site.btaErdogan Says He Supports Azerbaijan’s Decision to Launch Military Operation in Nagorno-Karabakh

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday that he "supports" Azerbaijan's decision to launch a military operation in Nagorno-Karabakh, a region Ankara's historic ally disputes with Armenia, AFP reported. 

"We support the measures taken by Azerbaijan /.../ to defend its territorial integrity," the Turkish president said in a post published on the social network X, formerly known as Twitter.

 "Karabakh is Azerbaijani territory. Imposing any other status will never be accepted," Erdogan added, reiterating that Turkiye and Azerbaijan are "one nation, two states."

Earlier in the day, the Turkish Foreign Ministry described as "legitimate" the "concerns" that led to the Azerbaijani military operation, while also calling on Baku and Yerevan to return to the negotiating table. During the war between Yerevan and Baku in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020, Turkiye supported Azerbaijan by supplying it with drones. Relations between Turkiye and Armenia remain strained by the killings of Armenians during World War I in the Ottoman Empire, which Yerevan and many other countries consider to be a genocide, which is a term Ankara rejects.