Turkey’s Erdogan, at Nagorno-Karabakh parade, says Armenia needs new leaders

Ankara (Reuters) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday renewed a call for a change of leadership in Armenia, while offering the country the chance of joining a regional cooperation group alongside Azerbaijan.

Erdogan made the comments in Baku, where he reviewed a military parade marking Armenia’s defeat by Azerbaijan in a war in the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Erdogan, who provided military and diplomatic backing to Azerbaijan during the fighting, offered indirect support for opponents of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who is under pressure at home to resign over his handling of the conflict, which ended last month.

“We wish for the Armenian people to rid itself of the burden of leaders who console them with the lies of the past and trap them into poverty,” said Erdogan.

He had discussed with his Azeri counterpart forming the cooperation initiative alongside Russia, Iran and Georgia. Armenia could also participate and see its border with Turkey reopened if it took positive steps, Erdogan told a news conference.

Armenia and Turkey signed a landmark peace accord in 2009 to restore ties and open their shared border after a century of hostility stemming from the World War One mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman forces. The deal was never ratified and ties have remained tense.

The Karabakh fighting was brought to a halt after Russian peacekeeping troops deployed under a deal that locked in territorial gains by Azerbaijan, a close ally of Turkey.

Karabakh is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan, but is populated and, until recently, was fully controlled by ethnic Armenians after a bloody war in the 1990s which saw them seize other outlying regions belonging to Azerbaijan too.

Erdogan, who reviewed the parade in Baku with Aliyev, said there was also now a need to hold ethnic Armenian forces accountable for what he said were their war crimes and destruction of villages, cities and mosques.

Armenian forces deny such accusations. They say Azeri forces and foreign mercenaries are the ones responsible for large-scale cultural destruction and atrocities. Baku denies that.

At Thursday’s parade, helicopters bearing the flags of Turkey and Azerbaijan flew over the nearby Caspian Sea, almost 3,000 Turkish troops marched across Baku’s main square, and Azeri tanks and soldiers filed past the two men.