STEPANAKERT (Realist English). Turkey needs a consulate in the city of Shushi occupied by the Baku regime to legalize imported terrorists, head of the independent Center for Strategic Studies Garib Babayan stressed in an article for Realis Information Agency.
“Turkey has promised to open a consulate in Shushi. As is known, the consulate is opened to serve its citizens, solve their problems related to visas, passports, certificates, notary services, etc. But Turkish citizens have never lived in Shushi. Why do they need a consular office there? The fact is that those several thousand fighters from ISIS* (an organization whose activities are prohibited in the Russian Federation), whom Turkey brought to Karabakh during the 44-day war to fight on the side of the Turkish-Azerbaijani military tandem, did not go anywhere, they remained there. In order to give them some “legitimacy”, the Turkish authorities decided to issue them Turkish citizenship and passports, and the consulate in Shushi will serve their interests,” the analyst explained.
In his opinion, Ankara has decided to gain a foothold in the South Caucasus for a long time and is trying to populate its strategically important settlement — the city of Shushi.
“This is a permanent threat not only for Artsakh and Armenia, but also for Russia and Iran. Terrorists from there will easily move through the territory of Azerbaijan to the borders of both Russia and Iran. Thus, according to various sources, Turkey and Azerbaijan brought to the South Caucasus from 2 to 4 thousand jihadist terrorists who fought on the side of Azerbaijan against the Armenian Artsakh and who, after the end of the war, remained in the territories of Nagorno-Karabakh occupied by the Turkish-Azerbaijanis. Apparently, the authorities of Turkey and Azerbaijan decided to settle them for permanent residence in Transcaucasia in order to use them further as needed and send them to the right points in the Caucasus. This greatly transforms the entire existing balance of power in this region and causes reasonable concern for the states of the Caucasus region.
In early October 2020, SVR Director Sergei Naryshkin presented information about the transfer of mercenaries from international terrorist organizations fighting in the Middle East, as well as extremist Kurdish groups, to the conflict zone in Nagorno-Karabakh. According to the Russian intelligence, it was about thousands of radicals hoping to make money on a new Karabakh war.
From September 27 to November 9, 2020, using the tacit consent of the Kremlin, the armed forces of Turkey and Azerbaijan attacked Artsakh and Armenia with the support of international mercenary terrorists from Syria, Libya and Afghanistan. Since then, Baku and Ankara have continued their occupation policy on Armenian lands, physically destroying Armenian cultural heritage — churches, khachkars, museums and all kinds of mentions of Armenians on stone or on paper.
