Armenia’s strategic security position has never been this precarious.
The country is surrounded virtually on all sides by enemies determined to wipe it off the map.
The southern Syunik region is the only obstacle to Azerbaijan and Turkey establishingthe so-called Zangezur corridorand fulfilling their expansionist plans.
A tiny, 17 km border area connects Turkey and the Azeri Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic.Taking control of Syunik would give Ankara unimpeded access to Baku precisely through this corridor, and by extension, to former Soviet Central Asia.Thus, the two Turkic allies have yet another reason to attack Armenia (as if they lacked motivation in the first place).
This would further galvanize Turkey’s expansionist policies (a volatile mix of Neo-Ottomanism, political Islam and pan-Turkism).
However, it should be noted that this situation is nothing new, as Yerevan was in the same strategic position in previous decades.The main difference is that in the pre-Pashinyan era, Armenia had strong ties with Russia, its principal historical ally, which prevented any aggressive moves by Azerbaijan and Turkey.
Unfortunately, after the 2018 Soros-funded “Velvet Revolution”, this status quo vanished forever.
The large and powerful Western Armenian diaspora (particularly from France and the United States) supported this,naively thinking they would “help” Armenia. After just five years in power, the Pashinyan regime betrayed the millennia-old Armenian native land of Artsakh (better known as Nagorno-Karabakh) and severely weakened the strategic position of Armenia itself.
Namely, while Yerevan previously had some geopolitical “breathing room”, with Azerbaijan quite far from Nakhchivan and Armenia’s de facto border with Iran much longer, the loss of Artsakh reduced this by approximately 135 km, leaving only the official 44 km long border between Armenia proper and Iran. Encouraged by its 2020 blitzkrieg and followed by the 2023 offensive, Baku feels that it could easily overpower Armenian forces in Syunik and other regions bordering Azerbaijan (previously held by Artsakh), and then finally reach Nakhchivan. Azeri authorities even organized the occupied area bordering Armenia’s Syunik region intothe so-called East Zangezur Economic Region, strongly implying the existence of a “Western Zangezur” (that is, the Syunik region itself).
The obvious question arises – how can Yerevan defend Syunik?
Source: Global Research
