Turkey cannot be a mediator: it openly supports Azerbaijan, Armenian President Armen Sarkissian told Kommersant newspaper.

“The Turkish military and their equipment are participating in these operations (of the Azerbaijani army). Turkish drones work in the mountains every day. Turkish military aircraft fly every day. How can Turks be mediators?

When we talk about the current war, we should not forget that it is different from the first one. The intensity of hostilities is much higher, and the very nature of the conflict has changed. Military actions began on September 27 under the pretext of resolving the Karabakh issue by military means. But in reality, if you look at the goals of the Azerbaijani-Turkish side, then obviously it is not only about Karabakh.

Turkey allegedly came to help ‘brotherly Azerbaijan’: here you guys cannot solve the Karabakh problem on your own, let us show you how to solve it. We hear various artificial pretexts – about a “fraternal republic”, about Kurdish militants allegedly fighting on the Armenian side … There can be not a single militant in Armenia. They also say that it is necessary to “ensure the safety of energy routes.” But this is absolute nonsense because if the Armenians wanted to attack energy routes such as oil or gas pipelines, they could have done so 20 years ago. But not a single shot was fired. Azerbaijan, on the other hand, pumped gas and oil from the Caspian Sea, earned billions, and spent these billions on the purchase of weapons. And now it uses this weapon to kill Armenians.

There is no need to pretend that, they say, ‘we are here to protect Azerbaijanis.’ Turkey is there because it wants to manage these lines (oil and gas pipelines). And the longer the conflict lasts, the deeper Turkey’s presence in Azerbaijan will be.

And this will change the entire regional geopolitics. Turkey is becoming a neighbor of Russia, with which it, in fact, will have a land border. Turkey will manage oil and gas pipelines to Europe. This means that Turkey will have a huge impact on Europe’s energy security. It will also have a huge impact on Central Asia and the Caspian region because some of the gas and oil comes from there,” the President noted.

According to him, if we put aside what Turkey says about “ethnic brothers”, it is obvious that it is now destroying the status quo everywhere and creating hotbeds of instability.

“They were involved in a conflict in Egypt with the Muslim Brotherhood. They are now in Libya. Where is Turkey and where is Libya, are their “ethnic brothers” there? The Turks are there to have control over rich energy resources and over the gateway of migration from Africa to Europe. Turkey keeps Europe under economic and humanitarian focus,” he added.

“Turkey is very active in the development of oil wells in the part of the Mediterranean Sea, which belongs to Greece. The same is done in Cyprus. Turkey actually occupied half of Cyprus. Nobody recognized it (the Turkish republic of northern Cyprus). When they talk about the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic … What about the Turkish part of Cyprus, is it recognized? Why is the Turkish army there?” Sarkissian wondered.

“To achieve an armistice and later to increase trust between the parties (then, perhaps, to put peacekeepers between them, for example, Russian ones), one thing must be done – to exclude Turkey from this picture. Its presence complicates and radically changes the entire conflict,” he added.