Erdogan will make his first official visit after the elections to union Azerbaijan

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was re-elected as President of Turkey on May 28, will make his first official foreign visit to Baku on June 13. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev became the first foreign leader to congratulate Erdogan on his victory. This was reported by the administration of the President of Turkey. The agenda of the talks in Baku includes the deepening of bilateral relations and the discussion of problems in the South Caucasus.

Last time, Erdogan also made his first visit to Azerbaijan, two weeks after the elections at the end of June 2018, and earlier than the planned trip to the self-proclaimed Turkish Northern Cyprus. Since then, Turkey indirectly took part on the side of Azerbaijan in the second Karabakh war in the fall of 2020, and a year later, in Shusha recaptured from Nagorno-Karabakh, the parties signed a declaration of the same name, which actually consolidated the allied nature of relations.

According to Yeni Safak, a former Turkish presidential candidate from nationalists, an ethnic Azerbaijani Sinan Ogan, will also arrive in Baku on June 13 as part of the Turkish delegation. During the campaign period, he supported Erdogan in the second round. He argued that the opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu in one of the election videos presented a draft of a new map of the Silk Road, in which Azerbaijan was excluded from the route. Subsequently, users of the Turkish segment of social networks accused Ogan of allegedly choosing him at the request of Aliyev, who had friendly relations with Erdogan. The candidate himself denied these allegations.

But de facto, Erdogan made his first state visit on June 12 to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC, only Ankara recognizes the independence of the territory). In Levkosha (the Turkish name for Northern Nicosia), Erdogan, together with TRNC President Ersin Tatar and Prime Minister Ünal Yustel, discussed bilateral cooperation and the problem of regional security in the Eastern Mediterranean, the press service of the Turkish President reports.

Turkish leaders traditionally make their first stop in Cyprus. Since 1974, 11 Turkish army corps, numbering 40,000 people, have been deployed in the north of the island, introduced under the pretext of protecting the local Turkish population after Greek-Turkish ethnic clashes. In total, the Turkish army controls about 40% of the island.

In addition, large gas resources have been discovered in the territorial waters of Cyprus, in which the Turkish authorities are interested. According to the Greek authorities in the southern part of the island (the internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus), gas reserves in the Aphrodite field alone can amount to about 170 billion cubic meters. m. Ankara does not recognize the sovereignty of the Greeks over the fields and considers the licenses issued by the Greek Cypriots to Western companies to develop wells illegal. At the same time, Turkish drilling vessels have been working south of the Karpas Peninsula in the north of the island since 2019.

After the unilateral declaration of independence of the TRNC in 1983, Ankara actually represents the interests of the Turkish Cypriots in the international arena. Officially, the Turkish state advocated the unification of the two parts of the island and the formation of a two-communal state. In a 2004 referendum proposed by then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Turkish inhabitants of the island, unlike the Greek Cypriots, voted for the “reunification” of Cyprus. But since 2022, Erdogan has set a course for the international recognition of the TRNC as an independent state; in November of the same year, Northern Cyprus received observer status in the Organization of Turkic States supervised by Ankara.

By visiting Northern Cyprus and Azerbaijan, Erdogan emphasizes the nationalist nature of the Turkish state on the outer contour, Nikolai Silaev, senior researcher at the Center for Caucasus Problems at MGIMO, believes. “Over the years, he has addressed the subject of the Ottoman heritage in one form or another, either with a focus on Islam or areas that were once part of the Ottoman Empire. Erdogan continues the policy of moving Turkey into the sphere of national interests,” the expert says.

According to Stanislav Pritchin, senior researcher at the Center for Post-Soviet Studies at IMEMO RAS, Ankara is building the most sovereign and subjective policy. Northern Cyprus and Azerbaijan are key allies of Turkey in the international arena, and the Turkish state acts as a leader here.

The second reason is the unconditional support of Erdogan by Aliyev during the presidential campaign, Pritchin continues: “It was clear that Baku participated in the Turkish presidential race to the maximum and had practically no contacts with the opposition. Although this unequivocal position of the Azerbaijanis carried risks, it turned out to be justified: it is with Erdogan that Baku has the closest cooperation, especially after his unconditional support for Azerbaijan in the second Karabakh war.”

The main topics of Erdogan’s talks in Baku will be the issues of coordinating a joint policy in relations with Armenia and Russia, Silaev said. According to the expert, Ankara will not correct the foreign policy vector in the Armenian direction. Here, one of the stumbling blocks is the promotion by Yerevan in the international arena of the topic of the Armenian genocide carried out by the Ottoman Empire in 1915, because of which the parties cannot find common ground, continues Silaev. And in the Russian direction, the Turkish authorities will maintain the vector of cooperation with Moscow in many foreign policy areas, he says.

From a global point of view, strengthening ties between Baku and Ankara is not in Moscow’s interests, Pritchin continues. “Ideally, Russia would like to have equal relations with Azerbaijan. But the Azerbaijani-Turkish tandem was formed in the early 1990s. All regional energy and infrastructure projects were implemented with the participation of Turkey. Ankara is also a key partner of Baku in the field of security. Moscow will have to reckon with this fact,” the expert concluded.