ZANGILAN, Azerbaijan — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, have opened another international airport near Nagorno-Karabakh. It is the second airport to have been built there since Baku regained control over parts of the breakaway region and seven adjacent districts in 2020.
The ceremony opening the new international airport in the southwestern city of Zangilan was held on October 20.
Speaking at a joint news conference with Aliyev, Erdogan said that there is an opportunity for Turkey to repair ties with Armenia, linking it with the normalization under way between Yerevan and Baku.
“The processes of normalization between Azerbaijan and Armenia, between Turkey and Armenia, are interdependent,” Erdogan said. “We must seize the opportunity which has opened.”
Armenia and Azerbaijan have begun drafting the text of a peace treaty, and Erdogan earlier this month met Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian for talks in the Czech Republic.
Aliyev told the news conference that the unity of Azerbaijan and Turkey “sends a serious message to the region and the entire world as it is a factor of stability.”
In October last year, Erdogan and Aliyev opened another international airport in the city of Fuzuli, the capital of the district with the same name adjacent to Nagorno-Karabakh. It was among districts placed under Baku’s control as part of a truce signed in November 2020 following a 44-day war between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces.
A Moscow-brokered truce ended heavy fighting in 2020 which saw thousands of casualties on both sides. Armenia lost control of parts of the breakaway territory and surrounding districts of Azerbaijan that it had held since the 1990s.
Armenian separatists retained control over most of Nagorno-Karabakh’s territory, and some 2,000 Russian peacekeepers have been deployed in the region.
Azerbaijan is building a third airport in the regained territory, namely in the district of Lacin, which is expected to be completed in 2025.
The region is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but came under the control of ethnic Armenian forces after a separatist war in the early 1990s.
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