Turkey has interfered in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in pursuit of its own goals, and one of those long-term goals is to exert pressure on Europe. This is what President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian said in an interview with RBK.

According to Sarkissian, today, Turkey has a tremendous influence on Azerbaijan. Promising Baku support for a military solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Ankara hopes to reinforce its military and political presence in the neighboring country in exchange.

“Turkey wants to not only protect its oil pipelines in Azerbaijan, but also manage them. The West needs to understand that Turkey’s presence in Azerbaijan means control over natural gas and oil passing from Central Asia to Europe,” Sarkissian said.

“They claimed that Armenia intends to strike Azerbaijan’s oil and natural gas infrastructure, but this is absurd. If the Armenians intended to strike those infrastructures, they would have done it 20 years ago to show that pipelines can’t be built without Armenia,” Sarkissian said.

According to him, it’s normal that Moscow has its interests in relations with Ankara. “I don’t see any danger. On the contrary, Russia is the country that can radically change the current military situation in Nagorno-Karabakh through diplomacy and by exerting pressure on the parties,” he added.