President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s statement on Turkey’s willingness to support any trilateral format, including the Georgia-Azerbaijan-Armenia format must be viewed along with the first part of the statement in which Erdogan says he will actively support the Turkey-Georgia-Azerbaijan format that was established a long time ago.
This is what Director of the Institute of Oriental Studies at the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia, Turkologist Ruben Safrastyan told Armenian News-NEWS.am. According to him, the aim of this format is to weaken Russia’s role in the South Caucasus and augment Turkey’s influence. “In the beginning, the Turkey-Georgia-Azerbaijan format implied economic cooperation, and then it moved to the political level, and recently we have been seeing the move to the military level. Erdogan’s statement on willingness to support the Georgia-Azerbaijan-Armenia format also fits within the logic of weakening Russia’s role in the region. This goes to show that Ankara has far-reaching geopolitical goals, including the removal of Russia from the region so that Turkey will become the major force regulating integration processes of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia in the South Caucasus,” he added.
According to Safrastyan, as far as the second phase is concerned, the Georgia-Azerbaijan-Armenia format is actually unfeasible, taking into consideration Baku’s hostile policy towards Yerevan which is backed by Turkey.
Recently, Erdogan declared that Turkey supports any trilateral cooperation, be it Georgia-Azerbaijan-Armenia or Georgia-Azerbaijan-Turkey.