One of the most important consequences of the November 2020 and January 2021 joint Armenian-Azerbaijan-Russian declarations ending the latest round of fighting between Yerevan and Baku was a commitment to the reopening of transportation routes in the South Caucasus region. But while there has been little progress on reopening the road and rail transportation routes that the earlier declarations speak of, significant movement can be observed on another trans-border project: a natural gas pipeline between Turkey and Nakhchivan. The agreement on this pipeline was signed by Turkish and Azerbaijani officials in December, just weeks after the second Artsakh war ceasefire declaration; and construction is now set to begin over the next month or so. The pipeline is designed to eliminate the requirement that Azerbaijan engages in gas swaps with Iran to supply its strategic western exclave. But it also promises to extend Turkey’s presence in the South Caucasus far deeper than has been the case in more than a century. Read the full story on Jamestown.
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