Parvin Rahimli

This thesis revolves around the recent Nagorno-Karabakh war (hereinafter will be referred to as “Karabakh war”) which has long been considered as a frozen conflict, but all of a sudden turned into a full-fledged war after 27 years. The first Karabakh war started in 1991 and lasted until 1993, a cease-fire agreement between the two parties has been signed in 1993, and this agreement “lasted” until 2020. Around 2015 there were a few major acts of breach of the ceasefire, and two countries were on the verge of a new war, however, it never happened until 2020. In 2020 similar breach of ceasefire happened but it escalated very quickly into a war. The second Karabakh war lasted for around 3 months, starting on the 27th of September 2020, and ending on the 10th of November 2020. It ended with a trilateral declaration that has been signed between Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Russia, and this declaration forced the tables to turn, Armenia had been obliged to return all the remaining occupied territories circling Nagorno-Karabakh territory. The goal of this research is to clearly explain Russia and Turkiye’s position throughout the conflict since there is no research academically stating and analyzing detrimental factors and reasons that made these two countries set their position during the Karabakh conflict. An additional goal of the research is to analyze the level of neutrality of Russia during its mediator role within the OSCE Minsk Group. The main question of this research is expected to be “Considering the long-lasting conflict history between Armenia and Azerbaijan, what factors were determinants of Russia and Türkiye’s official and possible non-official positions during the history of the conflict?” The scope of the investigation is planned to be geographical and historical. As mentioned above, since there is very limited information in Japanese academia about the said conflict and its historical/geopolitical background due to several factors such as language and information barrier, this research carries a role of introducing the Karabakh conflict and its actors and its positional determinants into Japanese literature. The research aims to answer several questions such as “Despite being the number one power in the South Caucasus region how Russia’s passiveness during the 27-year cease-fire and activeness during the 44 days of the II war affected the conflict?” and many more. On the other side, the research also aims to explain if Türkiye’s existence in the region and having close ties with Azerbaijan made any difference.