Turkey's deputy EU minister: Turkey-Azerbaijan represent common history and culture

Turkey's Deputy EU Minister Alaattin Buyukkaya has said Turkey and Azerbaijan represent a common history, culture and fraternity which they will preserve for the future. Speaking at the workshop "Nagorno-Karabakh Issue: From Where to Where?" held in Ankara by the Council on State Support to NGOs under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Buyukkaya stated that Turkey and Azerbaijan are already strategical partners, always acting jointly in bilateral matters. He highlighted the two countries play a key role in maintaining peace and stability throughout the whole Caucasian region, exerting all their efforts towards their wish of peace for the region. He refered to the first foreign visit of the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to Turkey after his re-election at the presidential voting in October last year as to indicate the significance of the bilateral relations. Azerbaijani Ambassador to Turkey Faig Bagirov remarked on the history of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh territory between Azerbaijan and Armenia, and said the reason for the conflict was Azerbaijan's disintegration from the Soviet Union, and Azerbaijan's rejection on unification of the region with Armenia. Bagirov also described the January 20 massacre against Azeri people, whose population mostly consisst of Turkic-Muslims, as a punishment by the "totalitarian Soviet regime" for this rejection, killing Azeri civilians and shelling the Azeri TV and radio stations. He said the Soviet regime intervened in the Nagorno-Karabakh region on January 19-20 acting on the motto "Azerbaijan must be controlled, and the most useful tool for that is the Armenians." Turkey's former Ambassador to Azerbaijan and Turkish Foreign Ministry Bilateral Political Relations Director-General Hulusi Kilic noted that the political influence of Azerbaijan in the international arena is growing so as to benefit the solution process for the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute. Describing Turkey and Azerbaijan as identical twin sisters, Kilic stated Turkey wants a solution for the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in which "the Armenians withdraw from the territory they occupy" and the two ethnic groups live in peace and tranquility in the wider region. Turkish parliamentarian and Chairman of Turkey-Azerbaijan Interparlimentary Friendship Group Necdet Unuvar said "Perpetrators of both the Baku massacre of 1990 and the Khojaly massacre of February 1992 confess before the public what they did then." He maintained that the countries in the Turkic world must be strong on their own economically, socially and in terms of the international lobbying activities. "To secure a solid and strong place in the international arena, Turkic countries need to further strengthen their unity, solidarity and courage, enabling the latest technological and cyber opportunities of our age to the utmost," he added. Armenian and Azerbaijani delegations and governments have been holding peace talks over disputed status of Nagorno-Karabakh region since the end of the Nagorno-Karabakh War in 1994, under mediation of the OSCE Minsk Group. Black January (1990) was a violent crackdown in Baku upon on a state of emergency during the dissolution of the Soviet Union and in Baku. The Black January massacre is also regarded as the rebirth of the Azerbaijani Republic