Yerevan /Mediamax/. The recent war between Azerbaijan and Armenia was designed to bring Turkey and Russia into direct contact in the Southern Caucasus, remove US influence and partition the area, The Jerusalem Post's author Seth Frantzman writes in the article "Turkey’s goal in Caucasus was to increase Russia’s role”.

“For Turkey, the attacks on Armenian civilians were a success, replicating Turkish-backed ethnic-cleansing in Afrin, where Kurds were expelled in January 2018. The model was the same in Nagorno-Karabakh. Turkey sent extremists, accused of beheading people, to ransack churches and force Armenians out,” the article says.

Frantzman is certain that “the war that Turkey prodded Azerbaijan into last September was the final end of US involvement in the Caucasus.”

“While Turkey sold the war as being needed to confront Iran and Russia, Ankara was, in fact, working with Tehran and Moscow. The end result is more Iranian, Russian and Turkish control and a weakening of independent southern Caucasus states.

“Stories about how the Turkish-Iranian-Russian triangle is destined to clash because of historic Ottoman, Persian and Russian imperial goals, or because they are Sunni, Shi’ite and Christian countries, are a misreading of history. They are more likely to work together against their common enemies in the West and to further their joint authoritarian and military agendas. They share much in common as rising powers in the world, seeking to end the unipolar world of US hegemony that grew out of the Cold War. Those in Washington who see Turkey through a Cold War lens are wrong about Turkey’s overall agenda. The agenda of Ankara is always to weaken and reduce the US role in the Middle East and to increase the Russian and Iranian role,” concludes Seth Frantzman.