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Almost Anniversary: Azerbaijan's Hope For Turkey's Attack Failed Bec

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  • Almost Anniversary: Azerbaijan's Hope For Turkey's Attack Failed Bec

    ALMOST ANNIVERSARY: AZERBAIJAN'S HOPE FOR TURKEY'S ATTACK FAILED BECAUSE OF POLITICAL CRISIS IN RUSSIA
    By Aris Ghazinyan

    ArmeniaNow
    03.10.11 | 15:05

    Photo: www.wikipedia.org

    October 4, 1993, tanks opened fire at the Russian parliament building,
    a historic fact that saved Armenia from Turkish air attack.

    October 3 marks a historic day of 18 years ago when all the armed
    forces of Armenia were on hair-trigger alert for a possible air attack
    from Turkey.

    Political analyst Hayk Demoyan, head of the Armenian Genocide
    Institute-Museum, recalls that "Turkey then centered its forces on the
    Armenian border, and deployed armored vehicles and artillery of the
    220th mechanized and the 9th artillery alignment of the Sarighamish
    division of the Turkish army at Bayraktaran border village."

    What exactly was going on?

    Presidential elections were scheduled for October 3, 1993 in
    Azerbaijan; the initial predictability of the outcome did not promise
    any surprises. The intrigue was however somewhere else, and Heydar
    Aliyev, then running for presidency, had high hopes for it: he was
    counting on opening a second front against the Armenian statehood.

    And, his hopes were not groundless.

    Yet in September Turkey concentrated a solid military contingent at
    the Armenian border. It was then that Turkish premier Tansu Ciller,
    openly demonstrating his annoyance with the Armenians' success,
    stated that Turkey "is not going to sit back and do nothing".

    Ankara's determination was determined by most serious crisis of
    power in Russia, where the conflict between the president and the
    parliament was gradually turning into an armed confrontation. Turkey
    was counting on Boris Yeltsin's removal from office, on the creation
    of prerequisites for reconsideration of Armenian-Russian agreements
    and withdrawal of Russian military units deployed in Armenia.

    Aliyev had high hopes for such a prospect, and in early October Turkey
    was making attempts to use the political crisis in Russia to attack
    Armenia under the pretense of a fight against Kurds.

    Russian parliament speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov had reached a clear-cut
    agreement with the Turkish Premier: should Khasbulatov win, Russian
    frontier guards would be withdrawn from Transcaucasia. This would
    enable Turkey, using the Kurdish issue as an excuse, to carry out a
    limited encroachment upon Armenia.

    If the October 3 presidential election results in Baku were
    predictable, in the Russian capital, on the contrary, things were
    happening in an interactive regime: while Azeri voters were on their
    way to polling stations, Khasbulatov was calling to storm the Kremlin
    and lock Boris Yeltsin in Matrosskaya Tishina ("Seaman's Silence" -
    detention facility in Moscow).

    The night of October 4 Yeltsin made a decision to storm the House
    of Soviets: at the session of Defense Ministry's General Staff he
    ordered to use tanks and armored vehicles.

    On October 4, the day when the army entered Moscow and tanks opened
    fire at the House of Soviets, the armed forces in Armenia were on
    red alert to repulse the possible attack from Turkey. Thousands of
    Russian border guards deployed on the Armenian-Turkish border were
    watching the north.

    Heydar Aliyev secured an almost 100-percent victory in elections, and
    he could have rightfully celebrated another victory, if not for the
    fact that Yeltsin's victory in Moscow wrecked his far-reaching plans.

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