The Azerbaijani-Armenian negotiations, elections in Turkey...

Baku/19.05.23/Turan: The next round of negotiations on the draft "peace agreement" between Azerbaijan and Armenia will take place in Russia today. Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Ceyhun Bayramov and Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan are already in Moscow.

The second round of the presidential elections will be held in Turkey on May 28. It should be noted that none of the presidential candidates won more than 50% of the votes in the elections held on May 14, so the second round of voting will take place on May 28. One of the two candidates, either Recep Tayyip Erdogan or opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, will win and become president.

Political commentator Rauf Mirkadyrov talks about the processes taking place in the region in the "Difficult Question" program.

According to him, in fact, the purpose of the meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia - Ceyhun Bayramov and Ararat Mirzoyan, is to prepare a meeting between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. Unless, of course, nothing changes and the meeting of Ilham Aliyev and Nikol Pashinyan takes place. But in fact, this meeting of ministers is an attempt by Russia to regain the initiative. Because, frozen for several months, the mediation of the West, in principle, has already been restored. And, importantly, restored in the format of a series of meetings.

"First there was a Washington meeting, followed by a meeting with the participation of Charles Michel, and the next meeting is due to take place on June 1 in Chisinau. And if you remember, during the first initiatives of Charles Michel, we did not know when the next meetings would take place. Such a systematic nature of the meetings suggests that the parties are moving towards a certain result," the observer noted.

In his opinion, a characteristic feature of these meetings is that they do not take place in a bilateral or trilateral format, as it was before, but with the participation of experts. "This is evidence that work is underway on specific documents," Mirkadyrov believes.

Another important point, according to the expert, was the statement of the Armenian Prime Minister that Armenia recognizes the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan within the territorial and administrative borders of the republic within the USSR.

"This means recognition of Karabakh as the territory of Azerbaijan. However, we should not get euphoric. Because this does not mean that the Armenians in Karabakh will agree with this and that Armenia will be an outside observer of the processes going on in Karabakh," the observer said, drawing attention to the fact that Russia still has enough opportunities to commit provocations and torpedo the peace process.

Referring to the results of the elections in Turkey and the reasons that the opposition failed to win, Mirkadyrov noted that Turkish society is split.

"Although this split is based on ideology, it is still not ideological in nature. On the one hand, it is very interesting that the main supporters of Erdogan, his social base are nationalists and traditionalists of the Islamic persuasion - mostly illiterate provincials. And the propaganda machine broadcast from all irons that if tomorrow the followers of Ataturk in the person of Kilicdaroglu come to power, then for those who wear a hijab, the entrance to state institutions will be closed again, and the children of traditionalists will be expelled from universities, etc. This was the reason that the united opposition could not get enough votes to win," Rauf Mirkadyrov believes.