Armenia has filed an inter-state complaint against Turkey with the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) accusing it of involvement in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict by providing assistance to the Azerbaijani armed forces, Turkish media reported on Tuesday, citing a press release by the Strasbourg court.
The court on Tuesday said it had on May 9 received a completed application form in the inter-state case Armenia v. Turkey, which concerns Ankara’s alleged role in the recent armed hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan taking place between Sept. 27 and Nov. 10, 2020.
“Armenia alleges that Turkey provided assistance to the Azerbaijani armed forces during the conflict,” the ECtHR stated, informing that Yerevan’s application form opens the proceedings on the complaints about alleged violations of the European Convention on Human Rights.
“The first matter for the Court to examine is the admissibility of the application. As an initial step … the President of the Court has assigned the case to the Third Section and given notice of the application to the respondent State,” the court noted in the conclusion of the press release.
Clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, which ended following diplomatic intervention by Russia, resulted in Azerbaijan seizing some of the territories it had lost during a six-year conflict that killed tens of thousands as the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s.
Turkey has supported Muslim-majority Azerbaijan in the decades-long conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory inside Azerbaijan where the population is predominantly ethnic Armenian. The region declared independence in 1991 under the name of the Republic of Artsakh, a state deemed illegitimate by the international community.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan backed Azerbaijan diplomatically during last year’s conflict, while Armenia’s position was supported by its traditional allies in Europe and the United States. Turkey, which has historically had poor relations with Armenia, has also been a major supplier of weapons to Azerbaijan, including drones that played a decisive role in the war.