Turkey tells Armenia to ‘cease provocations’ as Yerevan appeals for help against Baku

Above, Azerbaijan’s flag, left, and Armenia’s flag flying at a border check point between the countries. The neighbors have fought two wars over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. (AFP file photo)
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Updated 13 September 2022
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Turkey tells Armenia to ‘cease provocations’ as Yerevan appeals for help against Baku

  • Armenia said that at least 49 of its troops were killed in border clashes with Azerbaijan

ISTANBUL/YEREVAN: Armenia said Tuesday that at least 49 of its troops were killed in border clashes with Azerbaijan, the worst fighting between the arch foes since their 2020 war over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
“For the moment, we have 49 (troops) killed and unfortunately it’s not the final figure,” Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told parliament.
Meanwhile, Turkey told Armenia on Tuesday to “cease its provocations” against Azerbaijan, following a flareup of deadly clashes along the arch foes’ shared border.
“Armenia should cease its provocations and focus on peace negotiations and cooperation with Azerbaijan,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu tweeted after a phone call with Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov.
Armenia appealed to world leaders for help, saying that Azerbaijani forces were trying to advance onto its territory amid deadly clashes along the arch foes’ shared border.
Fighting erupted overnight along the volatile border between the Caucasus neighbors, leaving troops dead on both sides, defense ministries in Baku and Yerevan said, without giving the number of casualties.
The escalation marked the latest flare up since the end of the 2020 war between Yerevan and Baku over the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region.
“Azerbaijani forces continue using artillery, trench mortars, and drones... striking military and civilian infrastructure. The enemy is trying to advance (into Armenian territory),” Armenia’s defense ministry in Yerevan said early on Tuesday.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s office said he called French President Emmanuel Macron, Russian President Vladimir Putin and the United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken to demand “an adequate reaction” to “Azerbaijan’s aggressive acts.”
Pashinyan also chaired an emergency session of the country’s security council that agreed to formally ask for military help from ally Moscow, which is obligated under a current treaty to defend Armenia in the event of foreign invasion.
Armenian Defense Minister Suren Papikyan and Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu “held a phone conversation to discuss Azerbaijan’s aggression against Armenia’s sovereign territory,” the defense ministry in Yerevan said, adding that the two “agreed to take necessary steps to stabilize the situation.”
Armenia is a member of the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization(CSTO) which also includes former Soviet republics Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.
Earlier, Azerbaijani defense ministry said its forces were responding to Armenian provocation and denied claims that they were hitting civilian infrastructure.
“Azerbaijani armed forces are undertaking limited and targeted steps, neutralising Armenian firing positions,” it said in a statement.
Armenia said that Azerbaijani forces “launched intensive shelling, with artillery and large-calibre firearms, against Armenian military positions in the direction of the cities of Goris, Sotk, and Jermuk” shortly after midnight.
But Azerbaijan’s defense ministry accused Armenia of “large-scale subversive acts” near the districts of Dashkesan, Kelbajar and Lachin on the border, adding that its army positions “came under fire, including from trench mortars.”
Last week, Armenia accused Azerbaijan of killing one of its soldiers in a border shootout.
In August, Azerbaijan said it had lost a soldier and the Karabakh army said two of its troops had been killed and more than a dozen injured.
The neighbors fought two wars — in the 1990s and in 2020 — over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, Azerbaijan’s Armenian-populated enclave.
Six weeks of fighting in the autumn of 2020 claimed more than 6,500 lives and ended with a Russian-brokered cease-fire.
Under the deal, Armenia ceded swathes of territory it had controlled for decades and Moscow deployed about 2,000 Russian peacekeepers to oversee the fragile truce.
During EU-mediated talks in Brussels in May and April, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan agreed to “advance discussions” on a future peace treaty.
Ethnic Armenian separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh broke away from Azerbaijan when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The ensuing conflict claimed around 30,000 lives.


Faced with Trump, Greenlanders try to reassure their children

Updated 6 sec ago
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Faced with Trump, Greenlanders try to reassure their children

NUUK: In a coffee shop in Greenland’s capital Nuuk, Lykke Lynge looked fondly at her four kids as they sipped their hot chocolate, seemingly oblivious to the world’s convulsions.
Since Donald Trump returned to the White House last year with a renewed ambition to seize Greenland, international politics has intruded into the Arctic island’s households.
Dictated by the more or less threatening pronouncements of the US president, it has been an unsettling experience for some people here — but everyone is trying to reassure their children.
Lynge, a 42-year-old lawyer, relied on her Christian faith.
“There’s a lot of turmoil in the world,” she said. “But even if we love our country, we have even higher values that allow us to sleep soundly and not be afraid,” she said.
As early as January 27, 2025, one week after Donald Trump’s inauguration, the Greenlandic authorities published a guide entitled “How to talk to children in times of uncertainty?“
“When somebody says they will come to take our country or they will bomb us or something, then of course children will get very scared because they cannot navigate for themselves in all this news,” said Tina Dam, chief program officer for Unicef in the Danish territory.

- Unanswerable questions -

This guide — to which the UN agency for children contributed — recommends parents remain calm and open, listen to their children and be sensitive to their feelings, and limit their own news consumption.
As in many parts of the world, social media, particularly TikTok, has become the primary source of information for young people.
Today, children have access to a lot of information not meant for them, said Dam — “and definitely not appropriate for their age,” she added.
“So that’s why we need to be aware of that as adults and be protective about our children and be able to talk with our children about the things they hear — because the rhetoric is quite aggressive.”
But reassuring children is difficult when you do not have the answers to many of the questions yourself.
Arnakkuluk Jo Kleist, a 41-year-old consultant, said she talked a lot with her 13-year-old daughter, Manumina.
The teenager is also immersed in TikTok videos but “doesn’t seem very nervous, luckily, as much as maybe we are,” she added.
“Sometimes there are questions she’s asking — about what if this happens — that I don’t have any answers to” — because no one actually has the answer to such questions, she said.

- ‘Dear Donald Trump’ -

The Arctic territory’s Inuit culture also helped, said Kleist.
“We have a history and we have conditions in our country where sometimes things happen and we are used to being in situations that are out of our control,” said Kleist.
“We try to adapt to it and say, well, what can I do in this situation?“
Some Greenlandic children and teenagers are also using social media to get their message out to the world.
Seven-year-old Marley and his 14-year-old sister Mila were behind a viral video viewed more than two million times on Instagram — the equivalent of 35 times the population of Greenland.
Serious in subject but lighthearted in tone, the boy addresses the American president.
“Dear Donald Trump, I have a message for you: you are making Greenlandic kids scared.”
Accompanied by hard stares, some serious finger-wagging and mostly straight faces, he and his sister go on to tell Trump: “Greenland is not for sale.”
“It’s a way to cope,” his mother, Paninnguaq Heilmann-Sigurdsen, told AFP of the video. “It’s kid-friendly, but also serious.
“I think it’s a balance between this is very serious, but also, this is with kids.”