Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has accused neighboring Armenia of posing a “fascist threat” that needs to be destroyed, in comments the Armenian leader called a possible attempt to justify another conflict.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought a series of wars since the late 1980s, when Nagorno-Karabakh, a region in Azerbaijan that had a majority Armenian population, seceded from Baku with the support of Yerevan.
In September 2023, Azerbaijan retook Karabakh, forcing nearly all of the area’s 100,000 Armenians to leave en masse for Armenia. Both sides have since claimed they want to sign an agreement to end the conflict.
In an interview for Azerbaijani television channels, Aliyev said: “Armenia is actually a source of threat to the region. The independent Armenian state is essentially a fascist state. For almost 30 years, that country was governed by the bearers of fascist ideology, and they shaped the state in their own image,” reports Reuters.
(Vijesti.ba/FENA)
