Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan meets Azerbaijani President IIham Aliyev in Baku, February 2020. Photo CC-BY-4.0: President.Az / Wikimedia Commons. Some rights reserved. This isn't the first time in recent years when fighting has flared up in Nagorno-Karabakh. But what is new, observers say, is the scale of the latest clashes — which can now be more accurately described as a full-blown war. Regional power brokers are also playing an increasingly important role in the conflict. If Armenia's ally Russia has remained uncharacteristically remote, the same cannot be said for Azerbaijan's close partners in Ankara. Turkey has offered extensive political and likely military support to Azerbaijan in recent weeks. International media have reported that mercenaries from Turkish controlled areas of northern Syria have been transferred to the South Caucasus to fight on Baku's side — reports which the Azerbaijani authorities have roundly dismissed. Turkey and Azerbaijan share the smallest of borders — Azerbaijan's exclave of Nakhchivan borders eastern Turkey, though Nakhchivan is itself separated from Azerbaijan proper by Armenia and Iran. For decades, they were also divided by the Iron Curtain; Azerbaijan came under Soviet rule in 1920 and Turkey became a NATO member state in 1952. However, Turkey and Azerbaijan also share Turkic roots, very similar languages, and a shared narrative about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Turkey was the first to recognise Azerbaijan as independent after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, its relations with Armenia are officially non-existent; the long border between the two countries has been closed since the first Karabakh War in the early 1990s. Importantly, Turkey's refusal to recognise the events of 1915 as an act of genocide continue to infuriate Armenian public opinion. In this context, it is not surprising that Ankara remains a staunch supporter of Baku. But observers are increasingly wondering: why now? Why on this scale? And what role does domestic Turkish politics play? To understand more, I spoke to Rovshan Aliyev, a former Radio Free Europe journalist from Azerbaijan who currently works as a media trainer in the Czech capital of Prague. This interview has been edited for brevity and style. Rovshan Aliyev, photo used with permission. Rovshan Aliyev (RA): Well, this is not a routine disruption of the [1994] ceasefire, something that has been happening occasionally on the frontline for years. This is almost a full-scale, continuous military operation. During previous standoffs, even in the most recent one in 2017, Armenia never openly threatened Azerbaijan with a military intervention to Azerbaijan, saying that the forces holding Azerbaijani territories are the self-defence army of Nagorno-Karabakh. But this time, we see a policy change, as Armenia is no longer hiding its direct involvement. On March 30, the Armenian Defence minister David Tonoyan declared that his country must prepare for “a new war for new territories” on the website Aravot.am. In May, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan participated in an inauguration event in Shusha, a city in Nagorno Karabakh that holds special significance for Azerbaijanis as a cultural centre and a place formerly inhabited almost exclusively by Azerbaijanis which has been since ethnically cleansed. More recently, Pashinyan's wife, Anna Hakobyan also posed on social media holding a Kalashnikov rifle. Finally, in July, Armenian forces also shelled the region of Tovuz, which is situated inside Azerbaijan. FN: Why is Turkey so prominently and openly supportive of Baku this time? What does it mean for Turkey’s ambitions and for Azerbaijan’s politics? RA: Turkey was always supportive [of Azerbaijan] in terms of politics and diplomacy, but did not display direct military support. In 1991, Turkey recognised the independence of Armenia, but after Armenian forces occupied territories around Nagorno Karabakh, that is an additional seven districts of Azerbaijan, Turkey closed its border with Armenia. This was a form of economic sanction, but not a full-scale one, as to this day, the trade turnover between Turkey and Armenia amounts to several hundred millions of US dollars.