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November 13, 2020

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has become an important component of Turkish foreign policy. Over the years, Ankara’s support for Baku has grown exponentially. Diplomacy was an element of this support, but more significant was the dispatch of sophisticated weaponry. Greater support for Azerbaijan coincided with Turkey’s more active foreign policy in the Middle East and the Mediterranean, and is now strikingly different from Ankara-Baku relations of the 1990s and even the early 2010s. The reason for Ankara’s assertiveness could be access to energy and trade routes.
Public opinion polling in the Arab world suggests that autocratic leaders like Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman and his UAE counterpart, Muhammad bin Zayed, have gotten some things right. Both men have to varying degrees replaced religion with nationalism as the ideology legitimizing their rule and sought to ensure that countries in the region broadly adhere to their worldview.

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