Back in 1991, in the immediate wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Israel desk of Armenia’s foreign ministry—populated at the time by fluent Hebrew speakers—waited for a phone call that never came. The ministry was convinced that Israel, with whom Armenia shared an experience of genocide, was a natural ally. But Israel never made the call. Their shared experience could not compete with Armenia’s Turkic nemesis, Azerbaijan, with which Armenia was at war over Nagorno-Karabakh—a majority ethnic Armenian enclave on Azerbaijani territory.
“The calculation was simple,” an Israeli official said at the time. “Azerbaijan has three strategic assets that Israel is interested in: Muslims, oil, and several thousand Jews. All Armenia has to offer is at best several hundred Jews.”
Azerbaijan had another important asset as well: close political, security, and energy ties to Turkey, which was supporting it in its hostilities with Armenia. The pro-Israel lobby in the US and American Jewish organizations that had had longstanding ties to Turkey for years helped Ankara defeat proposals in the US Congress to commemorate the 1915 mass murder of Armenians.
The Turkey-Israel relationship has soured in recent years as strains between the two have grown more acute over issues like the status of East Jerusalem, held by Israel since 1967’s Six-Day War; the Palestinian question; Iran; political Islam; and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s touting of antisemitic conspiracy theories.
What has not changed is Israel’s close relationship with Azerbaijan, which put it on the same side as Turkey in renewed animosity between Armenia and Azerbaijan following the former’s defeat in the Second Karabakh War. This is a reflection of the Caspian basin’s inextricable links to the greater Middle East’s myriad conflicts and the fluid and fragile nature of regional alliances, partnerships, and animosities across the Eurasian landmass. Writing in Baku Dialogues, Svante Cornell emphasized this important point, noting the “gradual merger of the geopolitics of the South Caucasus and the Middle East” and going so far as to say that Azerbaijan in particular is “more closely connected to Middle Eastern dynamics than it has been in two centuries.”