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By extraditing individuals to Turkey, Pashinyan gave Erdogan a strong trump card

January 21 2025, 12:57

Another Armenian-Turkish operation took place over the weekend. On January 19, the Armenian Foreign Ministry announced that official Yerevan had extradited to Turkey two individuals involved in organized crime in Turkey. According to Turkish media, these individuals were the leader of the organized criminal group, Erkan Yılmaz, and a member of the organization, Ibrahim Kaymak. Yılmaz has been wanted in Turkey for 15 years on 43 arrest warrants and has been on the international wanted list for the past 14 years. Ibrahim Kaymak was wanted by the national authorities for 6 years on 10 warrants and was listed in the Interpol database a year ago.

The event is not ordinary at all, and in its significance, it is comparable only to the support of Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Nikol Pashinyan in February 2021, and Pashinyan’s request to Erdogan to contribute to the normalization of Armenian-Azerbaijani relations.

The political content of the joint Armenian-Turkish operation may have several components at once:

1. “Another Overton window has been opened” at the request of Turkey, which has been applying sanctions (keeping the Armenian-Turkish border closed) against Armenia since 1993 (after the liberation of the Kelbajar region of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic) and which has the Shushi Declaration jointly with Azerbaijan against Armenia and receives those whom it considers criminals from Armenia itself. A precedent has been set, and the next joint Armenian-Turkish operation may be the extradition of some other person from Armenia, including an Armenian citizen, against whom a criminal case may be opened in Ankara.
2. By extraditing someone to Turkey, Yerevan has directly confirmed that it can be a place where certain individuals are hiding to escape from “Erdogan’s Themis.” It doesn’t matter if there are masses of Turkish fugitives in Armenia or not; what matters is that this fact has been recognized by official Yerevan.

This, in turn, means that “another Overton window has been opened,” and knowing the expansionist nature of Erdogan’s Turkey, with the example of Syria before our eyes, we can express reasonable concerns that Turkey may justify potential aggression against Armenia, claiming that Armenia has become a home for separatists or Kurds, PKK members, etc.

This scenario will become even more possible if Russian border guards are withdrawn from the Armenian-Russian border in accordance with the requirements of official Ankara and Baku.

Think about it…