A research article entitled “Turkey’s Assertive Turn in the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict: From Cautious Support to Strategic Engagement with Azerbaijan,” authored by Levon Hovsepyan, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor, and Head of the Department of Turkish Studies at the Institute of Oriental Studies, in co-authorship with Vahram Ter-Matevosyan, Doctor of Historical Sciences, has been published in Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, a Q1-ranked academic journal published by Taylor & Francis.

The article was published in open access within the framework of research projects funded by the Higher Education and Science Committee of the Republic of Armenia under grant Nos. 24LCG-6A016 and 21AG-6A081.

The study examines the role of domestic political factors and institutional transformations in shaping Turkey’s pivotal involvement in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War. Unlike in the early 1990s, when Ankara refrained from direct military involvement in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Turkey played a key role in securing Azerbaijan’s military victory in 2020. This marked a significant shift from Ankara’s previously cautious approach towards a more assertive strategic posture.

The article investigates the domestic factors that enabled Turkey’s decisive involvement in the conflict, accompanied by an unprecedented degree of military power projection. By examining the evolution of domestic institutional dynamics and their influence on Turkey’s strategic shift, the study employs a comparative analysis to identify the domestic, unit-level factors underlying Ankara’s contrasting positions during the wars of the 1990s and 2020.

The authors argue that Turkey’s authoritarian turn, the erosion of domestic checks and balances, the centralization of decision-making, the expansion of military power and capabilities, and the emergence of a revisionist foreign policy identity collectively created the conditions that shaped Ankara’s involvement in the 2020 war.

The full article is available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14683857.2026.2704513