Turkish parliament approves peacekeepers for Azerbaijan

Ankara: Turkey’s parliament on Tuesday granted President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government permission to deploy peacekeepers to Azerbaijan to monitor a ceasefire deal between Azerbaijan and Armenia that aims to end the conflict in the region.

In a show of hands, legislators voted in favour of a one-year mandate allowing the government to send troops to Azerbaijan, where they would observe possible violations of the truce from a joint Turkish-Russian monitoring centre.

The cease-fire ended six weeks of intense fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Erdogan’s government would determine the number of troops to be sent and it wasn’t immediately clear how many the country planned to deploy.

The motion states that civilian personnel could also be deployed as part of the peacekeeping mission.

Last week, the defence ministers of Russia and Turkey signed a memorandum of understanding to create a joint monitoring centre in Azerbaijan, although technical details of the mission are still being worked out.