Ankara: ending Armenian occupation essential to ensure cease-fire in Karabakh

A road map to end the Armenian occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh is necessary to establish a cease-fire in the area, Turkish Presidential Spokesperson Ibrahim Kalın said Friday.

"Attempts at a cease-fire in the Nagorno-Karabakh region must be combined with a clear road map to end Armenian occupation," he told a live broadcast on Al-Jazeera.

Kalin noted that Turkey supports a diplomatic solution and has called on the OSCE Minsk Group to come up with a timetable containing a guideline to not only end hostilities but also end the occupation of Azerbaijani lands by Armenia.

He highlighted that establishing a cease-fire was crucial, but the only way to make the cease-fire permanent and lasting is by ending the Armenian occupation.

"Yes to a diplomatic solution but that needs to be combined with a timetable, a road map to end the occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh," Daily Sabah cited Kalın as saying.

The Armenian armed forces committed a large-scale provocation, subjecting the positions of the Azerbaijani army to intensive shelling from large-caliber weapons, mortars, and artillery installations of various calibers in the front-line zone on Sept. 27 at 05:00 (Msk). The command of the Azerbaijani Army decided to launch a counter-offensive operation of Azerbaijani troops along the entire front to suppress the combat activity of the Armenian armed forces and ensure the safety of the civilian population. To date, the city of Jabrayil and most of the Jabrayil district, more than half of the Fizuli district were liberated in the south, and the strategically important Murovdag mountain and the so-called sixth fortified area around the village of Sugovushan in the north were liberated.