Turkish President Erdogan heads to Nakhchivan to hold talks with Azerbaijan's Aliyev

By Diyar Guldogan

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan departed on Monday for Azerbaijan's autonomous Nakhchivan exclave at the invitation of his counterpart Ilham Aliyev.

Aliyev will welcome Erdogan with an official ceremony ahead of one-on-one talks to discuss bilateral relations, as well as regional and global issues, particularly the recent developments in Karabakh. They will later hold a joint news conference.

The leaders will also attend the groundbreaking ceremony of a natural gas pipeline between Nakhchivan and neighboring province of Igdir in eastern Türkiye, as well as inaugurate a modernized military complex in the Azerbaijani exclave.

Ankara and Baku agreed in 2020 to supply natural gas from Türkiye to Azerbaijan's Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic under a memorandum of understanding.

The new 85-kilometer-long gas pipeline will run from Igdir to Sederek in western Azerbaijan, with an annual capacity of 500 million cubic meters (mcm) and 1.5 mcm daily.

The project will be realized through a partnership between Türkiye's crude oil and natural gas pipeline trading company BOTAS and Azerbaijan's state oil company SOCAR.