Erdoğan: Armenia must immediately withdraw from Azeri lands

As speaking during an event in Istanbul, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Monday Armenia must immediately withdraw from Azeri lands which it has been occupying and that it is time to end the crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway region inside Azerbaijan run by ethnic Armenians.

"The time has come for the crisis in the region that started with the occupation of Nagorny Karabakh to be put to an end," the Turkish leader stressed in his speech.

"Once Armenia immediately leaves the territory it is occupying, the region will return to peace and harmony," he also said in a statement.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a territorial dispute over the Nagorny Karabakh region for decades, waging a war in the early 1990s that claimed thousands of lives.

Erdoğan once again blamed Armenia for starting the latest escalation, accusing the United States, Russia and France of failing to properly address the conflict in so-called "Minsk Group" talks.

"They basically did everything they could not to resolve the issue," Erdoğan said.

"Now Azerbaijan must take matters into its own hands."

Border clashes broke out early Sunday when Armenian forces targeted Azerbaijani civilian settlements and military positions, leading to casualties.

Azerbaijan's parliament declared a state of war in some of its cities and regions following Armenia's border violations and attacks in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Relations between the two former Soviet nations have been tense since 1991, when the Armenian military occupied Upper Karabakh, or Nagorno-Karabakh, an internationally recognized territory of Azerbaijan.

Four UN Security Council and two UN General Assembly resolutions as well as many international organizations demand the withdrawal of the occupying forces.