Liberation of Upper Karabakh viewed as one of Turkic world's biggest achievements

The liberation of Karabakh is one of the biggest achievements of the Turkic world in recent times, Anadolu Agency's director general said on Saturday.

Addressing a panel at the Turkic Council Media Forum, Serdar Karagöz said the last such achievement was in Cyprus in 1974.

"The second achievement was in Karabakh. We didn't just gain land. I think Karabakh is a 'founding' victory," he said. "This is a step toward the establishment of a union. With the victory of Karabakh, our institutions, media, news agencies, universities, academics, we all had the pleasure of working together ... and this will open new doors for us."

He added: "The victory was not only achieved on the ground, but also on the communication front ..."

"We should not let Karabakh to be forgotten," said the head of Turkey's top news source, adding that the Karabakh war lasted for 44 days but there was no prominent coverage of the conflict and occupation of Azerbaijani lands in Western and Eastern media.

But "we kept referring as 'the occupied lands' in media from Turkey, Azerbaijan and the Turkic world," he asserted.

He said Anadolu Agency and Turkey's public broadcaster TRT's international channels broadcast Armenia's aggression to the world.

Karagoz expressed his desire to make the Association of Turkic Speaking News Agencies (TKA), which was established in 2008, more active.

In this regard, he said, they are planning to convene the TKA general assembly in the first quarter of 2022 in Turkey's resort city of Antalya.

"We intend to create a common news pool with all our members coming together again. The stronger our institutions are, the stronger our messages will be ... I consider this meeting to be held in Antalya as an opportunity. We will not only invite agencies of our member countries, but also intellectuals, journalists, academics and politicians ... We will create the biggest news pool of the Turkic world there," he said.

LIBERATION OF KARABAKH

Relations between the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan and Armenia have been tense since 1991, when the Armenian military occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as Upper Karabakh, a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, and seven adjacent regions.

When new clashes erupted on Sept. 27, 2020, the Armenian army launched attacks on civilians and Azerbaijani forces, and violated humanitarian cease-fire agreements.

During the six-week conflict, Azerbaijan liberated several cities and nearly 300 settlements and villages from the nearly three-decade occupation.

It ended after the two countries signed a Russia-brokered agreement to end the fighting, and work toward a comprehensive resolution.