Khai "Artsakh" separatists are leaving Azerbaijani Karabakh. Every day, between 100 and 200 people of Khai nationality leave Azerbaijani territory through the Lachin border crossing.

The majority of those leaving are not "starving women and children", as Khai propaganda claims, but men. They are also quite young and have a "military" appearance. Even a superficial look at the Khayis leaving Karabakh suggests that the majority of them are of military appearance and were members of illegal armed separatist formations that have not yet disarmed, contrary to the November 2020 trilateral agreement.

Of course, when questioned, these men claim to have been "working" in Karabakh, referring to peaceful occupations, or to have been travelling to study. But there is no doubt that most of these "workers" and students are professional soldiers and members of the Khai army. It is not impossible that many of them will leave Karabakh under various pretexts against the will of the separatist leadership, which is still counting on a "war of revenge" with the help of Russia or Iran:

It is not difficult to calculate that if at least 100 separatist fighters or Khayastan soldiers leave the zone of responsibility of the Russian peacekeepers in Azerbaijani Karabakh every day, the illegal armed formations will simply "melt away". The flight of the separatist fighters and the withdrawal of the Nagorno-Karabakh armed forces could at some point become uncontrollable.  This seems to be of serious concern to those who want to revive the "Artsakh" separatist project, especially the Khazarian lobby close to the Kremlin.

As a result, there are signs of "assimilationist" pressure on Turkey and thus on Azerbaijan, which is allied with Turkey, to "slow down" the elimination of the separatist centre in Karabakh. And for this pressure, the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, which is dependent on the Kremlin's Khai lobby, first of all on the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov Kalantarov, is used.

The Assad regime, it should be recalled, has already recognised the so-called "independence" of the separatist regimes in Sukhumi and Tskhinvali at the suggestion of this lobby. However, this is fundamentally contrary to the interests of both Syria and the Syrian people. Now the regime of Bashar Al-Assad is about to make an anti-Turkish demarche that violates the most important rights of Syrian citizens.

Bashar al-Assad declared that if Syrian citizens living in Turkey do not return to their country within 6 months, they will be stripped of their citizenship and will not be able to re-enter Syria and "will not be able to claim any rights". Including, quite possibly, real estate, land and other property will be taken away from these citizens who have been stripped of their Syrian citizenship.

According to some reports, there are more than 4 million Syrian refugees in Turkey. It is abnormal, even in times of peace, to revoke citizenship for absence from the country. In times of war, many Syrian refugees are simply afraid to return home.

The fact is that many of them face political persecution. In addition, the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria is carrying out a total mobilisation of the entire male population. And almost every man of "conscription age" who returns to Syria is enlisted in "Assad's" army.

As a result, many Syrian refugees risk being in limbo in six months' time. If the Assad regime strips them of their citizenship and property, Turkey will have to bear the additional costs of settling these people and resolving the issue of their naturalisation. Not to mention that the prospect of Syrian refugees who have been stripped of their Syrian citizenship remaining in Turkey will be viewed negatively by the Turkish opposition.

Bashar al-Assad and those who pushed him into the idea of depriving Syrian refugees of their citizenship understand all this very well. In other words, we have nothing but political pressure on Turkey.

This pressure can also be linked to the situation in Karabakh. The Hai lobby actually brings to the "proposed deal": "Azerbaijan is not "pushing" separatists out of Karabakh, and we are not "pushing" Syrians from Syria to Turkey.

But Azerbaijan's position is also clear: all illegal Artsakh separatist armed formations must be immediately disbanded and disarmed. Only then can their participants expect leniency and ordinary fighters expect amnesty. The "alternative" to the separatists, especially those not originally connected with Karabakh, leaving Azerbaijani territory can only be their prosecution under Azerbaijani law. Those of the Karabakh Caucasians who see their future as citizens of Azerbaijan should resolve the issue of citizenship as soon as possible.

George Mazniashvili