AN outbreak of violence in a so-called frozen conflict on Europe’s borders has raised the spectre of another war that could drag in Russia and Turkey on opposing sides.

While the crisis in the de facto independent state of Nagorno-Karabakh has stabilised since the flare-up last week, the risk of an escalation is far from over.

The latest bloodshed, which left at least 70 people dead, was the worst since a bitter ethnic war claimed the lives of up to 30,000 people before a ceasefire in 1994.

While Azerbaijan and Armenian fighters declared another ceasefire last Tuesday sporadic violence has continued.

World leaders, alarmed by the possibility of more unrest in the region, have called on both sides to adhere to the truce.

However Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has vowed to back its ally Azerbaijan “until the apocalypse”.

It’s inflammatory talk not likely to endear Turkey to Russia which has a defence pact with the Christian state of Armenia and is already angered by the shooting down of a Russian bomber on the Syrian border by a Turkish F-16 last November.

Other international leaders, such as UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon and US Secretary of State John Kerry, have weighed in to call for the ceasefire to be maintained.

WHY THE VIOLENCE?

SINCE the break-up of the Soviet Union, Nagorno-Karabakh has been regarded as a tinderbox in the South Caucasus.

A land-locked mountainous region bordered by Armenia, it is home to only around 150,000 people, most of whom are Armenian Christians.

After the Russian revolution at the end of World War I, Nagorno-Karabakh was set up as an autonomous region inside the Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan.

When the Soviet Union began to split it was the first region to see the outbreak of inter-ethnic violence, with the Armenians attempting to break free from the mostly Muslim Azeris who are ethnically close to the Turks.

The conflict began in 1988 with Nagorno-Karabakh declaring independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Up to 30,000 people are believed to have died before the truce in 1994 which left Nagorno-Karabakh in the hands of the ethnic Armenians.

The war saw over a million people flee their homes. The ethnic Azeri population – about one quarter of the total before the conflict – left Karabakh and Armenia while Armenians fled from Azerbaijan. Neither group has been able to return home.

The state is not recognised internationally as an independent country but Armenia gives it military and financial backing. Since 1994 sporadic violence has continued with Iran and Turkey backing Azerbaijan while Russia has supported Armenia which is suffering severe economic problems because of the closure of its borders with Azerbaijan and Turkey.

The Minsk Group of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe which is co-chaired by the US, France and Russia has attempted to bring an end to the conflict but appears to have reached a stalemate.

WHY IS RUSSIA SELLING ARMS TO BOTH SIDES?

RECENT years have seen a dramatic arms race between Armenia and Azerbaijan, according to Magdalena Grono of the International Crisis Group.

“Azerbaijan increased its military expenditure more than 20-fold between 2004 and 2014. Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev has boasted that the 2014 defence budget was twice as large as Armenia’s overall state budget.”

To make matters more complicated, Russia has been selling arms to both sides. Despite the recent flare-up of violence, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has said it will continue to do so, justifying the policy on the grounds that if Russia didn’t someone else would. “They will buy weapons in other countries, and the degree of their deadliness won’t change in any way,” he said after visiting both Armenia and Azerbaijan to emphasis Russia’s lead role in mediation between the two countries. “But at the same time, this could ... destroy the existing balance of forces (in the region).”

However Armenia has condemned the policy.

“Russia is our strategic partner, and our people take it with pain that Russia sells weapons to aggressor Azerbaijan,” said Armenian Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan after a funeral for a soldier killed in last week’s clashes.

Grono believes Azerbaijan has become fed-up waiting for a diplomatic solution to the territorial dispute and is also seeking to rally its citizens round the flag to divert their attention from the drop in oil prices and devaluation of the currency.

With world leaders’ attention preoccupied by the war in Syria, Grono warns that the risks of a war in Nagorno-Karabakh have escalated.

WHAT ARE THE RISKS OF WAR?

LAST week the Azerbaijani ambassador to Moscow, Polad Bulbuloglu, complained of the lack of progress in the talks.

“There have been 22 years of attempts to find a peaceful solution to this conflict,” he said. “How long can it go on? We are ready for a peaceful solution to the question.

“But if this won’t be solved by peaceful means, then it will be solved by military means.”

However Labour MP Stephen Pound warned that the “well-documented evidence of aggression from Azerbaijan” had the potential to ignite a conflagration in the South Caucasus.

“I feel that it is important to state that neither Armenia nor Nagorno-Karabakh have any territorial ambitions in respect of Azerbaijan and that anyone who has visited the area will see indisputable evidence of an Armenian presence in the region from at least the third century,” he said.

“By breaching the 1994 ceasefire, President Ilham Aliyev may achieve his aim of distracting attention from the profound problems that exist in Azerbaijan, but he risks the creation of yet another war zone in a region that has already seen far too much bloodshed.”

Nagorno-Karabakh is known as a frozen conflict because of its uneasy ceasefire which, as last week proved, has the potential to break up at any time. Until now world leaders have been happy to keep it on ice but the recent violence appears to be a warning that the situation may no longer hold.