ISTANBUL: Turkiye President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will meet his counterpart Ilham Aliyev in the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan on Monday, Turkiye media reported on Sunday.

The two allies had said in June they wanted to step up efforts to open a land corridor linking Turkiye to Azerbaijan’s main territory via Nakhchivan and Armenia, a longstanding and complex project.

The meeting follows a lightning Azerbaijani offensive which recaptured the separatist Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, mainly populated by ethnic Armenians.

The Turkish president has repeatedly expressed his support for Azerbaijan’s army this week.

Azerbaijan on Thursday held a first round of “reintegration” talks with the ethnic-Armenian rebels after they agreed to lay down their arms in the face of the day-long military assault.

Some experts believe Azerbaijan could now seek to push its advantage and launch operations in southern Armenia to create territorial continuity with the Nakhchivan exclave.