Turkey's Parliament approves troop deployment to Azerbaijan

Turkey's Parliament has approved a bill to deploy Turkish troops to Azerbaijan for peacekeeping following the truce in Karabakh between Azerbaijan, Russia and Armenia.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had asked parliament to authorise sending soldiers to Azerbaijan to establish a peacekeeping "Joint Centre" with Russia to monitor a ceasefire in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

The deployment bill submitted to parliament requested a one-year mandate to send Turkish peacekeepers. 

The Turkish president would determine the number of troops to be sent.

President Erdogan's request followed two days of talks in Ankara with Russian officials about how the two regional powers intend to jointly implement a Russian-brokered ceasefire signed last week.

Last week, Russian and Turkish defence ministers signed a memorandum to create a joint monitoring centre in Azerbaijan.

Baku and Yerevan signed a Moscow-brokered peace deal that ended six weeks of fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh that left thousands dead and displaced tens of thousands more.

Under the deal that sparked celebrations in Azerbaijan and fury in Armenia, Yerevan agreed to cede swathes of the region it was occupying for nearly 30 years to Baku, as well as other territories controlled by Armenian settlers since a devastating war in the 1990s.