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Opinion: Assault on Yerevan Police Station Underlines Risk of Violent Opposition to Armenia-Azerbaijan Peace
28 March 2024
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Opinion: Clarity, Consistent Rhetoric, and Multitrack Diplomacy Still Lacking in Armenia-Azerbaijan Normalisation Talks
6 March 2024
It was touch and go for a while. Even a day before this year’s prestigious Munich Security Conference it was unclear whether both Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev would attend. In the past, Armenian leaders have more often shunned the event and even despite December’s much-lauded bilateral COP-29 joint statement made bilaterally by Baku and Yerevan, the war of words between the sides unfortunately continues.
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Opinion: Pashinyan's Constitutional Gambit
12 February 2024
Reforming the constitution of any nation is inherently challenging, but in Armenia it has always proven particularly controversial, writes Onnik James Krekorian in this op-ed for commonspace.eu "Speaking at the Ministry of Justice in January, Pashinyan not only emphasised the necessity of constitutional reform but even argued for a comprehensive overhaul rather than piecemeal amendments. The purpose, he said, in addition to possibly switching from majority to minority governmental system, was to make Armenia “more competitive and viable” in a new “geopolitical and regional situation.” The opposition instinctively interpreted those words as referring to his administration’s attempts to normalise relations with Azerbaijan.
At the heart of these claims is a belief that the preamble in the current constitution referring to the 1990 Declaration of Independence, itself based on the 1989 decision on the “Reunification of the Armenian SSR and the Mountainous Region of Karabakh,” could be removed. The opposition claims that doing so would only be at the behest of Baku. Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan has not categorically denied the claim but does confirm that Azerbaijan continues to raise this issue in negotiations, interpreting the preamble as indisputable claims on its territory."
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Opinion: Roadblock to peace: the geopolitical quagmire of the "Zangezur Corridor"
31 January 2024
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the 1994 ceasefire agreement that put fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces over the Soviet-era mainly ethnic Armenian Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) on hold – or at least until it escalated into war in 2016 and more devastatingly in 2020. Despite the involvement of international mediators, peace remained elusive despite occasional claims to the contrary. The sides were said to have gotten close, but never enough to prevent tens of thousands dying in over three decades of conflict.
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Opinion: A worrying sense of deja-vu prevails in Armenia-Azerbaijan relations
22 November 2023
This month marked the third anniversary of the ceasefire statement that was meant to end the second Karabakh war. In retrospect, it might be more appropriately considered a continuation of the first conflict of the early 1990s given that the ceasefire then was hardly implemented too, leading to a new war 26 years later. Meanwhile, hopes that Baku and Yerevan could sign a peace agreement are fading.
In this op-ed for commonspace.eu Onnik James Krikorian says that "a deal was possible by the end of the year, both sides pronounced in 2022 and again throughout 2023, but that sounded as vague and sometimes disingenuous then as it does now. Instead, an uncanny sense of deja vu hangs over the process, reminiscent of earlier failures by the now defunct OSCE Minsk Group."