A dangerous precedent for legitimation. How does Alen Simonyan justify the Baku city?

Journalists from NA Speaker Alen Simonyan at the National Assembly today were interested in What will happen to those Artsakh citizens who went to Kornidzor yesterday to take photos against the background of Artsakh, and on the way back, the National Security Service confiscated their phones? In response, he first considered it necessary to make a question-“remark”, noting:

“I want to ask, why do you say Artsakh? I am just curious. Then why do you feel bad when some territories of the Republic of Armenia are given Azerbaijani names, and Sevan is given some other name somewhere, do you feel bad, why do you feel bad? Why don’t you give the same name to the Constitution of Karabakh, it’s just interesting, because you are all politicized, you are all busy presenting demanding things. In that case, I ask you, don’t feel bad that in some country, some person can say to Yerevan: Yerevan, and say something else to Sevan. Karabakh also belongs to Azerbaijan, so why do you give it another name?

Can we say that the representative of the government, who leads the legislative body, accusing his political rivals of “making war-provoking statements” is legitimizing a possible new war in Armenia and giving legitimate grounds for it? Moreover, before this, Alen Simonyan has already managed to legitimize Baku’s military-political plan to start a war against Artsakh and Armenia in September 2020. Specifically, in 2024 “Freedom” in the conversation with, to the question whether Azerbaijan had a legitimate right to attack Karabakh, Simonyan answered: «Azerbaijan carried out an operation in Karabakh under which it had at least 3-4 UN resolutions»:

In this context, let us remind that in 1992-1996 The head of the mediation mission of Russia, the luminary Vladimir Kazimirov, said at the time that Azerbaijan did not fulfill the 4 resolutions of the United Nations.

“All of them have failed, they have not been implemented. And by whom were they not implemented: Azerbaijan? In 1993 in the spring Armenians captured Kelbajar. The success of this operation provided the Armenians with another route connecting Karabakh and Armenia in addition to the Lachin Corridor. After that, Azerbaijan takes the initiative to discuss this issue in the Security Council.

SC in 1993 on April 30, adopts resolution 822 on the issue of Nagorno Karabakh. Baku expected that the resolution would include a demand for Armenians to release the occupied Azerbaijani territories. However, the Azerbaijani side did not take into account that this demand in the document will be preceded by an important demand to immediately stop fire, military operations and even “hostile operations”.

And what constitutes “hostile action”? It is the energy, economic, transportation blockade of the Armenian territories. Baku did not expect this. And that is the most important demand in all four resolutions – the cessation of fire.

However, Azerbaijan was still under illusions that it would be able to defeat the Armenians by force. Its potential is, of course, more significant or respectable, both in terms of territory, population, and armament, because after the collapse of the USSR, Azerbaijan received more military assets than Armenia. For example, the Aghdam depots were the strategic reserves of the Soviet Army in Transcaucasia. There are about 16 airports in Azerbaijan, and only 2-3 in Armenia. But potential alone is not enough to win. After the adoption of Resolution 822, I convinced the Americans and even the Turks.

And the three of us – Russia, the USA and Turkey – addressed all three sides of the problem with a written question. “Are you ready for the full implementation of Resolution 822?” Yerevan and Stepanakert gave their consent, Baku chose not to respond at all. for he hoped nevertheless to win. That is why the war did not stop. And the four resolutions of the UN Security Council regarding Karabakh were practically devalued. The SC was already unwilling to accept the fifth resolution because it would undermine its authority. he makes resolutions and they are not fulfilled. That is why, when we were working on the ceasefire agreement, we could not work on the basis of Security Council resolutions. We had to create another basis for ourselves.” in 2016 “Moscow Komsomolets” given to the periodical in the interview explained Kazimirov.

In other words, Azerbaijan has always accused the Republic of Armenia of not fulfilling the UN resolutions, and it did so even days before the 44-day war.

of 2020 on September 21 President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev in connection with the opening of the 75th session of the UN General Assembly in New York video message remembered the UN resolutions and emphasized. “We have only one condition to achieve peace: the armed forces of Armenia must be withdrawn from all the occupied territories of Azerbaijan.”

If we accept for a moment that Azerbaijan had a legitimate right to attack Artsakh, then why was Armenia in a hurry to declare martial law in RA on September 27, 2020, why did it not stop the war in the first days, why was the same Alen Simonyan in October 2020, when the war was still going on, with “Azatutya” in the interview declares that there is two choices: one is “Lavrov’s plan”, which is unacceptable to him, the other is to make a breakthrough in the war, which he believed we had the opportunity to do.

6 years after the war, can Alen Simonyan say whether we made a mistake, that we started an “illegitimate” struggle against the “legitimate right” of Azerbaijan, or on what basis was he sure in mid-October 2020 that we would be able to make a breakthrough, and why they didn’t introduce, moreover, why the “Lavrov Plan” was unacceptable, but the Prague documents of 2022 were acceptable, by which the entire Artsakh passed to Azerbaijan. They will say that they protected the territorial integrity of the Republic of Armenia, but why didn’t they try to do it by preventing the war, for example, with the “Lavrov Plan”, and who questioned the territorial integrity of the Republic of Armenia with the mileage by which Armenia gained independence?

Let’s not forget that the current government in 2019, represented by the Secretary of the Council of Ministers Armen Grigoryan, noted that their “freedoms and united dreams are protected on the territory of 42.000 square meters”. They will say again if they made a mistake, and did Alen Simonyan read that in Nikol Pashinyan’s quote “All prerequisites for peace are present” the article where he, in particular, noted.

“I have stated several times that even The territories of more than 200 square kilometers, which are an integral part of the 29,743 square kilometers of internationally recognized sovereign territory of RA, which are currently under the occupation of Azerbaijan…»:

The occupied territories were not returned, right? Actually, it turns out that there is no territory of 29,743 square kilometers, or is it a mental mistake in this case as well?

Aren’t the current authorities making a lot of mistakes… and in fact, it’s not a mistake, but a politically calculated move that is advantageous at the moment, this also applies to the “Aghdam is our homeland” campaign, which has been repeatedly mentioned letterwe went which was later confirmed by Alen Simonyan himself, that the goal was to oppose Serzh Sargsyan.

And what do you think about the then president of Artsakh in September 2019? Was calling Bako Sahakyan a governor by chance? of course not. And the question is that during the question-and-answer session with journalists today, NA Speaker Alen Simonyan, in fact, did not rule out that there may be some change of views in the future, because today’s ideological transformation was conditioned by the rapidly changing challenges and developments in the world.

Naturally, Armenia should be able to move in line with geopolitical developments and combine its interest, the national interest, with the interests of other states, but are these authorities doing this?

Some of the examples given by Alen Simonyan are absolutely not about that, you cannot start a campaign after the change of power: “Aghdam is our homeland” when The third president of RA, Serzh Sargsyan, clearly explained why Aghdam had to be taken and why he said, “Aghdam is not our homeland”, but only a piece of his speech was taken and manipulated.

Or, what does the changing world have to do with the students of historian-teacher Suren Papikyan? taught for example, that Azerbaijanis are Caucasian Tatars, who, due to one or another circumstance, penetrated into our region, and now, perhaps, it is the bearer of a different “historical reality”.

You cannot, having a higher education, at some stage consider not only Artsakh, but also a certain part of RA as Armenian, and then as Azerbaijani, but take as a basis the declaration of Alma Ata of 1991, the map of 1975, etc. This is not an entirely positive change. Of course, geopolitical realities teach us to revise tactics, but not to rewrite historical facts. Today, no one says that the lost Artsakh should be taken back by force, or that it should be returned there, because the current realities do not give it the “right”. No one is saying that you have to start from scratch and “delete” the Washington documents, but of course you can fill them in, especially against Iran. in the background of war. What, the war against Iran did not give rise to consequences?

As for the fact that Azerbaijan calls Yerevan “Irevan”, Sevan – “Goycha”, and so on, then this is not a retaliatory action, Aliyev never conditioned either this or the “Western Azerbaijan” political project (which existed before the 2020 war) with this, but the return of Azerbaijanis to Armenia is observing in the context of international human rights. This is a state policy, within the framework of which “scientific-legal evidence” is created, including a virtual encyclopedia about “Western Azerbaijan”. resource, which includes maps, and which, in particular, includes “Yerevan and Gyumri, mosques, graves and 1192 villages”, a dictionary of “Western Zangezur” place names, etc. Moreover, they regularly warn that all this will not remain on paper, there will be a physical return and control.

Let us emphasize that Aliyev does not condition this on whether the journalists say Artsakh or Karabakh. And the Declaration of Independence is removed from the RA constitution purely based on some political ambitions, tactics and maybe “fears”, but its exclusion will not prevent Aliyev’s political plans related to “Western Azerbaijan”, which Pashinyan’s government might one day start lobbying, and now, before the elections, they do not emphasize it so that my mood does not fall. Not excluded.

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