Key Takeaways:
- Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has proposed exchanging four small Azerbaijani exclaves inside Armenia for the larger Armenian exclave of Artsvashen inside Azerbaijan to eliminate all enclaves and create a single continuous border, though Baku has not confirmed interest and Armenian officials say the issue is not yet under discussion.
- The proposal revives earlier swap ideas involving larger territories such as Karabakh and Zangezur, which Azerbaijan once favored and Armenia opposed; Baku’s 2023 military recovery of Karabakh and the subsequent transit deal have reversed the power balance.
- Analysts note that successful Central Asian land swaps, the depopulation of the remaining exclaves, and reduced Russian influence may make a limited exchange more feasible, though any territorial concession remains politically sensitive in Armenia and would likely require a referendum.
The future of four small remaining exclaves created based on ethnicity by the Soviets—three Azerbaijani ones inside Armenian borders and one larger Armenian one inside Azerbaijan—is again slowing down progress toward the signing of a peace accord in the South Caucasus. Armenian Nikol Pashinyan is now pushing for a swap, but Baku is less than enthusiastic. As a result, while Baku would like to sign a peace treaty now, Yerevan suggests it may be several years before that happens (OC-Media; Modern.az; Telegram/@Nikolpashinyan_PMofficial, October 14; Kavkaz Uzel, October 16).
Calls for such territorial exchanges have regularly marked relations between the two countries since the early 1990s. Then, the proposed swaps involved two larger territories: Armenian-populated Karabakh—which had been part of Azerbaijan since the 1920s but which Armenian forces occupied at the end of Soviet times—and Zangezur—the land bridge between Azerbaijan proper and its noncontiguous autonomy of Nakhchivan. Neither was a true exclave, but continuing talk about them and the opposition to that which such proposals generated earlier has continued to shape discussion about the smaller remaining true ones and made it more politically fraught (Window on Eurasia, May 21, 2021; Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty via Reliefweb, June 9, 2000; see EDM, November 28, 2023).
Initially, Azerbaijan supported these larger territorial swaps while Armenia opposed them. Baku’s military preponderance, however, appears to have reversed this, with Azerbaijan retaking Karabakh by force and securing a U.S.-backed deal that reopened transit through Zangezur (U.S. State Department, January 2026; OC-Media, August 11).
Pashinyan, however, has now reopened the exclave issue, saying he has “the preliminary impression” that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev may be open to swaps for the exclaves (OC-Media, October 14). If true, this impression makes it more likely that such a swap will happen not only because of changes on the ground but also because of the successful use of land swaps in Central Asia. There are fears that no other path to a more permanent peace in the South Caucasus exists except through new military action to achieve the peace accord the two countries have already initialed (see EDM, June 30).
On October 14, Pashinyan said that he believes there should be “no enclaves or exclaves on either side of the border” between Armenia and Azerbaijan. He added that, to achieve such an arrangement, Yerevan and Baku should exchange territories of “corresponding sizes,” and said he believed Aliyev was prepared to agree (Telegram/@Nikolpashinyan_PMofficial; Kavkaz Uzel; OC-Media, October 14).
The swap the Armenian leader anticipates would transfer sovereignty over four Azerbaijani villages in Armenia—Karki, Barkhudarlyu, Yukhari, and Askipara—to Armenia, and sovereignty over the larger village of Artsvashen, now controlled by Baku, to Azerbaijan (OC-Media, October 14). That swap would leave the two countries almost the same size as they are now and, more importantly, with a single border without the ambiguities of exclaves/enclaves. (The same territory is an exclave or an enclave depending on which side of this debate is being discussed, which adds confusion for outsiders.)
Azerbaijani media outlets reported Pashinyan’s comments (Modern.az; Asbarez, October 14; Kavkaz Uzel, October 16; New Dosh, October 14). They did not specify, however, that Aliyev was open to them. Three follow-up statements by Armenian officials suggest that moves on this issue may not be immediate. The day after declaring the need to swap exclaves, Pashinyan said in a press briefing that Yerevan and Baku were not yet discussing the issue (Facebook/CivilNet.TV, August 28). Then his foreign minister, Ararat Mirzoyan, said the exclave issue “does not constitute an obstacle” to signing the peace agreement the two leaders had initialed (Azernews, October 16). He said Baku has not made it one. He added that it is “a sensitive one” and that “if there is an exchange of territories, this is an issue that must be put to a nationwide referendum,” not only because “enclaves and exclaves complicate the lives of countries at least from a technical standpoint even if their relations are excellent in every respect.”
Separately, Alen Simonyan, secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, said that Armenia has not agreed with Baku on this issue and that Armenia has neither surrendered nor would surrender any territory to Azerbaijan (Azernews, October 16). This statement reflects how deeply unpopular such steps would be in Armenia (see EDM, April 23, 2024).
Despite Yerevan officials’ qualifications and Baku’s corresponding silence, three reasons suggest a territorial swap to resolve the exclave issue may still go forward. First and most important, such swaps in Central Asia have been enormously successful, ending open military conflicts and paving the way for unprecedented cooperation among those five post-Soviet countries (see EDM, June 30).
That success, and Azerbaijan’s growing involvement in Central Asia, make it likely that Baku will be more open to the idea than before. Second, most of the enclaves involved have been depopulated as their former Armenian or Azerbaijani residents have left. Consequently, and despite the international community’s general aversion to changes in international borders, transferring sparsely populated territories from one state to the other is less of a problem than moving densely populated territories.
Third, opposition to border changes that animated earlier suggestions by this author and others that Yerevan and Baku swap Karabakh for Zangezur has declined. This decline has occurred because of the passage of time and the implicit acceptance of sovereignty shifts elsewhere; the decline in Russian influence in the South Caucasus; the interest by the United States, Europe, and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in developing transit across the region; and both the past successes of the Azerbaijani military in retaking areas occupied by Armenia and in the near certainty that it could do the same with other areas, including the exclaves, if it chose to.
In such a situation, swapping small, largely unpopulated areas to prevent that from happening and open the region to expanded trade almost certainly appears to an increasing number of officials in Yerevan, Baku, and other capitals as less a problem and more an opportunity than it was earlier. It is likely to continue to animate opposition among many Armenians, however, who see any territorial retreat as a threat to their country’s future. (On why earlier discussions likely matter less now, see Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty via Reliefweb, June 9, 2000.)
Because of these factors, Pashinyan’s call for a territorial swap and Aliyev’s failure to react negatively to it immediately matter far more than a first glance might suggest. A territorial swap would not only undo yet another part of the Soviet inheritance that has restricted Armenia’s opportunities in the past, but also open the door to a genuine peace agreement.
- This article was published by The Jamestown Foundation
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