What is behind Baku’s new rhetoric?

Have you heard any official response from Armenia, in response to the statement of Azerbaijani President’s assistant Hajiyev that territorial ambitions towards Azerbaijan and Turkey should be removed from the Armenian constitution?

There seems to be no response. Meanwhile, this is an extremely important issue, because such statements “legitimize” a perception, so to speak, that Armenia expresses territorial ambitions towards its neighbors at the level of the constitution. And this is in the case that during its independence, Armenia has never, never expressed such an ambition not only in constitutional texts, not only in laws, not only in any legal act, but also at the level of any statement of the political leadership.

However, this is not just a question of Azerbaijan’s “traditional” statement.

Baku’s statements are aimed at creating a new reality, where the issue of Armenia’s “territorial ambition” towards Turkey is “on the agenda” in order to play it at will. Baku provides that service to Ankara, which will certainly make the issue on the agenda a subject of wider discussions, not with Armenia, but with geopolitical centers interested in the status quo issue in the region.

By the way, from that point of view, it is very important to draw attention to the fact that Ilham Aliyev’s assistant is talking about Armenia’s territorial ambitions towards Turkey at a time when Russia has started talking about the 3 3 regional format and the new meeting of foreign ministers within its framework.

Let me remind you that the last such meeting took place in Turkey in October 2024. In other words, there have been no discussions in that format for a long time. In recent days, Moscow has often started to talk about this format, moreover, Sergey Lavrov also spoke about it a few days ago in his meeting with the Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan. Ankara has not publicly responded to Moscow’s reminders, but it turns out that through Azerbaijan it is “reminding” about some territorial “approvals” of Armenia.

And the essential circumstance here is that the Armenian-Turkish border was essentially drawn by Russian-Turkish agreements and in a geopolitical sense it is a Russian-Turkish border. When Ankara speaks about Armenia’s allegedly existing or existing territorial ambitions, then most likely, an attempt is made to hide that “agenda” in order to add Turkish playing cards to the table of discussions with Russia.

Analyst Hakob Badalyan

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