Author: Emil Lazarian

By Michael Rubin

AEIdeas

May 01, 2023

By Nourah Khan
Exclusive to The Times Kuwait

Armenia is one of the most beautiful countries in the Caucasus, characterized by its charming natural landscapes, distinctive tourist sites, and a history that spans eons. The moment you step into the country, you are engulfed by the friendliness of locals, which adds to the beauty of a trip to this enchanting country.

Armenia is not a very large country, and within a week you could be able to traverse the major tourist attractions in this place. The most appropriate time to visit Armenia and enjoy its beautiful atmosphere and moderate temperatures are from April to June.

Whatever type of tourism you prefer, you will find what you need in Armenia. So if you are looking for a new destination for family tourism, or you want to spend your honeymoon in a magical place to create unforgettable memories, or perhaps you prefer nature hikes, exotic sports, heritage tourism, or just partying and other fun activities, you can do all of this and more in one country, Armenia.

In Armenia you can find different natural landscapes and a country that is steeped in culture and heritage with a history that extends back more than 3,500 years. Many cultural and historical monuments dot the country, and befittingly enough the country is often referred to as an ‘Open Museum’.

But this does not mean that travelers who are seeking relaxation and enjoying nature will not find any such venues in the country; quite the opposite. Armenia is a country with outstanding natural beauty, which gives visitors all the ingredients for relaxation and unwinding.

As for prices, it is one of the countries that will not cost you much to travel and stay. The cost of living as a tourist is reasonable and appropriate, and of course cheaper than most places in Europe. So I think it is suitable for people who are on a limited budget.

A visit to any city or town in Armenia makes you feel quite comfortable, because you will notice that a large number of Armenians were born in Gulf countries and know a lot about our cultures, customs and character. On knowing that I am from Kuwait, I was warmly welcomed into homes of total strangers and plied with food and drink. And, speaking about food, Armenian food is quite similar to what we have here in Kuwait and the Gulf.

The most important thing I particularly noticed about Armenia is the high level of security that prevails across the country. I used to go out for walks alone in the streets at night without encountering any untoward incident.

Some of the amazing places I visited in Armenia include:
Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, is a city of contradictions where modern lifestyle trappings compete for space with the old. While few traces of the city’s storied ancient history are visible today, much of the extant architecture is dominated by stolid Soviet-era buildings interspersed by numerous beautiful gardens, parks and other greenery. The city was once called the Pink City based on the color of the stones that were used in building architectural artifacts and houses.

Another place to visit is the town of Dilijan, which teems with health resorts, and is also one of the places with an amazing natural beauty. Every corner and space appears embellished with green trees, colorful gardens and fountains. Located on the banks of the Aghstev River, Dilijan lies to the northeast of the capital Yerevan and enjoys a mild climate throughout the year.

The town’s many health resorts and natural beauty, as well as entertainment places with exciting activities, attract a lot of tourists year round. And, while in Dilijan do not miss visiting the town’s other major attractions, including the Old Town, Dilijan Museum, the famous healing mineral water fountains and the World War II Memorial.

And, no matter what, do not miss tasting Armenian cuisine, as it is considered the source kitchen for much of today’s Middle-Eastern cuisines, with their slant towards poultry, meat and fish. Famous local dishes vary in taste between European and Eastern preferences, and there are also dishes that appeal to our Gulf tastes and flavors, especially ones such as the Armenian grilled fish.

Among the other beautiful cities that must be on your tourist schedule is the city of Jermuk. The city of Jermuk in Armenia is one of the most famous places for medical tourism, as it is characterized by its mineral waters and mild climate throughout the year. The city contains more than 40 thermal springs that people go to for treatment for various diseases and you also get to see the second largest waterfall in Armenia, with the Jermuk Waterfall cascading down from a height of over 70 meters.

Another interesting place that should be visited in Armenia is Lake Sevan, also known as the ‘Jewel of the Caucasus’. It is one of the highest freshwater lakes in the world, located at an altitude of 1,900 meters above sea level. As a result of its height, the weather in Lake Sevan is moderate to cold even in the summer days, which makes it an important attraction for tourists, especially tourists coming from hot countries such as the Arab Gulf states. You can also enjoy camping or doing some water sports when you visit Lake Sevan in the summer, at very reasonable prices.

There is something else you should not miss when visiting Armenia, Mount Ararat mentioned in the Bible and associated with Noah’s Ark. Although it is located on Turkish soil, Mount Ararat is one of the most majestic mountains in the world, which can be seen from the Armenian lands. Although it lies outside the borders of modern Armenia, the mountain is a national symbol of Armenia and has been considered a sacred place by Armenians for ages.

In Armenia, you will not have any difficulty in interacting with others, because English is the most common language after the Russian language, especially in the capital, Yerevan. But moving to the countryside, Russian is the most popular foreign language, and rarely you can come across Armenians who speak French, especially in shops, restaurants and hotels.

For my transportation throughout Armenia, I relied on a tour company and a tour guide. Modes of transportation in Armenia are of high quality, given the number of tourists who come to the country most of the year, with domestic transportation divided between the metro, buses, mini-buses and taxis.

I also recommend that you travel with a knowledgeable tour guide so that they can explain the stories, histories and traditions behind statues, buildings, and other attractions in the country.

I believe that the opening of direct flights between the two countries could be mutually beneficial. More visitors from Kuwait could travel easily to Armenia, and more Armenian fresh products could arrive in this country, not to mention the significant Armenian community in Kuwait who would also benefit from such direct flights.

Noura Khan, a travel influencer and content creator, is a Kuwaiti national, holds a degree in law from Kuwait University and has worked as a journalist prior to taking up a position in the government. In 2018 she started blogging on travel and visited more than 57 countries since. She has more than 54k followers on her blog post @nourajtraveller is well appreciated for content and travel information. Noura writes exclusively for The Times Kuwait on her travel visits.

https://timeskuwait.com/news/armenia-a-timeless-land-of-great-beauty/ 

I was on my way to the Azerbaijani capital Baku on the night President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was taken ill on live television. I arrived towards the morning, and my host Zafer, who came to greet me, directly asked after salutations: “How is the chief?”

Azerbaijanis refer to their state leader Ilham Aliyev in English as “president.” When I visited Azerbaijan seven months following the liberation of Karabakh from invasion, I heard the Azerbaijanis I met refer to Erdoğan as, “our president.” In fact, I mentioned it in this column too. However, I heard the term “chief” used for the first time. I asked Zafer why they call Erdoğan chief. He responded, “Our [love for him is so great that our] heart is not big enough for him. He is at the highest level.”

The people of Azerbaijan truly do have an inexplicable love for the people of Türkiye, and Erdoğan. It is enough to tell anyone, “I am from Türkiye.” They immediately embrace you with their love and sincerity.

We set off towards Karabakh as the sun was rising. Zafer said, “We watched the news all night. We are curious about our chief’s condition.” Indeed, whomever we spoke to all day, the agenda was Erdoğan’s health condition.”

Surely Erdoğan’s contributions towards reclaiming Karabakh are effective in this love. However, there is a great prior “yearning” as well. As known, the two sister countries’ ties weakened for many reasons after Baku was liberated from invasion in 1918 by the Caucasus Islamic Army, led by Nuri Pasha.

The reason ties that became weaker over the years are now stronger than steel and turned into great love and affection is known by all: The Karabakh victory in 2020 against Armenia.

Regardless of whom you speak to in Azerbaijan, you will certainly hear them say: “If it wasn’t for Türkiye if Erdoğan had not made efforts, we could not have taken Karabakh.”

The people of Azerbaijan still remember Nuri Pasha, and the Türkiye that refrained from sending the helicopters requested for civilians’ evacuation in 1992 while Armenians were conducting massacres. They analyze really well the Türkiye that was dealing with its own problem in those years in comparison to the powerful Türkiye that ensured Karabakh’s conquest.

Hence, they are stronger Erdoğan supporters than the electorates in Türkiye. Therefore, the public polls conducted in Azerbaijan present 92 percent support for Erdoğan.

There are 400 kilometers between Baku and Shusha, the last remaining Azerbaijan territory in the Karabakh region. However, travel, for now, is via this exhausting and long route. Meanwhile, the construction of new roads and new cities are underway. Armenia turned the city center and villages of culture and civilization capital Shusha, which it invaded for 28 years, almost into a ghost town. They massacred history. They destroyed the mosques, homes, water fountains, and mansions. They even removed the stones and took them. Directly across Karabakh, there is the city of Khankendi, situated within Armenian borders. It is quite visible. In fact, even the sounds are audible. Khankendi is part of the Karabakh territory that was reclaimed 28 years later. In other words, it is still under Armenian occupation, and “for now” under the watch of Russian Peacekeeping Forces.

Azerbaijan wants the incomplete operation to be concluded through war or without war, and for Khankendi to be returned to Azerbaijan. Some of the officials with whom we met are pointing to 2025 and beyond. However, Armenia has plans as well, which are spread throughout the Azerbaijan side in the form of hearsay.

Such that Armenians associate Karabakh’s defeat to Türkiye and the Bayraktar drones. They are not hiding this, and they feel shamed as a nation. In other words, they have dreams of re-occupying Karabakh. But for them to overcome this hysterical state, Türkiye’s attitude must change. The expectation from Türkiye is a country that does not protect Azerbaijan, two countries that do not run to each other for help whenever they are in trouble, and a Turkish president whom the Azerbaijani president refers to as “big brother,” but rather a Republic of Türkiye that is closer to Armenia than normal. For this to happen, the ruling power in Türkiye must change. This is how Türkiye’s May 14 elections are viewed by the Armenian side. This is not an interpretation, but a matter discussed in both Baku and Shusha. These hearsay are really based on open sources. The analysis in March by Euronews – notorious for its anti-government publications in Türkiye – with the title, “Türkiye’de olası iktidar değişikliği Ermenistan ile ilişkileri nasıl etkiler?” (How will a likely government change in Türkiye affect relations with Armenia?), is only one of the signs.

Occupation-term Karabakh President Arayik Harutyunyan stated in recent months, “All documents identifying Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan are unacceptable for us.” Harutyunyan’s denial of the defeat is the reason underlying the close combat between the two countries’ troops on the border. Nowadays, the same Harutyunyan’s comments centered around Türkiye’s May 14 elections are being discussed. There is no doubt that the biggest dream is the ruling government in Türkiye will change, and Karabakh will be “returned” to Armenia without war in the post-Erdoğan period. The Armenian front has managed to put this hearsay in circulation. But is it successful? In other words, does it scare and unsettle the Azerbaijani public? We returned to Baku with Ali Muradoğlu and his wife, who reclaimed their destroyed home in Aghdam 28 years later. I opened the subject as we were chatting, and they made me regret ever asking them. They were so overflowed with emotion that they shared the agony of those 28 years and the gratitude of being back on their land with striking comparisons.

They said they made vows for the night of May 14, much like the retaking of Karabakh. Muradoğlu’s wife, who is the Shusha delegate said, “We are the ones who will be celebrating on the night Erdoğan wins. Everybody will see.” I asked, “What if he loses?” She said, “Brother, you must be out of your mind.”

Let’s wait and see on the evening of May 14, whether Azerbaijanis will rejoice, or the Armenian invaders will celebrate? Both countries are waiting.

https://www.yenisafak.com/en/columns/ersin-celik/azerbaijanis-affection-for-chief-erdogan-preparations-for-may-14-elections-3663929

The installation of a border crossing point on the Lachin Corridor should not have come as a surprise. Azerbaijan has been strikingly patient for nearly three years waiting for Armenia to sign a post-war peace treaty.

The Lachin road has been de facto sealed from military traffic since environmental protestors established a camp there in December 2022. The protestors continued to allow Russia’s so-called ‘peacekeeping force’ and the IRC (International Red Cross) to travel through the Lachin.

Meanwhile, Armenia has refused to implement articles 3 and 9 of the November 2020 ceasefire agreement.

Article 3 specifies ‘The peacekeeping contingent of the Russian Federation is being deployed in parallel with the withdrawal of the Armenian armed forces.’ Nevertheless, Yerevan still has a large 10,000 contingent (for only 25,000 Karabakh Armenians) of Armenian security forces masquerading as Karabakh ‘self-defence’ forces. In the last three years, Armenia has rotated and re-supplied Armenian and Karabakh forces through the Lachin Corridor with the assistance of Russia’s so-called ‘peacekeeping forces’ using trucks officially transporting humanitarian assistance.

The Russian independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported that trucks transporting humanitarian assistance were allowed to travel through the Lachin Corridor after paying ‘several thousand dollars’ in bribes to Russians. Armenian security forces are reportedly travelling in these humanitarian trucks camouflaged as civilians and construction workers. Russia used the same maskirovka when using humanitarian trucks to supply its proxy forces in the so-called ‘Donetsk Peoples Republic’ (DNR) and ‘Luhansk People’s Republics’ (LNR).

In July 2022, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan agreed to withdraw ‘all remaining military units’ from Karabakh by September of that year, itself a recognition that Armenian security forces continued to be illegally based in Karabakh. Unfortunately, Pashinyan has the ‘ability to contradict himself sometimes even in the same sentence’ and he has not fulfilled his promise to withdraw Armenian forces from Karabakh.

Worse still, Armenia has transported into and planted thousands of mines in the Karabakh region that were manufactured in 2021; that is, after the ceasefire agreement was signed. Armenia does not deny the mines were manufactured in 2021 but claims the mines were taken from its own territory.

Article 9 ‘guarantees the safety of transport links between the western regions of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic in order to organize the unimpeded movement of citizens, vehicles and goods in both directions.’ Armenia has refused to call this a corridor (despite using this term for Lachin) and has not implemented article 9 allowing unimpeded traffic along the Zangezur Corridor between Azerbaijan and Nakichevan. Armenia’s borders are controlled by Russia’s FSB (Federal Security Service) and Pashinyan may be reluctant to allow them to control the Zangezur Corridor.

Pashinyan has dragged out the peace talks with contradictory signals and messages. At times Pashinyan has leaned towards an EU-brokered agreement and at other times he has sided with Russia’s proposal to take the ‘Karabakh question’ off the table until an unspecified future date. Azerbaijan does not support an indefinite postponement of the ‘Karabakh question.’

The Kremlin seeks to postpone an agreement on Karabakh which would mean that Russia’s so-called ‘peacekeepers’ would remain indefinitely in place. In the last three decades the Kremlin has never sought to resolve frozen conflicts in Moldova’s Transdniestria, Georgia’s South Ossetia and Abkhazia and Azerbaijan’s Karabakh. The Kremlin has always viewed its so-called ‘peacekeepers’ as military bases projecting Russian influence into its self-declared exclusive sphere of influence in Eurasia.

Pashinyan has only himself to blame for wasting three years and not signing a peace treaty. He came to power in the 2018 velvet revolution as the first leader to be born in Armenia. His main rivals from the ‘Karabakh clan’, Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan, were discredited by decades of authoritarianism, rigged elections, oligarchs, and corruption.

But instead of adopting a dovish stance towards Azerbaijan, Pashinyan adopted nationalist rhetoric and called ‘Artsakh’ (Karabakh) an Armenian land, claimed Karabakh should be part of Armenia, and rejected earlier peace proposals. Ironically, although Pashinyan had come to power in a democratic revolution and was not a member of the ‘Karabakh clan’, Pashinyan’s hyper nationalist discourse led to the Second Karabakh War in September 2020 and military defeat.

Since the war, Pashinyan has not reigned in his foreign and defence ministries who continue to espouse irredentism towards Azerbaijan. Armenia’s siloviki refuse to acknowledge their defeat in the 2020 war, claim the ceasefire treaty was imposed upon them, do not accept the conflict is resolved and the only question left remaining is minority rights for Armenians in Karabakh, refuse to accept Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh and continue to promote the concept of ‘self-determination’ for Karabakh.

In international law the concept of ‘self-determination applies to states, not territories within states. Four UN resolutions in April (822), July (853), October (874), and November (884) 1993 supported Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity to include Karabakh.  Armenia’s leaders point to Crimea, illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, as the precedent for ‘self-determination’ they wish to use for Karabakh.

Time is running out for Pashinyan.

In November 2025, Azerbaijan is unlikely to renew the five-year mandate for Russian so-called ‘peacekeepers’ as they have not implemented the ceasefire agreement and have directly or indirectly assisted Armenia in maintaining an illegal military presence in Karabakh.  Armenia’s reliance on Russian military support is a strategic miscalculation as the war in Ukraine has shown to what degree Russia is a declining power with a Potemkin military.

Pashinyan therefore has just over two years to negotiate a peace treaty with Azerbaijan. If he does not, he will only have himself to blame when Azerbaijan again, as with the new border post it installed this month on the Lachin road, asserts its sovereignty over Armenian-controlled Karabakh.

The views expressed in this article belong to the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect those of Geopoliticalmonitor.com.