Author: Emil Lazarian

On Saturday, April 29th, Turkish officials closed Turkish airspace to select Armenian flights. The ban particularly applies to all Armenian flights heading to a third destination and comes in response to a monument erected in Yerevan last week.

The ‘Nemesis Monument’ commemorates the individuals involved in an assassination scheme of Ottoman and Azerbaijani leaders in the 1920s. The Turkish government has taken offense to the monument and will keep these air travel restrictions in place until the monument is removed.

Armenian air carriers found their operations suddenly restricted while operating within Turkish airspace on Saturday. According to Daily Sabah, the air carriers reported were informed by The Directorate General of Civil Aviation of Turkey that they would no longer be able to operate to a third destination from Turkish airspace.

The airlines said they were given no prior notice and were forced to halt such operations immediately. The sudden stoppage of these operations forced the airlines to cancel such flights for the foreseeable future.

The carriers are understandably frustrated that forces beyond their control are hindering operations. To them, it seems unfair that they should be punished for actions and decisions made by politicians. A representative for the low-cost air carrier FlyOne Armenia stated the following concerning the airspace closure,

“For reasons incomprehensible to us and with no visible grounds, Turkish aviation authorities canceled the permission previously granted to the FlyOne Armenia airline to operate flights to Europe through Turkish airspace,”

In association with the country’s aviation authority, the Turkish Foreign Ministry has shared the terms by which it will remove the airspace restriction. Representatives have stated that if Armenian officials were to have the ‘Nemesis Monument’ removed, the aviation authority would, in part, terminate the travel restriction.

As of now, no negotiations are known to have occurred between the two countries concerning the air travel restriction. However, even if talks begin, it is unlikely that Turkey will fold as it has made its stance very clear.

The new air travel restriction puts Armenian air carriers and the Armenian air travel economy in a pinch. While it may not seem like a big deal to restrict flights from one foreign country to another, it is, in this case, due to Turkey’s geographic location. Turkey is effectively cutting off Armenia from much of Europe.

While other ways exist to reach parts of Europe, most will require operators to fly significantly further to travel around Turkish airspace. This will impede timely operations and force airlines to restructure many routes.

These longer flights will lead to higher operating costs which will be passed down to the paying customers. The higher airfare will likely slow the Armenian air travel economy. Suppose the Armenian air transit industry experiences a significant decline in ticket sales – in that case, it will begin to hamper the country’s economic growth as the leisure and business travel markets will likely take a hit.

Source: Reuters, Daily Sabah

This article was first published on OC Media. An edited version is republished here under a content partnership agreement. 

On April 28, the Azerbaijani so-called “eco-activists” blocking the Lachin Corridor — the only route connecting Armenia to Karabakh across the territory of Azerbaijan — suspended their blockade following the installation of an Azerbaijani border checkpoint on the corridor on April 23.

The protest had been ongoing since December 2022, blocking all traffic in and out of Nagorno-Karabakh except for vehicles from the Red Cross and the Russian peacekeeping mission. According to the ceasefire agreement that brought an end to the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020, the Russian peacekeepers were to control the Lachin Corridor.

Despite claiming to be protesting environmental damage from mining in Nagorno-Karabakh, the protesters had seemingly no connection to any environmental movements and were widely seen as an instrument of the Azerbaijani government, who rarely allow protests to go ahead unhindered and control all access to Shusha, the city that was regained following the 44-day war Armenia and Azerbaijan fought in 2020.

The Nagorno-Karabakh area has been under the control of its ethnic Armenian population as a self-declared state since a war fought in the early 1990s, which ended with a ceasefire and Armenian military victory in 1994. In the aftermath of the first war, a new, internationally unrecognized, de facto Nagorno-Karabakh Republic was established. Seven adjacent regions were occupied by the Armenian forces. As a result of that war, “more than a million people had been forced from their homes: Azerbaijanis fled Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and the adjacent territories, while Armenians left homes in Azerbaijan,” according to the International Crisis Group, an independent organization that works to prevent wars and shape policies. Following the second Karabakh war in 2020, Azerbaijan regained control over much of the previously occupied seven regions. Azerbaijan also captured one-third of Karabakh itself during the war. On November 10, 2020, Armenia and Azerbaijan signed a ceasefire agreement brokered by Russia.

The activists reportedly said they reserved the right to restart the blockade if their demands were not met for the Russian peacekeepers to “stop the illegal exploitation of mineral deposits” and to “ensure the monitoring of environmental and other consequences remain in force.”

The move follows the installation of an Azerbaijani border checkpoint at the entrance of the Lachin corridor near the Armenian border on April 23. According to the reporting by the Economist Intelligence Unit, “the move has increased the blockade of Nagorno Karabakh. A checkpoint on the border would give Azerbaijan the ability to stop any cars traveling between Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh.” Reports that residents were being screened by the Azerbaijani border troops emerged on May 1. According to reports, footage appeared to show Armenian vehicles passing through the checkpoint, with Azerbaijani border control officers inspecting their vehicles and documents.

“The people are from villages near the checkpoint under double blockade and were traveling with the support of peacekeepers, with guarantees of not being bothered,” wrote Artak Beglaryan, an adviser to the State Minister, on Twitter.

The villages were cut off from the rest of Nagorno-Karabakh after the blockade began near Shusha. They are now separated from Armenia by the new customs checkpoint. Samvel Tavadyan, a teacher in one of the villages affected, told OC Media the residents of the village were now surrounded on four sides, “it feels like a cage,” adding, “People hoped that Russians would ensure free movement” but now they are “confined to a small area between the blockade and the new checkpoint.”

Meanwhile, the checkpoint, which was erected on the Hakari Bridge, next to a base of the Russian peacekeepers, triggered criticism in Armenia that the peacekeepers are “unreliable.” With the new checkpoint, resentments have only gotten stronger. Armenia’s foreign ministry calling on the “Russian Federation to finally fulfill its obligation under Provision 6 of the trilateral statement by eliminating the illegal blockade of the Lachin corridor and ensuring the withdrawal of Azerbaijani forces from the entire security zone of the corridor.” Yerevan criticized Baku’s actions, stating that “no one but Russia” should exercise control over the Lachin Corridor.

Baku, in the meantime, denied blocking the corridor. Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov stated on April 27 that Azerbaijan installed the checkpoint after warning Armenia of the “illegal use” of the road to transport weapons to the region.

“The Lachin road is open and will remain open,” Bayramov stated during a meeting with his French counterpart in Baku.

The Foreign Ministry had previously promised to create the “necessary conditions” for the “transparent and orderly passage of Armenian residents living in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan.”

Western officials also expressed concern over Azerbaijan’s actions. US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Secretary of State Antony J.Blinken, who spoke with President Ilham Aliyev on the phone on April 30, expressed “the United States’ deep concern that Baku has established a checkpoint on the corridor.”

The US mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe echoed Blinken’s concern in a statement. “[The] United States is concerned that Azerbaijan’s establishment of a checkpoint on the Lachin corridor on April 23 undermines efforts to establish confidence in the peace process,” read the statement by the mission.

The EU High Representative Josep Borrell said in a Tweet the checkpoint ran “counter to EU calls for reducing tensions and solving issues by dialogue.”

The checkpoint has led to renewed fears in Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia over the future of the region’s ethnic Armenian population.

The EU-funded ‘Partnerships for Syunik – Enhanced Community-Based Social Services’ project in Armenia is looking for up to 20 social service-providing Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) or actors, based or operational in Syunik and interested in developing quality social services.

The participants will have an opportunity to gain and enhance critical skills to effectively assess local social service needs and resources, engage in policy dialogue and conduct evidence-based advocacy actions. The action will also focus on technical social service delivery, with the ‘Armenian Caritas’ NGO sharing its extensive experience and supporting interested CSOs to receive government accreditation.

The deadline for applications is 29 May.

‘Partnerships for Syunik – Enhanced Community-Based Social Services’ contributes to the development of a more resilient system of social protection in all seven communities of the Syunik region. The project is funded by the European Union, and implemented by the Czech NGO ‘People in Need’, in partnership with the ‘WINNET Goris’ development foundation and ‘Armenian Caritas’ NGO.

Find out more

Press release

Armed conflicts and military actions can have devastating impact on objects of cultural heritage, which are of irreplaceable value to the entire mankind as unique expressions of history, identity and cultural memory, Armenia’s Permanent Representative to the UN Mher Margaryan said the UN Security Council Arria-Formula Meeting “Protection of Cultural Heritage in Armed Conflict.”

As such, their integrity and preservation must be upheld at all times., he stressed.

“In our region, we have first-hand experience going through the devastating loss of cultural property. The Armenian heritage was under heavy attack during the war in Nagorno-Karabakh launched by Azerbaijan in 2020. The Holy Savior Ghazanchetsots Cathedral of Shushi, for example, was deliberately shelled, twice within a few hours, resulting in the partial destruction of the Church,” the Ambassador noted.  

“Today, the millennia-old Christian Armenian sites in Nagorno-Karabakh are on the verge of total extermination, targeted to promote the distorted narrative that the Armenian people are alien in the region. Armenia’s deep concern in relation to the fate of the cultural property in Nagorno-Karabakh is also based on the previous history of total and intentional eradication of the Armenian heritage by Azerbaijan. In Nakhijevan, for example, thousands of monuments, including 89 medieval churches and more than 5,000 cross-stones were annihilated, in an effort to remove traces of the Armenian civilizational presence,” he added.

He emphasized that Azerbaijan is yet to commit, in good faith, to the implementation of the Order on Provisional Measures issued by the International Court of Justice at the request of Armenia in December 2021, according to which Azerbaijan shall “take all necessary measures to prevent and punish acts of vandalism and desecration affecting Armenian cultural heritage, including but not limited to churches and other places of worship, monuments, landmarks, cemeteries and artefacts”.

“Armenia has consistently requested that a UNESCO fact-finding mission be deployed to Nagorno-Karabakh and the adjacent areas in order to help preserve the vast and unique cultural heritage of the region, yet, Azerbaijan continues to obstruct efforts of the international organizations for independent and impartial assessment of the facts on the ground, having opted, instead, for the policy of systematic erasure of the Armenian traces, putting into practice a pseudoscientific theory that denies the historical sites of their Armenian origin. Only today, the chairman of what is called the State Committee for Work with religious Organizations of Azerbaijan went on record saying that the Medieval Armenian Dadivank monastery “belongs to Caucasian Albania” and “sooner or later it will be controlled by the Albanian-Udi religious community”,” Mher Margayn said.

“Destruction of the Armenian cultural heritage continues to be extensively monitored and reported, including through the use of modern technologies. I would like to recall, in this regard, that on 28 April, last Friday, Armenia hosted a panel discussion at the UN, which looked into the role of new technologies in preventing genocidal acts, such as cultural heritage destruction. The event featured a research project at the Cornell University entitled “Caucasus Heritage Watch”, which relies on digital satellite technologies to monitor and document cultural heritage in the region, revealing large-scale damage and destruction in the territories under Azerbaijan’s control,” he added.

The Permanent Representative encouraged UNESCO to also utilize digital technologies to identify, monitor and act upon the facts of destruction of cultural heritage in any part of the world, and in our region in particular.

The embarrassing flag-burning incident at the Opening Ceremony before the European Championships in Yerevan, Armenia last month – and a controversial podium incident last year – prompted the decision, said International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) President Mohamed Jalood.

“We are a sport, we represent peace, not fighting and arguments about who is best,” said Jalood at the Asian Weightlifting Federation Congress at Hotel Dong Bang in Jinju, Korea.

Jalood said he discussed the situation last week with IWF general secretary Antonio Urso and Technical Committee chair Sam Coffa before the committee agreed on a ban.

“What happened in Yerevan was taken into consideration when we talked about this,” said Jalood.

Referring to an incident last year he added: “We don’t want athletes on a small podium trying to push their flags in front of each other – this is not sport.”

From now on flags will still feature in medal ceremonies but as images on a screen, and no longer in the hands of athletes.

At last year’s European Junior Championships in Albania a Turkish athlete disrespected an Armenian gold medallist.

After Garik Karapetyan, one of Armenia’s best weightlifters, had been presented with his medal Emre Ozturk tried to cover up the winner’s flag with his own, left the podium during the Armenian anthem and refused to shake hands.

The European Weightlifting Federation banned flags from any podium ceremony involving Turkish and Armenian athletes for the rest of that competition, and in Yerevan three weeks ago it banned athletes’ flags outright because of the incident that made headlines worldwide.

A fashion designer ran from the crowd during the parade of nations at the Opening Ceremony of the European Championships in Yerevan, Armenia and set light to the Azerbaijan flag.

Days of political interference followed, in which various officials who have nothing to do with sport claimed that Armenia should be dropped by the IWF as a potential host for next year’s World Championships.

Armenia has no diplomatic relations with either Azerbaijan or Turkey, host nation for next year’s European Championships.

While Azerbaijan’s team flew home on Government orders, Turkey stayed and their federation President, Talat Unlu, praised the hosts for organising a successful Championships.

The new policy will be formally adopted by the IWF at its next Executive Board meeting.