Category: 2021

Moscow will host an inaugural meeting of a six-way South Caucasus peace platform on Friday, an idea proposed by Turkey and Azerbaijan following last year’s Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.

After six weeks of fighting last year, Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a Russia-brokered ceasefire to end conflict over the region that is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but populated mainly by ethnic Armenians.

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The ceasefire locked in territorial gains by Baku, which was backed by Turkey.

The peace platform – including Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Russia, Iran, and Turkey – was proposed by Azeri President Ilham Aliyev and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after the ceasefire. Ankara, which has no diplomatic ties with Armenia, has said the platform may help normalize ties with Yerevan.

“The first meeting of the regional cooperation platform in the 3+3 format proposed … for the establishment of lasting peace and stability in the South Caucasus will be held in Moscow on December 10,” the foreign ministry said.

It said Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia, Iran and Turkey will be represented at the deputy foreign ministers level, but did not elaborate on Georgia’s participation.

Armenia and Turkey signed a landmark peace accord in 2009 to restore ties and open their shared border after decades, but the deal was never ratified, and ties have remained tense. During the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Ankara accused Yerevan of occupying Azeri territories and provided military support for Baku.

Turkey has said it will reciprocate positive steps taken by Armenia to mend ties and has invited Yerevan to join the peace platform since the end of the conflict.

Russia and Turkey jointly operate an observation center in Nagorno-Karabakh to ensure the ceasefire is maintained.

The tumultuous political climate after Armenia’s severe defeat in the Second Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh) war in the Autumn 2020 has caused uproar within the 10 million World Armenians.

That shocking loss of another land and the end of the Armenian presence in the major part of Artsakh has made Armenians work on finding ways out of the morass. History shows that big losses have sobered entire nations up and Armenians must not be an exception.

One could already see how thousands of Armenians have changed their lifestyles – that is they have firmly decided to leave the pre-2020 comfort zones and double and triple their efforts to help the mother Armenia recover from the bitter 2020 loss.

Armenians in Armenia and in the Diaspora (together they are called the World Armenians by the Armenian Network State movement to stress their one complete subjectivity) have teamed up in different movements, initiatives, organisations and companies to change the political vector of the Armenian world.

A lot of self-organised teams have already appeared in Armenia since November 2020 to teach and train people with military knowledge and might. A lot of networking platforms have been created to bring in investments into mother Armenia.

Those are indicators of reviving seeds of the nation that has suffered a lot since the year of 1045 when the Bagratuni (Bagratid) kingdom of Armenia collapsed.

Nevertheless, there are two very hazardous socio-political processes within the Armenian world parallel to the self-organisation and revival which need to be addressed urgently by the World Armenians.

First thing is the lack of central pan-Armenian elite who would otherwise usher the thousands of self-organising Armenians to coordinated actions everywhere.

According to the political science theory, that elite would be the incumbent government of Armenia who would share with the World Armenians the strategic plans to overcome the vehement challenges by concrete day-to-day steps.

But the World Armenians now appear to be under severe circumstances: the incumbent government of Armenia has proved its inability to deliver as a pan-Armenian elite.

Walking through this type of difficult terrain is not an easy task for a nation that has usually lacked smart political thinking. As a result, a lot of competent and incompetent individuals and teams have brought 180 degree differing agendas into the political field of the Armenian world.

These currents reminding Brownian motions are very dangerous as they can trigger (and probably have already triggered) a number of anti-Armenian special services and supranational structures to penetrate into and lead those self-organising initiatives which can bring a bitter harm to the World Armenians.

There is an even more dangerous political process that has started shaping itself into a daily Armenian agenda.

Different individuals and teams & initiatives in Armenia and in different Diaspora communities have started believing that the current Armenian statehood is gone and that the Armenians need to find other, “out-of-box” options for the Armenian problems.

Not surprisingly, these anti-Armenian ideas find fertile soil among respectable amounts of the World Armenians because of the lack of central agenda and pan-Armenian elite.

There are initiatives and media publications where the Armenian Statehood (i.e. the state of Armenia in the 1/10 land of the Armenian Highlands) gets blamed for the Armenian sufferings and there even are a number of proposals in Armenia and in the Diaspora that champion for alternative political structures such as religious [smaller] state; or a new Armenian reservation far from the Armenian Highlands and so forth.

It is clear that these currents that undermine the Armenian Statehood are easy political prey for Turkish, Azeri and other special services, and unsuspecting Armenians who of course establish these initiatives without any anti-Armenian incentives fall into a trap due to lack of deep political knowledge and foresight.

The Armenian Statehood in the Armenian Highlands (even if now it encompasses just 1/10 of the Armenian highlands) is the only political and ideological entity that the 10 million World Armenians should look and head to.

The Armenian Statehood is the centre of the Armenian world and this must be an avowed axiom for every single World Armenian.

The 10 million Armenians should never confuse the bad or incompetent government with the Armenian Statehood: the latter is a highest value, it should nest in every Armenian’s mind and the World Armenians should streamline their efforts to empower the Armenian Statehood in the Armenian Highlands.

The Armenian Network State has carefully monitored all aforementioned dangerous currents during the last 6 months and will continue doing so. The fall of Armenia as an independent state must be an existential threat to all 10 million World Armenians.

The declaration of the Armenian Network State reads:

“Being convinced that the sustenance of the Armenian people can be ensured only in the territory of its origin and historical development – the Armenian Highlands, and that the World Armenians as an ethnic unit with a unique identity can survive and develop only under a viable Armenian statehood;

United around the idea of protection and development of the Armenian statehood,

Our goal is to build a free, united and sovereign Armenia, as well as to ensure the security and protection of the rights of the World Armenians anywhere in the world.”

This is the political formula that the Armenians should unite around.

Armenian Statehood in the Armenian Highlands stands above all.

Vahram Ayvazyan is the founder of the Armenian Network State. He is an International Relations and Genocide scholar, startup founder and a Climate Reality Leader, personally trained by former US vice president Al Gore.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ordered Armenia and Azerbaijan to prevent the incitement of ‘racial hatred’, as rulings were delivered in two opposing cases submitted by the respective countries.  The court declined the two countries’ specific requests and did not order the release of prisoners of war or the handover of landmine maps by Armenia.

The 7 December ICJ rulings often differed by only a few words. In both cases the Hague-based court ordered that Azerbaijan and Armenia ‘take all necessary measures to prevent the incitement and promotion of racial hatred and discrimination’ — in Azerbaijan’s case ‘including by its officials and public institutions’, and in Armenia’s case ‘including by organisations and private persons on its territory’ — against Armenians and Azerbaijanis, respectively. 

The status of sites of Armenian cultural heritage in Azerbaijan was also covered by the court’s ruling, which ordered Azerbaijan to protect such places from ‘vandalism and desecration’ and ‘punish’ perpetrators.

The court also called on both countries to ‘refrain from any action which might aggravate or extend the dispute before the Court or make it more difficult to resolve’.

The ICJ did not rule according to the specific requests made by Armenia and Azerbaijan. While it ordered Azerbaijan to ‘protect from violence and bodily harm’ all Armenian prisoners of war, and to ‘ensure their security and equality before the law’, it stopped short of ordering their release.

‘Armenia has not placed before the Court evidence indicating that these persons continue to be detained by reason of their national or ethnic origin’, the ruling reads.

At the same time, the court also did not issue any order to Armenia prohibiting the use of landmines or necessitating that it hand over landmine maps to Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan’s legal team has argued that Armenia had used landmines as ‘a longstanding campaign of ethnic cleansing’. 

The court ruled that Azerbaijan did not provide evidence that proved that Armenia’s use of landmines has  ‘the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing’ of the rights of Azerbaijani ethnicity or nationality. 

Government officials in both countries declared that the rulings vindicated their respective positions. 

Following the publication of the Court’s decisions, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry issued a statement in which they said that Azerbaijan is ‘committed to its obligations under international conventions’ and that it ‘will continue to demand that Armenia be held accountable for violations of international law’. 

The Armenian Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, stated that ‘Armenia will consistently pursue Azerbaijan’s compliance with the Court’s orders, and will inform the Court of any violation’.

https://oc-media.org/icj-orders-armenia-and-azerbaijan-to-prevent-racial-hatred-but-declines-specific-requests/

YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) — Armenia and Azerbaijan on Thursday traded blame for border clashes in which officials say at least one soldier was killed and two others were wounded amid simmering tensions between the ex-Soviet neighbors.

Armenia’s military said that two of its troops were wounded after Azerbaijani forces opened fire on Armenian positions, while Azerbaijan said Armenian forces killed one of its soldiers in what it called “a provocation.”

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a decades-old dispute over the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which lies within Azerbaijan but was under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a separatist war there ended in 1994.

Moscow brokered a peace deal last November to end six weeks of fighting over the territory, during which more than 6,600 people were killed. The Russia-brokered truce allowed Azerbaijan to reclaim control over large parts of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding areas that the Armenia-backed separatists controlled.

Tensions on the two nations’ border have been building since May, when Armenia protested what it described as an incursion by Azerbaijani troops into its territory. Azerbaijan has insisted that its soldiers were deployed to what it considers its territory in areas where the border has yet to be demarcated. Clashes have been reported ever since.

Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan for talks in Sochi. After the meeting, Putin said that the three leaders agreed to create, before the end of the year, mechanisms for delimitation and demarcation of the border between the two countries.