Category: 2022

As negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan advance, the question of what will happen to their Soviet-vestige exclaves has again become a matter for dispute.

In recent days the issue has again become the subject of diplomatic jockeying. The two sides have for the most part repeated their previous, mutually incompatible positions on the issue, casting doubt on the prospects for delineation of the two countries’ border just as serious work is set to begin.

On May 5, as he was discussing Armenia’s new framework for negotiations for the first time in public, the Secretary of Armenia’s National Security Council, Armen Grigoryan brought up the issue of the exclaves, quirks of Soviet border-drawing along the Armenia-Azerbaijan border that will have to be settled along with the bigger, thornier issue of Nagorno-Karabakh.

“In general, the opposition is constantly making baseless statements, which have nothing to do with reality. The issue of exclaves has not been raised so far, as there is an exclave on both sides,” Grigoryan told reporters. “Those territories are almost equal. Neither side is saying anything on this issue, it has not been discussed yet!”

The fact that he brought up the issue during his brief on Armenia’s new six-point proposal, which has yet to be made public, led to suspicion that Grigoryan was protesting too much and that the exclaves may be part of that deal.

But his mention of the opposition appeared to be a reference to a recent protest march from one of the exclaves in question: Karki, which Armenians call Tigranashen.

Karki is one of a handful of parts of Soviet Azerbaijan that were effectively islands inside Soviet Armenia. There was one, larger corresponding exclave of Soviet Armenia, Artvashen, located inside the borders of Soviet Azerbaijan and which Azerbaijanis call Bashkand. Following the war between the two sides in the 1990s, each side occupied the exclaves that were surrounded by their territory, and the respective populations had to flee.

The views of the Armenians and Azerbaijanis displaced from the exclaves more or less mirrors that of their governments: while many Armenians from Artvashen are resigned to not going back home, many Azerbaijanis still harbor hopes of being able to return back to live in their villages.

Armenia’s political opposition has regularly accused the government of preparing to return the Azerbaijani exclaves – which happen to straddle the country’s strategic north-south highway – to Azerbaijan. In the new wave of protests that the opposition has launched against the government’s negotiations, one key event was the march to Yerevan from Karki/Tigranashen, highlighting what they claim is a government wish to hand the territory back to Azerbaijan.

“Today the most important thing is fighting against these Turkish-subject authorities and saving the homeland,” one participant in the march, Hripsimeh Arshakyan, told reporters. “Nothing is scarier than losing a homeland.”

The government denies any plan to hand over the exclaves inside Armenia; it says that it is negotiating to allow each side to keep the exclaves that they now control.

“Our hope is that the possible solution is that the exclave of Armenia is left to Azerbaijan, the exclaves of Azerbaijan, which are in the territory of Armenia, are left to Armenia,” Grigoryan said.

Grigoryan’s comments occasioned a rebuttal from Azerbaijan Deputy Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan Khalaf Khalafov, who on May 10 reiterated Azerbaijan’s position that it wants back control of its exclaves. “These territories are part of Azerbaijan. The return of these lands to Azerbaijan will be considered within the delimitation process. These issues will be resolved after discussions,” he told journalists.

Responding to Khalafov’s comments, Armenian ambassador-at-large Edmon Marukyan rolled out a new bargaining position: that Armenia has a stronger claim to Artvashen than Azerbaijan does to its exclaves.

“We’ve stated numerous times that delimitation and demarcation processes should be based on facts and documents of de jure significance. At this moment, we don’t possess any legal substantiation that any de jure Azerbaijani enclave has ever existed in the territory of Armenia,” Marukyan told reporters. “On the contrary, there are legal grounds for the village of Artsvashen belonging to Armenia. … These issues must certainly be discussed and resolved in the delimitation and demarcation process.”

A joint commission to work on delimiting the border between the two countries, which was agreed at an April meeting between the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders, will hold its first meeting in Moscow May 16-17, Armenia Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said. 

The foreign ministers of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Russia have met in Dushanbe to discuss the normalisation of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The discussion between Armenia’s Ararat Mirzoyan and Azerbaijan’s Jeyhun Bayramov took place on Thursday on the sidelines of a meeting of the Russia-led Commonwealth of Independent States.

It comes after almost two weeks of opposition protests in the Armenian capital Yerevan sparked by fears the Armenian government planned to make concessions over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh in a peace agreement with Azerbaijan.

In their statement on the talks, the Azerbaijani foreign ministry said they had discussed ‘the conclusion of a peace agreement between the two countries’.

In a post on Twitter following the meeting, Yerevan-based political analyst Tigran Grigoryan pointed out that the Armenian and Russian statements did not mention any ‘peace agreement’, which he suggested could mean they intended to separate normalisation from the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Mirzoyan also emphasised that he reiterated Armenia’s position on the ‘rights of Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh and the status of Nagorno-Karabakh’ during the meeting.

Both sides mentioned that fulfilling the terms of the 9 November ceasefire agreement was discussed, including normalising relations, border delimitation, and the opening of transport links.

The issue of a peace agreement has led to unrest in Armenia, with the opposition attempting to topple the government of Nikol Pashinyan.

On 6 April, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met with Pashinyan in Brussels, along with EU Council President Charles Michel.

Readouts of the meeting said the parties agreed to start work on a ‘peace agreement’ and establish a joint commission on the delimitation of borders.

Pashinyan’s statement following the April meeting, as well as a speech to Parliament hinting at concessions on the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, sparked outrage in Armenia, leading to the protests that are still ongoing.

On 11 May, during a call with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, President Aliyev reportedly said that Armenia had accepted a five-point peace agreement proposed by Azerbaijan and that steps were being taken to implement this.

Armenia disputed this, claiming they had sent an additional six-point proposal to Azerbaijan to be included in the peace talks.

Blinken reportedly stressed that the United States was ready to support the delimitation and demarcation of borders between Azerbaijan and Armenia and the opening of transport links.

TBILISI, May 13 (Reuters) – Thousands of demonstrators blocked access to government buildings in the Armenian capital Yerevan on Friday in the latest of a spate of protests demanding the resignation of the prime minister.

Pressure against Nikol Pashinyan has increased since he moved closer to normalising relations with Azerbaijan, which defeated Armenia in a six-week war in 2020.

The unrest also coincides with Russia’s war in Ukraine, which is prompting its former Soviet neighbours to reassess their own security and their relations with Moscow.

Protests have simmered in Armenia for weeks since Pashinyan said the international community wanted Yerevan to “lower the bar” on its claims to the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Video posted on YouTube showed protesters, led by opposition figures, brandishing tricolour Armenian flags and chanting anti-government slogans as rows of police officers guarded the buildings.

“With this we are showing that Nikol (Pashinyan) has no power in the country,” TASS news agency quoted Ishkhan Saghatelyan, vice president of Armenia’s National Assembly, as saying.

Pashinyan’s comments on Nagorno-Karabakh came as Azerbaijan has said it was ready for peace talks to take place soon but that Yerevan would need to renounce any territorial claim against his country.

The Nagorno-Karabakh enclave is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but was populated and fully controlled by ethnic Armenians until they lost to Azerbaijan in a six-week war in 2020.

With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, another former Soviet country, Armenia has begun pondering its relations with its neighbours to reduce the external threats it could face.

“The war has caused all of Moscow’s partners to reconsider their relationships,” said Laurence Broers, an associate fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House in London.

“In Armenia there is concern that in a worst case scenario Armenia may be coerced into some kind of union state relationship with Russia, and consequently that Armenian statehood itself is in doubt.”

Armenia is currently a close ally of Russia, which has a military base in the northwest of the country and sent peacekeepers to Nagorno-Karabakh under the accord that ended the fighting in 2020.

Pashinyan has insisted he would not sign any peace deal with Azerbaijan without consulting the ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh.

05/13/2022 Turkey (International Christian Concern) – The largest Armenian church in the Middle East, St. Giragos Cathedral in Diyarbakir, reopened on May 7. The church, built some 600 years ago, was abandoned for some time until restoration efforts began in 2008.

After three years of renovations, the church reopened in 2011 only to be closed again in 2015 due to damage during PKK fighting. According to Fides Agency, the Turkish government expropriated Christian churches as part of the campaign against the PKK to utilize their positions in the fighting. Five churches and more than 6,000 houses were expropriated, mostly from the historic center. After the latest renovation, the church’s foundation also submitted a request to the government to appoint a permanent clergyman to the church.

At the reopening of the historic church, Armenian Patriarch Sahak II commented, “Even with the numerical decline in the Christian presence in Diyarbakir, the opening of this church can be a lifeline. And it contains an important and meaningful message of friendship with a view to improving Turkish and Armenian relations.”