Category: 2023

Activist groups are planning coordinated protests in Yerevan, Armenia, and Stepanakert in the Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) region of Azerbaijan, July 25. The demonstrations are demanding action against Azerbaijan for the alleged blockade of the road linking Armenia to the Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) region. The following actions are confirmed to take place from 20:00:

• Freedom Square in Yerevan

• Renaissance Square in Stepanakert

The events will be linked by video conference. The demonstrations are likely to attract several thousand attendees, based on a related protest in Yerevan on July 22.

Heightened security and localized transport disruptions are likely near the protest sites. While the gatherings will probably pass peacefully, minor skirmishes between police and participants remain possible. Further related protests are likely in coming days.

Avoid the protests as a safety precaution. Allow additional time to reach destinations in central Yerevan and in Stepanakert. Heed instructions of authorities.

He described the forum as “a remarkable event for our country and for Karabakh”. Shusha, he added, is a symbol of Azerbaijan’s victory in the Second Karabakh War but also of peace; after it was liberated the war stopped.

Shusha has been officially declared by presidential decree the cultural capital of Azerbaijan. The government is restoring the city’s monuments after the Armenian occupation when Shusha’s traditional 17 mosques and 17 springs were destroyed. Five of the springs again have water.

Symbolically, the forum took place in a hotel newly built on the site where Armenian separatists planned to build the ‘parliament’ of their breakaway republic. But President Aliyev observed that the Armenian church remained untouched. He said Azerbaijan was not dealing in revenge and had left hostility on the battlefield.

Armenian revanchism remained, said the President. However, Azerbaijan’s army was much stronger than when it secured victory three years ago and the fact that Karabakh is Azerbaijan is acknowledged more and more often by the international community.

In contrast, there had been ambiguity from global actors during the decades of Armenian occupation, with the goal of freezing the conflict. President Aliyev recalled unsuccessfully asking for sanctions, “so we had to do it ourselves, we had to implement Security Council resolutions of the United Nations on the battlefield”.

Now, if international brokers said Azerbaijan must accept reality, he could reply “I agree!” Russia, the United States and the European Union are each trying to facilitate a peace treaty between Azerbaijan and Armenia. The President said his government was working in good faith on all three tracks, as he described the potential paths to peace, but so far without an end result.

"Armenia needs to make, I think, one of the final steps. They already made several steps after the war; I would not say that these were not steps which they made voluntarily” he said, adding that during the last two and a half years,”several episodes … clearly demonstrated to Armenia that if they do not recognise our territorial integrity, then we will not recognise their territorial integrity”.

So far Armenia has verbally acknowledged Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and that Karabakh is Azerbaijan but it is yet to take the crucial step of putting it in writing. If Armenia put its words on paper, perhaps at forthcoming talks in Moscow, President Aliyev said that there could be a peace treaty by the end of the year.

Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has taken a more belligerent view, stating that a fresh war with Azerbaijan remains probable without a peace treaty between the two countries. "So long as a peace treaty has not been signed and such a treaty has not been ratified by the parliaments of the two countries, of course, a war is very likely”, he said in an interview with Agence France Presse, published on the same day as President Aliyev was speaking in Shusha.

The President characterised the European Union’s efforts to broker peace, spearheaded by Council President Charles Michel, as a supplementary and supportive mechanism that had so far worked more or less successfully. Tensions had perhaps been decreased, enabling Azerbaijan and Armenia to understand each other better.

The Azerbaijani President and Armenian Prime Minister last met in Brussels on July 15, for what Charles Michel described as “frank, honest and substantive” exchanges. He highlighted that the leaders had once again fully reconfirmed their respect for the other country’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, “based on the understanding that Armenia’s territory covers 29.800 km² and Azerbaijan’s 86.600 km²”.

In Shusha, President Aliyev stressed the importance of bilateral negotiations between Azerbaijan and Armenia, however helpful the efforts of international actors. He said there are proposals for “bridging language” to bring the two sides together on the issue of national minorities, giving the same recognition to Azerbaijanis in Armenia as Armenians in Azerbaijan.

The President reflected on how Armenians had lived for a long time in Azerbaijan, first coming to Karabakh in 1805. They had gone from arriving as guests to claiming Shusha as an Armenian city, although Azerbaijanis were in the majority before the occupation.

Shusha’s first returning residents, who fled when Armenia invaded, are being welcomed back but many areas of Karabakh still need to be cleared of Armenian landmines. Planting them is a war crime that still continues, as Armenia has not supplied accurate maps of the minefields. It was important that peace talks were informed more by realism than optimism, the President concluded.

Azerbaijan's government is sounding more and more positive about the U.S.- and EU-brokered negotiations with Armenia and increasingly negative about Russia's mediation efforts. 

Those talks are taking place on a separate track, not coordinated with the Western mediators. Russia maintains a 2,000-strong peacekeeping contingent in Azerbaijan's Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh.

The latest meeting between Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders on July 15 in Brussels, mediated by European Council President Charles Michel, didn't seem to advance the process too much, but it did introduce one new idea. 

Michel welcomed Azerbaijan's "willingness to provide humanitarian supplies" to the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, via the Azerbaijani city of Aghdam. 

The initiative was not received well by Armenians. Many interpreted it as a step toward normalizing and legitimizing Azerbaijan's seven-month blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh. Some residents of Askeran, an Armenian town close to Aghdam, reportedly vowed to install barriers on the Askeran-Aghdam road "in order to counter the so-called humanitarian aid predetermined by the Azerbaijani authorities."

(Michel also "emphasized the need to open the Lachin road" connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia. Toivo Klaar, the EU's special envoy to the South Caucasus, told Armenian media that the Aghdam offer is "not an alternative but a complement to the Lachin road".)

Azerbaijanis largely welcomed the Aghdam proposal, seeing it as an opportunity to advance the integration of the Karabakh Armenians into the Azerbaijani state. 

"In case humanitarian aid will be accepted by the Armenian community, it could create a precedent (not massive) for them accepting the Azerbaijani citizenship in the near future," political analyst Fuad Shahbaz tweeted in English. 

Vasif Huseynov, of the state-run Analysis of International Relations Center, wrote for the Jamestown Foundation that Michel's support for the Aghdam proposal was "another affirmation of Azerbaijan's territorial integrity by the EU and Armenia – to the dismay of some ultra-nationalist groups in Armenia and on the Russian side."

Azerbaijan's reaction to a statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry on the same day, July 15, similarly highlighted its growing preference for the European track of talks.

The Russian statement opened by saying that "by recognizing Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijani territory," Yerevan had "cardinally changed the fundamental conditions" under which the Russian-brokered cease-fire that ended the 2020 Second Karabakh War was signed.

The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry soon released its own statement objecting to this line: "Russian MFA commenting on and setting conditions for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan in the context of the recognition of Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan by the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia, a country that occupied the territories of Azerbaijan for nearly 30 years, is unacceptable."  

(Both the Russian and Azerbaijani foreign ministries asserted that Armenia already recognized Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan while in fact it has only stated its willingness to do so)

This sort of verbal sparring between Russia and Azerbaijan isn't new since the 2020 Second Karabakh War. Azerbaijan has long accused Russia of failing to secure the withdrawal of what it calls "illegal armed Armenian groups" in Nagorno-Karabakh. (This refers to Karabakh's armed force, the Artsakh Defense Army.)

In nearly every official utterance Azerbaijan is at pains to refer to the Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh as "temporarily stationed there." The peacekeepers' 5-year term of deployment expires in 2025.

Russia's war against Ukraine provided Baku with yet another platform to reproach Russia. Though Azerbaijan has never officially condemned Russia's invasion, nor voted for UN resolutions against Russia (in accordance with a strategic partnership agreement signed two days before Russia's invasion), Azerbaijani state media has clearly been taking the Ukrainian side. And Azerbaijan has regularly been providing humanitarian aid to Ukraine since the start of the war. 

Baku has been taking advantage of Russia's preoccupation with Ukraine, seizing additional territories in Nagorno-Karabakh and placing the region under blockade. 

This is widely seen as an attempt to change the situation on the ground in such a way to ensure that the peacekeepers leave Karabakh when their mandate expires. 

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Azerbaijan's strategic partner Turkey, recently threw his weight behind Azerbaijan's demand for the Russian peacekeeper's timely exit and expressed confidence that they would leave by 2025. 

The existing discourse and latest statements suggest that Azerbaijan is working to secure Russia's exit from Karabakh, says Shujaat Ahmadzada, an analyst at the Topchubashov Center, a Baku-based think tank. He says Baku has two key levers it can use to make this happen. 

"First, there is a need for rapid integration into the non-Western economic space for Russia. In this direction, the intensification of trade contacts with India, the Middle East and other actors is more relevant than ever. The full realization of the North-South Corridor passing through Azerbaijan is more relevant than ever for Moscow. For Azerbaijan, the North-South Corridor is not only an economic project, but also a political lever." Ahmadzada wrote on Facebook. 

"Second, it is important for Russia that states do not join the anti-Russian front. Azerbaijan supports Ukraine and provides humanitarian aid, but does not join the anti-Russian front. In this case, Azerbaijan's 'neutrality' is more important than ever to Moscow."

Both these things are more important to Russia than maintaining peacekeepers in Karabakh, Ahmadzada said.

Fresno, CA –

FRESNO, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) – A prominent figure in the local Armenian community, and someone who dedicated their life to their ancestral homeland and its people, was laid to rest on Saturday in Fresno.

Richard Hovannisian was born in Tulare in 1932 and went on to earn his doctorate degree from UCLA, where he taught for 60 years.

He was granted a national funeral for his dedication to the Armenian community, which was held at the Holy Trinity Armenian Apostolic Church in downtown Fresno.

The Armenian flag was draped over his casket before the funeral service.

Throughout his lifetime he authored dozens of books, was a lecturer, and documented the history of the Armenian people while pushing Armenian history to the forefront of the world’s headlines.

Berj Apkarian, the Honorary Consulate of the Republic of Armenia in Fresno, reflected back on the impact of Hovannisian’s life.  “To a giant in history in the Republic of Armenia where he authored so many books, where he forged forward the issue of the Armenian cause.”

Hovannisian received honors from the Armenian church and many organizations. 

His family says his crowning achievement was recording close to 1,000 oral histories from Armenian Genocide survivors, which are housed at the Shoah Foundation at USC.

https://www.yourcentralvalley.com/news/local-news/local-armenian-author-lecturer-laid-to-rest-in-fresno/

In July 15, I met the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, and the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliev. This meeting with the Azerbaijani President is the latest in a series that has taken place over the past four months, in different forms and in different capitals. Armenia has proven by its actions that there is a real will on the part of the Armenian government and people to establish lasting peace in the region.

We firmly believe that a lasting peace in the South Caucasus can have significant global benefits. In recent years, Armenia has become a stable democratic country in a complex region. Geographically, we are a strategic crossroads.

If we succeed in advancing peace, normalizing relations with our neighbors and establishing strong transport and energy infrastructure, local prosperity will be increased, links between Asia and Europe strengthened, global trade and international stability greatly enhanced.

Although the contours of a peace agreement are emerging, there remain significant obstacles to its realization. These stumbling blocks, which have persisted for a decade, can only be overcome with the support of partners who truly believe in peace in the South Caucasus.

At present, the main obstacle to peace is constituted by the aggressive and illegal actions of Azerbaijan around Nagorno-Karabakh, in particular in the Lachin corridor, but also within the borders of Armenia. The Lachin Corridor is the only road that connects Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians to the outside world.

Since December 2022, access to this corridor has been severely restricted by Azerbaijan, citing environmental concerns. Today, Baku has gone up a notch by installing a border checkpoint at the entrance to the corridor, even preventing access for the International Committee of the Red Cross. The supply of food, medicine and basic necessities is seriously disrupted.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the European Parliament, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and other international institutions have warned of the ongoing humanitarian crisis. In addition to blocking access to people and vehicles, Azerbaijan deliberately obstructs gas and electricity supplies to Nagorno-Karabakh.

You have 65.27% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.

https://globeecho.com/news/asia/armenia-the-international-community-must-take-measures-to-end-the-siege-of-nagorno-karabakh/

By Eurasianet - Jul 24, 2023, 12:00 PM CDT

Azerbaijan's government is sounding more and more positive about the U.S.- and EU-brokered negotiations with Armenia and increasingly negative about Russia's mediation efforts. 

Those talks are taking place on a separate track, not coordinated with the Western mediators. Russia maintains a 2,000-strong peacekeeping contingent in Azerbaijan's Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh.

The latest meeting between Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders on July 15 in Brussels, mediated by European Council President Charles Michel, didn't seem to advance the process too much, but it did introduce one new idea. 

Michel welcomed Azerbaijan's "willingness to provide humanitarian supplies" to the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, via the Azerbaijani city of Aghdam. 

The initiative was not received well by Armenians. Many interpreted it as a step toward normalizing and legitimizing Azerbaijan's seven-month blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh. Some residents of Askeran, an Armenian town close to Aghdam, reportedly vowed to install barriers on the Askeran-Aghdam road "in order to counter the so-called humanitarian aid predetermined by the Azerbaijani authorities."

(Michel also "emphasized the need to open the Lachin road" connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia. Toivo Klaar, the EU's special envoy to the South Caucasus, told Armenian media that the Aghdam offer is "not an alternative but a complement to the Lachin road".)

Azerbaijanis largely welcomed the Aghdam proposal, seeing it as an opportunity to advance the integration of the Karabakh Armenians into the Azerbaijani state. 

"In case humanitarian aid will be accepted by the Armenian community, it could create a precedent (not massive) for them accepting the Azerbaijani citizenship in the near future," political analyst Fuad Shahbaz tweeted in English. 

Vasif Huseynov, of the state-run Analysis of International Relations Center, wrote for the Jamestown Foundation that Michel's support for the Aghdam proposal was "another affirmation of Azerbaijan's territorial integrity by the EU and Armenia – to the dismay of some ultra-nationalist groups in Armenia and on the Russian side."

Azerbaijan's reaction to a statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry on the same day, July 15, similarly highlighted its growing preference for the European track of talks.

The Russian statement opened by saying that "by recognizing Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijani territory," Yerevan had "cardinally changed the fundamental conditions" under which the Russian-brokered cease-fire that ended the 2020 Second Karabakh War was signed.

The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry soon released its own statement objecting to this line: "Russian MFA commenting on and setting conditions for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan in the context of the recognition of Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan by the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia, a country that occupied the territories of Azerbaijan for nearly 30 years, is unacceptable."  

(Both the Russian and Azerbaijani foreign ministries asserted that Armenia already recognized Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan while in fact it has only stated its willingness to do so)

This sort of verbal sparring between Russia and Azerbaijan isn't new since the 2020 Second Karabakh War. Azerbaijan has long accused Russia of failing to secure the withdrawal of what it calls "illegal armed Armenian groups" in Nagorno-Karabakh. (This refers to Karabakh's armed force, the Artsakh Defense Army.)

In nearly every official utterance Azerbaijan is at pains to refer to the Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh as "temporarily stationed there." The peacekeepers' 5-year term of deployment expires in 2025.

Russia's war against Ukraine provided Baku with yet another platform to reproach Russia. Though Azerbaijan has never officially condemned Russia's invasion, nor voted for UN resolutions against Russia (in accordance with a strategic partnership agreement signed two days before Russia's invasion), Azerbaijani state media has clearly been taking the Ukrainian side. And Azerbaijan has regularly been providing humanitarian aid to Ukraine since the start of the war. 

Baku has been taking advantage of Russia's preoccupation with Ukraine, seizing additional territories in Nagorno-Karabakh and placing the region under blockade. 

This is widely seen as an attempt to change the situation on the ground in such a way to ensure that the peacekeepers leave Karabakh when their mandate expires. 

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Azerbaijan's strategic partner Turkey, recently threw his weight behind Azerbaijan's demand for the Russian peacekeeper's timely exit and expressed confidence that they would leave by 2025. 

The existing discourse and latest statements suggest that Azerbaijan is working to secure Russia's exit from Karabakh, says Shujaat Ahmadzada, an analyst at the Topchubashov Center, a Baku-based think tank. He says Baku has two key levers it can use to make this happen. 

"First, there is a need for rapid integration into the non-Western economic space for Russia. In this direction, the intensification of trade contacts with India, the Middle East and other actors is more relevant than ever. The full realization of the North-South Corridor passing through Azerbaijan is more relevant than ever for Moscow. For Azerbaijan, the North-South Corridor is not only an economic project, but also a political lever." Ahmadzada wrote on Facebook. 

"Second, it is important for Russia that states do not join the anti-Russian front. Azerbaijan supports Ukraine and provides humanitarian aid, but does not join the anti-Russian front. In this case, Azerbaijan's 'neutrality' is more important than ever to Moscow."

Both these things are more important to Russia than maintaining peacekeepers in Karabakh, Ahmadzada said.

By Heydar Isayev via Eurasianet.org 

https://oilprice.com/Geopolitics/International/Azerbaijan-Armenia-Peace-Talks-Lean-West-As-Russias-Role-Declines.html

As the humanitarian crisis worsens in the Nagorno-Karabagh of Azerbaijan amid ongoing tensions with neighboring Armenia, System of a Down‘s Serj Tankian has drafted an open letter urging stronger intervention into the matter.

In an exclusive interview, the artist tells SPIN that more than 120,000 people are without critical food and medical supplies due to Azerbaijan’s seven-month blockade of the Lachin corridor, the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabagh to Armenia. The sovereignty of Nagorno-Karabagh is disputed; it is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but is made up of land historically occupied by Armenians for thousands of years. The conflict broke out into a short war in 2020.

“The residents of Nagorno-Karabagh have since relied on humanitarian aid from Russian peacekeeping forces and the Red Cross,” reads the letter, which was also signed by musicians such as Peter Gabriel, Roger Waters, Tom Morello, and Stewart Copeland as well as other notable entertainment industry figures. “Azerbaijani soldiers are now blocking the entry and exit of aid convoys and the humanitarian crisis is worsening. In shops, essential food items are running out. Hospitals have an acute shortage of drugs and medical supplies. In February, the [United Nations’] top judiciary body, the ICJ [International Court of Justice], ordered Azerbaijan to ensure free movement on the road. Azerbaijan continues to ignore the ruling.”

Tankian, who is of Armenian descent, has long used his platform to advocate for the country’s well-being. “Everyone is supporting opening the blockade, from the United States to the State Department to the European Union, but it’s all talk,” he says. “But while people are starving, telling a dictatorial regime to open up an illegal blockade is not going to help them survive. They’re just words. There’s no actions, and that’s the issue. Everyone has already condemned it, but no one is doing anything. For example, USAID [United States Agency for International Development] could easily tell Azerbaijan, we’re going to fly in supplies. They have an office in Armenia, and the Armenian government has supplies that have been sitting around. We’ve been trying to reach out to [USAID administrator] Samantha Power to get her attention on the issue, and she’s aware of it, because she posted about it on Twitter.”

Tankian admits the problem is complicated by Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, which has further destabilized the region. “Alliances have re-aligned between Russia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey,” he says. “Once the war started, Russia looked to Turkey and Azerbaijan as a way of surviving because their oil is being funneled through Azerbaijan pipelines. Turkey is then playing both sides between NATO and Russia to their benefit, and that has even become a stumbling block for Finland and Sweden’s NATO membership. They’ve basically been blackmailing NATO to get what they want, which is the arrest of Kurdish activists living in Europe. In the long run, these changes might be great for Armenia, because Armenia has definitely been pivoting towards the west since the 2018 peaceful revolution, but right now, I don’t think things are changing for the better.”

Those interested in spreading the word about the situation can contact their political representatives in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada.

“Most people read about Ukraine everyday in the press but don’t know that this is even happening,” Tankian says of the Nagorno-Karabagh crisis. “[Ukrainian president] Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Twitter praised Azerbaijan and their corrupt, fascist dictatorial leader Ilham Aliyev for helping Ukraine with energy supplies. So be it, but at the same time, the same dictatorial leader has put a chokehold on these people in Armenia and has invaded our proper, United Nations-recognized territories. He’s taken about 150 kilometers and his soldiers aren’t backing up. We’re being hypocritical as an international community, because we can’t sacrifice one country for another. It’s not right.”

On the musical front, Tankian confirms he will release a “rock EP” next year and that he has some collaborations with as-yet-unnamed artists in the pipeline as well. Having recently composed the score for the Netflix series Down to Earth With Zac Efron, Tankian is also “working on another series on a major streamer that I can’t name. I don’t think we’ll be putting out the soundtrack, but that will be out by late this year. There’s a few films coming down the line to work on too. There’s a lot going on.”

Alas, there is no activity on the books for System of a Down, which hasn’t released an album since 2005’s Mesmerize and Hypnotize and has played less than 20 shows in the past five years. The band made its only scheduled appearance of 2023 at the Sick New World festival in Las Vegas in May. “It was very fun,” Tankian says of the show, which also featured fellow nu-metal Mount Rushmore acts Korn, Deftones, and Incubus. “There were a lot of friends and family there, and seeing so many of our peers from the late ‘90s and early 2000s was a unique and beautiful experience.”