Why is Armenia Hindering the Peace Process?

In an interview to Russian TV Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev stated that Armenia and Azerbaijan have agreed on 15 out of 17 articles in a draft peace agreement. According to Aliyev, the two unresolved articles concern a commitment not to file international claims against each other via the courts and the non-deployment of external actors on the conditional border between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The commitment not to file claims against one another relates to the key obstacle to the signing of the peace deal – Armenia’s refusal to amend the preamble to its Constitution, where it makes official claims on Azerbaijan’s sovereign territory. These claims have been the basis of Armenia’s irredentist Miatsum (unification) policies for decades and led to the occupation and annexation of Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region. In a decision in September, Armenia’s Constitutional Court downplayed the legal significance of the preamble as part of the Pashinyan government’s response to Azerbaijan’s concerns. The preamble could be changed if a new constitution were adopted. The court decision does not meet Azerbaijan’s expectations for obvious reasons. Firstly, Azerbaijan intends to sign a viable and durable peace treaty with guarantees that it will be upheld by Armenia regardless of government changes in the future. Any new government or new judges in the Constitutional Court in Armenia might nullify the court’s recently adopted decision by declaring that it contradicts the preamble to the Constitution and is thus null and void. Secondly, as a victim of Armenia’s military aggression in the 1990s, Azerbaijan is seeking a lasting peace with Armenia. It wants Yerevan to take clear steps approved by the vast majority of Armenian society to ensure the future sustainability of peace and coexistence.

In other words, claims on Azerbaijan’s territory have been a state doctrine in Armenia since independence. On 18 January, Armenia’s PM Nikol Pashinyan argued that Armenia needs a new constitution, not just amendments. He argued that the new realities in the region as well as the ongoing transition in the international system require Armenia to cease irredentist claims against neighbours and to focus on Armenia as a state within its territorial borders as part of ensuring what he calls legitimacy. In February Nikol Pashinyan stated that it would be impossible to achieve peace if state policies were still guided by the Declaration of Independence’s message, a reference to solving the problem of the preamble to the Constitution. Although the Armenian PM openly acknowledged that the Declaration of Independence in the preamble to Armenia’s Constitution created a significant obstacle to signing a peace deal, he later refused to terminate the claims and came up with the September decision of the Armenian Constitutional Court downplaying their significance. Pashinyan’s refusal to amend the preamble to the Constitution contradicts his claims that Yerevan recognises Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and sovereignty over Karabakh. A resolution of the Supreme Council (parliament) of the Republic of Armenia on 8 July 1992 provides a further legal complication. The resolution openly states that any international or domestic document where the Karabakh region is mentioned as part of Azerbaijan is considered inadmissible for the Republic of Armenia. Pashinyan’s critics argue the 8 July 1992 resolution prohibits Armenia signing any international agreement that recognises Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity encompassing Karabakh, and that the resolution itself cannot be annulled since it derives its constitutional basis from the Declaration of Independence enshrined in the preamble to the Constitution. To put it simply, Pashinyan cannot under the current Armenian Constitution sign a peace deal and the September 2024 decision of the Constitutional Court does not pave the way to achieving a durable peace. It is not in Azerbaijan’s interests to sign such a document without genuine action taken by Yerevan.

Pashinyan’s announcement that a referendum on a new constitution will be held in 2027 appears to be part of his next election campaign, as his strategists in Washington and Paris view it as a way to repeat a Moldova-type strategy of holding a referendum on a new constitution expressing willingness to join the EU alongside a general election. PM Pashinyan has already announced that he backs the idea of a referendum on EU membership.

WHY THE NEED TO END THE MINSK GROUP & EU MISSION?

Another hurdle in the peace process is the lack of commitment by the Armenian side to jointly request an end to the OSCE Minsk Group, the international body supposedly mediating an end to the conflict over Karabakh which has long since been dead in the water. Eliminating the remnants of the former conflict, particularly the Minsk Group, is crucial for Azerbaijan. External actors, in particular the USA, Russia and France, used the Minsk Group to manage the conflict, turning it into a tool to advance their geopolitical interests in the South Caucasus region. This was at the expense of Azerbaijan’s national interests as the Minsk Group contributed to sustaining the occupation of Azerbaijani territory indefinitely. Since all decisions in the OSCE require unanimous approval, Armenia joining Azerbaijan and requesting the termination of this format would prove Yerevan’s sincerity about removing obstacles to the peace process. According to President Aliyev, the continuing existence of the Minsk Group format is meaningless since Armenia has recognised Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan, thereby accomplishing the main task of the institution which was to solve the former Karabakh conflict. The president said that if Armenia refuses to demand the dissolution of the format, this means that revanchist circles in Yerevan have not given up their territorial claims. As a matter of fact, various Armenian officials have said that the group can be disbanded following the signing of a peace treaty. Following the remarks made by Azerbaijani President Aliyev, Armenian PM Pashinyan told  local media that he sees no reason to preserve the Minsk Group and understands Baku’s position, though he used vague wording at the end.

Yerevan’s reluctance to terminate the Minsk Group is most likely influenced by external actors, in particular the US and France which are key players advising the Armenian PM and shaping his decisions. According to an Azerbaijani analyst, Farid Shafiyev, at the 31st Ministerial Council of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) which took place on 5 and 6 December 2024 in Malta, the Armenian delegation refused Azerbaijan’s suggestion to take concrete measures to terminate the Minsk Group and the US and some EU countries backed Armenia’s stance.

The negative impact of France on the peace process and regional stability in the South Caucasus can be seen not only in France’s leading role in the militarisation of Armenia, but also in its diplomatic backing of the Armenian revanchist narratives at every level. For example, its ambassadors to Yerevan continue to act provocatively, constantly inflaming Armenian revanchist narratives. In other words, France aims to use the topic of the so-called Karabakh Armenians against Azerbaijan on behalf of Armenia in an attempt to outsource the Armenian revanchist claims to itself. In April 2022 in his address to the Armenian parliament, Nikol Pashinyan made it clear that Armenia’s international partners (presumably the US, France and some other EU countries) told him that by lowering the benchmark on the status of Karabakh a little, greater international consolidation around Armenia and so-called Artsakh could be ensured. It was clear that France and the US were pushing to facilitate representation in a future EU mechanism on the ground in Karabakh before Azerbaijan’s launch of the anti terror operation in September 2023. The EU’s special representative at that time, Toivo Klaar, was advocating for Russian peacekeepers to be equipped with scanners at the former Lachin corridor to prevent illegal goods shipment which was an attempt to reject Azerbaijan’s exercise of its sovereignty over its border.

The deployment of the so called civilian EU mission along the conditional Armenia-Azerbaijan border, which was agreed for a maximum two-month period in Prague on 6 October 2022, turned out to be an attempt by France to insert itself into the region. By creating a mechanism on the ground, Paris was trying to be part of the border delineation and demarcation talks, since French President Macron was desperate to get a role in the process. At the Prague meeting in October 2022 France and the EU desperately wanted to have not only a foothold in the form of the so-called EU civilian mission in Armenia, but on the Azerbaijani side as well, though this was rejected by Baku. Clearly, the intention was to set up French representation in the Russian peacekeeping zone through the deployment of an international force, which was backed by the French Senate. Since the EU mission was extended and enlarged without Azerbaijan’s agreement, it has become a propaganda tool for the French-led hybrid warfare against Azerbaijan, as the recent provocative visit of Polish President Duda has once again shown.

The EU mission is part of the destructive approach of the French and Biden administrations to turn the South Caucasus into a geopolitical playground as part of the ongoing geopolitical struggle over Ukraine. The Biden administration views the South Caucasus as a “gray space” where countries that conduct multilateral independent foreign policy with pragmatism and a balanced approach are viewed as a “threat to the US interests”. The quotations are from the US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, James O’Brien, speaking in a conversation with the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Kyiv this January. As part of this approach, the US backs the EU advancing its presence by offering accession talks, as in the case of Georgia which was a pure geopolitical move.

The US and EU, with France as a driving force, have taken provocative actions in Armenia: for example, using the restoration of Azerbaijani territorial integrity and sovereignty as a tool to exploit Armenian irredentist claims, deepen the rift between Russia and Armenia and damage Russia’s public image within Armenia, or the actions of the EUMA along the conditional border with Azerbaijan. These are actions taken jointly by the Biden State Department and France in the so-called “gray space”, which they view as an extension of the geopolitical struggle with Russia over Ukraine. Azerbaijan’s stance of getting rid of the external negative presence from the border areas aims to reduce the possibility of a spillover of the vicious geopolitical confrontation into the South Caucasus. The EUMA’s existence creates a negative environment as it engages in propaganda and fake news against Azerbaijan.

Overall, the lack of steps by Yerevan regarding the Minsk Group, the EUMA and the preamble to the Constitution, as well as the military build-up financed by France and the US, create obstacles to durable peace and stability in the South Caucasus. This also creates the impression that Armenia’s territorial claims against Azerbaijan – meaning the issue of the so-called Karabakh Armenians – have been outsourced to France, the US, and EU institutions such as the EU parliament, which will continue using this geopolitical blackmail against Baku in the future. It is clear that Nikol Pashinyan was pursuing a policy of remedial secession with the approval of Western backers, and in particular France and the US State Department, from 2021 until Azerbaijan’s anti-terror operation in September 2023 in the zone controlled by Russian peacekeepers at that time. Pashinyan won the Armenian parliamentary election with the promise of conducting a Kosovo-style remedial secession. His policy and the later French and EU attempts to facilitate the entrance of a so-called international force into Karabakh was part of this strategy.

Azerbaijan has made it clear that it will counter any future blackmail, outsourced to Armenia’s external backers, over Karabakh with the topic of the Western Azerbaijan Community who were expelled in the late 1980s from modern-day Armenia. They will raise the rights of this community to return to a specific geographical location, depending on the approach taken by Armenia and its external backers.

[Photo by the Press Service of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, via Wikimedia Commons]

Rufat Ahmadzada is a graduate of City, University of London. His research area covers the South Caucasus and Iran. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect TGP’s editorial stance.