Michael Rubin: France and NATO should force Azerbaijan to hold a referendum among the indigenous people of Nagorno-Karabakh

In an article published in The Armenian Mirror Spectator, analyst Michael Rubin said that “after the exposure of Azerbaijan’s hand” in the May 2024 New Caledonia protests, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev promised to sponsor separatism among other French territories across the globe.

“Aliyev is not a smart man. He believed that by championing New Caledonian independence, he would punish France for demonstrating the commitment to defend Armenia’s territorial integrity. The problem is that Aliyev knows nothing about New Caledonia,” Rubin noted, adding that in 2018, New Caledonia held an independence referendum in which native Kanaks could vote but recent immigrants to the island could not. The result was that even native Kanaks expressed the desire to remain part of France. In 2020 and 2021, subsequent referendums confirmed the result.

According to the author of the article, it is time for France and its NATO allies to demand Aliyev accept the New Caledonia precedents for Nagorno-Karabakh. France allowed only the indigenous and long-term residents of New Caledonia to vote in its referenda. “Nagorno-Karabakh was nearly entirely Armenian until Joseph Stalin’s gerrymandering. Both Paris and Washington should demand without hesitation or embarrassment that Aliyev follow through on the New Caledonia precedent in Nagorno-Karabakh itself and hold a referendum among the 120,000 residents expelled last year and others who can prove residence up to the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. Such a referendum already occurred ahead of Nagorno-Karabakh’s 1991 declaration of independence. Aliyev may not know the history,” Rubin wrote.

According to the analyst, it is time Nagorno-Karabakh had a referendum on a simple question: “Should Nagorno-Karabakh be part of Azerbaijan or independent?”