Peace agenda between Armenia and Azerbaijan and Azerbaijani demands: What to do?
Recently, Aliyev spoke in Shushi about the peace agenda between Armenia and Azerbaijan, stressing that 80-90% of the peace treaty has already been agreed with Yerevan. According to Aliyev, the only thing that remains to be done is Yerevan making concessions regarding the dissolution of the Minsk Group and the amendment to its constitution. According to Aliyev, the amendment of the Constitution is not purely a domestic matter of Armenia, as there is a reference to the Declaration of Independence in the text of the Constitution of Armenia. And that reference is about the reunification of Artsakh with Armenia, which poses a threat to the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and makes it impossible to conclude a peace treaty.
To remind, not long ago, Nikol Pashinyan himself announced the need to change the Constitution of Armenia. Moreover, a committee has already been formed, which deals with the issues of drafting a new constitution. As a matter of fact, agreements were reached between Aliyev and Nikol a long time ago, which are currently being implemented. As for the dissolution of the Minsk Group, the present authorities are also preparing the ground for it. In particular, the works of the Minsk Group are criticized and considered useless by various pro-government analysts and KP officials.
Referring to Aliyev’s statements that there is a threat to Azerbaijan in the Constitution of Armenia and the Declaration of Independence, the same government analysts support the viewpoint expressed by the dictator of Baku. According to these analysts, Artsakh is considered a part of Azerbaijan, and any state document about reunification is tantamount to a territorial threat and contradicts international norms. Before speaking, such theorists had better study the political map of the South Caucasus in 1919, at least once. It depicts the First Republic of Armenia and the then Democratic Azerbaijan with their internationally recognized borders. The maps clearly show that Nagorno Artsakh and most of its plains belong to Armenia. The good proof of this is the map of the Arbitral Award of Wilson, where, in addition to 90,000 square kilometers that should have been joined to Armenia, we can see the Republic of Armenia with its internationally recognized territory of 70,000 square kilometers.
The Arbitral Award of Wilson Map
The present-day Republic of Azerbaijan considers itself the successor of Democratic Azerbaijan, and this fact alone proves that Azerbaijan could not make any claim to Artsakh. Let us bring a brief historical review about Democratic Azerbaijan. On May 27, 1918, when it declared its independence, the country was officially named the Muslim Democratic Republic of the Eastern Caucasus. The name of the state indicates religious affiliation, geographical location, but not nationality. The state flag was also different; it almost copied the flag of Turkey and the Ottoman Empire. Later, until Nov. 9, 1919, both the name of the state and the flag were changed, which have been preserved until now.
Thus, the claims of some theorists that justify the demands of the Baku regime regarding the Constitution of Armenia and the Declaration of Independence are completely meaningless. In fact, the transfer of Artsakh to Soviet Azerbaijan under the 1921 Treaty of Kars completely contradicted international law, because that treaty was concluded between two internationally unrecognized entities: Kemal Turkey and Soviet Russia. And, as we know, the process of international recognition of the Republic of Turkey started in 1923, when they just proclaimed their independence. In the case of Soviet Russia, the process of recognition began later, in 1933. All this is well understood in Baku. That is the reason why today’s weak-willed authorities of Armenia are forced to remove all aspirations for unification with Artsakh from the state legislation and documents, because if official Yerevan has no will to unite its historical territories and considers them part of the neighboring country, it also legitimizes the occupation of these territories by that neighboring country. Aliyev’s demand, according to which Armenia should agree to dissolve the Minsk Group, is also from the same scenario. Some theorists claim that the Minsk Group was an aimless organization because it could not contribute to the peaceful settlement of the Artsakh conflict. However, the fact is that the Minsk Group is the very multinational organization that internationally raises the Artsakh issue, and the latter ceases to be merely an internal matter of Azerbaijan or some local territorial issue. While, with the dissolution of the Minsk Group, we agree that the Artsakh issue was only an internal issue of Azerbaijan and was resolved by the latter’s armed forces; and this will be considered a completely legitimate process in terms of international norms.
Thus, Baku consistently forces Yerevan to make such decisions, which will later make it impossible to settle the Artsakh conflict, at least to some extent in favor of Armenia. The present authorities of Armenia do not have any red lines, and by begging the neighboring country for a “Cadastre document”, they will not be satisfied with the collapse of the Artsakh conflict resolution.
Ashot Barekyan
