There is no peace in sight in Ukraine, but there is hope for another war-torn region. After decades of bloody conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, the situation between Armenia and Azerbaijan seems to have eased to the point that a peace treaty even seems possible. It has probably never been mentioned as often as it is now.
“I think there is a possibility of a peace agreement,” Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said recently. This in turn has to do with the repeated statement by Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan that he would be willing under certain conditions to recognize the Armenian-inhabited region of Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also said that a peace agreement was “in sight, within reach”.
Pashinyan and Aliyev, bitter opponents for years, have recently met unusually often: in Washington, at the security conference in Munich, two weeks ago in Brussels, last Thursday in Moscow with Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin and this Thursday again when the European political community meets for a summit in Moldova. Then Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron will also be present at the sideline talks. So it is also about the influence that Russia, Europeans and also Turkey and the USA have on the peace process in the Caucasus.
Armenia used to be under the military protection of Russia
Under international law, Nagorno-Karabakh belongs to Azerbaijan. However, in the early 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Armenia conquered the area and a buffer zone. The tide turned three years ago. Azerbaijan, which has meanwhile been heavily armed militarily, took back a large part of the area during fighting. Armenia was left with no choice but to agree to a ceasefire that would be overseen by a Russian peacekeeping force. Nevertheless, there were repeated fights, shootings and deaths between Armenia and Azerbaijan. In all, tens of thousands of people have been killed in the conflict over the past few decades.
That the Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan now publicly offered such important concessions, namely accepting Karabakh as Azerbaijani territory, was previously unthinkable. In Armenia and in Nagorno-Karabakh itself, this is also being massively criticized. But his position has deteriorated significantly in recent years. In the conflict with Azerbaijan, Armenia has always been under the military protection of Russia, for example through the military alliance “Collective Security Treaty Organization”. But that has changed.
It felt let down by Moscow when Azerbaijan recaptured large parts of Nagorno-Karabakh in autumn 2020 and Armenian areas were also shelled. And when alleged Azerbaijani environmentalists blocked the only link between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia in December, Russian peacekeepers made no move to unblock it. Most recently, Azerbaijan also set up its own checkpoint at the bottleneck, the Lachin Corridor.
The rights of the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh should be protected
So Azerbaijan has been very self-confident lately, and it can count on powerful supporters: Turkey and Russia. Bound and weakened by its war against Ukraine, Moscow, in turn, badly needs Turkey as a strategic partner. Armenia, on the other hand, has realized that Russia is no longer simply on its side. The pressure on Prime Minister Pashinyan is immense, and a peace treaty is obviously an opportunity for him in the bitter conflict.
But is it also “inevitable”, as Azerbaijan’s President Aliyev said? Pashinyan sets conditions. Among other things, it is about the rights and security of the Armenians in “Artsakh”, as Armenia calls Nagorno-Karabakh, about their political status, their language, their culture, the demarcation of borders, their controls and international guarantees.
But Azerbaijan’s head of state, Aliyev, made that clear: that Nagorno-Karabakh is “our internal affair”. The people there should either accept Azerbaijani citizenship or find another place to live. A sensitive point of contention is also a possible train connection between Azerbaijan and Nakhichevan, an Azerbaijani exclave. This route would run through Armenian territory, but the question would be: who controls it?
So a peace deal would be a very big, complicated package. And it’s difficult to achieve because, apart from Armenia and Azerbaijan, so many other states have interests in the Caucasus region. The Europeans too. At the request of Armenia, the EU has had a modest but symbolic observer mission in the Armenian-Azerbaijani border region since February. The fact that Chancellor Scholz is also present at the talks on Thursday alongside Macron is likely to have something to do with the esteem that Germany enjoys in the region.
Armenia in particular is no longer relying solely on Russia; there is even a debate in Yerevan as to whether it could possibly leave the security alliance. However, one thing is also clear: Moscow does not want to just stand by and see how it might lose Armenia to the West. That’s one of the reasons why everyone should at least agree that a peace treaty should look like everyone has won something.