After the Second Karabakh War was over on November 10, 2020, there was a certain calm and stability in the South Caucasus region. Azerbaijan won most of its territories, which had been under the control of the Armenian Armed Forces for almost 30 years.
Azerbaijan is a secular state with a Shia Muslim majority. The nation serves as an example of efforts by a Shia Muslim state to engage its many diverse cultures in society. Professor Rovshan Ibrahimov, with Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (South Korea), has insights regarding Azerbaijan’s interregional influence, based on Azerbaijan’s overlooked diplomatic values.
In the information age, the war of words can be very revealing. In this analysis for KarabakhSpace.eu, Yalchin Mammadov looks at what the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders' twitter posts throughout the 44-day war can tell us about how they wanted to portray the conflict to the international community.
Let's be honest at least with ourselves and start calling things by their proper names. From the very moment the declaration of ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh was signed, we have been saying that Russia plans to turn this region of Azerbaijan into a major military base.
When Leonid Brezhnev visited Washington in 1973, William Colby — soon to be director of the CIA — told the Soviet Leader: “The more we know about each other, the safer we all are.” The summit Brezhnev attended marked a triumph of the Cold War detente. In the years that followed, deals were signed that limited the production of nuclear weapons and normalized relations between the West and the USSR.
Whilst Nikol Pashinyan's victory in the recent Armenian elections is seen by some as a rejection of revanchist political forces, this does not mean there are no challenges to the peace process. Vasif Huseynov gives the perspective from Baku of what the elections mean for peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Secretary of the Security Council of Armenia Armen Grigoryan made a number of very curious statements. In an interview with Armenian Public Television, he emphasized that Russian border troops would be deployed on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border and may stay there even after the process of border demarcation is complete—in case the Armenians, as Grigoryan put it, “do not have enough of their own manpower”.
Erdoğan's statement after his visit to Shusha caught the attention of all researchers. While declaring that Turkey will stand by its allies, the president made reference to a security zone – a mechanism that seems like the only tool that can provide stability in the region.
Announced by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in March this year, the snap parliamentary elections in Armenia have been a hotly debated topic both within and outside the country for several months. After the end of the Second Karabakh War, many in the Armenian diaspora actively opposed N. Pashinyan's candidacy, accusing him of betrayal and incompetence.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, signed an agreement on June 15, 2021, that may have historic significance not only for the two signatory countries, but also for neighboring states.
Taking into account the developments in the South Caucasus, especially after the Second Karabakh War, the constructive engagement of the United States in the region will also be significant for supporting peace efforts and economic integration.
Though it was intended to be a referendum on Pashinyan and the outcome of the Nagorno-Karabakh War, the election to some extent became a referendum on his opponent.
Armenia’s embattled prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, managed to overcome the fallout of a disastrous defeat in last year’s war with Azerbaijan to win a landslide victory in a parliamentary election on June 20.
On June 15, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan paid an official visit to Karabakh to meet with his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, thus becoming the first foreign leader to visit the region following last year’s 44-day war.
The traditional geopolitical boundaries that have defined the South Caucasus in the post-Cold War era are shifting as the region becomes increasingly connected to the eastern Mediterranean and wider Middle East.
At the Summer Session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) currently taking place in Strasbourg, the Armenian delegation is making further attempts to push this organization to adopt anti-Azerbaijani resolutions.
The election on Sunday in Armenia showed that nationalist fervour remains highly charged. The vote came following the country’s military defeat in last year’s Nagorno-Karabakh war, where Azerbaijan retook seven districts surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh and the southern part of the disputed enclave.
The signing of the so-called Shusha Declaration between Turkey and Azerbaijan is set to open a new chapter in an already amicable relationship between the two countries, and paves the way for further Turkish influence in the Caucasus and Central Asia.
With little progress in post-war negotiations over an array of areas, a new report by the International Crisis Group warned Armenia and Azerbaijan could resume hostilities. On May 14, Armenia’s parliament issued a statement on a ‘crisis situation in its border districts’ relating to its non-demarcated and undelimited border with Azerbaijan.
Many had been angry at Pashinyan after last year’s Nagorno-Karabakh war, but having won the snap poll, he may now usher in a period of easier relations with neighbours.
Azerbaijan released 15 Armenian prisoners of war on Saturday in exchange for the locations of 97,000 Armenian land mines on territory Azerbaijan recaptured in last fall’s Nagorno-Karabakh war. That was a welcome sign that American diplomacy in the Caucasus is alive and well.
“Who lost Turkey?” has been a running question among Turkey watchers for years, a reference to fears that the supposedly secular Muslim-majority state would cut ties with the liberal-minded West and turn to the purportedly more closed-off, and Islamist, East.
Russia largely stood aside as Turkey and Azerbaijan observed if Armenia would turn a page after decades of regional isolation.
Results released Monday showed that the party of Armenia’s acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan won a snap parliamentary election that he called to ease anger over a peace deal he signed with Azerbaijan.
