How Azerbaijan Disguises Its Obstruction of the Peace Process with Armenia

On November 9, Azerbaijan celebrated the fourth anniversary of its military victory in the 2020 Karabakh war with performative events.

On November 9, Azerbaijan celebrated the fourth anniversary of its military victory in the 2020 Karabakh war with performative events. They included the opening of the “Victory Park”, military parades in the major cities of Azerbaijan, including in ethnically cleansed Nagorno-Karabakh, and its President Aliyev’s speech manifesting his “iron fist”. He proudly stated to have “capitulated” Armenia and “eradicated” the “traces of separatists in the land of Karabakh”, using armenophobic expressions to stigmatize Armenians and employing historical revisionism to imply that Armenians were not indigenous there. He also mocked international mediators who were aiming at a compromise-based peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, while admitting that Azerbaijan was preparing for its military solution.

Aliyev repeated Azerbaijani one-sided narratives of the conflict in the speech made at the opening ceremony of COP29 summit on November 12 in presence of the UN and EU top officials, the heads and other senior representatives of many states. This contradicts his call for a truce in conflict zones worldwide for the duration of COP29. This confirms concerns that the event may be used to “greenwash” ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh and give a green light to Azerbaijan’s new military offensives against Armenia.

Azerbaijan’s bellicose rhetoric continues in parallel to the formally stated progress in the peace process between Armenia and Azerbaijan. On October 18, Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Armenia Ararat Mirzoyan and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan Jeyhun Bayramov met in Istanbul on the sidelines of the meeting of “3+3” regional platform. On October 24, Pashinyan and Aliyev met in Kazan on the sidelines of the 16th BRICS Summit. During both meetings, parties discussed the finalization and the conclusion of the Agreement on Peace and Establishment of Interstate Relations in the shortest possible period. It was followed by the announcement that Presidents of both counties approved the regulations of commissions of the border delimitation commissions between the two countries.

However, Azerbaijan has been raising preconditions and demands to Armenia for concluding a peace agreement. It is also unclear whether Baku intends to withdraw from Armenia’s border areas within the delimitation process. Baku controls at least 215 square kilometres of Armenia’s sovereign territory as a result of its military offensives and creeping annexation in 2021-2023. This has created human security challenges for civilians in 31 border villages of Armenia.

In the last four years, Azerbaijan employed a variety of conventional and hybrid warfare tools against Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians and the Republic of Armenia. While Azerbaijan has framed its actions as “restoration of its territorial integrity and sovereignty”, its rhetoric indicates that it pursues expansionist objectives and may invade Armenia. It also undermines Armenia’s sovereignty with its ambitions to establish a regional hegemony with regard to Armenia. 

When Azerbaijan launched a large-scale  war against Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians in 2020, it normalized the use of military force as an alternative to “conflict resolution” in violation of the UN Charter. Despite the similarities between the Nagorno-Karabakh and Kosovo conflicts, Azerbaijan framed Armenia as an “aggressor and occupant”. Due to the lack of international humanitarian intervention, during the first Karabakh war Armenia intervened to stop Azerbaijan’s military operations, blockade and forced displacement of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians. The regions surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh occupied in the heat of the war, remained under the Armenian control as a result of the mutually maximalist and unconstructive negotiating positions of both parties to the conflict throughout two and half decades. While Armenia was trying to maintain the status quo, Azerbaijan was preparing for a war.

After its military victory and the 2020 ceasefire, Azerbaijan continued its warfare against Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians, and extended it to sovereign Armenia. Invoking the principle of non-intervention, Baku rejected international peacekeeping or even humanitarian presence in Nagorno-Karabakh. It denied any level of self-governance for Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians, announcing that It is capable of ensuring their rights in a unitary state, despite its record as an authoritarian state with a history of human rights violations.

Exploiting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and weaponizing the principle of territorial integrity, Azerbaijan used the Western mediation to persuade Armenia to recognize the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan. To gain the Western support, Baku was accusing Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh of being Russian proxies. However, it signed a Joint Declaration on allied interaction with Russia on February 22, 2022, and an agreement with Russian GazProm in November 2022 to import Russian gas, and reportedly started mixing it with the gas supplied to Europe. It exploited the geopolitical interests of Russia in the region to secure the inaction and complicity of the Russian “peacekeeping” mission in Nagorno-Karabakh.

In violation of the measures ordered by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Azerbaijan imposed a nine-month blockade on Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians causing “serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group”. It weaponized energy cuts and prevented the delivery of humanitarian supplies, including by the international Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which eventually lead to the starvation of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians.

Azerbaijan ignored warnings from the U.S. and the EU that ethnic cleansing would not be tolerated in Nagorno-Karabakh. When the perseverance of people broke, Baku launched a military offensive, causing more than two hundred casualties and four hundred injured in one day. Despite Azerbaijan’s claims of no civilian casualties, 27 civilians, including women and children were killed during the offensive. Baku framed its military offensive as a “counter-terror operation”, employing language reminiscent of the Army of Republika Srpska for Srebrenica in 1995. It achieved the disarmament of the local civil defense forces, and coerced the surrender of Nagorno-Karabakh authorities. International pressure forced Azerbaijan to allow the remaining 100,000 Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians to flee to Armenia during the following week. At least 220 more people died, 50 went missing and many more were injured in a fuel depot explosion that transpired in the chaos of the crisis, and 64 more people passed away from exhaustion during the exodus. Baku also conducted arbitrary detentions of Nagorno-Karabakh politicians and regular citizens, based on dubious lawsuits without due process. Russian peacekeepers did not prevent Azerbaijan’s blockade and military offensive, while Russian diplomats prevented the UN Security Council from adopting any statement or resolution about the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh, thus undermining the “Responsibility to Protect” and “Leave No One Behind” notions.

Baku claimed that Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians may return, but proceeded to undertake actions making their return untenable. They include military parades, destruction or appropriation of the Armenian cultural heritage, demolishing public buildings and houses, and resettling Azerbaijani inhabitants in the region.

Baku has been denying that forced displacement and ethnic cleansing has occurred, claiming that Armenians left voluntarily. Baku is also demanding that Armenia withdraws its Application of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) v. Azerbaijan at the ICJ as a precondition for the peace agreement. Although Armenia doesn’t raise even the issue of return of Armenians to Nagorno-Karabakh, Baku claims that the lawsuit indicates a territorial claim by Armenia to Azerbaijan.

The demand of withdrawing Armenia’s case in the ICJ is one of Azerbaijan’s preconditions and demands for concluding a peace agreement. Baku also demands Armenia to change its constitution as a key pre-condition for the peace agreement. It points out a provision in Armenia’s Declaration for Independence that cites a 1989 unification act adopted by the legislative bodies of Soviet Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region. Even if Armenia’s Constitutional Court has ruled that the Preamble is not reflected in the articles of the Constitution, and therefore has no legal significance, Azerbaijan uses it to sabotage the peace agreement. However, the Armenian Constitution cannot be changed without a referendum, which is planned in 2027 within a larger constitutional reform. To accelerate the change of the Preamble in a separate referendum may lead to an unpredictable outcome in Armenia’s current political environment affected by the forced displacement of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians and the challenges of their integration in Armenia, and Russia’s hybrid tactics of interference. Baku may be interested in its negative outcome as a pretext for a new military offensive against Armenia.

At the same time, Yerevan points out that Azerbaijan’s Declaration for Independence and Constitution contain territorial claims on Armenia but doesn’t demand to amend those documents because it expects the peace agreement to resolve that issue. Azerbaijan has declared itself as a legal successor of the 1918-1920 Musafat Republic of Azerbaijan. The League of Nations refused to recognize the First Republic of Azerbaijan and rejected its application in 1920 because it presented maps claiming most of contemporary Armenia’s territory. Since January 2024, Aliyev has expressed territorial claims to Armenia, including the capital Yerevan. Besides, after claiming for years that “Karabakh is Azerbaijan”, Baku has introduced an irredentist claim that “Armenia is Western Azerbaijan” through an NGO called “Western Azerbaijan” and has developed a “Concept of Return” to Armenia. 

Baku is also demanding the withdrawal of the EU Mission in Armenia. Azerbaijan and Russia have been conducting coordinated information warfare to delegitimize EUMA since its establishment. Despite its civilian monitoring nature, EUMA is serving as a soft deterrent against Azerbaijan’s further military advances in Armenia, and has also led to the withdrawal of the Russian military from the Armenian-Azerbaijan border. Az     erbaijan’s propaganda machine claims that Azerbaijan cannot trust the EU because it is supporting Armenia. That rhetoric intensified after the adoption of a modest non-lethal assistance measure from the European Peace Facility for Armenia. Baku even claimed that the West will “share responsibility with Armenia for any possible destabilising provocations. In his November 9 speech, Aliyev accused Armenia’s “Western patrons” of Islamophobia, and “fostering more bloodshed” in the South Caucasus. This also falls under Baku’s information warfare against the U.S, France, the European Parliament, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and other actors for their criticism of Azerbaijan and support for Armenia. Recently, Aliyev called the U.S. criticism of Azerbaijan’s human rights record “disgusting”.

Azerbaijan has also urged to impose restrictions on the Armenian army, based on its stigmatization of Armenia as an aggressor. However, Azerbaijan has initiated all wars and military offensives against Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia. Azerbaijan is receiving armaments and military technologies from Israel, Turkey, Pakistan, Serbia and Italy. It also conducts dozens of military exercises with Turkey and other partners. At the same time, it accuses France and India for their recent supplies of armaments to Armenia, and the US for conducting joint military exercises with Armenia. Yerevan has made it clear that it is using its right to defense in line with the UN Charter, and doesn’t even intend to de-occupy its border areas through military means, instead relying on the delimitation process for it. Given the significant discrepancy between military capabilities and economic resources between Azerbaijan and Armenia, Armenia is aiming to reduce the military imbalance to deter military offensives and the use of coercive diplomacy by Azerbaijan.

Finally, Baku and Moscow use each other to coerce Armenia into acquiescing to their regional interests. They jointly demand an extraterritorial “Zangezour corridor” through Armenia to link Azerbaijan’s mainland with its exclave Nakhichevan under the control of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). Armenia is instead offering to open communications in line with its project “Crossroads of Peace” under the jurisdiction and sovereignty of each country.

To conclude, Azerbaijan doesn’t seem to be interested in a peace agreement but is aiming to achieve Armenia’s capitulation, jeopardize its sovereignty and security, and create conditions for new advances on its territory. The outgoing U.S. administration and the EU were encouraging Azerbaijan to conclude peace with Armenia through soft mediation. However, “liberal peace” theory did not work with Azerbaijan, and led to the forced displacement of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. It would be in line with the incoming U.S. administration’s vision of peace for Ukraine and Middle East to persuade Azerbaijan to refuse from its tactics of diplomatic obstruction and military coercion, and sign a durable and dignified peace agreement with Armenia.

Sossi Tatikyan
Sossi Tatikyan
Sossi Tatikyan holds a Master of Public Administration degree from the Harvard Kennedy School, has been a NATO Defense College Partnership for Peace Fellow, and is currently a PhD Researcher in Sorbonne Nouvelle University. Her main research topics are: Ethnic conflicts, cognitive warfare and lawfare, Euro-Atlantic integration, security dilemmas of small states. In her first career, she was a diplomat, representing Armenia in NATO and IAEA. Subsequently she has been an OSCE and UN Political and Security Advisor in the UN missions in Kosovo, Timor-Leste, Central African Republic and African Union. She has coordinated UNDP and Freedom House democratic governance projects and conducted research on security sector governance for DCAF (Security Governance Center in Geneva) in Armenia. Since 2021, Sossi has been acting as an independent analyst on foreign and security policies, involved in informal public diplomacy and peacebuilding. She combines academic research and policy work through articles, policy advice and public speaking. She is a member of the UN Senior Women Talent Pipeline and UN Security Sector Reform Advisory Network.