Why peace looks a long way off in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict

At the end of September, conflict erupted between forces fighting for Armenia and Azerbaijan, reviving a decades-old dispute over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Armine Ishkanian argues that while it remains to be seen if a diplomatic solution can be found, there seems little prospect of peace emerging in the short-term.

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In the early morning of 27 September, Azerbaijan launched large-scale military operations along the entire line of contact (approximately 180 km) of Nagorno-Karabakh, an unrecognised state in the South Caucasus with a population of about 150,000 people. A week on, this is now an all-out war which involves numerous parties, including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Nagorno Karabakh, and Turkey. Armenians are vastly outnumbered both in terms of population size (Armenia has a population of 3 million, compared to 10 million in Azerbaijan and 80 million in Turkey) and military strength.

In this blog, I consider the conflict from the perspective of the political dimension in Armenia and examine the historical and contemporary factors which shape Armenians’ attitudes, perceptions, and responses to the conflict. These perceptions have implications for the resolution of the conflict and the prospects for peace in the region.

Nikol Pashinyan, Prime Minister of Armenia, Credit: European Council

A brief history

The indigenous Armenian population has lived in Karabakh for millennia. Shortly after the establishment of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin included the territory of Karabakh, with its majority ethnic Armenian population, in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan. As such, it came to be known as the Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (administrative division).

In 1988, responding to the political liberalisation initiated by General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, the Armenians of Karabakh began a movement to have the oblast transferred to the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. This move was supported by the Armenia SSR and opposed by the Azerbaijan SSR, leading to pogroms against Armenians in the cities of Sumgait and Baku. All attempts to resolve the matter within the framework of the Soviet Union failed.

On 10 December 1991, a referendum on the Independence of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic took place in which 108,736 registered voters (82.2% of the total) voted for independence. When Azerbaijan refused to honour the result of the referendum, a war ensued which left 30,000 people dead. The war ended in a ceasefire in 1994 and since then, Azerbaijan has demanded the return of Karabakh claiming territorial integrity, while Armenians have demanded their right to self-determination. Negotiations under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group, which France, Russia, and the US co-chair, have failed to achieve a durable peace.

Today, Turkey’s direct participation in the current conflict is further complicating an already complex situation. Moreover, there is growing evidence from a number of international news outlets that Turkey has facilitated the movement of jihadist mercenaries from Syria to the region to take part in military operations against the Armenian side, creating concerns that the South Caucasus will become another theatre of operations for international terrorism.

The impact of Armenia’s 2018 Velvet Revolution

On 31 March 2018 now Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, began a protest march which would become the Velvet Revolution. On 23 April, then PM Serzh Sargsyan resigned from office and the corrupt and authoritarian Republican Party of Armenia was in disarray. The Velvet Revolution was not only a political revolution, but also a revolution of values. Today, the impact of the Velvet Revolution on Armenians’ attitudes is undeniable.

The success of the revolution and the overthrow of the corrupt regime gave Armenians a deep sense of confidence and belief in their ability to affect change. The revolution’s slogan, “With Courage” (Duxov), strongly reverberates today. There is a determination among Armenians to protect the democracy they fought so hard to achieve. Armenians, both in Armenia and Karabakh, view this war as one for freedom, independence, self-determination, and ultimately, sheer survival.

Memories of genocide

Apart from the impact of the Velvet Revolution, the memories of the 1915 genocide of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire are also shaping attitudes today. The genocide has had a lasting impact on the consciousness of Armenians around the globe. It is a collective trauma which inspires feelings of existential threat.

The Turkish Government’s continued denial of and refusal to recognise the genocide, its active support for Azerbaijan in this war, coupled with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erodgan’s imperialist, neo-Ottomanist ideology and his criticisms of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne that established the borders of modern Turkey, fuel fears among Armenians. These fears are widely shared and are reflected in Armenian PM Pashinyan’s following statement in which he accuses Turkey of “continuing its genocidal policy towards the Armenians” and adds that, “…this is an existential threat for us, and there is nothing else to do but to defend ourselves.”

Armenians living in Turkey, including MP Garo Paylan and the civil society group Nor Zartonk, have called for peace and expressed concerns that Turkey’s involvement in the war is leading to intimidation and hate speech towards them.

Democracy or dictatorship?

In contrast to Armenia’s democracy, Azerbaijan is an authoritarian state that has been ruled by members of one family for nearly three decades. Heydar Aliyev was president of Azerbaijan from 1993 until his death in 2003, after which his son, Ilham, became President and has held that post ever since. His wife, Mehriban, is Vice President. According to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, the Aliyev family has taken large shares in lucrative industries including the telecom, minerals and construction industries often through government related deals. The 2020 Freedom House report describes Azerbaijan as an authoritarian regime where corruption is rampant and the formal political opposition parties and civil society have been weakened by years of persecution.

Karabakh Armenians have expressed their resolve and made it clear that they will never consent to live under Aliyev’s authoritarian regime. Furthermore, there has been too much bloodshed and the promotion of anti-Armenian propaganda by Azerbaijani leaders for them to feel safe in Azerbaijan. These factors cannot be ignored if peace is to be established.

This war will only spread suffering and destabilise the South Caucasus and the wider, already troubled, region. It remains to be seen if a diplomatic solution to the war can be found. A durable and lasting peace is of utmost importance, but it should not come at the price of the safety and security of Karabakh Armenians. The OSCE Minsk Group have called on the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to “commit without delay to resuming substantive negotiations, in good faith and without preconditions.” But sadly, the outlook for a peace at present is grim.

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This article has orginally posted on the LSE website and is cross-posted with the author’s permission

ARTSAKH / NAGORNO-KARABAKH: A BRIEF HISTORY | Part 2

Read Part 1 here

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Following the Russian Revolution and the emergence of independent republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia in South Caucasus in 1918, Artsakh with its majority Armenian population was briefly occupied by the Ottoman Turkish forces who ordered the Armenians to submit to the rule of the new Azerbaijani government whom the Turks viewed as their ethnic allies. The Turkish troops withdrew at the end of World War I and were quickly replaced by the British. The latter, acceding to the demands of sovereignty over Artsakh by the nascent Republic of Azerbaijan, approved the appointment of an ethnic Azerbaijani as the governor-general of Artsakh, pending a decision on the status of the region at the Paris Peace Conference. British support for the Azerbaijani control of Artsakh further reinforced Tsarist Russia’s administrative separation of this region in spite of its Armenian majority (89% according to the first Soviet census of 1926) from the rest of Armenian-populated areas to the west.

The Armenian National Council of Artsakh rejected the sovereignty of Azerbaijan over the territory, demanding the right of self-determination. A provisional agreement in August 1919 between the Council and the Azerbaijani authorities granted local autonomy to the Armenians who in turn agreed to conditional Azerbaijani jurisdiction over the territory. Frequent violations of this agreement by Azerbaijan resulted in a failed Armenian revolt in March 1920. In retribution, the Azerbaijani forces sacked the capital Shushi, massacring the Armenian population in their thousands and burning the Armenian quarters of the city.

With the step-by-step sovietisation of the three republics in South Caucasus between 1920 and 1921, Artsakh remained within the borders of Soviet Azerbaijan until the thaw in the Soviet Union instigated by the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev. In February 1988, a mass demonstration in Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, demanded the unification of the region with Soviet Armenia. In Azerbaijan the reaction to this mass protest was swift: late in the same month mobs in the industrial town of Sumgait attacked ethnic Armenians in their homes and in streets, ransacking and burning homes, raping and murdering for full twenty-four hours before the Soviet forces intervened.  In the post-Soviet power vacuum the conflict between the two republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan over Artsakh escalated into an all-out war resulting in thousands of casualties and massive movements of refugees on both sides. A fragile ceasefire was reached in 1994, leaving Armenians in control of Artsakh and occupying territories between the region and the Republic of Armenia and in the lowlands to the east. The ceasefire resulted in the de facto independence of Artsakh with close, intertwined relations with Armenia. Despite international efforts of mediation to reach a peace settlement in the region, skirmishes have continued to a higher and lesser degree along the line of ceasefire, erupting into a full-fledged war on Sunday, 27 September 2020.

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By Gagik Stepan-Sarkissian

ARTSAKH / NAGORNO-KARABAKH: A BRIEF HISTORY | Part 1

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This region of historic Armenia which is at the epicentre of the current war raging in South Caucasus has a long history.  In Urartian inscriptions (9th to 6th centuries BCE) it appears as the toponyms Ardakh, Urdekhe and Atakhuni. The Greek geographer Strabo (c. 63 BCE-c. 23 CE) calls the region Orchistenê, a province of Armenia which furnishes large bodies of cavalry. In fact, the Artsakh cavalry took a prominent part at the Battle of Avarayr against  Sasanian Persia in 451 CE. After the fall of Urartu, Artsakh is mentioned as the 10th province of Greater Armenia which emerged as a state on the Armenian Highlands from the 2nd century BCE. The first bishop of Artsakh was Grigoris, the grandson of St Gregory the Illuminator. He played an important role in the Christianisation of Artsakh, the adjoining province of Utik and the neighbouring country of Caucasian Albania, the territory of which corresponds to the modern Republic of Azerbaijan. The present-day monastery of Amaras in Artsakh marks the burial place of Grigoris who died a martyr. Mesrop Mashtots, the inventor of the Armenian alphabet, founded one of the first Armenian schools in Artsakh to educate the children of the province and through them help establish the new religion of Christianity more firmly in the region.

After the demise of the Armenian Arsacid kingdom in the 5th century, Artsakh became part of the Persian marzpanate (border province) of Albania and suffered the invasion of the Khazars from the north before falling under Arab rule in the 7th century. Artsakh regained a semi-autonomous status under the Bagratuni kings of Armenia (9th to 11th centuries) forming the vassal kingdom of Khachen. From the beginning of the 11th century the region increasingly became known as Khachen and Artsakh ceased to be known as a distinct administrative region; it survived as a mere geographical toponym until the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh officially renamed the state Artsakh in 2017. The Middle Ages saw a flourishing of arts and spirituality with the founding of various monasteries and scriptoria, producing a great variety of manuscripts with a distinct regional style of book illumination.

In the early 11th century the invasion of Seljuk Turks resulted in the first settlements of Turkish tribes in the lowlands of eastern Artsakh. Over a century later, the Mongol invasion of Armenia put an end to the semi-independent status of Khachen, culminating in the devastating conquest of the region by Tamerlane in the late 14th century. There followed the domination by White Sheep and Black Sheep Turkomans which resulted in further fragmentation of the Armenian princedom of Khachen into smaller administrative units known as melikdoms ruled by a hereditary melik. From the late 14th century onwards, the region became known as Karabagh (from Turkish ‘kara’, meaning either ‘black’ or ‘big’ and Persian ‘bagh’, meaning ‘garden’), a name that has survived to the 21st century in all regional languages, including Armenian, and also in the Soviet Russian name for the autonomous region of Nagorno-Karabakh (mountainous Karabagh).

From the end of the 16th century to the beginning of the 19th century the melikdoms in the mountainous regions of Artsakh and the adjoining Armenian province of Syunik led a semi-independent existence, mostly under the suzerainty of Persian shahs. The Russian Empire, expanding southwards under Tsar Alexander I, annexed the territory of Artsakh in 1805. Thereafter, the region was incorporated in the newly created province of Elizavetpol. The Armenian regions to the west of Artsakh, namely Yerevan and Nakhichevan, were annexed by the Russians some 20 years later and formed part of the sort-lived Armenian Province, later morphed into the Erivan Governorate. In placing East Armenia and Artsakh in different imperial provinces in the early 19th century, the Russian colonial administrators thus wittingly or unwittingly sowed the seeds of future problems in the region.

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By Gagik Stepan-Sarkissian, AI librarian and research advisor