Prof. Dr. Enver Bytyçi| ARGUMENTUM
Azerbaijan is a country with a very important geopolitical and geo-economic position in the Caucasus region and beyond. For the first time, this country declared its independence in 1918, right after the First World War, but two years later it was annexed by the former Soviet Union. From 1920 until 1991, when it again declared its independence, it was part of Moscow’s communist empire.
The former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan was among the first of the 15 republics that the USSR had, to declare its independence in 1991, as the empire was collapsing. After independence, Azerbaijan did not have major conflicts with Armenia. However, during the Soviet era and up until last year, Azerbaijan had a prolonged, decades-long conflict with the former Soviet Republic of Armenia, which also became independent with the dissolution of the former USSR. The cause of this conflict was the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which is inhabited by a majority Armenian population. This region had autonomy within the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic.
But after independence, the Republic of Armenia announced its claims to Nagorno-Karabakh, demanding that this region join the Republic of Armenia. Initially, it was the head of the Nagorno-Karabakh government, Gurkassjan, who in 1991 accused Azerbaijan of having violated the autonomy of this republic. He said that the Armenians of this region, as well as the Armenians of Armenia, see themselves as a one nation, preaching the unification of Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia.
The independent Republic of Azerbaijan denied the accusations, not because it feared the union of Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia. This unification was completely impossible because the borders of the region with an Armenian majority and those of the Armenian state itself do not coincide. A union of a region, recognized as part of the state of Azerbaijan, with another state, in this case Armenia, was absurd to even contemplate, let alone to implement.
Nevertheless, the Armenian authorities, both in the region and in Armenia, nurtured the illusion of the unification of Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia for decades. In this venture of belief, they had the support of some European countries, but also of Russia. Russia supported the ambitions of the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians in order to keep a hotbed of conflict burning in the Caucasus. Keeping conflict hotbeds active has always been a strategy of the Russian Federation, with its hope that in a favorable situation it could use that conflict zone for its expansionist interests. The same thing happens, for example, in the Balkans with the two conflict hotbeds, that of Kosovo with Serbia and of Republika Srpska with the Bosnian Federation.
On the other hand, the demands of the Armenian citizens of Azerbaijan were extremely unrealizable. With their extreme demands, the Armenians in this case, instead of gaining substantial autonomy in exchange for accepting and respecting the Republic of Azerbaijan, focused on rejecting the state and its territorial integrity. However, after declaring independence in 1991, Azerbaijan was recognized by the UN Security Council as an independent state, with full respect for its territorial integrity.
However, the President of Armenia, Robert Kocharyan, declared in 2003 that “Azerbaijanis and Armenians cannot live together, as they do not accept each other’s ethnicity.” This statement was harshly criticized at the time by the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, of which Armenia is a member.
The disagreements continued for many years and decades. They were also related to the so-called return of Armenian refugees to their settlements in Nagorno-Karabakh, which was met with refusals from Baku, mostly due to the increase in the number of these refugees by Armenia. This is reminiscent of the number of Serb refugees who fled Kosovo, which Belgrade authorities consider to be 235,000, while in Kosovo in 1991, according to the Serbian government’s census, only 209,000 Serbs lived. And if we add to the figure of 235,000 the 105,000 Serbs who have not left Kosovo, then it turns out that the number of Serbs in Kosovo during the last war was 340,000, or 130,000 more than the actual number.
In 2010, the international community intervened seriously to resolve the conflict through negotiations between the two states. The Council of Europe, through resolution 2216, welcomed the decision for direct talks between the president of Azerbaijan and that of Armenia at the time and called for the return of Armenian refugees to Nagorno-Karabakh. It also called for peacekeeping troops to be deployed in this region after an agreement. Meanwhile, the UN Security Council stated in three of its resolutions that Nagorno-Karabakh belongs to Azerbaijan.
Since this time, talks have continued between the two presidents and delegations of both countries, until early 2024 when the agreement to resolve the conflict in favor of Azerbaijan was reached. During the 13-year period, there were numerous episodes of violence and even loss of human life in this conflict. On March 13, 2025, the parties informed the public that they had agreed on the terms of peace and that the Republic of Armenia recognizes Nagorno-Karabakh as a sovereign part of the state of Azerbaijan. Meanwhile in August of this year, the American president, Donald Trump, invited the two presidents of both countries to the White House, where an additional peace agreement was signed, in which Azerbaijan is also recognized the right to the Sangesur corridor, which passes through Armenia, to use for trade with Turkey and other countries. The USA will be the guarantor power of this agreement which includes the use of the Armenian corridor by Azerbaijan for trade.
But the achievement of the agreement is also a contribution of the Republic of Turkey and its president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who with his diplomatic methods managed to paralyze Russian aid to Armenia. This even caused Armenia to express a kind of revolt against Moscow and to consider its withdrawn stance as a “betrayal”. However, it should be considered that Armenia itself at this time had become very close with France and some other European countries, which ran in contradiction with the tense relations between the Russian and French presidents.
The fundamental lesson that comes from this conflict is that minorities must fight for their rights, but always in accordance with the constitution of the country in which they live. If it happens that a certain minority does not accept coexistence, then the solutions can be painful. The Armenians of Azerbaijan refused for more than three decades to integrate into their state, as a result, they ultimately lost their territorial autonomy as well. Having become extremely hostile to the majority population, a large number of them left their settlements to Armenia after the agreement. The departure was also a refusal of coexistence with the Azerbaijanis.
© 2025 Argumentum
