"FAILURE OF THE ARMENIAN MIRACLE"

The trilateral meeting in Sochi on October 31, 2022 between the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Russian President Vladimir Putin was a landmark event in the post-conflict settlement process. There is now a new document, the Sochi trilateral statement, which draws a thick line under yet another attempt by Yerevan and other stakeholders to revise post-war realities in the region.

"The Garabakh conflict is already history"

Many participants found the Sochi meeting very important. Reasonably, Russia considers it an opportunity to take over the mediation initiative from the European Union, especially after the scandalous statements made by the French authorities. Azerbaijan expected to advance, as the outcome of the meeting proved, successfully advanced its own agenda. Armenia, on the other hand, was serious about reanimating the issue of the status of Garabagh.

So, each side had its own interests. Meanwhile, the Sochi talks culminated in a new and far-reaching success for Azerbaijan. "The Garabakh conflict is already history. It was resolved two years ago. There is practically nothing to discuss in this context. And the normalisation of Azerbaijani-Armenian relations is a format which requires very serious steps. We count on your active personal role and that of Russia to continue to achieve these goals," President Ilham Aliyev said during his meeting with Vladimir Putin, as reported by many media outlets. Red lines drawn by Baku are fully reflected in the final document of the meeting. The trilateral statement does not mention Nagorno Garabakh or the Garabakh conflict in general. The document is focused on the normalisation of relations between Baku and Yerevan, which fully corresponds to Azerbaijan's interests and position.

Azerbaijan can consider the final paragraph of the statement its victory. It says that the negotiators "agreed to refrain from the use or threat of use of force and to discuss and resolve all problematic issues exclusively on the basis of mutual recognition of sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability of borders in accordance with the UN Charter and the 1991 Alma Ata Declaration". Territorial integrity and the UN Charter are exactly what Baku wanted to see in the final document.

In essence, the Sochi summit completes a stage that included some geopolitical chess-play, unexpected manoeuvres, an attempt to involve new players, and new large-scale realities. And Armenia acted as a facilitator of these new actors.

Armenian expectations

Each country has its own favourite foreign policy moves and techniques. Some rely on economic influence, others on military might. In Armenia, traditional perceptions of foreign policy have had their own specifics. They believe that the interests of Yerevan must be defended and fought for by other countries. As a consequence, local Armenian experts and even politicians continue to hope for better outcome for their fellow citizens.

In recent weeks, the focus of Armenian hopes started to shift to Europe. Particularly after the arrival of the EU observer mission to Armenia as part of the implementation of the Prague agreements. Petty soon they  were joined by the OSCE 'observers' causing a major scandal. According to the Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs, none of the collective decision-making bodies of OSCE has ever discussed the dispatch of the OSCE Needs Assessment Mission to Armenia. As a result, no decision was taken on the matter. Thus, any team called OSCE Needs Assessment Mission to Armenia is not mandated by this organisation, cannot be affiliated in any way to it and none of its findings or reports can be accepted as an OSCE document, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said. The Ministry warned that this was a unilateral initiative by Armenia to visit a group of several participating states and any result of such a private visit will be assessed accordingly.

The EU mission has disappointed Armenia from the very beginning. According to its representatives, they will only observe, not investigate. In other words, no loud statements should be expected from the "European observers" against Azerbaijan.

As Azerbaijani experts have repeatedly noted, Armenia's main hopes failed from the outset. Yerevan had expected observers to stand between the sides. Pashinian has been suggesting something similar since the spring of 2021, in the wake of the failed Armenian provocation at the Lake Garagol. Back then, he suggested an equal withdrawal of troops and deployment of observers on the border. Azerbaijan opposed the idea for the same reason it did even before the 44-day war, i.e. Baku had rejected the idea of deploying observation cameras on the line of contact under the auspices of the OSCE.

The deployment of observers on the border, let alone the equal withdrawal of troops from it, is possible when the border is clearly defined, demarcated and delimited. Today the border between Azerbaijan and Armenia is very provisional. The delimitation process has not even begun. Moreover, during the Soviet period and the occupation of Garabagh and East Zangezur, Armenia illegally annexed Azerbaijani border territories. Now Armenia should return these territories in the process of delimitation and demarcation. Yerevan tried to put off the situation deliberately. But this attempt failed. Azerbaijan transformed the European mission into a 'one-sided' one, without influencing the process of border demarcation and delimitation.

Yerevan mistakenly believed that this so-called European mission could give Armenia some sort of security guarantees. Even Armenian lobbyists visiting Yerevan grudgingly recognised that Armenia itself had to make drastic decisions to begin with. However, Armenia is still not ready to guard the border, buy oil, gas and weapons at global prices and maintain unprofitable infrastructure on its own. Flirting with the West was necessary for Armenia to bargain with Russia, especially amid Yerevan's shattered of hopes for CSTO intercession.

They were deeply upset when the CSTO did not intervene in the 44-day war. But after the Septemebr 12-13 skirmish at the border with Azerbaijan Yerevan expected that the incident would be responded to with the same ferocity and urgency as the unrest in Kazakhstan. And they were totally unprepared for the outcome of the emergency CSTO summit, which got nowhere for Yerevan.

However, as the meeting in Sochi showed, Russia was not impressed by Yerevan’s bargaining skills at all.

New realities from Azerbaijan

Major geopolitical changes in the region are linked to Azerbaijan. The second international airport was recently inaugurated in Zangilan. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan once again attended the ceremony, as he did in Fuzuli. The opening of the new airport was another demonstration of the growing alliance between Baku and Ankara. "Last year, we signed the Shusha Declaration in Shusha, making Turkey and Azerbaijan official allies. We became allies in all areas, which is a serious achievement for our nations. At the same time, this is a serious message to the region and the world, because Turkish-Azerbaijani unity is a very important factor in the region. It is a factor of peace and stability. Yet if someone once again tries to take unjust actions against us, this factor must of course be taken into serious consideration,” President Ilham Aliyev told the journalists attending the ceremony.

Certainly, one of the addressees of this message was Armenia. They cannot turn a blind eye on the pace and scale of reconstruction works. Despite the mine terror and destroyed infrastructure, Azerbaijan is confidently pursuing its reconstruction strategy, and is doing this prudently, clearly and according to the plan. Moreover, any hopes that after a war as costly as the Second Garabagh  War Azerbaijan would be, if not ruined, then inevitably challenged with financial difficulties also shattered.

By and large, President Aliyev's statement was addressed to neighbouring Iran, where IRGC recently announced a military exercise simulating a crossing of the border along the Araz River.

Iran begins... and loses

Obviously, Tehran is planning some sort of sabre rattling. The military exercises, the opening of the Iranian consulate general in Ghafan (Armenia), statements by Iranian officials underlining their intolerance for the change of regional borders, video clips threatening Baku caused understandable indignation in Azerbaijan. Baku asked quite fair questions: why Iran has tolerated 30-year long occupation of Azerbaijani lands by Armenia? Why did not and does not Iran think it was necessary to respond to the destruction and desecration of mosques and cemeteries in the occupied Garabagh? Why didn't the Iranian authorities, when they opened the consulate general in Gafan, consider it necessary to ask about the fate of the indigenous Azerbaijani population of this city?

Baku's relations with Tehran have sunk to almost zero. And the sabre rattling did not frighten Azerbaijan at all. Baku responded not only with scathing comments about Iran's ‘military might’ based on equipment from the seventies, but it exploited soft power as well. During his meeting with the Secretary General of the Organisation of Turkic States Baghdad Amreev, President Aliyev said: "...We in Azerbaijan will do everything to strengthen the unity of our organisation, as well as support tens of millions of our brothers living in different countries of the world. Azerbaijanis living outside Azerbaijan are many times more than those living in Azerbaijan. Certainly, their security, their rights, their welfare is of paramount importance for us. We will continue to do our best to help Azerbaijanis, who for different reasons have been torn away from our state, to help them in their development, so that they could keep the Azerbaijani language, traditions and culture, were faithful to the principles of Azerbaijanism and never cut ties with their historic homeland, just as many other representatives of our brotherly Turkish states live outside their state borders. But I also know that all leaders of Turkic states attach great importance to securing the rights of their brothers in different countries.” Mentioning Iranian Azerbaijan was too obvious to ignore. Especially amid internal instability in Iran. Baku was not scared and only strengthened its opposition to Tehran. Iran certainly should not have thrown stones living in a house made of very thin glass, the wreckage of which buried Armenia's hopes for Iran as well.

This means that both regional and extra-regional players will have to get used to the fact that it is the tandem of Azerbaijan and Turkey that determines the geopolitical climate in the region. These new realities cannot be ignored.