The Armenian view on the opening of the South Caucasus after the 2020 Karabakh War

Following the November agreement, the de facto demarcation of the Armenia–Azerbaijan border in the Syunik region (known for its beautiful mountainous scenery as seen above) was hastily completed. Azerbaijan and Turkey hope to establish de facto control over parts of the region to create an uninterrupted land corridor. Photo: Sun_Shine / Shutterstock

The 2020 Karabakh War has established a new status quo. The Nagorno-Karabakh region is now a de facto Russian protectorate with significantly reduced borders. As a result, Armenia has lost its position as the main guarantor of Karabakh’s security. During the 26 long years of negotiations under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group, several settlement plans have been created and offered to both sides: the package deal from the summer of 1997; the phased deal in December 1997; the union state in 1998; the Key West deal in April 2001; the Kazan document in June 2011; and the Lavrov plan since 2014. However, none of these plans were as disastrous for Armenia and the unrecognised Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) as the trilateral statement of November 10th 2020.

New kingmaker

Previous deals firstly envisaged the gradual return of territories considered a security zone by Armenians against the Azerbaijani military. These proposals explicitly linked these moves to the future status of Nagorno-Karabakh. The status of these disputed regions would then be decided either through future negotiations (such as in the December 1997 deal or Lavrov plan) or through a legally binding referendum (Kazan document). At the same time, the Key West model called for Nagorno-Karabakh to be declared a part of Armenia in line with the 1988 borders. In return, Yerevan would provide a corridor from Azerbaijan proper to the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic via the Syunik region. Despite this, the November 10th deal envisaged the immediate return of all seven regions outside the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast to Azerbaijan. The agreement also accepted Azerbaijani control over 1,500 square kilometres of the former oblast. As a result, only 3,000 of the NKR’s previous 11,450 square kilometres of territory now lies outside Azerbaijani control.

Overall, the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic lost approximately 80 per cent of its land area, while infrastructure was badly damaged in its remaining territories. Some 90,000 people have left for Armenia and at least 25,000 cannot return as their lands are now under Azerbaijani control. Others are waiting for the reconstruction of civilian infrastructure, which may take months, if not years. Meanwhile, the deployment of 1,960 Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh has effectively made Karabakh a Russian protectorate. Whilst the NKR’s de facto government, president and national assembly nominally continue their activities, it is clear that the real kingmaker in Karabakh is now Russia.

According to the November 10th trilateral statement, Azerbaijan or Armenia may demand the withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers after November 2025. This has only caused uncertainty over the future of Karabakh and the nearly 100,000 Armenians still living there. If Russian troops leave the region, the Armenians will have two options: to flee or be massacred. No country or organisation, including the United States, France, European Union or NATO, could possibly prevent this scenario. Given the severe damage imposed by the war on Armenia’s army and economy, Yerevan is not in a position to change the new status quo in its favour over the next ten years. Thus, Armenia will take all necessary steps to ensure that Russian troops remain in Karabakh at least until 2030. During this period, Armenia will seek to revive the OSCE Minsk Group process, stressing that the war did not resolve the conflict and that negotiations should continue over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh. This, of course, was the most important topic during the 26 year-long negotiations between May 1994 and September 2020. Yerevan will likely offer to organise a legally binding vote to establish Nagorno-Karabakh’s official status as stipulated in the 2009 Madrid Principles.

The potential opening up of links

The November 10th statement also brought up the issue of opening up transportation links in the South Caucasus. According to article nine of the statement, all economic and transport connections in the area should be unblocked by regional governments. Armenia should also guarantee the security of transport connections between the western parts of Azerbaijan and the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic (this is a landlocked Azerbaijani exclave separated from the rest of the country by Armenian territory – editor’s note). At the same time, the border guard of Russia’s Federal Security Service (or FSB) has been made responsible for overseeing these transport connections. Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia signed another trilateral statement on January 11th, 2021, which focused on transportation issues. All three governments agreed to establish an intergovernmental working group under the joint chairmanship of the deputy prime minister of Azerbaijan, the deputy prime minister of Armenia, and the deputy chairman of the Russian government. According to the statement, by March 1st 2021, the working group should have submitted an approved list and timetable of activities designed to restore or build new transport infrastructure necessary for secure international traffic through Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Naturally, Armenian society has accepted these statements with surprise and suspicion. Almost all of the potential settlements offered by the Minsk Group included a reference to the opening of regional transportation. However, the November 10th document was not a comprehensive agreement to solve the conflict. Instead, it was only meant to stop the war.

In this context, the most pressing issue for Armenia is the security of its southern Syunik region, which provides the country with its only land border with Iran. Before last year’s war, Syunik bordered both Nakhchivan and Nagorno-Karabakh. Now, Syunik finds itself squeezed between Azerbaijan proper and the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic. At its narrowest, the region separates these territories by less than 30 kilometres.

Azerbaijan has claimed since the early 1990s that the Syunik region artificially separates the so-called Turkic world. Baku has pursued this line of argument within the Cooperation Council of Turkic-Speaking States, an intergovernmental organisation created in 2009 by Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey and Uzbekistan. Interestingly, Hungary is the organisation’s sole observer state. The council was officially founded during a meeting in Nakhchivan and this was accompanied by various statements arguing that Syunik (or as Azerbaijanis call it “Zangezur”) separated the Turkic world. It should be noted that Turkey lacks a direct land connection with Azerbaijan proper despite the fact that it possesses a ten kilometre border with the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic.

Doubts in intentions

Even before the 2020 war, there was a clear perception in Armenia that Azerbaijan and Turkey hoped to establish de facto control over Syunik and create an uninterrupted land corridor. Following the November agreement, the de facto demarcation of the Armenia–Azerbaijan border in the Syunik region was hastily completed without any legal process. This resulted in the deployment of Azerbaijani soldiers along the Goris-Kapan highway and several roads connecting Goris and Kapan (the regional capital) to several Armenian villages. This situation forced Armenia to ask Moscow to establish several checkpoints along the Armenia–Azerbaijan border, as well as two outposts of the 102nd Russian military base in the Syunik region. These all help to provide security for the roads that are now partly under Azerbaijani control.

This has led to a situation in which Russian border troops protect Armenia’s borders with Turkey, Iran and partly even Azerbaijan. Without Russian support and protection, it would be impossible to drive from Yerevan to Kapan and further into Iran, as the Armenia-Iran international highway passes through the Syunik region.

Repeated statements by Azerbaijani President Aliyev regarding the “Zangezur corridor” and Zangezur’s status as historical Azerbaijani land has only added to suspicions in Armenia. Yerevan has stressed that there are no mentions about any corridors, except for Lachin, in either the November 2020 or January 2021 statements. Due to this, both sides should rather be speaking about opening up general communications. Aliyev stated that if Armenia was not going to create a “Zangezur corridor”, then Azerbaijan would open the corridor by force. This statement was naturally met with backlash in Armenia. It confirmed Armenian doubts that the real intention of Azerbaijan and Turkey is to establish de facto control over the Syunik region.

Azerbaijan demands that at least two routes be provided to Nakhchivan via the Syunik region. According to Baku’s vision, a railway should pass along the Araks river and enter Nakhchivan. This would resemble the railway connection that existed during Soviet times. Azerbaijan has already started constructing the railway on the territories it took during last year’s war. Meanwhile, Turkey has stated that it hopes to construct a Kars–Igdir–Nakhchivan railway. If implemented, this route will create another Azerbaijan–Turkey rail connection parallel to the Baku–Tbilisi–Kars route. In addition to the railway along the Aras, Azerbaijan has called for a highway connection to Nakhchivan that would pass through Syunik.

Negative perceptions

Experts in Armenia are now actively discussing other possible routes that could connect Azerbaijan with Nakhchivan. One option is to use the Gazakh–Ijevan railway to connect both areas by rail. Azerbaijani trains may enter Ijevan, then reach Yerevan and enter Nakhchivan via the village of Yeraskh in the Ararat region. As for a highway connecting Azerbaijan with Nakhchivan, it may be possible to use the Vardenis-Sevan-Yerevan-Yeraskh highway. Azerbaijan’s continued insistence that the Syunik region’s territory be used to connect Azerbaijan with Nakhchivan has only strengthened Armenian concerns that Baku and Ankara ultimately hope to seize Syunik in the long term.

On May 12th and 13th, The Azerbaijani army made several incursions of up to four kilometres into the Syunik and Gegharkunik regions of Armenia. The Azerbaijani military still refuses to withdraw and this has only contributed to hostile attitudes present among Armenian society. Armenia officially applied to the Collective Security Treaty Organisation on May 13th to start consultations regarding Baku’s actions. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan even sent a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin asking for military support. However, after months of discussions, the CSTO described these events as mere border incidents, which did not require the involvement of the organization. The Russian foreign ministry has called for restraint and has offered to help Armenia and Azerbaijan officially start talks regarding delimitation and demarcation.

French President Emmanuel Macron demanded the withdrawal of Azerbaijani troops from Armenian territory, while the US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan spoke with Pashinyan and Aliyev. He expressed concerns over recent bilateral tensions and emphasised that military movements near disputed borders are irresponsible and provocative. He also underscored the need for both countries to conduct formal discussions to agree on their international border. Simultaneously, Azerbaijan launched a large-scale military drill that involved 15,000 troops on May 16th.

In late August 2021 Azerbaijan closed the Goris-Kapan highway for two days and established police check points. Then, since mid-September, Azerbaijani police have started to check Iranian vehicles driving through this route and to collect taxes. Azerbaijani authorities arrested two Iranian drivers for alleged illegal crossing of the Azerbaijan border. These actions disrupted the transport links between Armenia and Iran and ushered a crisis in Iran-Azerbaijan relations. The recent tensions in the Syunik region have bolstered negative perceptions in Armenian society regarding the opening up of transportation links. After winning the early parliamentary elections, Pashinyan is now forced to find a solution. In the end, he may decide to simply reject any possibility of providing transport routes between Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan via the Syunik region.

Benyamin Poghosyan is the chairman of the Center for Political and Economic Strategic Studies in Yerevan.

Armenia, Caucasus, Nagorno-Karabakh, War