The negotiation process on the settlement of the Karabakh conflict lasts more than a quarter of a century. During this time, it was repeatedly interrupted, frozen and resumed. The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan changed, however, the fundamental approaches of the parties to the mechanisms for resolving the long-term crisis remained the same.
Baku adheres to a strict legal line, tirelessly pointing out the need to comply with international norms in resolving conflicts. Yerevan seems to recognize the supremacy of international law, including the UN Charter, but insists that Baku recognize and accept the results of the Karabakh bloodshed. Azerbaijan draws attention to the unacceptability of artificially dragging out the negotiation process, while Yerevan is ready to make an unlimited effort to legitimize the occupation.
The topic of the Karabakh bloodshed is a problem that Armenian politicians are ready to talk about indefinitely, feeling as comfortable as possible. Thus, the third president of Armenia, Serzh Sargsyan, hopes to revive the destroyed political career, while the second president, now under investigation, Robert Kocharian, uses the Karabakh problem as a distraction from the criminal case brought against him. Kocharian tries to remind him of his importance in the modern history of Armenia, from time to time telling the "unknown pages" of the negotiation process. The current Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan only strives to enter the pantheon of "heroes" of the Karabakh war and therefore demonstratively reports on the increase of Armenia's defense capability in the occupied territories. Each in his own way exploits the topic of the conflict, however, all politically significant figures, without exception, are racing to comment on certain statements of official Baku, trying to expose the "aggression" in the words of the Azerbaijani side as convincingly as possible.
This week the Armenian political establishment began to actively discuss the words of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, who negatively characterized the negotiation process around Karabakh. The Armenian side, represented by Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan, characterized Aliyev's statement as extremely "emotional", and the position of the Azerbaijani side as "unconstructive, devoid of logic and diplomacy."
In reality, the negotiation process on the Karabakh settlement has indeed been interrupted. Baku does not harbor illusions that Yerevan is ready for a settlement, realizing that Armenia took advantage of the situation with the spread of coronavirus infection to postpone the resumption of negotiations, during which Yerevan is demonstrating political sclerosis, again and again trying to revise the format of the negotiation process and generally accepted procedures for overcoming international crises.
As for the "emotionality" of Aliyev's speech, it is worth recalling that throughout the entire history of the negotiation process on Karabakh, the Armenian side was happy to ethnopolitize the Karabakh conflict, filling it with emotional stories. For example, when it comes to justifying the Armenian aggression in Karabakh and "realizing the right of peoples to self-determination," Armenian separatists present the change in the ethnic ratio of Armenians and Azerbaijanis in the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region from 1921 to 1989. in the context of the malicious policy of the leadership of the Azerbaijan SSR. At the same time, the Armenian side does not provide any research, even without trying to take into account the supranational policy of the USSR, overcoming cultural isolation, including many factors of internal migration, including labor. For the Armenian side, any inconvenient research is of little importance, since demonization of the leadership of the union republic and indirect accusations of Armenophobia are enough.
Another favorite argument of Armenian diplomacy is the words of Robert Kocharian, which he said at the session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, that self-proclaimed Karabakh was never part of independent Azerbaijan. The leader of the Armenian separatists did not want to mention that the unrecognized "NKR" was created on the territory of the former NKAO, which was originally a subject of the Azerbaijan SSR. The post-Soviet Armenian ideological doctrine rarely paid attention to the maintenance of legal and political literacy in society, yielding to populism and imaginary cultural revanchism. In other words, support for the occupation of Karabakh actually rests on the emotions of Armenian separatism.
Regularly referring to Armenia and "Artsakh" as something identical, Armenian diplomacy warms up the public's militaristic view of the crisis in the Karabakh negotiation process. Armenian diplomats represent the occupation as a fait accompli, not subject to revision, recklessly ignoring the cornerstone principle of recognition of new states that no modern state can be recognized as a result of aggression.
