Azerbaijan Must Show a Victor’s Wisdom

By Emil Avdaliani
February 9, 2024

Armenia has signaled it might alter its constitution. But while this could open the way to peace, its relations with Azerbaijan remain dominated by raw power.

It is demanding that Armenia’s constitution be rewritten. “It will be possible to achieve peace” if there are changes to several state documents, Azeri President Ilham Aliyev stated. The demand has been echoed by Armenia’s powerful neighbor Turkey.

Together, the two countries could open the way to improved regional relations, including border openings and improved transport links. Or they could spark a backlash that so angers Armenians that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is dumped at next year’s election, perhaps opening the way to a hardline nationalist.

Given what’s at stake, Pashinyan’s government has been surprisingly open to discussions.

In part, that’s because some Azeri demands sound harsher than they are. For example, while Azerbaijan remains determined to secure transportation links to its Nakhichevan exclave — the shortest passes through Armenian territory — the worst tensions have mostly subsided.

In October, Iran and Azerbaijan signed a railway agreement that envisions the transit from Azerbaijan proper to Nakhichevan via Iranian territory. This projected connectivity is beneficial to everyone in the region and could help pave the way for a wider Azeri-Armenian peace agreement.

Other questions, such as delimitation of borders and the issue of around 100,000 Armenians returning to Nagorno-Karabakh, would likely remain outside the framework.

That seems wise. The alternative would be another lengthy negotiating process to settle border issues before signing the deal. This would take months, if not years. Given Azerbaijan’s military superiority, it would be likely to intersperse the talks with army exercises to pressure its interlocutor.

The preamble of the current Constitution of Armenia refers to the reunification of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, the region which it won by force of arms in 1994. The circumstances under which the document was created — at the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the First Nagorno-Karabakh War — reflected the country’s mood back in the 1990s.

Now, following its defeats in 2020 and 2023, the balance of power very much favors Azerbaijan. And yet, while its demand to change the constitution is unprecedented, it is not impossible.

Surprisingly, government figures in Yerevan agree on the need to change the constitution. What might have been received with ridicule even a year ago is now supported by Pashinyan, who has on numerous occasions criticized the 1990 declaration and suggested plans to enact a new constitution. The planned document would address the new reality created following the fall of Nagorno-Karabakh and effectively acknowledge its loss.

Though a final decision has not yet been made, it seems that Armenia will eventually concede. But it expects mirror changes in Azerbaijan’s main state documents too. The Speaker of the National Assembly, Alen Simonyan, referred to the provisions in the constitution of Azerbaijan, which references Armenia as a hostile neighbor.

Armenia is not just seeking peace with Azerbaijan; it also wants better relations with Turkey, which closed its borders more than 30 years ago. The process has been lengthy and beset with delays, and much of its success depends on Yerevan-Baku talks.

Turkey objects to references in the Armenian constitution to the Armenian genocide and veiled territorial claims toward Turkey based on the post-World War I treaties that dissolved the Ottoman Empire.

These disputes do not take place in a vacuum, of course. There is an attentive domestic audience in Armenia, and Pashinyan has not been a popular leader. The opposition has been accusing him of state treason, which gives some sense of the debate. While the opposition (which is mostly openly pro-Russian) is currently even less popular, constitutional changes to meet foreign demands might further degrade Pashinyan’s standing.

It is a brave path to put aside historical grievances in a determined push toward mending ties with Turkey and Azerbaijan.

Even so, what matters most is not the signing of a peace deal in itself but whether the dominant parties — Azerbaijan and Turkey — show the sense not to push too hard. In that case, the South Caucasus will be set for more years of disputes.

Emil Avdaliani is a professor of international relations at European University in Tbilisi, Georgia, and a scholar of the silk road.

Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.