The Armenian government is facing pressure from all sides over a plan to transfer to Azerbaijan four villages that Yerevan has controlled since the 1990s. For Azerbaijani leaders, the return isn’t happening fast enough, while many Armenians wonder if it should happen at all.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s government signaled in mid-March that it was ready to unilaterally return the villages. Pashinyan’s supporters say the unilateral handover is a gesture designed to speed up the finalization of a border delimitation pact between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Others also see it as a preemptive move to deny Baku a pretext to launch further military action.
The Armenian newspaper Hraparak reported March 25 that Pashinyan told members of his Civil Contract Party that the handover of the villages would occur in the near future. But Lilit Miniasyan, a Civil Contract MP, told RFERL that no specific timeline has been set for the transfer.
The four abandoned villages in question were located within Azerbaijan’s Gazakh Region at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, bordering Armenia’s northern region of Tavush.
The government’s transfer plan has triggered a strong backlash in Armenia, especially among Tavush Region residents, who worry about heightened security threats. The handover has the potential to disrupt the ability of Armenians to travel on a highway connecting Armenia to Georgia. Currently, another section of the Yerevan-Tbilisi highway passes by military positions near the village of Baghanis, but drivers can use a detour to avoid that choke-point. In addition, pipelines bringing Russian natural gas to Armenia are situated near the soon-to-be-returned villages.
Opposition politicians in Yerevan are resisting the government’s handover plan, saying that any such move will weaken Armenian national security, increasing the country’s vulnerability to the possibility of renewed attack by Azerbaijan. Pashinyan counters that a refusal to parlay with Baku on the return of territory runs an even greater risk of renewed conflict. The quick resolution of disputes holding up a border delimitation agreement offer the best chance of averting further violence, the prime minister contends.
Earlier in March, Pashinyan acknowledged that the four villages in question have always been part of Azerbaijan, as per an agreement signed in 1991 in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The villages – Baghanis Ayrim, Lower Askipara, Kheyrimli, and Gizilhajili – were occupied by Armenian forces in the 1990s, during the first Karabakh war, which concluded in 1994 after the signing of the Almaty declaration.
Against the backdrop of rising domestic tension in Armenia on the handover issue, pro-government media in Azerbaijan turned up the heat on Yerevan.
A commentary published by a prominent news agency, Report.az, hinted that if Armenia doesn’t give back the villages soon, the Azerbaijani military will take them. The commentary also raised the stakes calling for the unilateral return not only of the four villages but also four small Azerbaijani exclave territories just inside the Armenian border that are also a matter of dispute.
“It is possible that Pashinyan is just trying to prolong things by saying that these settlements are the territory of Azerbaijan. Because this statement doesn't mean anything yet. We have seen similar rhetoric from the prime minister of Armenia before in a number of cases, official Yerevan's words and deeds do not match,” the commentary reads.
“Time is working against Armenia. If Pashinyan thinks about his power and statehood, he should prove his word in action and return eight villages unconditionally. Otherwise, both Armenia and the international community know very well what will happen, and they are responsible for that. In other words, Azerbaijan will liberate its lands from military occupation in accordance with international law.”
The belligerent stance staked out by pro-government media provided fresh impetus to a war of words between Baku and European Union institutions. Responding to the Azerbaijani media barrage against Armenia, EU special representative for the South Caucasus, Toivo Klaar, called the threats of renewed Azerbaijani military action “unacceptable”.
“Genuine negotiations on border delimitation are needed and all territorial disputes must be settled peacefully and as part of an agreed process,” Klaar wrote in a post on the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Reacting to Klaar’s comments, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry effectively told the EU’s envoy to take a hike. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Aykhan Hajizada said Klaar can't “get rid of biases and only sees the evils in the legitimate discourse about the return of Azerbaijani villages, while totally ignoring calls to fight for the continuation of illegal occupation in Armenian media”.
