By Tigran Grigoryan
The visit to Nagorno-Karabakh for foreign diplomats, organized by the Azerbaijani government, and the events that unfolded during it triggered a strong reaction in Armenia. The most provocative episode was the conduct of Hikmet Hajiyev, Assistant to the President of Azerbaijan, at Gandzasar Monastery. Hajiyev not only repeated Azerbaijan’s propaganda narrative about the monastery’s supposedly Albanian origins, but also mocked the Armenian side by showing diplomats a replica of a medieval manuscript and claiming that it proved Azerbaijan’s allegations that Armenians had falsified history.
The episode prompted an almost unanimous reaction across Armenia’s political and public spheres. Actors from across the political spectrum publicly criticized Azerbaijan’s conduct, arguing that it contradicted the logic of the peace process and the atmosphere of mutual understanding that had emerged following the Washington summit.
For its part, the Azerbaijani side, through unofficial spokespersons and state-controlled media, described the strong reaction in Armenia as “hysteria” and a “manifestation of revanchism.”
Interestingly, both sides have suggested that the escalation reflects more serious problems that have emerged in the interstate negotiations. In Armenia, the dominant view is that the Gandzasar incident was a consequence and continuation of those underlying problems. Experts operating under the Azerbaijani authorities’ control, meanwhile, have argued that the statements coming from Armenia after the incident were coordinated and orchestrated. As evidence, they point to the fact that the issue was raised by pro-government as well as neutral and opposition figures.
In reality, however, there had been no serious indications before the foreign diplomats’ visit to Nagorno-Karabakh and the Gandzasar incident that, beyond the known contentious issues in the negotiations, any new major problems had emerged.
On August 31, Ilham Aliyev and Nikol Pashinyan met in Bishkek. Following the meeting, the two sides issued coordinated statements consistent with their official rhetoric of the previous year, emphasizing the importance of the Washington summit, emerging economic cooperation, and the implementation of the TRIPP project. The fact that the two official statements were largely identical and clearly coordinated suggests that no major new disagreements had emerged during or immediately after the meeting. Nor did either side make any unusual statements in the period that followed that would have indicated the emergence of new problems.
In this regard, the tendency to seek broader and more rational explanations for what happened reflects, to a greater extent, the diametrically opposed perceptions that exist in the two societies regarding the Armenia-Azerbaijan negotiations, the peace process, and its future.
Azerbaijan’s position is that, having accepted virtually all of Baku’s demands and positions, Armenia should no longer have reservations about any issue related to Nagorno-Karabakh. The model of peace envisioned by Azerbaijan is highly hierarchical. In the academic literature, such arrangements are often described as a “victor’s peace.”
The Armenian government has, by and large, accepted this logic while presenting a different model of peace to its domestic audience, one based on the idea that the interests of both sides should be incorporated into the peace process. The moderation of Azerbaijan’s aggressive rhetoric following the Washington summit, together with several confidence-building steps, created a perception in Armenian society that Baku’s approach to its relations with Armenia, as well as its narratives about those relations, had changed and become more conciliatory.
In reality, however, the official narratives that Azerbaijan had developed over decades had not disappeared. The fact that the Armenian government, having become prisoners of its own domestic narrative about an established peace, was actively ignoring those narratives did not mean that they had ceased to exist.
Even after the Washington summit, Azerbaijan continued to actively promote irredentist narratives about “Western Azerbaijan.” It continued to accuse Western and international organizations of having supported Armenia before the 2020 war and of pursuing a policy aimed at preserving the status quo. And although less frequently, they continued to use the term “Zangezur Corridor,” which remains particularly contentious in Armenia.
The steps that could be described as constructive or conducive to peace, meanwhile, were largely driven by Baku’s need to establish relations with the new U.S. administration. These included, above all, the documents signed at the Washington summit, opening Azerbaijani territory to transit toward Armenia, and establishing direct trade relations with Armenia.
In the case of the Washington summit, Baku essentially accepted the process in exchange for establishing a strategic relationship with the United States. The other two steps are likewise intended, among other things, to persuade various actors in Washington that Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act, which since 1992 has restricted direct U.S. government assistance to Azerbaijan until it ends its blockade of and aggressive actions against Armenia, has become obsolete.
Against this backdrop, Hajiyev’s pseudoscientific claims about Gandzasar, as well as the mocking manner in which he presented them, should be seen neither as an extraordinary development nor as a surprise. Contrary to the perceptions that have taken hold in Armenia over the past year, Azerbaijan has never abandoned these narratives and has no intention of doing so.
Moreover, Azerbaijan expects Armenia, at the very least, not to actively challenge these narratives. Significantly, this expectation is directed not only at the Armenian government but also at Armenian society more broadly.
It is in the clash between these competing visions of peace that the roots of the latest tension should be sought. The Armenian government and part of the expert community have simply become prisoners of their own narratives. In promoting the narrative that peace had been established, Armenia’s authorities and their affiliated circles consciously ignored the fact that Azerbaijan, by and large, had not abandoned any of its narratives or discourses after Washington.
The episode also highlighted something that had been evident from the beginning. Engagement with expert circles and media outlets controlled by the Azerbaijani government provides little, if any, added value. At the same time, it lends legitimacy to actors who, as soon as circumstances change even slightly, revert to serving as instruments of anti-Armenian propaganda.
The incident has already had a negative impact on both Baku’s official rhetoric and the broader atmosphere surrounding the peace process. In the near term, Azerbaijan should therefore be expected to create new artificial obstacles on various tracks of the peace agenda.
The op-ed was originally published on CivilNet.