October 27, 1999, was a day quite unlike any other. U.S. Secretary of State Strobe Talbott had been in town to talk Karabakh and a new Catholicos was controversially elected in Etchmiadzin. Later that evening, outside the Armenian National Assembly, a crowd had gathered, including myself, where an armed gang was holed up inside. Led by former journalist Nairi Hunanyan, eight senior members of the recently formed government were assassinated, including Speaker Karen Demirchyan and Prime Minister Vazgen Sargsyan. If there had been any hope for change that morning it disappeared later that afternoon in a hail of bullets.

With hopes for peace dashed by what Talbott called a “human, political, and geopolitical catastrophe,” Demirchyan and Sargsyan’s Unity bloc, a necessary counter to presidential power, would splinter and the Holy See of Etchmiadzin become synonymous with Robert Kocharyan’s rule just as the oligarchs had too. In a leaked embassy cable from 2008, then U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch referred to Karekin II as the “second-most influential member” of the “Aparan clan” led by Prosecutor General Aghvan Hovsepyan, “a perception that serves to reinforce [his] close identification with the [then] authorities.”

  

Hovsepyan, arrested on corruption charges in 2021, was instrumental in Kocharyan’s crackdown on opposition activists after deadly political unrest in 2008. The Catholicos was also silent as scores were imprisoned, including current prime minister Nikol Pashinyan. Hovsepyan’s investigation into the 27 October 1999 assassinations left many questions unanswered and both events have obsessed Pashinyan ever since. It is no wonder that Pashinyan’s relations with the Catholicos soured when Karekin II called for Kocharyan’s release from pre-trial detention in 2020. Months later he was freed on $4.1 million bail.

 

Government supporters believe that the Catholicos must therefore be somehow involved in the protests currently underway in Armenia. Karekin II was one of the first to call for Pashinyan’s resignation following the 44-day-war in 2020 and in 2022 permitted senior clergy to participate in anti-government demonstrations organised by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation – Dashnaktsutyun (ARF-D), the main party in Kocharyan’s Hayastan parliamentary bloc. At the helm was Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, Primate of the Tavush Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church and a die-hard revanchist by his own admission.

 

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Even so, as the country has seen before, the potential dangers are real. There has never been such a clash between a church now concerned by its own position and a prime minister sometimes hesitant about his own. “Democracy is under attack in Armenia and the Armenian church authorities are implicated in that attack,” one prominent ethnic Armenian historian wrote on social media. “The damage may very well prove to be irreparable, not just in Armenia, but also in the diaspora. Please do not pour fuel onto the fire,” he warned.

The full opinion piece can be read online here.

When Nikol Pashinyan’s Civil Contract took power in Armenia in 2018 it did so with 70 percent of the vote. By the time snap elections were held in June 2021 that had fallen to 53.95 percent. Later, in Yerevan municipal elections last year, it was just 32.6 percent. Most recently, in December, a survey conducted by the International Republican Institute (IRI) showed that only 20 percent of respondents would vote for Civil Contract if elections were held that weekend. This month, in another by local pollster MPG, that had dropped further to 12.8 percent.

Not to say that the opposition has fared any better. Their ratings combined still roughly match those of the government in both surveys, leaving the vast majority of the electorate stuck in-between, undecided and/or disillusioned following Armenia’s defeat in the 44-day war and the loss of Karabakh. Taken separately, Robert Kocharyan and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation – Dashnaktsutyun (ARF-D), united in the Hayastan alliance, stood at just under 4 percent. Even if many have lost faith in Pashinyan, few want to see the return of the old regime.

  

That could change if a new political force led by a charismatic and populist alternative were to emerge. This month, the opposition hoped they have  such an alternative in Bagrat Galstanyan, Archbishop of the Tavush Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Leading protests against the recent delimitation and demarcation of the Gazakh-Tavush section of the Armenia-Azerbaijan border, the cleric managed to rally up to 30,000 people in Yerevan’s Republic Square earlier this month, the largest public gathering since Pashinyan’s own in 2018.

 

In this month’s poll, Galstanyan garnered 3.9 percent support, second only to Pashinyan. That might seem low but he has also only just emerged as a revanchist and nationalist rival. Though claiming to be non-partisan, Galstanyan appears to have strong links with Dashnaktsutyun and has also managed to unite otherwise disparate parliamentary and extra-parliamentary political forces around him. In a country such as Armenia where political divisions run deep, that is no mean feat.

 

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Moving forward, he will have to tangibly demonstrate how the dividends from his peace agenda are bearing fruit in practical terms rather than simply words, cardboard cutouts of maps, and glasses of water spilt in TikTok videos. Though the European Union appears to have offered its own symbolic support, including financial assistance, its main focus remains on removing Russia from the region. Baku could also tone down its own domestic rhetoric and take a more magnanimous approach to resolving whatever sticking points remain in any peace agreement.

The full opinion piece can be read online here.

Armenian military base on the border with Azerbaijan in 1994 © Onnik James Krikorian 1994

This month marks the 30th Anniversary of the 1994 ceasefire agreement that put the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the then disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh on hold. The 5 May declaration, known as the Bishkek Protocol, instructed the sides to introduce a ceasefire on 9 May though slight delays followed. A formal cessation was signed by the Armenian, Azerbaijan, and Karabakh defence ministers days later, coming into effect just after midnight on 12 May 1994.

What followed in the coming years were various attempts to hammer out a lasting peace. Suffice to say, none were successful. Instead, and especially since 2011, signs were that a new war was coming, an inevitability that became a fact in September 2020. Up until that point, conventional wisdom had been that it would break out by accident – an escalation following a cross-border skirmish, for example – and also that it would last just a few days before the international community stepped in.

 

We now know that wasn’t the case. When the war did come, it lasted 44 days and broke out because the negotiation process had finally exhausted itself. Around 7,000 died on both sides in fighting that could have been avoided had mutual compromises been made earlier. They weren’t.

 

This year is also the 30th anniversary of my first visit to Karabakh. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Armenians had already fled from other parts of Azerbaijan years earlier just as hundreds of thousands of ethnic Azerbaijanis had left Armenia. Hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis also fled en masse from the seven regions surrounding Karabakh. A tale of human tragedy on all sides that should have been reason alone for a negotiated settlement, but apparently not.

 

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For much of the time since visiting Karabakh for the first time in 1994, it had seemed unlikely a peace deal would be signed in many of our lifetimes. Thirty years on, with the possibility of normalising relations greater than at anytime before, that opportunity exists again and should not be squandered. Only then can the long overdue and likely arduous but necessary task of reconciliation begin.

The full opinion piece is available here.