Early last month, Azerbaijan’s President, Ilham Aliyev, announced that an agreement to normalize relations with Armenia is unlikely to be signed unless it changes its constitution. Specifically, this would mean removing a controversial preamble that references the 1990 Declaration of Independence, which in turn is based on the 1989 Joint Statement on the “Reunification of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Mountainous Region of Karabakh.”
Pashinyan has acknowledged that the text amounts to territorial claims on Azerbaijan and should be removed, but there is still no idea of when.
Instead, Yerevan has made it clear that it does not take kindly to demands on what it considers to be an internal matter while Baku believes that this fails to acknowledge that it concerns its own national security and ignores the central issue that triggered the conflict in the first place. Despite its dissolution at the beginning of the year, revanchist circles in Armenia continue to make claims not only on the former Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) but also on the seven formerly occupied regions that surrounded it.
The situation has been complicated by opposition claims that remarks on constitutional changes by Pashinyan since last year were made under duress. Yet Armenian officials charge that Azerbaijan’s demands are intended to prevent a deal from being signed while their counterparts in Baku allege that Pashinyan is playing for time enough to rearm.
The matter of the constitution, however, is not that simple. Pashinyan’s rationale for his own proposed changes made since 2019 concern the future of the country in general. Amendments adopted by referendum in 2005 and 2015 were marred by allegations of widespread fraud and inflated voter turnout. The last of those plebiscites was seen as a manoeuvre by Pashinyan’s predecessor to retain power by taking the premiership when his final term as president ended in 2018. Street protests followed, propelling the current government to power instead.
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Nonetheless, a mature discussion has emerged among analysts in Baku, though it is lacking among their counterparts in Yerevan. Azerbaijani MP Rasim Musabekov has also acknowledged that Pashinyan could lose power if a referendum was to fail but, he says, the government could approach the Constitutional Court to request that the legality of the preamble be reviewed instead. If deemed null and void then this obstacle would disappear. Later it could be addressed through constitutional reform.
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