It was touch and go for a while. Even a day before this year’s prestigious Munich Security Conference it was unclear whether both Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev would attend. In the past, Armenian leaders have more often shunned the event and even despite December’s much-lauded bilateral COP-29 joint statement made bilaterally by Baku and Yerevan, the war of words between the sides unfortunately continues.
Indeed, it has only been since 2020 that Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders have attended the prestigious conference at the same time. Controversy has always followed. Not to be outdone, perhaps, Georgia even got in on the act this year too when Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili attended without clearing it first with the government in Tbilisi. Newly appointed Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze anyway stayed away, favouring Brussels for his first official foreign trip.
Perhaps the publication of this year’s Munich Security Report which also criticised Georgian Dream founder Bidzina Ivanishvili just days before the conference was another possible reason for the no-show.
Cetin discussed the issue with then President Suleyman Demirel who instructed him to talk to his counterpart, Abulfaz Elchibey. “No-one should be deprived of God-given bread. It’s a humanitarian issue,” the then-Azerbaijani president responded even though the conflict with Armenia over Karabakh had already descended into a full-scale war. Grain shipments, as well as processed commodities from warehouses in Turkey transported by the United States, were dispatched.
But even that paled into insignificance compared to the shenanigans usually surrounding Armenia and Azerbaijan. In February 2020, for example, Aliyev and Pashinyan found themselves on the same stage in a well-intended effort by organisers to bring the sides together. Though the two did attempt to put a jovial face on proceedings, it nonetheless descended into petty bickering and a tiresome journey through a bitterly disputed history rather than look to the future.
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The full opinion piece can be read here.
