Delays in signing an Armenia-Azerbaijan peace agreement open the prospects that the process may be derailed as a result of domestic politics. Next month, Yerevan will go to the polls to indirectly elect a new mayor. The parliamentary opposition is boycotting the vote, and a large number of voters remain apathetic or undecided, but the vote can still be seen as demonstrative enough ahead of the 2026 national parliamentary elections. In this op-ed for commonspace.eu, Onnik James Krikorian argues that Pashinyan foes are already attempting to turn the 17 September 2023 vote into a ‘referendum’ on Armenia-Azerbaijan talks and former de facto State Minister of Karabakh Ruben Vardanyan has called for the same.
As the third anniversary of the start of the 2020 war over the former Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) approaches, uncertainty continues to surround the possibility of signing an Armenia-Azerbaijan peace agreement by the end of the year. In a perfect world, there should be little to prevent one, but that too was arguably the case in the years following the earlier 1994 ceasefire agreement.
In short, we simply don’t know.
But what we do know is that time is arguably running out with a number of dates on the horizon making some kind of agreement all the more urgent. Aside from the risk of a major humanitarian crisis in Karabakh unless commercial goods can be delivered via Lachin, with additional humanitarian aid possibly via a supplementalroute through Aghdam, the most obvious date is already known – 2025.
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