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Though the future remains unpredictable, last year’s war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh changed the geographical and geopolitical landscape in the South Caucasus after three decades of bitterness, conflict, and division. Now, some analysts hope, there is an opportunity to turn a new page in Armenia-Azerbaijan relations.
The 9-10 November 2020 ceasefire that ended last year’s fighting should have clarified this future, but a lack of transparency and a drought of objective or informed analysis has left the public in both countries confused and in the dark. Certainly, some provisions of the agreement remain unfulfilled, though that might change in the coming weeks and months.
Armenia wants Azerbaijan to return the remaining captives that it holds while Baku is frustrated that an anticipated transport link running through Armenia to its exclave of Nakhichevan, as dictated by the ceasefire agreement, has not yet been established. It also demands that Yerevan hand over any maps of minefields in territory now back under Baku’s control.
Meanwhile, despite more frequent talk of normalising relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and possibly Armenia and Turkey too, there have been no clear signs as to when such developments might happen.
“For 12 months, the Armenian government and much of the population has been limited to a state of denial where it took many, many months in order to accept a new reality,” says Richard Giragosian, the director of the Regional Studies Center (RSC) in Yerevan. Now, he says, those signs might be on the horizon.
“The turning point,” he says, “came on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York [in September] when the Armenian and Azerbaijani Foreign Ministers with the OSCE Minsk Group mediators were able to reconvene in a meeting that heralds the return and resumption of diplomacy over the force of arms.”
“This marks a return to diplomacy and a belated Armenian adjustment to a painful, unprecedented new reality.”
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