Yerevan is entering its second month of protests against the border and delimitation process launched between Armenia and Azerbaijan in April. Relations between the Armenian Apostolic Church and the government have plummeted and may be irreconcilable.
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.
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.
On May 9, thousands of Armenians gathered in Yerevan’s Republic Square to protest the return of four villages de jure part of Azerbaijan but de facto under the control of Armenia since the early 1990s. According to the Union of Informed Citizens, the crowd contained around 31,700 people. It was the largest protest in Armenia since Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan rose to power in 2018.
When Rafik Baghdasaryan died in prison in 1993, his body was transported from Russia to Armenia for burial. Baghdasaryan was part of a criminal network spanning the former Soviet Union and associates from Baku flew in to Yerevan to attend his funeral. At the time, Armenia faced a profound shortage of energy but reverence for Baghdasaryan was reportedly so profound among criminal circles in Azerbaijan that power was restored if only for the few days of the funeral. Since then, Armenia receives its gas from Russia through the North Caucasus-Transcaucasia Gas Pipeline.
As peace talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan appear to be making some progress, the normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations have begun to gain more traction. In April, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan described any breakthrough as “epoch-making” for the region. Toivo Klaar, EU special representative for the South Caucasus and Crisis in Georgia, told media he hoped talks would continue in the near future.
The announcement of the return of the four non-enclave villages of Baghanis Ayrim, Ashagi Askipara, Kheyrimli, and Gizilhajili comes as a welcome development. Situated in that part of Azerbaijan’s Gazakh region under Armenian control since the early 1990s, they were initially mentioned in an early version of the November trilateral ceasefire statement before being removed from the final version.
Nikol Pashinyan is a populist. Whether on the domestic or international scene, it is difficult to consider him a statesman. Populism defines his words and permeates his actions. But in comparison with those leaders before him, he is also a rarity in Armenia’s post-independence history – he is a democratically elected leader. Despite the devastating defeat in Armenia’s recent war with Azerbaijan in 2020, Pashinyan emerged victorious in snap parliamentary elections held just seven months later.
On November 9, 2020, the leaders of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Russia signed a trilateral ceasefire statement ending the Second Karabakh War. An initial draft of the agreement was mistakenly uploaded to the Kremlin’s website. According to the draft, in addition to the return of the remainder of territory under Yerevan’s control immediately surrounding Karabakh, four villages in the Gazakh region of Azerbaijan were mentioned.
For a year, the European Union Mission in Armenia (EUMA) has been deployed on the border with Azerbaijan, which it patrols regularly: a measure considered necessary by Yerevan – which fears a new conflict – but viewed with suspicion by Baku.
On January 18, six years after the street protests that brought him to power in 2018, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan raised the issue of reforming the country’s constitution during a meeting with the Armenian Ministry of Justice. The constitution was originally introduced under Levon Ter-Petrosyan in 1995 and controversially amended under his successors, Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan.
Reforming the constitution of any nation is inherently challenging, but in Armenia it has always proven particularly controversial. Introduced by referendum in 1995 under then President Levon Ter-Petrosyan, the current constitution has been amended twice by his successors – Robert Kocharyan in 2005 and Serzh Sargsyan in 2015.