Armenia’s state-run Orbeli Forum has hosted Azerbaijani and Turkish participants in Yerevan this week along with attendees from 15 other countries.
The forum marks the second visit of Azerbaijani Civil Society members to Armenia since the pre-signing of the peace agreement in Washington in August.
The organiser of the forum, the Orbeli Analytical Research Centre, is a think‐tank based in Yerevan, and functions under the auspices of the Office of the Prime Minister. Founded in 2019, the Centre was inaugurated by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan who stated that the aim is to ‘mobilise our country’s intellectual potential […] the task of the intellectual sphere’.
A member of the Azerbaijani delegation, Zaur Shiriyev, a political scientist and researcher on Russia and Eurasia at the Carnegie Endowment’s Berlin Research Center, told the audience: ‘When it comes to the peace agreement, we must change our perspective […] we must be realistic’, he said, adding that the sides should avoid ‘maximalist positions’.
‘A change in mindset is needed,’ he said.
The second Azerbaijani speaker, Rusif Huseynov of the Topchubashov Centre, defended Baku’s use of the term ‘Zangezur corridor’, which Yerevan views as containing territorial claims.
‘Unlike in Armenia, it does not have a negative connotation; when we say the term corridor, it is perceived differently in Armenia and in Azerbaijan’, he said.
Pashinyan also spoke at the conference, where he said the peace deal was not ‘imported’.
‘This is the result of joint work between Armenia and Azerbaijan […] and this result must be maintained on a daily basis’, he said.
The government maintains that the forum offers a deliberately open platform and that engagement with Azerbaijani and Turkish voices reflects Armenia’s multi-vector diplomacy. Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan, who also attended the forum, said: ‘Here in this audience, we have experts from Azerbaijan […] Similar events should be held in Azerbaijan, with representatives from Armenia participating’.
Later during the forum, Armenian National Security Council Secretary Armen Grigoryan confirmed that similar visits to Azerbaijan are planned for Armenian civil society members as well. No details about the visits have been announced.
Huseynov’s colleague, the deputy-director of Topchubashov Centre, Murad Muradov, visited Yerevan in September, taking part in a NATO summit organised by Yerevan.
Arshaluys Barseghyan
Before Muradov’s visit, again in September, a delegation led by Andranik Simonyan, the Chief of the National Security Services took part in a security forum in Baku.
Earlier, on 5 September, the chairs of the Armenian and Azerbaijani border delimitation committees, Mher Grigoryan and Shahin Mustafayev, held unprecedented mutual visits to each other’s respective countries.
