▲A 2017 meeting in Geneva between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev (CL) and Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan (CR). Official photo.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova has stated that all OSCE’s Minsk Group structures ‘are subject to dissolution’ after being asked to comment on Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s proposal to dissolve it.
During Wednesday’s press briefing, Zakharova also suggested that the ‘optimal path’ for such a decision would be a joint proposal by Armenia and Azerbaijan to disband it.
Zakharova claimed the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs’ mandate became irrelevant after Armenia recognised Nagorno-Karabakh as a part of Azerbaijan following the 2022 October summit in Prague.
She added that the co-chairs, France and the US, had ceased contact with Russia in February 2022, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, blaming the West for blocking the group’s work.
The Minsk Group has been the only internationally mandated format for mediating the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict since 1992.
Aliyev has proposed to dissolve the Minsk Group multiple times. The most recent of such statements came last week, during an interview with Dmitry Kiselyov, the Director General of Rossiya Segodnya.
‘Our question is this: if Armenia has recognised Karabakh as a part of Azerbaijan and the Minsk Group was created to solve the Karabakh issue, why is it still needed? So, Armenia’s reluctance to liquidate it and to apply together with us to the OSCE for its abolition demonstrates that the plans of the revanchists are quite serious’, Aliyev said during the interview.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan swiftly responded to Aliyev in an interview with Armenpress, saying the Armenian government understands Azerbaijan’s stance.
‘If there is no conflict, what's the meaning of the existence of a format dealing with the conflict resolution’, Pashinyan said.
‘But we also want to be convinced that Azerbaijan is approaching this issue in this same logic, and for instance, that its motive under developing the narrative of the so-called Western Azerbaijan isn’t about engaging in aggressive policy against the territory of the Republic of Armenia’, he added.
Pashinyan also said that it was ‘obvious’ that through the narrative of Western Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijani government ‘wants to materialise its territorial demands against the Republic of Armenia’, which was ‘recorded in Azerbaijan’s constitution’.
Aliyev builds on the narrative of ‘Western Azerbaijan’
Over the last few years, Aliyev has repeatedly raised the issue of ‘Western Azerbaijan’, an irredentist concept frequently used by Azerbaijani authorities to lay claim to the territory of modern-day Armenia.
On 5 December, Aliyev noted during an address to the participants of the second international conference on the right to return for Azerbaijanis forcibly expelled from Armenia that ‘the Western Azerbaijan Community has repeatedly called on the Armenian government to engage in dialogue, but the other side has refused’.
Previously, in July, Aliyev stated that the right to return of Armenian refugees to Nagorno-Karabakh should be ‘mutually ensured’, and that it must include the right for Azerbaijanis displaced from Armenia in the early 1990s to return.
Prominent Azerbaijani journalist Rauf Mirgadirov told OC Media that ‘even imagining the return of people […] is impossible’, emphasising that ‘if we will speak about international law, IDPs and refugees from both countries should be returned to their homelands’.
He also stated that he didn’t think Azerbaijan ‘seriously thinks about attacking Armenia’ in relation to the narrative of Western Azerbaijan.
According to Mirgadirov, ‘Western Azerbaijan’ is a phrase used by Aliyev to show Azerbaijanis born in Armenia that he still cares about them, and is working in their favour.
He explained that former Azerbaijani President and Aliyev’s father Heydar Aliyev formed a tribal government made up of Azerbaijanis originally from Armenia. Now that Ilham Aliyev is creating a family oligarchy, he is using the narrative of ‘Western Azerbaijan’ to keep this former social base loyal to him and solidify his power in Azerbaijan itself.
Therefore, according to Mirgadirov, the irredentist rhetoric is just that — pure narrative.
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