On October 2, on the sidelines of the Warsaw Security Forum, Minister of Foreign Affair of the Republic of Armenia Ararat Mirzoyan participated in the "Global Order and Democracy: A Map for the South Caucasus?” high-level conversation.
Below we present Minister Mirzoyan's answers to the moderator's questions.
Anja Wehler-Schock: “Since we are talking about global order, let’s start off with a very current development-related topic. Iran, a neighboring country to Armenia, fired more than a hundred rockets on Israel last night. Are you concerned that there will be a regional war and what would be the implications for your country?”
Ararat Mirzoyan: “Good morning everyone. It’s a pleasure to be here and I’m looking forward to an interesting discussion. The very first question was quite a tough one, I should confess. If you follow the general geopolitical situation, the trends, and the policies in the South Caucasus, we in Armenia, we do our best to achieve peace in our region and here we see that some other countries in larger neighborhoods strike each other with missiles. Of course, we are concerned. Of course, we cannot encourage or welcome any escalation, we can only hope that this conflict finds its soonest possible settlement.”
Anja Wehler-Schock: “Let’s zoom in a little bit. The conflict around the Karabakh region has been a driver of conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan for decades and little more than a year ago, following the offenses by Azerbaijan more than 140.000 people were displaced and found refuge in Armenia. How has Armenia managed to take in this massive influx of people?”
Ararat Mirzoyan: “Well, first, in terms of only receiving the refugees, displaced population of Nagorno Karabakh, it was a huge challenge. I think, for any government in the world, it is quite a challenge to receive more than 140.000 refugees in 2-3 days. We did our best to meet the immediate needs of these people, give them shelter, food, and some essential things. Of course, we applied to the assistance of the international community and we appreciate all the assistance we achieved. Now, it is time for the next stage I would say, we need to somehow satisfy and meet the mid-term and longer-term needs and first of all, here I’m speaking about the housing problem but also employment and bigger efforts would be needed here. Our policy is that if there is no means, no possibility, no opportunity for these people to go back to their homes, then our policy is to make every possible effort to ensure that these people are integrated in the society of the Republic of Armenia, they find the job and build new homes in our country and stay in Armenia.”
Anja Wehler-Schock: How has this development impacted your government’s efforts to democratization in Armenia?
Ararat Mirzoyan: Well, not only this influx of refugees but roots of this issue, I mean attack of Azerbaijan, it happened in 2023 but the whole story started in 2020 when war was launched by Azerbaijan against Nagorno Karabakh, and then in the course of the war and during the aftermaths Azerabaijani forces entered and invaded also into the sovereign territories of the Republic of Armenia, this is the whole story. Of course, in this situation many in Armenia came up with the questions, and they started questioning the efficiency of democracy. Interestingly, the questions were the following: “Okay, democracy is probably good internally for the prosperity of people, etc but whether democracy is able to ensure our security as well?”. So, after the war which I spoke about, a series of internal crises emerged in the Republic of Armenia and to give some solution to this situation we decided to have snap parliamentary elections. We had a snap parliamentary election in 2021 and democracy was among the main things which was discussed during the electoral campaign. Well, fortunately, the political party that was lobbying for democracy, my political party, won the elections and formed the government. This means that the citizens of Armenia supported 2 things: first of all, the peace agenda of the government and also the further democratization of the country.
Anja Wehler-Schock: These developments impact the population’s stance towards Russia? Russia used to hold its hand over Armenia in this conflict, but stood by when the Azerbaijani offenses came last year. Has this pushed Armenians away from Russia possibly towards Europe?
Ararat Mirzoyan: Very interesting question. You know, it’s not a secret anymore that there is a huge frustration in Armenian society regarding Russia, Russia’s assistance and alliance with Russia, because for decades people of Armenia were thinking that if something like this happens Russia will help us, will protect us, etc. So, now people of Armenia saw that this is not the case, we don’t get assistance, moreover you know that after the war of 2020, Russian peacekeepers were sent to Nagorno Karabakh to ensure the security of the population of Nagorno Karabakh, and we saw that during this forced displacement the peacekeeping mission did not work, did not justify itself.
Moreover, we are a formal member of the Collective Security Treaty organization with Russia and other countries, and when we had attacks on our internationally recognized borders we saw that again neither Russia, nor our formal allies from CSTO did not react, at least their reaction was not fitting with our expectations. So, of course one can assume this created a huge frustration. Now people in Armenia are considering some other options, as I said.
And on the topic connected with democracy: we truly believe in democracy and understandably this brings us closer to the EU, to the US, so in the context of the values of the society we have been close to the EU, to the Western countries. In the context of security, psychologically the people of Armenia were connecting themselves to Russia. Now, this second component is crushed and people don’t see any other reason, why not to fully tie themselves with the EU.
Anja Wehler-Schock: I wanted to have a look with you at the peace agreement that Azerbaijan and Armenia have been negotiating for months, and it seems to be stuck right now. Can You shed some light on where you stand?
Ararat Mirzoyan: Well, huge work has been done during recent 2-3 years despite all the challenges of escalations and attacks on the Armenian territory. We, the Armenian side, have been very constructive during the negotiations. You know, there is good news and bad news here.
The good news is that we succeeded, we somehow managed to have some success with the Azerbaijani side. For instance, recently we adopted the first ever legal document between the 2 countries, we adopted the regulation on the joint work of the respective border commissions. These commissions work on delimitation of the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan. In this document we managed to agree that the basis of the delimitation process should be the Alma-Ata Declaration of 1991 which is quite an achievement. Not to overload you with the details, I will only say that among other things, the Alma-Ata Declaration of 1991 was adopted by 12 former Soviet Union Republics. So, according to this document, the Republics recognized that the former administrative borders between us, Soviet Socialist Republics, became internationally recognized, inter-state borders. This means that we have a border with Azerbaijan, while starting delimiting this border we have solid ground, solid basis.
The bad news is that there are some other topics that we are negotiating around, for instance, the more comprehensive document, the peace treaty. Imagine, we have a situation when we have almost completed and finalized the text of the peace treaty, there is the draft but we don’t sign it. The Azerbaijani side is reluctant to sign this peace document, peace agreement for some reasons. For some calculations they come up with new and new preconditions each time and we see that they don’t want to sign the document. This time they say that there are more things that could be agreed but we believe that there is no single agreement in the world between any two countries that regulates all the aspects, all the spheres of their relations, meanwhile we can sign this very serious document and then continue negotiating the remaining issues. We don’t see this political will from Azerbaijani side.
Anja Wehler-Schock: So, in November, Baku will host COP29, the climate conference. Do You think this could be a driver in accelerating the peace process?
Ararat Mirzoyan: I hope so. If you remember, we supported the Azerbaijani candidacy for holding this COP29 event in Baku. Indeed, I really believe that there is momentum, there is a real opportunity to close the page of conflict in our region, at least between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and open a new page of the era of peace and cooperation. The reality is something else.
Anja Wehler-Schock: Many Armenians are still worried about possible threats coming from Azerbaijan. How can instill a sense of confidence that there will be sustainable peace?
Ararat Mirzoyan: Absolutely, there are serious concerns that Azerbaijan has further military plans regarding Armenia, towards Armenia’s territories. I can bring an example, now Azerbaijani side uses the narrative of “Western Azerbaijan” which you know basically coincides with almost the whole territory of the Republic of Armenia. They assure us that this is not a territorial claim but unfortunately the impression is completely different. So, You ask how we - I, as the minister of Foreign Affairs or my government - can give confidence. Unfortunately, I cannot give confidence because I’m not confident about the peaceful plans of Azerbaijan.
Anja Wehler-Schock: I would say, that’s a bad point to start peace of negotiation. Let’s hope there will be progress. The EU has been sending a Monitoring mission to monitor the border on the Armenian side. What difference has this made?
Ararat Mirzoyan: Well, the EU sent a Monitoring Mission and interestingly Azerbaijan did not agree to have the same mission on their side of the border. The mission monitors the situation only from the Armenian side of the border. We should confess that since its deployment there hasn’t been any major escalations. It works, it really works and we highly appreciate this effort of the European Union. By the way, speaking about the European Union, if you don’t mind, this is not the only tool that now is used to strengthen Armenia’s resilience be it economic, political resilience or to ensure somehow stability in the region. There are several other tools which are aimed to strengthen Armenia’s resilience as I said but also to bring the EU closer to Armenia and Armenia closer to EU. We just launched Visa liberalization dialogue, we just got the support of the EU under European Peace Facility, which is almost an unbelievable thing, considering the fact Armenia is still a formal member of the CSTO and some other things we now work over a new comprehensive document which is entitled New Partnership Agenda. So, more is coming. Many things are happening between the EU and Armenia.
Anja Wehler-Schock: Could Armenia favor leaving the CSTO?
Ararat Mirzoyan: We have frozen our membership and we don’t have any intentions to return to those relations that existed before these incidents. We cannot and do not want to see ourselves in a military alliance which does not work.
Anja Wehler-Schock: What prevents Armenia from leaving CSTO?
Ararat Mirzoyan: I think all of us should be more careful and it’s not a big secret that stability should be a priority and the processes which can possibly take place should be well calculated and managed and also I mean the risk management, etc. It’s not a very simple question.
Anja Wehler-Schock: Armenia has had traditionally extremely difficult relations with Turkey but there has been a process of normalization and at the end of July, special envoys met at the shared border. What has been the development?
Ararat Mirzoyan: Special envoys met but also there are regular meetings and phone conversations between Foreign Ministers, the President of Turkey and PM of Armenia meet from time to time. The last meeting between them took place a few days ago in New York on the margins of the UN General Assembly. The overall atmosphere is quite positive, this agreement was reached months ago, more than a year ago. We have agreed that there is no precondition neither by Armenian side, nor by the Turkish side, we have agreed that the outcome of this process should be the full normalization of relations between Armenia and Turkey, we have agreed that as a first serious step diplomatic relation should be established between two countries, also the border which has been closed for more than three decades should be opened for at least third country citizens, also for the Armenian and Turkish national citizens who have diplomatic passports. But we see that this does not happen on the ground, the border is still closed, there are no diplomatic relations. Although there have been some positive developments as well, our experts studied and renovated and reconstructed some infrastructure on the border where the passage should be open. Also, now our experts make the same study, and we assume that we will continue this work, where we should reconstruct the infrastructure where we have the railway passage, railway gate.Nevertheless, the border is still closed and interestingly in the context of Armenian-Turkish dialogue there is no problem with Armenian-Turkish nature. The only problem is, our Turkish colleagues say that the only problem is the non finalized normalization between Armenia and Azerbaijan. So, the Turkish counterparts think that we can finalize Armenian-Turkish normalization only after Armenia-Azerbaijan normalization. While we, in Armenia, think that on the contrary if we make achievement in the context of Armenian-Turkish normalization then it will have a positive impact on Armenia-Azerbaijan normalization.
Anja Wehler-Schock: We are almost at the end of our discussion. Why don’t you wrap us off by telling a little bit of how Armenia sees its path towards the EU, your government has made it very clear that they want to get closer to the EU. What path do you see?
Ararat Mirzoyan: Well, I’ve already mentioned earlier that we are right in the middle of the process of bringing Armenia and the EU closer to each other. I've already mentioned that there are several tools and mechanisms that are being discussed right now. We have already had some serious achievements and some more are being discussed right now. What I can add to this is that many in Armenia now loudly speak about Armenia’s membership in the European Union. I can say people of Armenia, they have european aspirations but also question what would be european response to these aspirations.
Anja Wehler-Schock: Unfortunately, we are near the end of our discussion. Thank you so much Minister Ararat Mirzoyan. Please stay tuned for the following panels.
