(Continuation. Start – at this link https://www.ypc.am/lineofcontact/en/2025/11/03-11-2025-eng/)
The Armenian-Azerbaijani meeting on October 21–22 of this year, held in the format of “citizen diplomacy” and coming as a surprise to many, has made the topic of encouraging such contacts by the governmental bodies relevant.
According to a recent study by the Yerevan Press Club, four episodes can be identified in the recent history of relations between Baku and Yerevan where both official sides and mediators, to one degree or another, at least at a declarative level, embraced the idea of “preparing peoples for peace.” In other words, they agreed on the need to involve representatives of the wider public in the process. The first time this topic became relevant was after the ceasefire agreement in May 1994. Baku and Yerevan engaged in negotiations for a conflict settlement under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group, and although they did not officially declare the importance of “citizen diplomacy,” the efforts of international organizations to establish dialogue within “Track 2” enjoyed a certain level of support from the authorities of both countries. “Preparing societies for peace” was first recognized as part of the official agenda of Armenia and Azerbaijan after the negotiations between Heydar Aliyev and Robert Kocharyan in Key West in March 2001. However, this was never implemented – on the contrary, even the contacts that had existed up until then began to be curtailed.
Following the “Velvet Revolution,” just as in previous instances when leadership changed in Yerevan or Baku, a situation emerged that differed from the past, stimulating certain expectations of new trends regarding the Karabakh conflict. In 2018, an opportunity arose to restore the bilateral contacts that had been interrupted after the April 2016 war, and mediators became more active. There were contacts between Ilham Aliyev and Nikol Pashinyan, and negotiations between the Foreign Ministers intensified. The heads of diplomacy of Azerbaijan and Armenia, Elmar Mammadyarov and Zohrab Mnatsakanyan, issued an official statement on January 16, 2019, the most noteworthy element of which was the formulation about the need to prepare peoples for peace. It was implied that one of the ways to achieve this goal should be to facilitate dialogue not only at the official level but also with the participation of the public. Possible implementation of joint projects in the humanitarian sphere was discussed after the meeting between Ilham Aliyev and Nikol Pashinyan on March 29, 2019. However, the fact that events took a completely different path was, to some extent, probably also due to the lowest intensity of public dialogue since the beginning of the conflict.
Experience shows that, on the one hand, abstract peacebuilding at the civil level is sooner or later doomed to crisis when there is no progress in the settlement process involving the decision-making parties. But, on the other hand, the freezing of Track 2 and the complete alienation of societies from each other cannot but negatively affect the effectiveness of official negotiations. Unfortunately, in previous episodes when the official sides declared the need to prepare societies for peace, the opposite occurred. Therefore, it is fundamentally important that the similar statements made by Baku and Yerevan in recent months, which confidently point to a fourth episode, do not contradict real intentions and actions.
The aforementioned meeting in Yerevan on October 21–22 and the expected reciprocal visit in the near future are unprecedented in terms of their status (direct involvement of state structures from both sides and the absence of international mediators among the organizers). Therefore, it is premature to talk about the new initiative’s influence on the process of normalizing Armenian-Azerbaijani relations. At the same time, there are grounds to hope that it will contribute to maximum outreach to the wider public, parallel to the official diplomatic channel. For this to happen, the perspectives on the peace process from the non-governmental sector must be conveyed to the decision-makers in Baku and Yerevan. This is exactly the communication function performed by the past and planned meetings. The agenda of the discussions in Yerevan included the full range of problems in Armenian-Azerbaijani relations: the timeline for the final signing of a peace agreement, concrete prospects for unblocking transport communications and delimiting the border, establishing contacts between residents of border settlements, humanitarian issues related, in particular, to missing and detained persons, and attracting new experts and organizations engaged in various areas of potential cooperation to the current format. It is the latter three points that can provide the “added value” of “citizen diplomacy” in the short term, as they are, to put it mildly, not a priority in official negotiations.
According to the participants in the new bilateral process, its atmosphere can be characterized as trusting, and the attitude towards the issues discussed as realistic and constructive at the same time. The public perception of the organized meetings in both countries is also an important factor. The direct involvement of the governmental structures and even such a specific element as the organization of a special charter flight gave the initiative a unique resonance. Therefore, the attitude towards it is difficult to compare with other projects involving representatives of the NGO sector. As expected, the reactions in both Armenia and Azerbaijan were marked by heightened attention and some caution towards the specific participants. However, in the end, people will judge by deeds, and in this sense, there is cause for optimism, and the experience of previous years should provide guidance on how to avoid breakdowns and discredit.
According to the YPC study from 2018–2019, which also involved experts, journalists, and civil society representatives from Azerbaijan, the history of “Track 2” initiatives aimed at facilitating the settlement of the Karabakh conflict is conventionally divided into several periods:
- Initiatives of the Soviet period (1988–1991);
- Contacts during the “hot phase” of the conflict (1992–1994);
- Establishing dialogue after reaching ceasefire agreements (1995–1997);
- The period of most intensive interaction and involvement of a large number of public representatives in the joint projects (1998–2001);
- “Fading inertia” of regional interaction (2001–2010);
- The “Ice Age” in “citizen diplomacy” (from 2011 until the time of the study).
The conventionality of the proposed chronology, of course, implies blurred boundaries between the periods and the presence of recurring trends in each of them. Nevertheless, it helps to understand the changing specifics at different stages of the involvement of civil society and media representatives in shaping the context of the Karabakh conflict.
In the six years since the aforementioned study (2019–2025), dialogue initiatives have fit into two more periods:
- Maximum confrontation not only in the military and political arenas but also in relations at the public and personal levels, including the media, the expert community, the non-governmental organization (NGO) sector, and active social media users… (2019–2023);
- Modest attempts to establish a dialogue in qualitatively new conditions, different from the times of the USSR, the first Karabakh war, the preservation of a relative status quo after the 1994 truce, and from the new stages of escalation of varying intensity between the April 2016 flare-up and the compromise on the text of the Agreement on Peace and Establishment of Interstate Relations in early 2024. Accordingly, this ongoing period at the time of the new study can be dated from late 2023 – early 2024 (the period of “prevailing constructivism”).
In subsequent publications, “Line of Contact” will analyze the features of each of the listed stages and the circumstances associated with them, which will allow for a comparison of the practice of previous years with the new initiative that was launched by the Yerevan meeting on October 21–22.
It must be kept in mind that each of the ten participants in the new initiative is currently involved in the Armenian-Azerbaijani dialogue across several other directions, and ensuring synergy between the different processes takes on particular importance, which will require serious work. In particular, the Yerevan Press Club seeks to develop cooperation with colleagues from Azerbaijan on improving the quality of coverage of regional issues in the media, and joint broadcasts with the Baku Press Club on the new platform Press Clubs TV will be dedicated, inter alia, to all efforts within the framework of “citizen diplomacy.”
(To be continued)