YEREVAN—On September 26, a meeting between Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to take place in New York. The meeting, confirmed by Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry Press Secretary Ayhan Hajizade, comes at Blinken’s initiative and is scheduled to coincide with the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly. The trilateral talks aim to address the ongoing tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan, exacerbated by the ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of Armenians from Artsakh one year ago.
The meeting is an opportunity for Armenia and Azerbaijan to engage in dialogue under U.S. mediation. Blinken has actively sought to bridge the two sides, and this latest attempt comes at a time when bilateral relations are more strained than ever. Blinken’s role is crucial for the U.S., as it seeks to play a more active role in the region, especially given the influence of other regional powers like Turkey and Russia.
Notably, FM Mirzoyan has accompanied Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on his visit to the United States. During his last visit to New York, Mirzoyan addressed the rights and security of the people of Artsakh, but recent developments have cast doubt on the Armenian administration’s commitment to this agenda. Following the events of September 19, 2023, discussions surrounding Artsakh have reportedly been sidelined by the current administration in its negotiations with Azerbaijan.
Meanwhile, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev chose to forgo attendance at the U.N. General Assembly, focusing instead on domestic matters. While direct negotiations on a treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan have been ongoing, Aliyev says the Armenian government has been slow to respond. In a speech delivered during the first session of Azerbaijan’s 7th Milli Majlis (National Assembly) on September 24, Aliyev accused Armenia of delaying the peace process and taking 70 days to respond to Azerbaijan’s latest draft treaty, which he says is as an indication that Armenia is stalling for time rather than seeking genuine resolution. “Such a primitive and inadequate step, frankly speaking, was unexpected,” Aliyev stated.
Aliyev also expressed concerns about “revanchist forces” in Armenia, suggesting that the Armenian authorities harbor ambitions that threaten Azerbaijan. Aliyev called for the ratification of border demarcation agreements signed in August and declared bolstering military capabilities as Azerbaijan’s top priority. “Armenia’s revanchist tendencies force us to keep this sector under constant scrutiny,” he stated, while simultaneously criticizing Armenia’s military acquisitions and exercises with foreign powers.
In response to Aliyev’s claims, PM Pashinyan has previously pointed out that Azerbaijan has also engaged in significant arms purchases from various countries, including several EU member states. Pashinyan questioned the narrative surrounding military support, asking, “Why can Azerbaijan obtain weapons from Pakistan while Armenia cannot acquire them from India?”
Adding further complexity to the ongoing threat to Armenia’s sovereignty, during his speech at the U.N. General Assembly on September 22, Pashinyan focused largely on optimism for the future and emphasized his party’s slogan, “There is a future.” However, his failure to mention Armenia’s immediate security concerns, including the ethnic cleansing of Artsakh and the fate of Armenian prisoners of war held in Azerbaijan, drew domestic criticism.
Pashinyan’s speech was centered on the need for positive dialogue and forward-looking solutions. “It may sound strange, but the most important thing we can do for the future is to create positive conversations and focus on the opportunities to build their foundations,” he said, reflecting his administration’s belief that optimism should guide political decision-making.
During his visit to the United States, PM Pashinyan also met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at the Turkic House in New York. This meeting, held within the framework of the U.N. General Assembly, was intended to further Armenia-Turkey normalization efforts. According to official statements, the two leaders discussed the steps taken so far in the process and expressed their commitment to continue dialogue without preconditions.
However, the meeting has sparked controversy among opposition figures in Armenia. MP Gegham Manukyan, a member of the “Hayastan” opposition faction, criticized Pashinyan’s decision to meet Erdoğan at the Turkic House, calling it an act of submission. He argued that the venue is symbolic of Turkey’s anti-Armenian policies. “The Turkic House serves as one of the main headquarters of Western propaganda, including anti-Armenian propaganda, in Turkey,” Manukyan stated, noting Turkey’s continued denial of the Armenian Genocide and its military support for Azerbaijan during the 2020 war in Artsakh.
Manukyan also highlighted the presence of Turkish intelligence officials, including the head of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) Ibrahim Kalin, at the meeting. Manukyan suggested that the meeting was less about genuine dialogue and more about Erdoğan asserting his influence over Armenia. “Pashinyan’s willingness to meet Erdoğan at the Turkic House, especially in the presence of Turkey’s security officials, shows how Armenia’s leadership is willing to overlook critical national security issues in exchange for symbolic gestures,” Manukyan said.
Manukyan noted that the Turkic House has been embroiled in corruption scandals, with U.S. law enforcement investigating the building’s permits and funding sources. He added that the meeting reflected poorly on Armenia’s international standing. “Instead of raising key issues like the fate of Armenian prisoners held in Baku, Pashinyan seems more interested in symbolic gestures,” Manukyan said.
Turkish studies scholar and opposition figure Varujan Geghamyan also voiced strong criticism of the meeting. “In 1920, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, articulated the need to dismantle what he referred to as the ‘Caucasian wall,’ a term that pointedly identified Armenia as both an obstacle to Turkish expansion and a perceived security threat. Although Atatürk and his allies did not achieve their objectives at the time, the political ambitions behind his words have not diminished; they have merely awaited an opportune moment to resurface,” Geghamyan wrote on Facebook.
“That moment appears to have arrived in September 2024,” Geghamyan continued, claiming that a symbolic “handover” of influence has taken place, with Armenian security officials relinquishing their nation’s defensive posture. This not only undermines Armenia’s territorial integrity but also enables Turkey to pursue its ambitions for regional dominance, according to Geghamyan.
Geghamyan said that Erdogan’s 2021 book, titled A Fairer World is Possible, serves as a manifesto promoting Turkey’s supremacy in the region and across the world. “This book now finds its place within the corridors of Armenia’s de facto government,” Geghamyan wrote, entrenching Turkey’s influence over Armenia’s political landscape.
According to Geghamyan, the Turkic House is a hub for Turkish diplomacy and a platform for anti-Armenian narratives. It is a key site for disseminating propaganda that undermines recognition of the Armenian Genocide and complicates the already delicate issues surrounding Artsakh.
In light of these historical and geopolitical dynamics, Pashinyan’s engagement with Erdogan is not merely a diplomatic meeting, according to Geghamyan. “It is a troubling concession that threatens to compromise Armenia’s sovereignty and its historical narrative. Such actions must be scrutinized and condemned, as they represent a retreat from the principles of self-determination and security that are vital for Armenia’s future,” he concluded.
Hoory Minoyan
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Arktash is for the time being a lost cause.
Russia failed to support it’s ally and sought to balance and hence loosing it and now busy trying to find the best outcome for itself regarding Ukraine debacle.
Turkey is always going to be firmly on Azerbaijan side although the strength of the relationship will vary
USA is more sympathetic to Armenia than in previous years but has other priorities namely Ukraine, east Asia and the Levant.
Artsakh is not a lost cause neither now nor ever and more so right now in particular. The premeditated ethnic cleansing of Artsakh at the hands of the Azerbaijani chicken-hawk Aliyev, the khan of Baku, by way of manufactured environmental protest, while similar protests were met by police violence in Azerbaijan itself, and by way of military blockade and nearly a year of deliberate Artsakh population starvation to make them feel insecure as a prelude to his forced expulsion from their homeland, and portray it as a voluntary departure, must never be put on the back burner and has to be a top priority and on the Armenian government’s agenda so as not to let terrorist Aliyev the author of this atrocity off the hook. But the way things stand right now, it is quite clear that won’t happen while this unpatriotic and pathetic government is in charge and not until it is terminated. To let go or even to put off this premeditated criminal act of Azerbaijan under false pretenses is to reward Aliyev for this act and further complicate the future of Artsakh and the return of its native Armenian population. Aliyev has no choice but to allow their return to Artsakh because any resistance to this would mean and confirm his preplanned intention to solve this issue by depopulating Artsakh from the native Armenians. In his mind, the Artsakh issue ceases to exist once its Armenian population ceases to exist in Artsakh just like what his genocidal Turkish step-cousins did in occupied Western Armenia a century or so ago. But Aliyev by doing so, or by allowing him to do so by this treasonous Armenian government, he will in effect be incriminating himself in ethnic cleansing of the Armenians he has been trying so hard to conceal under various manufactured operations. We must not let this happen and must never let him off the hook!
UN, OSCE protocols wouldn’t formally endorse banishment and would nominally support right of return with provision for personal and cultural freedom although is open to interpretation and would be expected to be awarded citizenship of the country of residence. Along with the low prospect of enforcement upon Azerbaijan although the issue of Azeris once resident of Armenia has little prospect of internationally supported enforcement all part of the limited international attention the issues of Armenia and Azerbaijan have received. Thus a settlement where either no right of return or a mutual right of return will come into place. The issue of dual nationality will come to be addressed as the issue of persons resident in another country but holding only the nationality of the other would always lead to problems.
With all but a few stragglers or traitors remaining in Arktash and Azerbaijan holding the advantage militarily and the area being internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan as successor to Azeri SSR. The Armenian statehood cause there is not viable for the foreseeable future. There is no prospect of Armenians returning which will be under direct and full Azeri administration something nightmarish and dystopian to many Armenians born and bred there, without Azeris who were once resident of Armenian SSR also being allowed to return to Armenia.
Azerbaijan did not declare itself in 1991 as successor state to Azerbaijan-SSR but as successor state to their first ever and so-called Azerbaijan democratic republic of 1918. As such, both Artsakh and Nakhijevan stay outside the boundaries of their 1918 republic.
Armenia declared itself to be a revival of the first Armenian republic in 1991 and had previously stated the Alma Atla protocol of SSR boundaries didn’t apply to N-K but otherwise officially accepted the Soviet (generally biased against Armenia) boundaries.
Armenia with the wests encouragement, abandoned Russia. This is the result. Pashoglu is handing Armenia over to the turks essentially. It’s ok for him. He’s a billionaire.
Pashinyan is the Turks’ man.
I couldn’t bear to be in the same room with a Turk.
Putin and for what what worth half Armenian Lavarov don’t seem to mind being in the same room a Turk and there’s plenty of Tartars in Russia anyway.
you are absolutely right on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The biggest threat to Armenia today is incompetent Pashinyan himself and his dysfunctional government. A government filled with inexperienced losers and dreamers with an ideology that must be shattered and tossed in the garbage can with the rest of trash they have been spewing for Armenia’s future. Pashinyan’s biggest fans and supporters today are none other than our enemies because they have found in Pashinyan what they have been dreaming for a century. A sheep who thinks by sacrificing a piece of Armenia to the Turkish wolf with massive appetite for Armenia’s demise he can secure and safeguard the rest. He is selling us out. He is a disgrace to our nation and to our values. The sooner he is gone the sooner Armenia will recover from his disastrous and treasonous policies.
Recover ?
Yes recover and what I meant by that was you don’t conduct demarcation and delimitation of the country’s boundaries with an enemy state without a lasting peace treaty to begin with. You don’t spread fear among your own population in the border regions to give up land and whatever else they have built over decades to the enemy based on some improvised GPS maps purchased by the enemy petrodollars instead of real maps held in Soviet archives. You don’t stand in front of the world community at the UN and say Armenia’s total area is an X amount and ask the enemy to tell you what they think it is if not what we claim and effectively let the enemy dictate to you what that is instead of you dictating it to the enemy. You freeze all peace negotiations until enemy forces have left the Armenian territory they infiltrated and that not only it is your constitutional responsibility to do so but that based on November 9th, 2020 ceasefire deal both Armenian and Azerbaijani forces had to remain in place at the time of the ceasefire announcement and halt any movement. Recovery also means to stand your ground and uphold your nation’s dignity and fight for justice denied to them for over a century instead of declaring yourself the leader of a piece of land rather than being the leader of a nation with all of its past and present history and with all of Armenia’s possessions, both territorial and material property, instead of washing your hands off Armenia’s past and try to invent a whole new nation based on false and defeatist ideology. Recovery also means to stop selling out the Armenian Diaspora to the enemy by trying to wipe clean all of their decades-long efforts and fights to get justice denied to them for over a century. The list goes on…
Tragically, Artsakh is forever lost, just like Northern Artsakh, Nakhichevan and Western Armenia a century ago. Apart from exterminating and ethnically cleansing all Armenians from these historic Armenian homelands, the Turks and Azeris have almost completely destroyed Armenian cultural heritage there, and Azerbaijan is in the process of destroying what Armenian cultural heritage is left in Artsakh, the vast majority which they already destroyed once they occupied it. There are very few and usually unrecognizable Armenian ruins left in these lands, and unscathed but repurposed/converted Armenian structures, number no more than a few dozen in all these lost historic Armenian homelands combined, except Nakhichevan where the rate of destruction of Armenian cultural heritage is virtually 100%.
Thank God for pashinyan and the Armenian people who choose him democratically. He is a rational and pragmatic Guy and knows unlike some, that antagonizing Azerbaijan and turkey have been a disaster of earth shaking proportions for Armenia.
@Austin Onah
The vast majority of Armenians regard Pashinyan as a traitor.
You are such a Turk lover.
This Pashiyan is to the armenians like the Pope Francis to Catholics, an enemy against its own Church that try to obliterate what we are as Catholics and the teaching of Christ.
Why has the article given so much space to the words of Gegham Manukyan an opposition activist belonging to a political force that represents only 3 percent of the Armenian population?
Oh please another turk trying to lecture Armenians. A more ignorant and vile lot i have not seen. The hayastancis who support pashoglu and fall for this crap should be ashamed. There can be no honest dialogue between the Armenians and Turks without the turks coming clean snd making reparations for the turkic government program of 1915 of ethnic cleansing of the Armenian population from their historic homeland. Not now and not ever. All this dialogue between the turks and pashoglu, the wests mole, is a farce – with the only goal being the wests desire to remove Russian influence in the region at the expense of Armenia. Plain and simple as that. Hayastancis will lose their identity and be turkified, (or they can flee to LA that seems to be popular). the history of the genocide is already being whitewashed by the pashoglu regime to appease the turks.
Armenia’s future and existence is at stake, its territorial integrity already violated with its territory occupied and encroached on by Azerbaijan, its military weakened and demoralized, its foreign policy in tatters, and more than 100,000 dispossed Artsakhi refugees living in shelters.
Yet instead on dwelling and proposing concrete short-term and long-term plans on these life and death issues of the country and nation, the current inept and treacherous government of Pashinyan has obviously none, except how to remain in power.
And some, also in the diaspora, live in an unrealistic dream world about an impossible return of Artsakhi refugees to the destroyed Artsakh which is being “Azerbaijanized”, and even to Nakhichevan and Western Armenia, when the focus should be on how to strengthen Armenia economically and militarily, create a smart foreign policy, and integrate the Artsakhis in Armenia and give them Armenian citizenship.
There are more than enough earthly problems facing Armenia, which urgently need to be addressed and solved.
The people who are saying Artsakh is lost are the same ones who said it was lost back in the 1980s and who said Armenians could never win a war over Artsakh.
They were wrong.
Notice that Turks and Azeris hold no such pessimistic views over lands that belong to Armenia.
Turks and Azeris want not just all of Armenian land (they have a lot already) but also want the Armenians to be exterminated.
There will always be Armenian defeatists, such as Pashinyan.