November 10 agreement is blatantly violated

Main photo by Arman Yeramishyan, hetq.am :

We talked to a German scientist, historian, independent author and researcher, human rights defender Tessa Hofmann about Azerbaijan's violation of the trilateral statement and about Azerbaijan's continuing military aggression against Armenia. 

— Over 10 months have passed since the ceasefire agreement was signed between Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia, but Azerbaijan's military aggression against Armenia continues. It is attacking from different directions along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, including Nakhichevan, Syunik, and Gegharkunik regions. As a result, the Armenian side has had human losses again. Moreover, Azerbaijan's official belligerent rhetoric continues. In your opinion, what is Azerbaijan's goal?

Azerbaijan's goal is to bring Nagorno-Karabakh under its full control, possibly including parts of the Republic of Armenia, especially Syunik, which is repeatedly claimed as Azerbaijani territory (Zangezur). Azerbaijan, supported by Erdoğan's government, offers Armenia good neighborly relations on the condition that the Republic of Armenia recognizes the territorial integrity and sovereignty of its neighboring country. This would mean that Nikol Pashinyan's government recognizes the Azerbaijani claim to Karabakh.

The conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh is based on the hardly solvable antagonism between the principles of self-determination of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh and the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. It dates back to 1921, when Karabakh became a pawn in a shifting Soviet-Russian alliance policy. For Armenians and Azerbaijanis, moreover, the conflict is deeply linked to their respective national self-perceptions. For Armenians, Artsakh is a very own territory, which was illegally annexed to Azerbaijan in Soviet times. Peace negotiations imposed under international pressure without involving and preparing the general public for acceptable compromises, and especially without convincing concrete solutions to Armenian security needs or fears of annihilation, do not stop the cycle of mistrust and militarization, but accelerate it. Unfortunately, in this, as in many other areas of action, the Armenian government has so far failed to proactively initiate a public debate and to launch political education and awareness raising processes.

A broad public debate on the implications of peace solutions or a military solution has hardly taken place. The lack of inclusiveness of the Minsk Group has undoubtedly contributed to the failure of OSCE mediation efforts. All non-state structures were excluded from the Minsk Group at an early stage, including the immediate party to the conflict, Nagorno-Karabakh, as an internationally unrecognized entity, as well as all representatives of civil society in Karabakh, Armenia and Azerbaijan. One questionable result of this etatist fixation was the extension or shift of the interpretation of the conflict to Armenia as a (substitute) direct party to the conflict.

In the absence of any progress in peace negotiations, the resumption of hostilities in 2016 and 2020 was only a matter of time. It emanated, as on previous occasions, from Azerbaijan, which increased its military budget by a factor of 16 - from $300 million (2005) to $4.8 billion (2015) - within a decade. According to SIPRI, Azerbaijan's 2012-2016 arms imports exceeded those of Armenia by a factor of twenty. Baku has thus driven Armenia into an arms race.

— Azerbaijan still refuses to return the Armenian POWs, violating the terms of the trilateral statement. To date, Azerbaijan does not reveal the real number of the Armenian POWs. It did reveal the identity of few POWs labeling them as “criminals” holding trials against them with various false accusations In a talk with the wife of the President of Turkey, the President of Azerbaijan I. Aliyev stressed that they will exchange the Armenian captives in parts with some mined maps. This shows that the Azerbaijani leadership holds the Armenian captives illegally for political bargaining. As a human rights defender, how would you comment on the actions of the official Azerbaijan against Armenian POWs? What are Azerbaijan's expectations from the fact that it continues to hold POWs?

Azerbaijan is thus in violation of Article 8 of the trilateral cease-fire agreement of 10 Nov. 2020. In order to conceal this blatant violation of the agreement, the Aliyev regime criminalizes the captives by accusing them of crimes. However, even if there are apparent confessions, they have no probative value in light of the widely documented torture practices against Armenians. It is obvious that the detained Armenian prisoners tragically fulfill the role of hostages.

It remains to be seen which goals are to be extorted - whether maps of mined areas or the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, including Karabakh. 

— While Turkey continues to deny its participation in the war in Artsakh, it has reward its military officials with medals for  their "service to the war in Azerbaijan", which is yet another proof of Turkey's participation in the Artsakh war from the Azerbaijani side. In your opinion, what is Turkey's real goal and what expectations does it have?

NATO member Turkey's involvement in the war in Artsakh has been enormous. Instead of mediating between Azerbaijan and Armenia, the Turkish government has allowed the war to escalate - a reaction that reflects age-old ethnic and religious animosities. Turkey played an important role in the first Karabakh War, providing officially retired military advisors. For years, it provided Azerbaijani officers with military training according to NATO standards and, alongside Israel, armed Azerbaijan with drones, in particular the notorious “Bayraktar TB2” combat and reconnaissance drones.

However, the slogan ‚one nation in two states‘ is not Turkish, but an invention of Heydar Aliyev. The Erdoğan regime is concerned with expanding and stabilizing its zone of influence and power in the South Caucasus and Central Asia. Among other things, it is funding Sunni missions in Azerbaijan, where so far only about a quarter of Muslims are Sunni (including President Aliyev). The question is whether the majority of Azerbaijanis are prepared in the long run to submit to Turkey as a regional hegemonic power.  

— Immediately after the occupation of the territories of Artsakh, Azerbaijan began to destroy the Armenian cultural heritage there and , and the deliberate, planned destruction continues to this date, which is confirmed by a number of facts and evidence. In March 2021, a group of German and Armenian scholars, including you, called for the preservation of Christian cultural heritage in the territories occupied by Azerbaijan. What is Azerbaijan's goal and what steps should be taken to prevent the destruction of Armenian cultural heritage?

Azerbaijan takes a two-pronged approach to Armenian cultural property: through material destruction or through reinterpretation (currently ‘Albanization’). Until the late 1970s, Baku carefully hid Armenian monuments or ignored their existence. On tourist maps, in guidebooks and other such publications published in Baku, Moscow and abroad, the pages devoted to Nagorno-Karabakh contained photos of Muslim monuments that had nothing to do with the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region.

In the 1980s, under the pretext of restoration, characteristic architectural details of Armenian churches in Gandzak (Kirovakan; Azerbaijani: Ganja) were changed so that the sacral buildings could be presented as masterpieces of Azerbaijani architecture. For the same purpose, the Armenian founder's inscription and the cross of a 12th-century crossstone located in the Vachagan Barepasht church were carved out, and the stone was subsequently exhibited in the Agdam Regional Museum as the oldest Azeri monument. 

More aggressive forms of ethnocide followed with the Nagorno-Karabakh independence movement in 1989. In June 1989, Azeris set fire to the remarkable Cathedral of St. Savior (Ghazanchetsots) in Shushi. On December 25, 1989, they destroyed the Armenian church of Baku, burned sacred books, stole holy images and state property. After that, the Church of Our Lady of Arakel village and the monastery complex of Amaras (Martuni district) were shelled, followed by the churches of Norashen, Banadzor, Tsori, a ca-pelle in Berdadzor, without the perpetrators being brought to justice.

While those parts of Karabakh that were still inhabited by Armenians were able to preserve their Armenian cultural heritage to a large extent despite earlier official neglect, the removal of mobile material cultural assets, the falsification of the identity of architectural monuments and other manipulations, the picture in regions whose Armenian population was expelled is far more precarious. This applies, for example, to the regions bordering the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region to the north and belonging to historic Karabakh. In the historic canton of Gartmank (Gardman) alone, 5,000 monuments were once counted whose fate remains unclear.

One of the most blatant cases of ethnocide on the territory of Azerbaijan concerns the region of Nakhichevan, whose Armenian population was expelled at the beginning of the Sovietization of this region. Nakhichevan (4,000 sq. km) was placed under Soviet Azerbaijani rule as an "Autonomous Republic" by Moscow in 1921 at Turkish insistence, although it does not share a border with Soviet Azerbaijan; the last 2,000 Armenians of Nakhichevan were expelled in 1988, after the outbreak of the Karabakh conflict. Since 1922, but especially from 1998 to 2003, Azerbaijan has systematically destroyed one of the most remarkable monuments of this historical Armenian region: the 1500-year-old Armenian cemetery of Jugha, located on the border with Iran, where 6,000 cross stones were counted as late as the beginning of the 20th century.  Each Armenian cross stone is unique and therefore not replaceable. The cross stones of Jugha formed a stone chronicle of the history of Armenianism in this region and at the same time a unique object of study for the comparative (regional) stylistics.

In mid-December 2005, an Armenian film team in the Iranian border region documented the systematic destruction of the historic Armenian cemetery and cross stones in the region of Jugha in southern Nakhichevan (Azerbaijan). On 10 March 2006, the Armenian Apostolic Prelature in Tabris (Iran) documented the lamentable condition of the historical cemetery near Jugha from the Iranian territory. A unique and therefore irreplaceable ensemble of Christian culture disappeared before the eyes of the international public.  This cultural murder took place in complete disregard of the otherwise in the Orient particularly respected peace of the dead.

What can be done against such cases of cultural destruction? Already in the past Armenian NGOs have tried to create greater international awareness, especially at UNESCO. This must be done again at the present time. However, without Russia's involvement, no effective protection of Armenian cultural assets in and around Nagorno-Karabakh is conceivable. All remonstrances and protests by UNESCO, the European Uni-on and other international institutions have remained ineffective, as the example of Nakhichevan clearly shows. Moreover, the protection of cultural assets must be enforced on the ground, where currently only Russia can put a stop to Azerbaijani attempts at destruction.

— After the war, the issue of Artsakh is rarely discussed at the international level. In your opinion, what steps should the international community take and what role can it play in preventing the ongoing aggressive actions by Azerbaijan?

Unfortunately, unresolved political conflicts quickly disappear from media coverage and our consciousness. We can see this in numerous examples, not least Afghanistan, which has repeatedly slipped out of the public eye over the past 20 years, although no lasting progress has been made there, any more than in clarifying the precarious status of Nagorno-Karabakh. As with the protection of Armenian cultural monuments, the question will be whether the Republic of Armenia and the Armenian diaspora succeed in bringing these issues back into the international spotlight.

— After the war, due to the Azerbaijani aggression, the most important issue for the Armenians of Artsakh,  their right to self-determination, was almost removed from the agenda. In your opinion, how can Artsakh, under the current Turkish-Azerbaijani pressure, achieve the fundamental right to self-determination to be brought back to the agenda? What role can the international community play in this issue?

Before international public opinion would advocate Karabakh's right to self-determination, the Republic of Armenia would have to do so itself in a convincing manner. Karabakh is therefore not primarily a disputed territory between the republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan, but a territory condemned to de facto statehood, which thus successfully evaded Azerbaijani rule for almost thirty years.

Since 1992, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE; today's OSCE) has been striving for a lasting peace agreement and established the "Minsk Group" under the current chairmanship of the USA, Russia and France. Later, Karabakh was excluded from the talks as a direct party to the negotiations. Although Armenia always denied being a direct party to the conflict, from then on it alone negotiated the fate of Karabakh. The OSCE's "Madrid Principles" (2007 to 2009), which provided for the return of the seven districts controlled by Karabakh Armenian forces since 1994 and the return of hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijani internally displaced persons, were rejected by Armenia on security grounds.