{"id":269198,"date":"2021-02-24T18:50:55","date_gmt":"2021-02-24T23:50:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/issues\/seeing-the-south-caucasus-as-it-really-is\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T23:25:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T03:25:10","slug":"seeing-the-south-caucasus-as-it-really-is","status":"publish","type":"issues","link":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/fr\/2021\/02\/seeing-the-south-caucasus-as-it-really-is\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeing the South Caucasus as it really is"},"content":{"rendered":"

A recent Policy Options<\/em> op-ed by Sheila Paylan and Vrouyr Makalian, \u201cCanada\u2019s responsibility in the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis,\u201d<\/a> contains some basic mistakes and misunderstandings.<\/p>\n

The authors refer to the so-called \u201cRepublic of Nagorno-Karabakh\u201d as \u201ca breakaway state predominantly inhabited by ethnic Armenians since time immemorial.\u201d But the Nagorno-Karabakh region never existed as a political entity before the early 1920s. It was created under early Soviet rule and called \u201cNagorny\u201d (or \u201cNagorno-\u201d in the hyphenated form) \u2013 Russian for \u201cmountainous\u201d \u2013 because it had historically always been regarded as part of a larger Karabakh region stretching roughly from the current Armenian border in the west to the Azerbaijani lowlands in the east.<\/p>\n

The so-called \u201cRepublic of Nagorno-Karabakh\u201d was never a breakaway state. Indeed, it was never a state; and not even Armenia ever recognized its supposed independence. The 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States<\/em>, in its Article 1<\/em>, defines the four criteria<\/a> for statehood: a permanent population, a defined territory, a government and the capacity to enter into relations with other states. Of these, the so-called \u201cRepublic of Nagorno-Karabakh\u201d never possessed the first, second or fourth.<\/p>\n

For three decades, the Armenian side entrenched itself on Azerbaijan\u2019s territory while pretending to seek settlement by intermediation of the Minsk Group<\/a>, the part of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) tasked with finding a peaceful solution to the conflict. This subterfuge was fully unmasked by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan himself with his August 2019 effective denunciation of the Minsk Group\u2019s \u201cMadrid Principles<\/a>,\u201d when he provocatively declared<\/a> that \u201cArtsakh\u201d (what Armenians call Nagorno-Karabakh to imply its independence) \u201cis Armenia and that\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Madrid Principles, named for the city where the OSCE met and adopted them in 2007, had been the agreed basis for negotiation with Azerbaijan by every other Armenian government since their formulation. They were updated in 2009. They included the return to Azerbaijan of occupied territories surrounding the Nagorno-Karabakh region and several other elements for a settlement that the Azerbaijani military operation (along with the conditions<\/a> of the Russian-mediated ceasefire) has effectively realized.<\/p>\n

Azerbaijan did nothing other than to apply the UN Charter\u2019s Article 51<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> on the right of self-defence so as to put into effect the four resolutions of the UN Security Council (UNSC) from 1993, after the international community had failed for 30 years to resolve the situation where its lands were occupied by foreign military forces.<\/p>\n

Other misrepresentations of fact include:<\/p>\n