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President Aliyev Calls Ethnic Armenians Living in Karabakh Region Citizens of Azerbaijan

By Ilham Karimli October 6, 2022

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President Ilham Aliyev delivers a speech at the first National Urban Forum in Aghdam, Azerbaijan, October 5, 2022 / President.Az

President Ilham Aliyev has once again voiced the country's position regarding the ethnic Armenian population living in Azerbaijan's Karabakh region.

“With respect to the Armenian population, who still lives in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, are our citizens, and we are not going to discuss how we are going to organize their life on our territory with any international player. Karabakh is Azerbaijan,” President Aliyev said at the first National Urban Forum in Aghdam city on Wednesday.

“The Second Karabakh War proved it on the ground. During the times of occupation, no country in the world, including Armenia, recognized this artificial structure,” he added, referring to a self-proclaimed and unrecognized separatist regime set up by Armenia. 

According to Azerbaijan's president, issues related to internal affairs “we never discuss with international institutions or with any country, regardless of the size and potential of that country.”

President Aliyev's remarks came to back up the previous statements of the Azerbaijani authorities pledging the provision of fundamental rights and security to the ethnic Armenian population on a par with other ethnicities. However, Armenia and Armenia-backed separatists in Azerbaijan's Karabakh region stick to their unyielding rhetoric and calls for separatism.

Armenia's authorities have long been seeking a so-called “status” to the illegal separatist regime, demanding a “right to self-determination” for Armenian people living in Azerbaijani territory. The Azerbaijani authorities had previously proposed cultural autonomy inside Azerbaijan as an option, but the Armenian side rejected it for the sake of ambitions of so-called independence and recognition as an independent entity.

The irreversible separatist rhetoric of Armenia ultimately catapulted one of the world’s most-protracted conflicts into a full-blown war in 2020.

The 44-day war, dubbed the Second Karabakh War, was the largest outbreak of violence between Armenia and Azerbaijan since the 1994 ceasefire. It erupted on September 27, 2020, after Armenia’s military deployed in the once-occupied territories of Azerbaijan shelled the civilian settlements and military positions of Azerbaijan prompting immediate counter-offensive measures by Azerbaijani forces. Clashes between the two sides escalated into an all-out war.

During the counter-attack operations, Azerbaijani forces liberated over 300 settlements, including the cities of Jabrayil, Fuzuli, Zangilan, Gubadli, and Shusha, from nearly 30-year-long illegal Armenian occupation. The war ended in a tripartite statement signed by Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Russia on November 10, 2020, under which, Armenia also returned the occupied Aghdam, Kalbajar, and Lachin districts to Azerbaijan.

However, even after the war, sentiments among ethnic Armenians in the Karabakh region once again ran counter to Azerbaijan's goodwill, given their consistent calls for partition with Azerbaijan. They even promised to “liberate Shusha,” a key and strategic Azerbaijani city in the Karabakh region.

The Azerbaijani authorities have repeatedly warned their counterparts in Armenia about the dire consequences of the revanchist policy. President Aliyev has previously said that it would be “tantamount to suicide” for Armenia to act on such calls.

Azerbaijan is set to achieve a peace treaty with Armenia based on the mutual recognition of territorial integrities. In March 2022, Baku submitted five basic principles for guiding the bilateral talks to normalization of ties and finally leading to the singing of the long-awaited peace agreement.

On August 31 in Brussels, President Aliyev and Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan agreed to task their respective foreign ministers for starting the necessary work on drafting a peace treaty.

“We want to put an end to hostility and mutual hatred, and we want to open a new page of peace,” President Aliyev said in his most recent speech on Wednesday.

On the same day, according to Armenian media, PM Pashinyan confirmed that Yerevan has adopted a peace agenda and he personally assumes responsibility for carrying it out through “the support of the parliamentary majority and the people.” He added that by signing the December 8, 1991 agreement on the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Armenia and Azerbaijan mutually recognized each other’s territorial integrity.

Meanwhile, Arayik Harutunyan, a criminal who leads the Armenian separatist regime in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, has earlier said that recognition of Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity by Armenia would be labeled as “unacceptable.” He again called for bogus “independence” and vowed to achieve “international” recognition.