AZE.US
The Armenian national anthem was played without incident during a recent medal ceremony in Baku, marking a striking change in the public atmosphere surrounding Armenian athletes in Azerbaijan.
An Armenian athlete who defeated a Russian opponent to win a gold medal stood on the podium as the announcer asked spectators to rise for the anthem. The audience listened quietly, with no whistles, political slogans or provocations reported.
Kamala Mammadova, editor-in-chief of 1news.az, highlighted the episode during Current Topic, a program in the Line of Contact series broadcast by the Armenian-Azerbaijani platform Press Clubs TV.
She contrasted the ceremony with the inaugural European Games held in Baku in 2015. At that event, part of the audience whistled during the presentation of a medal to an Armenian athlete. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev intervened with a hand gesture calling for calm before presenting the medal.
Eleven years later, Mammadova said, the atmosphere was markedly different.
She noted that footage of the latest ceremony was also shared on Armenian social media pages, where users from both countries posted messages supporting peaceful coexistence.
“Let our children be rivals in competitions, not enemies in trenches,” one widely shared comment said.
According to Mammadova, even a year ago, Armenian coaches or athletes might have hesitated to speak publicly about positive experiences in Baku, regardless of their private impressions. Today, direct visits are beginning to give participants greater freedom to describe what they personally witnessed rather than rely on stereotypes shaped over decades of conflict.
Armenian director and public figure Ruben Babayan, who also joined the discussion, said peace represents a natural human aspiration, while war was an artificial condition imposed on the two societies.
“A stroke once occurred in relations between our peoples, and now we are going through rehabilitation,” Babayan said, using a medical analogy to describe the normalization process.
He argued that professional contacts between athletes, journalists, artists, educators and researchers could become one of the most effective foundations for rebuilding trust. People working in the same field, he said, can often find a common language more easily than political institutions.
Mammadova said four civil society meetings had been held over the past year – two in Armenia and two in Azerbaijan. The first gathering, involving five representatives from each side, was organized under strict secrecy because of security concerns. Later meetings expanded to approximately 20 participants from each country.
The speakers agreed that a peace agreement could accelerate these exchanges, but stressed that normalization cannot be achieved through official documents alone. Political leaders may establish the framework for peace, they said, but the two societies must turn it into an everyday reality.
AZE.US