By AZE.US Editorial Team
The meeting between Azerbaijani presidential aide Hikmat Hajiyev and Armenian Security Council Secretary Armen Grigoryan in Dilijan was more than another diplomatic contact. It was a political signal.
It came immediately after Armenia’s parliamentary election, in which Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party retained power. That timing matters. Baku and Yerevan did not wait for the dust to settle completely inside Armenia. They did not allow the post-election noise, opposition complaints or outside pressure to freeze the process. Instead, they returned to direct dialogue.
For the South Caucasus, that is not a small thing.
The Armenia-Azerbaijan peace process has often moved in uneven steps: progress, pause, pressure, new escalation, then another attempt at talks. But the meeting in Dilijan suggests that the process has survived one of its important political tests. Pashinyan went through an election, won a renewed mandate and, almost immediately, the Armenian side continued engagement with Azerbaijan.
That does not mean peace is already guaranteed. It means peace is again a real political scenario.
For Azerbaijan, the logic is clear. Baku is not looking for another temporary ceasefire dressed up as diplomacy. It wants a legally and politically durable settlement based on mutual recognition of territorial integrity, the opening of regional communications and the removal of claims that could later be used to revive conflict.
That is why direct contact matters. The more Baku and Yerevan speak to each other without excessive mediation noise, the more responsibility moves back to the two states that actually have to live with the outcome. Washington, Brussels, Moscow and Paris may all have their own interests in the region, but roads, borders, trade routes and public trust will have to be handled by Azerbaijan and Armenia themselves.
The Dilijan meeting appears to fit into this new logic. The sides discussed the peace agenda, the need to maintain bilateral dialogue and confidence-building measures between civil societies. They also agreed to continue working-level contacts, with the next meeting expected to take place in Azerbaijan.
That is not yet a breakthrough. But it is a mechanism. And mechanisms matter more than ceremonial statements.
The timing also puts new pressure on Yerevan. Before the election, Pashinyan could argue that domestic politics limited his room for maneuver. Now that argument is weaker. Armenian voters, despite polarization and opposition anger, gave him another mandate. If his government says it wants peace with Azerbaijan, normalization with Turkey and a more independent foreign policy, then it must now show that these are not just campaign formulas.
The hardest questions remain unresolved.
Azerbaijan continues to insist that Armenia must remove political and legal ambiguities that Baku sees as a basis for future territorial claims. Without that, even a signed peace treaty could remain vulnerable. It may calm the situation for a while, but it would not fully close the conflict.
This is the core problem. Peace cannot be built on language that allows one side to sign a document today and reinterpret it tomorrow. The South Caucasus has already paid too high a price for half-answers, frozen conflicts and outside games.
Armenia now faces a choice. It can use Pashinyan’s victory to move from rhetoric to decisions, or it can try again to balance between peace language abroad and old political reflexes at home. The first path is difficult, but it leads to a new regional order. The second path is familiar, but it leads back to mistrust.
The opposition’s challenge to the election results also shows how fragile the Armenian political environment remains. Pro-Russian forces did not disappear after the vote. Moscow’s influence has weakened, but it has not vanished. The Armenian public is still divided over security, Russia, the West and the consequences of the post-2020 reality.
That makes Pashinyan’s task harder. But it also makes clarity more necessary.
For Azerbaijan, the result of the Armenian election creates both an opportunity and a test. The opportunity is that Baku now has a counterpart in Yerevan with a fresh parliamentary majority and no immediate electoral excuse to delay decisions. The test is whether Armenia’s leadership is ready to match its public talk of peace with steps that can satisfy the basic requirements of a final settlement.
The meeting in Dilijan should therefore be viewed neither with naive optimism nor automatic skepticism. It is a positive signal, but not the finish line. It shows that the peace process did not collapse after Armenia’s election. It shows that direct dialogue continues. It shows that both sides still understand the importance of keeping the channel open.
But the real question is what comes next.
If the next meeting in Azerbaijan produces more structured steps, if the sides continue discussing practical confidence-building measures, if Armenia moves toward removing legal and political obstacles to a final agreement, then Dilijan may be remembered as the start of a serious new stage.
If not, it will become just another meeting in a long list of missed opportunities.
The South Caucasus does not need more beautiful statements. It needs decisions.
Azerbaijan has already changed the regional reality. Armenia now has to decide whether it is ready to live inside that reality and build a future from it. The window for peace is open again, but it will not stay open forever.
Dilijan sent a signal. Now Yerevan has to answer it with action.
AZE.US