By AZE.US Editorial Team
A possible visit by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to Baku would once have sounded impossible. Today, Azerbaijani commentator Elchin Alioglu argues, it is no longer political fantasy.
Speaking in a televised commentary, Alioglu said Pashinyan’s recent signals should be read in several layers. One of them, he said, is domestic. The Armenian prime minister is already framing his political future around the next election and presenting himself as a leader who expects to continue the process of normalization with Azerbaijan.
But the larger message, according to Alioglu, is regional. Pashinyan is signaling that Armenia is gradually moving away from a conflict-driven model and toward a more pragmatic understanding of its own security.
“Pashinyan wants to come to Baku. Let him come. Why not?” Alioglu said.
Alioglu noted that Azerbaijan and Armenia have been living in a state of peace for about nine months. That does not yet mean full relations between the two countries, he said, but it does mark a break from the logic that dominated the South Caucasus for more than 30 years.
In his view, Pashinyan’s message is also directed beyond Baku — toward Moscow and Tehran. Alioglu said the old regional model depended on keeping Armenia locked in hostility toward Azerbaijan and Turkey, while outside powers benefited from that hostility.
He described revanchism as one of the main dangers for Armenia itself. According to Alioglu, revanchist thinking was not simply a natural expression of Armenian society, but a political line encouraged and sustained from outside.
“Pashinyan broke that game,” Alioglu said.
The shift, Alioglu argued, should not be interpreted as affection for Azerbaijan or as an attempt to please Baku. It is a cold calculation. The worse relations are between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the more room there is for third parties to intervene, mediate, pressure and manipulate.
That is why, in Alioglu’s reading, statements from Pashinyan, Armenian parliament speaker Alen Simonyan and Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan about Armenia’s security being linked to Azerbaijan are important. They point to a pragmatic conclusion: Armenia’s stability depends less on outside patrons and more on a workable relationship with its neighbors.
If Baku and Yerevan can deal with each other directly, the role of intermediaries naturally shrinks. If AZAL planes land at Zvartnots Airport in Yerevan, if cargo moves from Azerbaijan to Armenia, and if Turkey and Armenia reach understandings on restoring the historic Ani Bridge, the question becomes unavoidable: what is left for the old mediators to do?
For Alioglu, this is the real meaning of the moment. A possible Pashinyan visit to Baku would not merely be a diplomatic gesture. It would signal that the South Caucasus is slowly moving out of a system in which outside actors managed tensions — and toward one in which the region’s own capitals begin setting the rules.
AZE.US