Pashinyan: saying “Artsakh” lets Baku call Vardenis “Basarkechar”
- Published
- Place
- Yerevan, Armenia
- Event date
- Past event —
Summary
At the MaskOFF discussion organised by the Restart Foundation in Yerevan on 7 November, Nikol Pashinyan argued that using the name “Artsakh” in Armenia opens the door, on the Azerbaijani side, to names such as “Basarkechar”, Azerbaijan’s name for the Armenian town of Vardenis, or “Western Azerbaijan”. “We can say ‘Artsakh’ as much as we like: in the morning, at noon, in the evening, and even wake up at night to say it again. But they will say ‘Basarkechar’ morning, noon and evening,” he said, according to Aravot and News.am. For the prime minister, the solution is to sign the peace treaty and close these issues. He added that recognising another state’s independence is a condition for having one’s own independence recognised internationally.
Analysis
The remark extends a consistent line from Pashinyan: turning the page on references to Karabakh in order to secure the signing of the treaty, initialled more than a year ago. According to the official readout, he set himself the goal of handing young people an Armenia with recognised and open borders. The next day, in Shusha, Ilham Aliyev said he hoped normalisation would bring “concrete results”. The term “Artsakh” nonetheless remains widely used by Armenians displaced from Karabakh and across the diaspora.
Possible consequences
This debate over words ties in with the new Constitution, which Baku has made a condition for signing the treaty.
