Azerbaijan not interested in making peace

OPINION:

During his recent meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, President Trump struck an optimistic note, suggesting that Armenia and Azerbaijan “might be headed toward peace” after years of hostility. Yet anyone watching Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s rhetoric might reach a different conclusion. His statements reveal not a road map to peace but a campaign rooted in irredentism and a veiled bid for territorial revisionism.

The issue is Mr. Aliyev’s demand for a land bridge across southern Armenia to connect mainland Azerbaijan with its exclave, the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, which borders Turkey. This would create a continuous land link from Turkey through Nakhchivan to Azerbaijan proper and from there to the broader Turkic world in Central Asia. Standing in the way is Armenia’s southern Syunik province, also Armenia’s only land corridor to Iran, a vital strategic and economic partner.

Immediately after meeting with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on July 10 at a summit in Abu Dhabi, Mr. Aliyev tweeted triumphantly about a future “implementation of the Zangezur Corridor,” using the Azerbaijani name for the territory in question. In a recent speech widely quoted in Azerbaijani media, he said: “Both on the international stage and in bilateral contacts with Armenia, we consistently emphasize one point. … There must be smooth and unrestricted passage from Azerbaijan to Azerbaijan, without any inspections or obstacles. This is our demand.”

This language demonstrates that Mr. Aliyev’s vision isn’t limited to a conventional transit route. He seeks a corridor immune from Armenian border controls, a route that would effectively sever Yerevan’s sovereignty over part of its own territory. This is about redefining borders.

Because his desire for a connection to Nakhchivan is not illogical, it deserves fair scrutiny. Can a country reasonably demand an unrestricted transit corridor through another sovereign state simply because it has an exclave? Would the United States, for example, demand unimpeded passage through Canada to access Alaska? Of course, the U.S. has never made such a claim because international norms do not support it.

Though Baku portrays this demand as a logical step toward peace, its legal, historical and geopolitical foundations are weak. The supposed basis for the corridor lies in the Russia-brokered ceasefire agreement that ended the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in November 2020. That agreement says: “The Republic of Armenia shall guarantee the safety of transport links between the western regions of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic to organize unimpeded movement of citizens, vehicles, and goods in both directions.”

However, this vague clause does not grant Azerbaijan extraterritorial control or use the term “corridor.” The only enforcement mechanism it outlines is monitoring by Russian border troops.

Armenia has interpreted the clause as an obligation to provide transit under its full jurisdiction with border control, customs and legal oversight intact.

No treaty, United Nations provision or precedent compels a country to cede control of its land to facilitate connectivity between disconnected parts of another state. Transit agreements exist, such as those between Russia and Lithuania for Kaliningrad, but they occur under host-state control. What Mr. Aliyev proposes is instead an effective territorial carve-out.

The world is not short of exclaves, and none has led to similar arrangements.

West Berlin (1945-1990) remained accessible to West Germany only through delicate negotiations. When the Soviets imposed a blockade, the West responded with an airlift, not a land grab.

East Pakistan (1947-1971), separated from West Pakistan by 1,000 miles of Indian territory, never received a corridor. India refused. The frustration contributed to East Pakistan’s eventual independence as Bangladesh.

Busingen am Hochrhein, a German exclave in Switzerland, operates smoothly through cooperation, not coercion.

Kaliningrad, Russia’s Baltic exclave, has transit rights through Lithuania, but under strict European Union and Lithuanian control.

Ceuta and Melilla, Spanish cities on the North African coast, remain firmly under Spanish rule despite Moroccan claims. Spain has never allowed any corridor-style arrangement that dilutes its sovereignty. Nor, needless to say, is there a corridor through Morocco between the two. The map, quite simply, is what it is.

The pattern is clear: Having an exclave does not entitle a country to unregulated passage through another sovereign state. These issues are resolved by negotiation, not imposition. We will hear arguments about economic benefits, but sovereignty is non-negotiable and good business does not require such violations of international norms.

Armenia does not have much room for maneuver. A real “corridor” through Syunik would weaken its geopolitical position by cutting it off from Iran, redraw the south Caucasus, and constitute unbearable further encroachment after the 2023 loss of its historic heartland in disputed Nagorno Karabakh.

Ceding control, symbolically or literally, would be a strategic catastrophe.

Iran also has warned that any alteration to the Armenia-Iran border is unacceptable. Tehran sees the Zangezur idea as a direct threat to its access to the Caucasus and has issued veiled threats in response.

Mr. Aliyev is attempting to turn a ceasefire clause into a tool for territorial revisionism. History is littered with examples of how wars begin by exploiting vague treaty language. The precedent will be dangerous if Armenia is forced to grant extraterritorial access under pressure. It would reward coercion, undermine diplomacy and send a message to other autocracies: Seize what you want, then call it a corridor.

It would also reward a despotic regime in Baku that has long assumed that its energy wealth would grant it cover for an anti-Armenian obsession. The international community must take this seriously. If Mr. Trump really wants to claim credit for Armenian-Azeri peace, that goes through getting Mr. Aliyev to back off from his ambitions to establish a “Zangezur Corridor.”

• Grigor Hovhannissian is a former ambassador to the United States and a former deputy foreign minister of Armenia.