Aliyev renewed last week his demands for Yerevan to ensure the return of Azerbaijanis who lived in Armenia until the late 1980s and give them “security guarantees.”
Armenian leaders, notably Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan, said earlier that such statements amount to territorial claims to Armenia. But Simonian, who is a close associate of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, offered a different interpretation, saying that Aliyev simply “tries to do the same things that he thinks we did” against Azerbaijan.
“We, on our part, make territorial demands to them when Karabakh’s representatives elect some new president for themselves and then make some statements,” he told reporters. “We don't notice that but say in response to the Azerbaijan steps, ‘Did you see what they said?’”
Simonian dismissed an argument that “Western Azerbaijan” never existed as an entity whereas Karabakh was for decades at the center of peace talks mediated by the United States, Russia and France. Mediators from the three world powers regularly visited Karabakh and drafted peace plans that would essentially uphold continued Armenian control over the territory.
Pashinian is accused by his political foes of recklessly rejecting the most recent of those plans put forward in 2019. Simonian famously visited an Armenian controlled Azerbaijani district just east of Karabakh around at that time and stated that it is also his “homeland.”
Pashinian caused a domestic uproar last November when he drew parallels between Aliyev’s talk of “Western Azerbaijan” and the fact that Armenians commonly refer to parts of modern-day eastern Turkey populated by their ancestors until the 1915 genocide as “Western Armenia.”
Those areas had for centuries accounted for most of the territory of ancient Armenian kingdoms before being incorporated into the Ottoman Empire. Their indigenous population was forcibly deported and/or massacred by the Ottoman Turks during the First World War.
As well as renewing his demands regarding “our historical lands,” Aliyev reaffirmed his preconditions for signing a peace treaty with Armenia finalized by the two sides in March. Pashinian was swiftly rebuffed on Monday after again appealing to Baku to drop those preconditions, notably a change of Armenia’s constitution. Nevertheless, Simonian looked forward to the signing of the treaty.
“Five minutes after the signing of the peace treaty, residents of Armenia and Azerbaijan will begin to trade with each other, communicate and interact with each other in all possible ways,” he declared.
Armenian opposition leaders say that the still unpublicized treaty is deeply flawed and would not bring real peace. They claim that Pashinian is desperate to clinch such a document to try to mislead Armenians and increase his chances of winning the next general elections due in 2026.