Former RA Minister of Foreign Affairs Vartan Oskanian has published an article.
"The history of both constitutions
At the current stage of Armenia-Azerbaijan talks, Baku demands that Yerevan adopt a new constitution, which will be ruled out any formulation that can be interpreted as ambition for Nagorno Karabakh. The response to Armenia, who respects itself, should have been clear and clear, "it is not your business."
However, since Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is ready to meet Baku's demand, then in the spirit of reciprocity, Armenia should also demand a change in the Constitution of Azerbaijan. That's why. There is a hidden contradiction under the demand of Azerbaijan within the framework of its own constitution, which is worth studying not only for legal inconsistency, but also a precedent for destabilizing and possible territorial claims.
If Azerbaijan is really ready to build a future based on mutual recognition of the current reality and territorial integrity, it must also face the problematic legacy set out in its own fundamental legal texts.
The Constitutional Act about the 1991 state independence of Azerbaijan is beyond the declaration of simple sovereignty. It is a clear position on the legal and political heir of the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan in 1918-1920, rejecting the integrity of the Soviet political and legal order. It claims that the establishment of power by the Soviet Union in Baku was illegal and rejects all treaties and the Soviet internal laws that followed it. Thus, Azerbaijan disables itself in a symbolic and legal term from the Soviet era, including the Soviet legal acts, which in 1921 transferred Nagorno Karabakh to the Azerbaijani SSR.
This is not a constitutional unintentional balance. The Azerbaijani government has repeatedly reaffirmed this legal succession, especially during the national celebrations of the 90th anniversary of the First Republic in 2008-2009. The message was clear. Azerbaijan is not just a post-Soviet state, but before the Soviet Union's new embodiment. This historical position, however, comes with uncomfortable truth. In 1918-1920, the borders of Armenia and Azerbaijan were not clearly defined. The first republics were involved in the armed conflicts around a number of areas, of which Nagorno Karabakh was key. During this period, control over these areas was a fluid and was often determined by military, diplomacy or external intervention. Therefore, presenting a demand for Nagorno Karabakh today, citing the Heritage of the Republic of 1918-1920, it means adopting the era of disputed and uncertain regional settings.
Azerbaijan cannot combine these two. It cannot reject the Soviet law and at the same time based on the decisions of the Soviet era, to justify its territorial claims. The decision of the Soviet Caucasus Bureau of 1921, which laid Nagorno Karabakh under the jurisdiction of Soviet Azerbaijan, was a Soviet political action. Invalidating all Soviet legal and administrative decisions, Azerbaijan also invalidates this transfer. Legal logic, which uses it to deny the legality of the USSR, should be applied to the decision of the USSR on domestic borders, if, of course, it does not choose the discriminatory recovery of the Soviet law for its own benefit, undermining its own constitutional order.
This discrepancy becomes more obvious in the context of Baku's requirements that Armenia will change its constitution to ensure that it does not imply a territorial claim. If any ambiguity of the recognition of Azerbaijan's borders from Armenia is expected to show identical willingness to ensure that its own constitution will no longer be born on such a legal identity that precedes and contradicts the same limits. The constitutional order, which confirms the heredity of the republic with uncertain boundaries, denies the legal structure approved by modern borders, cannot demand steady clarity and to end its neighbors.
If Azerbaijan really wants to close the one-year conflict and build a lasting peace in the South Caucasus, it must first come in and make sure that its own constitutional honor does not perpetuate the irresistical uncertainty. This will require a constitutional possibility of Nagorno-Karabakh's self-government restoration, the return of the captured Armenian territories and officially officially refusal to Armenia. Azerbaijan cannot demand that Armenia distributes the past, while clinging to the history of the history, which undermines the foundations of modern international law and miss the constitutional possibility of territorial encroits against Armenia.
