CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VIII (2) ContEurVIII2 | Page 54

ANNA KARAPETYAN
to the Azerbaijani people. However, Azerbaijan's aggressive rhetoric and
policy shows that official Baku is not ready to prepare its society for
peace. For example, the Foreign Ministry of Azerbaijan made a statement
that if Armenia does not implement the UN Security Council resolutions,
"Azerbaijan will restore its sovereignty within internationally recognized
borders." 13 The President of Azerbaijan announced at the “Valdai”
discussion club that "Nagorno-Karabakh is an integral part of Azerbaijan,
and the issue must be settled within the territorial integrity of
Azerbaijan." 14 He made another statement that "Zangezur is a historic
Azeri territory and when it was given to Armenians, the Turkish world
was split" 15 and so on.
In fact, during this time much was spoken about confidence
building, some clear steps were even planned, but no progress was made.
The visible tension between the authorities of Armenia and Artsakh also
had a certain impact on the public perception. On one hand, the Nagorno-
Karabakh conflict has maintained its importance in public perceptions a
foreign policy priority. Օn the other hand, perceptions of the overall
problem have undergone some changes.
So, the level of political modernization of the parties to the
conflict, the quality of democracy and the similarities or differences of
values are of crucial importance in the process of conflict resolution for
the region as well. The value system of the parties determines the
perception of the conflict, the ways of its settlement, the willingness to
take real steps, as well as the policy of propaganda towards their own
societies.
At the same time, when the conflict is deeply rooted in the issues
of identity of the ethnos, the elite's value transformation cannot bring
fundamental, decisive changes in the public perception of the conflict in
the short term. Changes are mostly reflected in the set of chosen tools and
priorities. In this case, the value system transformations taking place in
the modernization process provide additional tools for maneuvering in a
"paradigm of peace and war." In the case of a high level of modernization

13 “Foreign Ministry Statement,” (in Russian), Minval.az, September 13, 2019,
https://minval.az/news/123919942 (accessed September 13, 2019).
14 “The meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club,” (in Russian), Official website of Kremlin,
October 3, 2019, http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/61719 (accessed October 13, 2019)
15 “Aliyev: “The transfer of Zangezur to Armenia led to a geographical split in the Turkic
world,” (in Russian), Radio Liberty, https://rus.azatutyun.am/a/30217915.html (accessed
October 15, 2019).
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