CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VOLUME VIII (1) ContemporaryEurasia81 | Page 101

NAREK SUKIASYAN
hamper the possibility of achieving positive peace between Armenians and
Azerbaijanis “changing the minds of men”. Since 1988, around 25,000
casualties have been reported 69 , even though the number varies in various
sources. In May 1994, a ceasefire was established between Armenia,
Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan 70 through Russian mediation.
Nevertheless, the conflict remains unsettled. To the present day, Nagorno
Karabakh is a de facto state with functioning institutions, lacking any
international recognition (even from Armenia). This leads us to conclude
that the strategy did not succeed in bringing about peace between the
societies. In fact, it was “the beginning of new bitterness” 71 that has become
“an incentive to ethnic polarization”. 72 Next, when it comes to the
institutional morality of the right to secede as a mode of settling interethnic
conflict, the Karabakh case seems to fit the remedial right category.
Armenians of Karabakh (and beyond) consider the territory’s incorporation
into the Azerbaijani SSR as an historic injustice. The accumulated
perceptions of further injustices within the NKAO culminated when acts
threatening their physical survival were committed. The peculiarities of
Armenian historical interpretations and narratives played a key role in this
regard 73 . Particularly,
“The terms “massacre,” “pogrom,” and even “genocide” became
current, and immediate, spontaneous associations with 1915 were made
everywhere. The Azerbaijanis, related by race, language, and culture to the
Turks, became in Armenian minds the same heartless people who had
participated in the genocide of 1915”. 74
Even though Horowitz is highly critical of secession as a strategy for
conflict management or resolution, he agrees that, ‘remedial right’ to secede
is a more cautious case, as a “last-ditch response to discrimination or
oppression by a central government” 75 – which seems to be the case in
Nagorno Karabakh. The pogroms of Sumgait and Baku, the reported
attempts of siege against the NKAO and the numerous occurrences of
violence against civilians mentioned above may serve as justification for
Armenians to claim the right for remedial secession.
The first president of Armenia, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, explains that
“Under that [remedial secession] doctrine, if a state systematically violates
69
В Азербайджане подсчитали погибших в Карабахской войне [The number of deaths in
the Karabagh war was counted in Azerbaijan], Lenta.ru, January 13, 2014,
https://lenta.ru/news/2014/01/13/list/.
70
The Bishkek Protocol, Bishkek, 5 May 1994.
71
Horowitz, “The Cracked Foundations of The Right to Secede”, 9.
72
Ibid,12.
73
Kaufman, Ethnic Fears and Ethnic War in Karabakh, 32.
74
Richard G. Hovannisian, “Historical Memory and Foreign Relations: The Armenian
Perspective” in The Legacy of History in Russia and the New States of Eurasia, ed. Frederick
Starr (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1994): 241.
75
Horowitz, “The Cracked Foundations of The Right to Secede”, 18.
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