The main issue is the provision of a road or a corridor through Meghri city of Armenia, and the question is what it should represent: is it about a road envisioned for cars? Is it a railway? An oil pipeline? A natural gas pipeline? Or another option? And the second important question is who shall oversee those roads. Such an opinion was expressed by political scientist Stepan Danielyan in an interview with Armenian News-NEWS.am—and referring to the current regional developments.
According to Danielyan, the main discussion on these issues is taking place between Russia and Turkey, and the key issues are the ones in that domain. According to the political scientist, Russia's goal is to oversee that road.
"Besides, if new communications are to be created, it will imply new geopolitical changes. Imagine that [natural] gas from Central Asia—including the Turkmen—is exported through Turkey, whereas that would mean that Iran and Russia could suffer great losses, in which case they would lose the market. As for the fact that Armenia should recognize the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, this is the maximum that Baku seeks. [Azerbaijani President Ilham] Aliyev says that the Nagorno-Karabakh [(Artsakh)] issue no longer exists and that this term should not be used. But the issue is not closed, and Russian troops are actually stationed in the formal territory of Azerbaijan now because there is such an issue; if not, the Russians shall leave from there. [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan also says the same—as if the Kurdish issue does not exist, but the number of Kurds is increasing, and the problem is becoming more serious, which is why the steps towards Syria are needed to neutralize the problem to some extent. I do not believe what Aliyev said is a precondition in this sense," Danielyan said.
Aliyev said that there was an opportunity to end the Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) war on October 7. Why does the President of Azerbaijan now remember and speak out about this? And is it possible that such an opportunity really existed at that stage? According to the political scientist, this is a means of pressure from Aliyev.
"If he says that, then there may be something else to be said, too. I believe it is important to understand not so much what they say, but why they say it. The leaders of Armenia and Russia, of course, know those details. I believe the statement is addressed to the internal audience of Azerbaijan, too, because in the Azerbaijani discourse there is an active question as to why they did not go until the end during the war and why they did not finish everything, and why the Russian troops were allowed to end up in their territory. This issue is constantly escalating and may escalate even more in the future. I believe Aliyev was trying to say with this statement that there were agreements, of which Turkey was also aware and agreed to that solution in order to somewhat remove those accusations from it," Danielyan concluded.