Hrant Mikaelian - Commemorating the 44-Day War, Armenia Azerbaijan Talks, Draft 2025 State Budget, | Ep 371 - Sep 29, 2024 [EP371]

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Guest:

• Hrant Mikaelian

Topics:

• Tavush Protests Gain Momentum
• Pashinyan Pressing Ahead with Land Concessions
• Poll Results on Tavush Protests

Episode 371 | Recorded: September 30, 2024

Show Notes

Sep 27: Start of the 44-Day War

Last week marked the 4th anniversary of the beginning of the 44-Day war which culminated a year ago with the complete ethnic cleansing of Artsakh by Azerbaijan.

Some key notes to keep in mind:

• The people whose mistakes led to the war are still in power. The same people whose mistakes led to the death of 5,000 Armenians, and over 10,000 Armenian families destroyed, or injured, or destituted, remain in power and their continuing mistakes led to over 150,000 Armenians to be forced out of their homes and their lands last year. And this past week they said they will make more mistakes. Literally, they said that.
• An independent war commission was never convened. If there was any investigation it was only in name and there’s been no real accountability for the damage done to the nation, and the government continues to act in secrecy and behind the backs of the Armenian people.
• The same losers of the war continue in power today, negotiating national interests with enemies of Armenia, in exchange for being allowed to stay in power.
• In fact, the war continues to this day and every step is either a new voluntary concession by Pashinyan to Azerbaijan, or a new military operation resulting in more land losses; like a coordinated one-two punch.
• After Sep 27 2020, we had 2 more wars… In June of 2021 when Azerbaijan captured several areas of the Gegharkunik region. Then in Jermuk in September 2022, when in one day we had more than 200 dead.

Questions:

• What were your thoughts on this difficult day in our modern history?
• Has the war even ended?
• Is Armenia rebuilding its military? Has military balance been restored?

Armenian Azerbaijani Talks

The Armenian-Azeri talks continue. There’s a lot of pressure by the US on the sides to agree on a deal which they think would greenlight Turkey’s opening its border and relations with Armenia. So on the occasion of the UN General Assembly last week, country leaders were all in New York.

Pashinyan at the UNGA

Pashinyan peddled his brand of impotent pacifism at the UNGA, while Aliyev addressed his parliament and said Azerbaijan will continue its military buildup, and rejected Pashinyan’s proposed piecemeal peace deal, and said Pashinyan should not delay resolving the outstanding issues.

Pashinyan met with Erdogan in New York. Not at the UN building however. Instead, Pashinyan traveled to the Turkish House skyscraper that houses the Turkish consulate. There are reports that cite Turkish experts indicating that Pashinyan may have asked Erdogan to intercede in the negotiations with Aliyev. Instead, the latter reiterated Turkish demands for a corridor through Armenia.

The meeting with Erdogan ended with Pashinyan receiving a book authored by Erdogan, “A Fairer World Is Possible”. Pashinyan was photographed grinning and clutching the book close to his chest.

Questions:

• What is Erdogan’s vision for a “fairer world” in the Caucasus?
• Is Pashinyan at a dead end?

NOTE:

• On October 2, 2020 (in the middle of the war), Pashinyan said that “… Turkey has returned to the South Caucasus, in order to continue the Armenian genocide here.” What has changed, or has he forgotten what he said 4 years ago?

FMs Trilateral with Blinken

A trilateral meeting of Armenian and Azerbaijani FMs with Secretary Anthony Blinken yielded no immediate discernible result.

Questions:

• Is there any progress to the Armenian-Azerbaijani talks?
• Does the US have any leverage over Azerbaijan to make any agreements happen?

No “Peace Treaty” Before Constitutional Changes

In response to Pashinyan’s speech, Azerbaijan’s foreign minister Jayhun Bayramov repeated Azerbaijan’s rejection of a partial “peace treaty” and re-confirmed that Armenia must change its constitution. (Another point that is currently not agreed upon, is the so-called Zangezur corridor.)

Pashinyan says that the Armenian constitution does not contain claims on Azerbaijani territory, but their constitution makes claims to Armenian territory. However, he says that he doesn’t think that this is a problem because the “peace agreement supersedes domestic law.”

Questions:

• Is Pashinyan right?
• What happens if Armenia changes its constitution per Aliyev’s demand, and removes alleged claims to Azerbaijan’s territories. Obviously this demand aims to legitimize the ethnic cleansing of Artsakh and the dispossession of the Armenians with international legal basis. Afterwards Azerbaijan tears the so-called “peace agreement”, and returns to claim Armenian territories per its constitution. Where does that leave Armenia?

Border Deal Ratification by Constitutional Court

During this past week Armenia’s constitutional court rubber stamped Pashinyan’s border agreement with Azerbaijan. Now it heads to be rubber stamped by the parliament.

Let’s be clear: the so-called agreement of principles of delineating the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan is a bullshit agreement.

• It claims that the process will be based on the 1991 Alma Ata declaration.
  • That declaration contains no maps. Soviet intra-state maps were not international borders, and are in the possession of the Russian defense ministry. Azerbaijan has refused the use of maps, and Armenia has essentially excluded Russia from the negotiations process.
• Azerbaijan has said it will use different maps for different border segments, whichever are more advantageous to them; alternately it may also not use any maps.
• The agreement also says that the sides may decide to chuck this agreement and do whatever they want.

So you can see that the key principle here is that there are no principles. It’s a snow job, to sell to the Armenian public whatever Aliyev wants from Pashinyan.

Questions:

• How could the constitutional court sign off on this?
• Obviously the parliament will ratify this, because there’s a ruling party super majority which can not be stopped, even though all the parliamentary opposition groups have said that they will vote against it. What can be done here?
• How is the government ramming this through the people? (in the media campaigns, etc)

Srbazan Movement

Last weekend Bagrat Srbazan held a gathering to relaunch the Tavush For The Homeland movement he started in April.

Questions:

• What are your impressions? Does it look like this movement is ready, or ramping up to apply popular pressure on the government to not go forward with further mistakes? (aka: unilateral concessions).

Parliament Approves 2025 State Budget

Last week the parliament approved the government’s draft 2025 budget of about $9 Billion.

Summary:

• Budget expenditures of $8.93B
• Ongoing expenses of $7.05B
• Capital expenditures of $1.88B
• Budget revenues of $7.37B, of which $7.08B in tax revenues.
• Budget deficit of $1.56B, amounting to 53.5% of GDP
• Economic growth of 5.6%
• Inflation rate of 3.5%

A 20% growth in the defense budget is earmarked to “increase resilience” of Armenia’s security. So in 2025 the defense budget will be $1.7B, compared to Azerbaijan’s $3.9B.

Questions:

• What are your thoughts about this budget?
• Given that the government has a dismal record in hitting its targets both in expenditures, as well revenues, do these targets look reasonable?
  • Note: as far as tax revenues are concerned, the government thinks it can increase revenues by 25% through “improvements in tax administration, fight against shadow economy, as well as other tax policies.”
• Economic growth is slowing down significantly during 2024. Is a 5.6% 2025 economic growth rate a reasonable expectation?
• Are the government’s calculations continuing to include the re-export factor into its GDP? If so, is the National debt-to-GDP (53.5%) at risk, if these reexports evaporate?

We recently discussed with economist and former minister of finance Vardan Aramyan, who expressed concern that consumer debt, especially due to home mortgages, is rising at an alarming rate, given that their income is not keeping pace with their debt.

Questions:

• What is fueling all the borrowing, is it a government promoted modus vivendi?

Thoughts from the Panelists

• Hrant: The Church and its government dilemma
• Hovik: On the speech of the Catholicos; also: Stay active against Azerbaijan’s greenwashing of ethnic cleansing via #COP29

Wrap-up

That’s our Week in Review, we hope you found it helpful. We invite your feedback and your suggestions, you can find us on most social media and podcast platforms.

Thanks to Laura Osborn for the music on our podcasts.

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