Is Armenia Fulfilling Aliyev’s Demand with New Pashinyan Constitution Proposal?

Parliamentary opposition members Gegham Manukyan, Anna Grigoryan, Kristine Vardanyan and Artur Khachatryan, MPs from the Hayastan faction (Armenia), made a joint statement decrying the move.

In their opinion, Pashinyan is thus “preparing the ground for meeting another demand” of the Turkish-Azerbaijani tandem:

“The demands constantly made to the Republic of Armenia by Turkey and Azerbaijan have been the exclusion of the provisions on the right of the Artsakh people to self-determination and commitment to international recognition of the Armenian genocide from the fundamental documents of the Republic of Armenia.”

Political scientist Suren Surenyants says that the new constitution implies the creation of a new republic. In his opinion, one could talk about an important and new milestone in the development of statehood, if we are talking about political and public discussions on the foundations of statehood.

“Pashinyan, on the other hand, needs a new constitution to ‘edit’ Armenia’s declaration of independence (to exclude what Aliyev calls ‘revanchism’), to establish ‘legitimate’ borders with a new ‘cadastral’ certificate,” Surenyants stated.

He believes that the prime minister is announcing the reduction of Armenia’s territory and wants to give this process a “nationwide package, according to the cadastral certificate certified by Aliyev.”

Political scientist Tigran Grigoryan recalls that in December 2023, Aliyev announced that Baku expected Yerevan to guarantee the exclusion of “revanchism.”

He studied articles by representatives of expert and political circles of Azerbaijan on this topic. He quoted one Azerbaijani expert, Rusif Huseynov, as saying that “Armenia’s legislation still contains territorial claims to Azerbaijan.”

“Such a legal background causes concern in Azerbaijan, where they predict such scenarios, when the Armenian Constitutional Court may reject the peace agreement or a future change of power may lead to territorial claims,” the political scientist wrote on Facebook.

Political analyst Tevan Poghosyan agrees with the opinion that Pashinyan is pushing Aliyev’s demands.

He says that if the constitution were amended, the first two clauses based on the declaration of independence would remain unchanged: “The declaration of independence takes as its basis the objectives of the existence of Artsakh and its unification with Armenia. In order not to preserve all this, Pashinyan says: let’s tear this paper up, throw it away, because Aliyev made a demand and I have to fulfill it.”

He does not rule out that in the future the ruling team will also raise the issue of adopting a new declaration so that the word “Artsakh” is mentioned in it.

According to political scientist Stepan Grigoryan, the declaration of independence contains “painful points” for Turkey as well: “In addition to what is written about the unification of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, there is also an article recognizing the genocide committed by Turkey in Western Armenia and Anatolia.”

Grigoryan says it is necessary to understand exactly what changes Pashinyan is thinking about, whether there is a need for them or whether all this is being done under pressure.

According to him, the new constitution presupposes significant changes. He wonders how the Prime Minister envisions a new constitution if its main provisions are not changed and the model of governance is not changed.