Perceptions of Civil Society in Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Context of the Nagorno–Karabakh Conflict

Abstract

This paper aims to be a contextual, conceptual and factual analysis of the complicated relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan and what are the main perceptions of civil society in these countries in the context of the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, which is a dispute over the province’s status as a major source of tension between the governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan and the leadership of the self-proclaimed republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, in the mediation of which other international actors got involved, such as OSCE, the Minsk group consisting of France, the Russian Federation and the USA. Overall, whereas Armenia tends to be on a progressive scale with some concerns over the possibility to return to a non-democratic regime, Azerbaijan is already placed on a regressive scale. Given the topic of the paper, we had a closer attention to the 2020-2021 period of time since the Nagorno Karabakh war took place in the autumn of 2020 – thus, 2011 being the first year when the European Commission launched the European Integration Index for the Eastern Partnership states and 2022 being the year with the most recent data regarding the topic. In what regards the results of our research, both civil societies have been involved in the conflict resolution, but with various degrees, taking into consideration the different national ex-ante conditions. Armenia proved to be more resilient over the years, thus, although facing mass protests ending with the Parliament building being temporally seized, with a general feeling of fear towards the possibility of regressing, the democratic level remained the same, in 2021-2022 being declared as a partly fee country, whereas in the case of Azerbaijan it fell under the regressive paradigm with: a practically non-existent independent media, very limited tools to hold the state accountable, measures that were taken against the activists that declared themselves against the war and civil society organizations that do not have access to foreign funding.