Dialogue Without Trust

Head of the Council of Europe's Baku Office Petr Zich was summoned to Azerbaijan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on June 22. The reason was the European Court of Human Rights decision of June 18, in connection with which the Azerbaijani side expressed a sharp protest.

In particular, official Baku's justified displeasure was caused by the use in the decision of terminology that effectively reproduces the political and legal constructs of the occupation era. This refers to such formulations as "the line of contact between Azerbaijan and the NKR," as well as references to the army, governmental bodies, prosecutor's office, and ombudsman of the self-proclaimed regime. Such definitions not only contradict Azerbaijan's internationally recognized sovereignty but also create an impression of legitimizing a structure whose existence never had international legal recognition.

Moreover, this concerns not just another dispute over a decision by an international judicial body. In reality, the conflict touches upon a much deeper issue — the attitude of European institutions toward the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict and the political changes that have occurred in the South Caucasus after the second Karabakh war, writes the newspaper "Kaspi."

The situation is made particularly acute by the fact that for decades the international community, including the Council of Europe, the European Court of Human Rights, the UN, the OSCE, and other international organizations, officially recognized Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan. Moreover, in the ECHR ruling in the case of "Chiragov and Others v. Armenia" as early as 2015, Armenia