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This is Part 2 of a 2-part series on the negotiations to end the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict and normalize relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Part 1 can be read here.
On an early Thursday morning, November 4th, 1,050 tonnes of wheat, loaded into rail cars, rumbled through the Caspian Sea megacity of Baku, Azerbaijan. The wheat originated in Russia, but the destination was Armenia.
It was in 1989, the year the Soviet Union collapsed, that freight bound for Armenia was last permitted to pass through Azerbaijan. The removal of this blockade represents a very tangible culmination to negotiations held between the two countries over the last year and a half.
Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan confirmed the arrival of the wheat shipment from Russia, crossing Azerbaijan and Georgia
“At this moment, wheat of Russian origin is being transported by rail from the Russian Federation to Armenia through the territory of Azerbaijan. I would also like to note that wheat of Kazakh origin is also on its way and will arrive in Armenia in the coming days – again through the territory of Azerbaijan,” Armenia media reported, citing country’s Economy Minister Gevorg Papoyan.
In reference to the wheat, Azeri President Ilham Aliyev said in a recent press conference in Kazakhstan that “peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia is no longer merely on paper but has already become a matter of practice”.
This simple act of international exchange brings with it enormous implications for the future of the region, particularly for Armenia, which has generally believed to have suffered acute shortages of essential goods, an energy crisis, unemployment, emigration, ecological damage, and widespread poverty as a result of the blockade.
On August 8th, 2025, Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met at the White House to sign an official declaration of peace and formal establishment of relations. The agreement was called “a decisive step” to a lasting peace by some, and “capitulation” by others.
The actual agreement, differing from the declaration, addresses one of two major impediments to peace that were at the time outstanding: the issue of the corridor through southern Armenia that would allow free and safe passage between the Azerbaijan hinterland and an Azeri exclave located near Turkiye called Nakhichevan which could before only be reached by plane.
Former Foreign Minister of Armenia Vartan Oskanian singled out this corridor as the single greatest issue facing the peace process.
“What makes the corridor especially dangerous is not just its legal ambiguity but its evolution—from a theoretical passage mentioned in the 2020 ceasefire to a maximalist Azerbaijani demands,” he wrote in Modern Diplomacy just two days before the White House summit. “Far from being a neutral infrastructure initiative, the corridor represents a unilateral attempt to establish extraterritorial control over Armenian land. Azerbaijan seeks not just transit access but a corridor stripped of Armenian customs, legal authority, or security presence—a demand no sovereign state should accept”.
Whether it was Pashinyan’s idea or one of Donald Trump’s aides, the actual agreement involved a deft sidestep of this issue by turning control of the corridor over to the United States for a period of 99 years—a country that while seemingly neutral has every reason to make sure it’s one of the safest places on Earth, as it gives the US for the first time in history a way to transit the entire Asian continent on land without passing through either Russia or Iran. Interestingly, both of these neighbors to Armenia decried the agreement as encroachment.
The “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP) initiative, has historically been referred to as the Zangezur Corridor by the Turks and Azeris. Under the agreement, the US would sublease the land to a consortium that will develop rail, oil, gas, and fiber optic lines, as well as possibly electricity transmission, along the 43-kilometer (27 mile) route.
The Turkish take
Turkiye, long-time backers of Azerbaijan, have also wasted no time since the August 8th agreement in rapidly improving relations with Armenia. On September 12th, Turkish and Armenian officials held a ceremonial meeting at the border, which has been closed since 1993. As the seat of power of the Ottoman Empire which ruled them, Turkish-Armenian ties go deep, and a restoration of relations goes far beyond just helping to bring about the end of risk for open conflict in the South Caucasus.
“Everyone would benefit from peace, but Armenia would gain the most. Turkiye supports an accelerated normalization process,” said Turkiye’s Ambassador to Azerbaijan, Birol Akgun, in an interview with the Turkish APA News Agency.
Turkiye’s stated terms for reopening the border have already been met by the peace declaration signed in Washington, and indeed Turkish Special Envoy Serdar Kilic said in an interview on his way to the border ceremony that “there are no political obstacles; only technical preparations remain before concrete actions can be taken”.
Kilic met Ruben Rubinyan, Deputy Speaker of the Armenian National Assembly and special envoy for normalization efforts at the Margara border crossing, who had previously said he was “sure it is possible to achieve big results in a short period of time,” in normalizing with Turkiye.
A statement from Turkiye’s Foreign Ministry said normalization also included restarting Turkish-Armenian air routes, new international scholarship opportunities, and cooperation to restore the historic Silk Road bridge that spanned the two countries during the time of Ani, a medieval Armenian city ruin in the Turkish district of Kars just across the border that was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
A local history expert Vedat Akçayöz said that any border reopening would bring many Armenians to see this place, which he described as “Humanity’s common heritage”.
“Ani was Zoroastrian, Ani was shaman, Ani was pagan, Ani was Christian, Ani was Muslim, Ani was yours, Ani was ours,” he told AFP.
But Turkiye’s role in guaranteeing that this peace lasts goes far further than just reopening borders and airlines, writes South Caucasus scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Thomas de Waal.
“Ankara currently wants two things at the same time, and sooner or later it will have to choose,” de Waal wrote in the aftermath of the White House meeting. “Turkish interlocutors say they know that normalization with Armenia makes Türkiye a stronger player in the South Caucasus… and is good for impoverished eastern Turkish border regions. Yet they also say—and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is personally invested in this—that Azerbaijan is a close Turkic brother state and that they must defer to Baku before moving forward”.
A long hard road
“Moving forward” as de Waal describes it, is a big challenge, because the second of the two impediments to peace mentioned earlier is the internationally-recognized right-of-return under the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights: how to get Azerbaijan to permit those 100,000 Armenians to return to their homes in Artsakh.
There are some things that may need to happen somewhat simultaneously in order to do that. Despite the Azeri government rhetorically announcing that Armenian residents can return, there’s no indication this is happening. The agreement in Washington was divided between a declaration and an official agreement, the latter of which was only initialed and hasn’t yet entered into force. For it to do so, another demand on Armenia must be fulfilled: to amend her constitution to remove a reference to a united Armenia and Artsakh that Azerbaijan interprets as a territorial claim.
According to de Waal, Pashinyan’s political agenda is called “Real Armenia” which he contrasts to his opponents’ notion of “Historic Armenia”. The former presents as an open country at peace with a diversified economy, codependent on its neighbors and the wider world, and not on Russia. The latter he decries as a now-unattainable dream of historic land claims across hostile nations.
“He essentially tells voters that, having suffered major military defeats to Azerbaijan in 2020 and 2023, Armenia must now accept a new reality: that it must try to make peace with Azerbaijan and Türkiye, open its borders and connections to Europe, and free itself from a dangerous dependence on Russia,” de Waal wrote.
A constitutional amendment is a difficult process in any country at the best of times, and Pashinyan is lucky that his opponents are even less popular than he is. Next year is a parliamentary election, and if Pashinyan can demonstrate tangible dividends from his dramatic shift towards Real Armenia, he could very well garner the necessary numbers of supporters to pass an amendment, see the agreement fully signed, and move on to bigger and better things.
Already, Pashinyan has announced that discussions on the railway component of TRIPP are underway with the US. This would be a major accomplishment in international relations, and offer substantial encouragement to Turkiye and Azerbaijan that a peaceful South Caucasus is a future worth betting on.
And yet it would also be the very depths of ultimate defeat in the eyes of Armenia’s large diaspora in the US, who, like Pashinyan’s nationalist opponents at home, see the whole normalization process as capitulation. One sympathizes with the desire to see one’s opponents in war go unrewarded for their conquests.
One looks to history for a parity in the situation: a head of state that has offered the olive branch in the face of defeat, and done so much to both carry it and deliver it to the desk of the victor. It’s exceedingly rare; not even the Dalai Lama could do it, who engaged his countrymen to the CIA for conducting guerilla warfare against the Chinese. Nations have reconciled themselves after war, often decades later—for example with China and America vis-a-vis Vietnam.
In Ukraine there is an example of what can happen when countries incapable of winning a war engage in it rather than accept concessions. The pre-war population of Ukraine was 57 million. Today it is 20 million. More than half the population has died, gone missing, or fled from the country. It is no closer to regaining the territory claimed by Russia now than it was 2 years ago when the country’s armed forces were much more intact. Pashinyan may be capitulating to Aliyev. Time will tell whether his ultimate goal of a Real Armenia will come to pass, but he has rejected the path of struggle and rage, and even if it costs him his political career, it’s a reality that both his supporters and his critics must now navigate. WaL
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PICTURED ABOVE: Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev shakes hands with Donald Trump and Nikol Pashinyan. PC: the White House, via Flickr
