NAGORNO-KARABAKH: SEPARATISM AND ELECTORAL LEGITIMACY
Abstract
The conflict known throughout the world as the “Nagorno-Karabakh” conflict arose during the disintegration of the U.S.S.R. The situation that had taken shape in the Soviet Un-ion at that time was conducive to the emergence of this conflict, while the confrontation over Nagorno-Karabakh, encouraged by the country’s authorities led by Mikhail Gorbachev, served as a catalyst of centrifugal processes, triggering off numerous ethnic and territorial conflicts in the post-Soviet space and transforming the evolutionary process of the U.S.S.R.’s disintegration into a revolutionary breakup.
The active phase of the conflict started in February 1988, when the separatist forces of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region (NKAR) of the Azerbaijan Republic, instigated by the Republic of Armenia, began to organize rallies, strikes and other civil disobedience actions, seeking a secession of the region from the Azerbaijan Republic and its incorporation into the Re-public of Armenia. Ethnic cleansing of Azeris started in that Union republic of the U.S.S.R. and in the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, with the creation of monoethnic Armenian areas.1 As a result of the first stage of the conflict, the parliament of the Republic of Armenia took a decision to incorporate the NKAR into the Republic of Armenia, whereas the Azerbaijan Republic abolished the NKAR and extended its uniform administrative-territorial division to that territory.2
The conflict moved into the phase of armed hostilities in late 1991 and early 1992, when the U.S.S.R. had ceased to exist and the last legal and organizational (except international legal) barriers to the forcible annexation of Nagorno-Karabakh by the Republic of Armenia had been removed.
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References
See: The Conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh Re-gion Dealt with by the OSCE Minsk Conference. Resolution 1416 (2005) of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe [http://assembly.coe.int/Documents/AdoptedText/
A05/ERES1416.htm], 22 August, 2005.
See: “Ob uprazdnenii Nagorno-Karabakhskoi av-tonomnoi oblasti Azerbaidzhanskoi Respubliki. Zakon Az-erbaidzhanskoi Respubliki ot 26 noiabria 1991 goda,” (On the Abolition of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Re-gion of the Azerbaijan Republic. Law of the Azerbaijan Republic of 26 November, 1991), Vedomosti Verkhovnogo Soveta Azerbaidzhanskoi Respubliki, No. 24, 1991, p. 448.
See: S.L. Utchenko, Politicheskie uchenia Drevnego Rima, Moscow, 1977, p. 41.
See: Prava cheloveka v mezhdunarodnom i vnutrigosudarstvennom prave, ed. by Editor-in-Chief Prof. R.M. Valeev,Kazan State University, Kazan, 2004, p. 9.
See: Aristotle, Afinskaia politika, Moscow, 1996, pp. 17-18.
See, for example: Teoria gosudarstva i prava. Kurs lektsi, ed. by M.N. Marchenko, Zertsalo, TEIS, Moscow, 1996,pp. 23-39; Osnovy teorii gosudarstva i prava. Uchebnoie posobie, ed. by S.S. Alekseev, Yuridicheskaia Literatura Publishers,Moscow, 1971, pp. 38-41.
See: “Karabakhski konflikt: vzgliad izvne,” Zerkalo, 13 August, 2005, p. 9; “Polnyi tekst doklada ministra oboro-ny Armenii na parlamentskikh slushaniakh po probleme Nagornogo Karabakha” [http://www.regnum.ru.news/437271.html],22 August, 2005, etc.
See: “Zakon SSSR ‘O poryadke reshenia voprosov sviazannykh s vykhodom soiuznoi respubliki iz SSSR,’
erkhovnyi Sovet SSSR 3 aprelia 1990,” Vedomosti Syezda narodnykh deputatov SSSR i Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR,No. 15, 1990.
See: Art 3 of the said Law.
See: “Polnyi tekst doklada ministra oborony Armenii na parlamentskikh slushaniakh po probleme Nagornogo Karabakha.”
See: Art 3 of the said Law.
See: Arts 3-12 of the said Law.
For more detail, see: Art 7 of the Law of 3 April, 1990.
See: “Ob uprazdnenii Nagorno-Karabakhskoi avtonomnoi oblasti Azerbaidzhanskoi Respubliki. Zakon Azerbaid-zhanskoi Respubliki ot 26 noiabria 1991 goda,” (On the Abolition of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region of the Azerbaijan Republic. Law of the Azerbaijan Republic of 26 November, 1991), Vedomosti Verkhovnogo Soveta Azerbaid-zhanskoi Respubliki, No. 24, 1991, p. 448.
See: R. Orudzhev, “Separatisty uporno gotoviatsia k ‘prozrachnym vyboram’,” Ekho, 18 June, 2005, p. 5.
See, for example: “SShA i YeS podderzhivaiut territorialnuiu tselostnost Azerbaidzhana, Gruzii i Moldovy” [http://
www.day.az/news/politics/21037.html], 17 August, 2005 (22 August, 2005); “Chyi interesy obsluzhivaet MID RF v Za-kavkazie?” [http://www.panarmenian.net/library/rus/?id=71], 17 August, 2005 (22 August, 2005).
See, for example: G. Movsesian, “Nagornyi Karabakh: pravo na vybory,” Erkir (Armenia), 13 August, 2004.
See, for example: Iu. Merzliakov, “Rossia ne priznaiot nezavisimost Nagornogo Karabakha” [http://www.day.az/
ews/armenia/26932.html], 17 August, 2005 (22 August, 2005); “Chyi interesy obsluzhivaet MID RF v Zakavkazie?”
See, for example: “Frantsia priznala nelegitimnymi vybory v ‘parlament NKR’” [http://www.day.az/print/news/
rmenia/26925.html], 17 August, 2005 (22 August, 2005).
See: “Chyi interesy obsluzhivaet MID RF v Zakavkazie?”
Ibidem.
See: “Prevratitsia li Karabakh v Kosovo?” [www.regnum.ru/news/476020.html], 22 August, 2005.
See: “Frantsia priznala nelegitimnymi vybory v ‘parlament NKR’.”
“Karabakhski izlom. Interviu s Davidom Shahnazarianom,” Washington Profile, No. 102 (502), 10 November, 2004 [http://www.washprofile.org/WPF-2004/WPF%2011.10.04.html], 22 November, 2005.
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