The Armenia-Azerbaijan Narrative Few Wanted to Acknowledge

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Almost seventeen years ago, in December 2008, I worked with a film crew shooting a documentary on the Armenia and Azerbaijan conflict for Al Jazeera English.

Given the often cookie-cutter approach international media tends to take, amplifying the negative while rarely acknowledging anything constructive, the experience was actually refreshing. Michael Andersen, the journalist behind the film, did indeed interview government officials in both Yerevan and Baku. However, we also explored perspectives often ignored such as an experimental school in Yerevan run by Ashot Bleyan, a former education minister under Armenia’s first president, Levon Ter-Petrosyan.

His Mkhitar Sebastatsi Educational Complex had already caused some controversy a year earlier in 2007 when the late peacebuilder Georgi Vanyan staged his Days of Azerbaijan at the school. A small group of nationalist bloggers briefly disrupted the event, but the children themselves were open and curious about the guests visiting from Baku. Critical, out-of-the-box thinking was central to how they were taught. This wasn’t even about textbooks, an issue that will have to be discussed by the ministries of education of both countries once peace is formally established, but the ability to freely discuss among themselves.

Moreover, Michael told me, after Armenia he planned to travel to a village just across the border in Georgia where ethnic Armenians and Azerbaijanis lived side by side in peace. It was a revelation. Even after a decade in Armenia, not a single civil society actor had ever mentioned this reality yet it was easily in reach for anyone travelling from Yerevan to Tbilisi. The government, forever entrenched in the logic of “ethnic incompatibility” first articulated by former president Robert Kocharyan in 2003, certainly wasn’t going to acknowledge it.

The following year, in 2009, I had to finally visit Tsopi, the village in question. Most Armenian journalists, as is still largely the case today, showed no interest so I invited two young journalists from Azerbaijan and a Georgian blogger along for the ride. The reality on the ground was exactly as Michael had described. The footage he and his cameraman shot also remains as relevant now as it did back then. The conflict was political and not ethnic or religious. With an ethnic Azerbaijani majority and ethnic Armenian minority, residents spoke each other’s languages, the children helped each other with their homework, and both groups lived as though the conflict had simply passed them by. The neighbouring village of Khojorni mirrored this arrangement but with the demographics reversed.

In the early 2010s, Thomas de Waal saw my work and reached out, keen to visit for the second edition of Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War. This was hardly surprising. In the early 2000s, on the recommendation of Thomas Goltz, de Waal had also asked me to accompany him on his first research trip to Karabakh for the book. Several stories contained within came from that or the introductions I made for him from my own work.

I had to decline taking him to Tsopi, but since 2009, I have returned to both villages regularly, documenting them through photography, video, and writing. I have also encouraged others to visit, most recently Azerbaijani commentator Konul Shahin with whom I recently produced a joint report on coexistence for the Topchubashov Centre in Baku. All this work has prompted further research by scholars who learned about the villages through that material.

Over time, it has since expanded to cover the markets of Tbilisi, other cohabited villages in Georgia, and the predominantly ethnic Azerbaijani town of Marneuli, where I still document Novruz regularly. For a period, I admit I was sceptical that any ethnic Armenians lived in Marneuli until chance encounters proved otherwise. Even in a majority ethnic Azerbaijani populated part of Georgia through which most of Armenia’s trade passes, even more examples of coexistence emerged. Sadly, conflict narratives had become so entrenched that this reality was ignored, criticised, or undermined by those unwilling to accept such examples. Even some international commentators, ostensibly supportive of the peace process, acted similarly, inadvertently perpetuating those same conflict narratives instead.

There were some exceptions, however, though mainly from Azerbaijanis who responded positively. In 2017, for example, Hikmet Hajiyev, then spokesperson for Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry, introduced himself at an OSCE reception in Tbilisi and thanked me for this work. That is why, incidentally, I take his words seriously when he speaks today of peaceful coexistence.

Arnold Stepanian, head of the Public Movement Multinational Georgia, has since confirmed that even during the 44-day war in 2020, ethnic Armenians and Azerbaijanis accustomed to regular contact continued to maintain social ties. This arguably offers an important lesson going forward. People-to-people contact matters. What we are now witnessing is a gradual shift driven not by policy papers, but by new realities that emerged organically. This means villagers, farmers, and ordinary people who want nothing more than to live in peace and provide for their families. This was also borne out by Georgi Vanyan’s Tekali Process in the early 2010s – an initiative that brought together participants from throughout Armenia and Azerbaijan in an ethnic Azerbaijani village in Georgia on the intersection with its two South Caucasus neighbours.

That is not to say researchers and analysts should not meet but prioritising them while excluding real communities always seemed doomed to failure. That is why the recent Bridge of Peace initiative is a welcome development. It has already facilitated direct contact between delegations, largely composed of analysts, with ordinary people in both Yerevan and Baku. Crucially, it also recognises the need to later include border communities and the mass media. This is something that many civil society initiatives, despite possessing the resources, did not do. They also took place with little to no transparency or public engagement save for a few exceptions that can be counted on one hand.

More importantly, this new semi-official initiative is organic and genuinely bilateral, free from the interference of external actors sometimes more interested in politicising and influencing engagement rather than simply facilitating it.

The lesson from these villages is not theoretical and nor is it emotional. It is actual, pragmatic, and has been sustained over time. Long before other actors reluctantly turned to the topic of coexistence, ordinary Armenians and Azerbaijanis were doing it themselves – quietly, pragmatically, and without slogans or publicity. That reality was ignored not because it was weak, but because it challenged the dominant conflict narratives on which too many had come to depend.

The future of Armenian–Azerbaijani relations depends less on these flawed frameworks of the past than on finally listening to people on the ground, including in the regions, that have already demonstrated coexistence is possible in their everyday lives.

The Bridge of Peace initiative is well placed to build upon that reality in 2026, and especially to engage wider society. If alternative and positive narratives can finally take their rightful place centre-stage, perhaps more difficult issues can eventually be discussed in earnest. Having covered the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict on the ground since 1994, and having experienced the ebbs and flows of the negotiation process throughout that period, it is about time.

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