Armenia’s Parliament Speaker Calls Return of Artsakh Armenians a ‘Conflict-Generating’ Goal, Says Armenia Must Accept ‘Current Reality’ for 100 Years of Peace

Armenia should not make the return of displaced Armenians to Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) an official state goal because it could reopen the logic of conflict with Azerbaijan, National Assembly Speaker Ruben Rubinyan said during a parliamentary debate.

Rubinyan made the remarks while responding to opposition lawmakers who argued that recent agreements with Azerbaijan do not address the roots of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict.

He said the conflict should not be viewed as beginning in 1988 with the Karabakh movement, but as part of a much longer history dating back to the Armenian-Tatar clashes of 1905.

According to Rubinyan, two factors repeatedly fueled violence between Armenians and Azerbaijanis: mixed settlement across the same geographic areas and the role of larger powers seeking influence in the South Caucasus.

He cited Bosnia, Cyprus, Kosovo and North Macedonia as examples of places where ethnic communities living in the same territory have faced prolonged political and security disputes.

Rubinyan also linked major periods of Armenian-Azerbaijani violence to moments of regional upheaval. He noted that the 1905 clashes came as the Russian Empire was dealing with revolution and defeat in the Russo-Japanese War. Fighting intensified again after Armenia and Azerbaijan became independent republics in 1918, before Soviet rule largely froze the conflict.

He said a similar pattern returned in the late 1980s as the Soviet Union weakened.

Rubinyan also pointed to the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey, arguing that the creation of more compact national majorities helped prevent another ethnic war between the two states.

He said Armenia and Azerbaijan now face a different demographic reality after decades of war and displacement.

“We Armenians live in the Republic of Armenia, together with our Yazidi, Kurdish, Assyrian and Russian sisters and brothers, as well as our dear sisters and brothers from Karabakh, who are not guests here at all but are in their homeland, while Azerbaijanis live in Azerbaijan,” Rubinyan said.

He argued that trying to restore the previous pattern of settlement could recreate the conditions that contributed to earlier conflict.

“If we do not want to revive the cause of the conflict, then we should not restore or talk about restoring the architecture that would bring us back to roughly the same situation as in 1905,” he said.

Rubinyan drew a distinction between the personal desire of a displaced Armenian to return home and making that return a formal objective of the Armenian government.

He said such a desire could be understandable and justified on a human level, referring specifically to MP Arega Hovsepyan.

“She may say, ‘I want to go to my home,’” Rubinyan said. “But when you formulate this as a state objective, it means reviving the logic of conflict.”

He described calls for the return of Karabakh Armenians as “conflict-generating” when framed as state policy.

“We propose acknowledging the current situation, moving forward and ensuring 100 years of peace,” Rubinyan said.

The remarks address one of the most sensitive questions left unresolved after Azerbaijan’s September 2023 offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh, which was followed by the departure of the region’s Armenian population to Armenia. The future status and possible return of displaced Armenians remain central to the wider debate over the consequences of the conflict and the terms of a lasting Armenian-Azerbaijani settlement.

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