Political analyst Farhad Mammadov says Azerbaijan’s recent historical references – such as President Ilham Aliyev’s remark that Lake Sevan appeared on imperial-era maps as “Goycha” – are part of a scholarly debate, not a signal of territorial claims.
The practical agenda, he argues, is unchanged: recognition of borders, a signed peace treaty, and everyday connectivity that lets “people return not on tanks, but in cars.”
Speaking to Factor TV, Mammadov urged both sides to treat competing historical narratives as an academic contest, not a policy guide.
“Every neighbor has its version of history,” he noted, but present-day policy should be built around the Washington principles: mutual recognition of territorial integrity, a demarcated border, and steady de-escalation.
On detained Armenian nationals in Azerbaijan, Mammadov pushed back on terms like “POWs” or “hostages,” saying Baku has not set exchange conditions. Cases, he said, fall into two groups – those already sentenced and those still on trial – and any humanitarian moves will depend on the broader climate of trust as well as domestic opinion, where these individuals remain potent symbols of the war years. The point, he added, is that justice tracks law while diplomacy builds room for future gestures.
He framed the opening of rail transit as the most tangible proof that the region is already collecting “dividends of peace.”
After Baku lifted restrictions, grain trains from Russia and Kazakhstan began moving to Armenia via Azerbaijan and Georgia. That shift matters, Mammadov argued, because it breaks with the zero-sum reflex: not everything that benefits Armenia is automatically bad for Azerbaijan. Whether the list of goods and routes expands will hinge on locking in the operating regime for the new overland link – what he called the “trip” documentation for road and rail.
Zooming out, Mammadov said the bilateral track boosts the sovereignty of both countries and helps the South Caucasus shed a decades-old “conflict-management” business model shaped by outside players.
He sketched a pragmatic regionalism built around two layers: shared principles of non-hostility, and project-based coalitions (“coalitions of the willing”) around concrete infrastructure – railways, power cables, logistics arteries—that create everyday incentives against relapse.
The near-term political marker, in his view, is Armenia’s parliamentary election and any follow-on constitutional process. Even if technical timelines slip, a government program that reaffirms the peace course would keep momentum – much like the Irish process, where implementation advanced while individual provisions awaited formal triggers.
For now, he said, the public’s long-bred skepticism on both sides will ease only through “many decisions, statements, and actions” – not slogans.
Mammadov’s takeaway from his visit to Yerevan was deliberately modest: direct conversations help. The more experts and institutions explain their positions face-to-face – and learn to disagree without trying to collapse talks—the easier it becomes to park historical disputes in lecture halls and move trade, travel, and legal cooperation onto the front burner.
Quietly, a new normal is testing itself on the rails. If the trains keep running and the border stays calm, peace will look less like an aspiration and more like a habit – one measured in schedules kept, paperwork standardized, and the simple fact that neighbors have more to gain by shipping goods than rehearsing grudges.
