Azerbaijani expert mulls over Karabakh Armenian population's citizenship dilemma 

Director of the Institute of South Caucasus Studies Farhad Mammadov has been discoursing the dilemma of citizenship of ethnic Armenians living in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan on his Telegram channel.

"With the start of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict in 1988, a forced exchange of population between the two countries took place. Azerbaijanis living in the Armenian SSR took refuge in Azerbaijan after being expelled from their lands and were granted its citizenship. Armenians who had left Azerbaijan were granted citizenship in Armenia or in the countries to which they had emigrated. For Karabakh Armenians, however, the process took a different direction. They, while physically residing in the territory of Azerbaijan, simultaneously became citizens of Armenia. On December 1, 1989, the Supreme Soviet of the Armenian SSR passed a resolution on 'Reunification of the Armenian SSR and Nagorno-Karabakh'. This decree contradicted both the domestic legislation of the USSR and international law. The resolution of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated January 10, 1990, emphasized that the decision of the Supreme Soviet of the Armenian SSR contradicts the Constitution of the USSR. However, this decision still retains legal force in the domestic legislation of Armenia. This act was not only an illegal annexation of the territories of Azerbaijan but also conditioned the acceptance of Armenian citizenship by the Armenian population of Karabakh.

The Constitution of Armenia has an indirect reference to the annexation decree. The resolution of 1989 was also referred to by the Court of Armenia in 2003. In 2003, for example, a group of opposition politicians filed a lawsuit against then-President Robert Kocharyan. The claim was that, according to the constitution, Kocharyan could not hold the office of the country's president. According to the Constitution, a presidential candidate must be a person "permanently residing in the Republic for the last 10 years." At the time, the court cited the resolution of 1989 and ruled that 'since Nagorno-Karabakh is legally part of Armenia, R. Kocharyan meets this constitutional requirement'.

Now Armenia's claim about its citizens illegally residing on the territory of another state is absurd. Before discussing the rights of the Armenian population of Karabakh as citizens of Azerbaijan, Yerevan should first declare through its officials that these people are not citizens of Armenia. To do this, legislative steps should be taken to invalidate the 1989 decree and all of its legal and particularly civil implications.

The Armenians of Hadrut, as well as Armenians in other parts of Karabakh, are now facing difficulties precisely because of Armenia's policy. They are in a legal vacuum. Legally they cannot be recognised as refugees. Under international law, refugees are citizens who have been forced to emigrate to a country of which they are not citizens. These people were once granted Armenian citizenship through the above scheme and are now in their country of citizenship. Under international law, they cannot be considered forced migrants (IDPs) either. Because IDPs are people who have been forced to migrate within the borders of their own state. Karabakh is not Armenia!

As a result, Armenians in both Hadrut and other regions of Karabakh were faced with a dilemma: to continue to live quietly as Armenian citizens or to try to prove that they are citizens of Azerbaijan and not Armenia in order to obtain refugee status. In order to return to live in Azerbaijan, they again need to prove that they are not citizens of Armenia or any other country, as Azerbaijani legislation does not accept dual citizenship. After this, according to the legislation, they should apply to the relevant state structures in Azerbaijan. If the Armenian leadership wishes to help this group, it can formally revoke their citizenship. In this case, they will be legally considered apatride or stateless until they obtain citizenship of Azerbaijan or any other country," Mammadov wrote.