Another perspective regarding the 2020 War in Karabakh: The relationship between a frozen conflict and securitization

Abstract

One of the most critical disputes in the Post-Soviet space is the long-lasting Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia. While this issue has long been regarded as a land-based dispute to a large extent, it can also be stated from the securitization perspective that it is a conflict inherent in ethnic identity. The proposed way to solve a problem in the securitization approach is the desecuritization of the issue. However, negotiations conducted by the Minsk Group on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which were initiated within the framework of the OSCE, did not yield any results. In this context, the process of resolving the issue through negotiations, in other words, desecuritization, failed. This has led to the re-securitization of the problem and paved the way for taking extraordinary measures to come to a solution. The final military confrontation experienced in 2020 has also been triggered specifically by this approach.

Does the Offence– Defence Theory Explain War Onset Between Small States? Causes and Consequences of the 2020–2023 Armenia–Azerbaijan War

“…While the authors have valid reasons, they fail to explain why the 2016 April clashes did not transform into a full-scale war, but 2020 did. Others explain in the context of securitisation theory and argue that ‘the failure of the negotiation process (de-securitisation) is considered to pave the way for military confrontation (securitisation)’ (Kurt & Tüysüzoğlu, 2022, p. 153). Indeed, it is true that the failure to resolve conflict by peaceful means created the potential for war, but the failure of negotiations occurred in the first decade of the 2000s.…”