The idea of the «Zangezur Corridor» was formally consolidated in the trilateral online statement of November 9, 2020, and subsequent declarations by the leaders of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Russia.

Background

The Zangezur Corridor is a proposed transport route connecting the main territory of Azerbaijan with its ally, Türkiye, via its Nakhichevan exclave.

The history of the issue of the Zangezur path dates back to 1918, when the British-Turkish project of the ‘Grand Game’ with access to Western Turkestan took real shape in the conditions of the collapse of the Russian Empire following the First World War and revolutionary upheavals.

In 1918-1920, the Russian Transcaucasia turned out to be a political field of regular experiments of the formation of national subjects with arbitrary borders. It was Zangezur with Karabakh that provided the Turks with the shortest path of access to the ‘Turkic world’ against the interests of Russia, Persia and China. In June, 1918, Turkish General Vehib Pasha directly warned the head of the Armenian delegation at the Batum Conference, Alexander Khatisyan, about this.

Meanwhile, following the results of two interventions in Transcaucasia (in 1918 and 1920), the Turks failed to establish control over the Armenian region of Zangezur, where they were faced with fiercel resistance (and not without the support of Persia). Tehran was categorically opposed to the British-Turkish Turan project, which would create a strategic threat to the territorial integrity and security of the Persian state.

Following the results of the Moscow Conference (February-March, 1921), Bolshevik Russia left this region as part of the Armenian SSR on the condition of the transfer of two Armenian provinces (Nakhichevan and Nagorno-Karabakh) to Azerbaijan with the right to autonomy.

The topic of Zangezur in the context of a ‘transport corridor’ has again been put on the agenda of secret and public diplomacy after the collapse of the USSR and the actualization of the Armenian-Azeri conflict over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh. So, in 1993, the Meghri district of the Syunik region of Armenia became the main direction of Azerbaijan’s offensive to enter Nakhichevan and block Karabakh. However, the Azeri army’s offensive in the south failed and led to new territorial losses.

In 1996-1999, the United States, as part of a project by RAND Corporation employee Paul Goble, proposed a territorial exchange option between Armenia and Azerbaijan (particularly the transfer of the........

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