Immediately after the November 9, 2020 trilateral announcement, that statement was assessed in Armenian political and expert circles as a capitulation agreement. Although the representatives of the government counter that it was not a capitulation, the opposition figures and deputies continue to call Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan a capitulator in their rhetoric, and our country has been capitulated.
The same words are written in the media referring to those who make these expressions. Recently, during Petros Ghazaryan’s Public Debate program on Public TV, Tigran Hakobyan, the president of the RAU, said, “Capitulation and the word capitulator have been circulating for a year. We did not capitulate, we just lost the war. Japan and Germany capitulated, and they capitulated only because they were once aggressors. When we consider ourselves capitulators, we seem to indirectly admit that we have really been an aggressor. Pieces are taken from the capitulated country, and they almost divided Germany in half. By considering ourselves capitulated, we put ourselves among the aggressor countries, which Azerbaijan aspires to.”
Aravot tried to find the legal explanation of the word capitulation, as well as what the definition is from the point of view of international law. We found only the historical explanation of the word capitulation on the Internet on the websites of prestigious foreign universities. In a conversation with Aravot, lawyer Ara Ghazaryan, a specialist in international law, explained that capitulation is not a legal category. It can be said that it is a historical category because in law, it is considered that there will be no war after the Second World War, and the UN Charter stipulates that states must solve their problems peacefully.
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“In other words, the UN Charter rules out the possibility of war. If it rules out, of course, capitulation as a legal category, there is no end to the war. The end of the war is announced by the peace treaty signed between the states. Instead of war, the terms armed conflict are used. Although the word ‘war’ is used in some documents, the modern world considers that war cannot be offensive, it can be counter-offensive, but it is in the general defense doctrine. After all this, the word ‘capitulation’ is not used as a legal category because it is not considered a legal process,” says the lawyer.
Saying capitulation can not have any legal consequences, and Armenia especially will not be considered an aggressor at the international level. It is just rhetoric. And the notion of aggressive war, as Ghazaryan mentions, is a legal category, which is now attributed to Azerbaijan. It is afraid of that term, and it claims in every way that the attacker was not Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan says that the Armenians attacked, then they counterattacked.
“They have a very good idea that this war and its legitimacy are in question. The aggressive war’s goal was expansion, ethnic cleansing in all its forms, the destruction of the historical and cultural heritage, the physical annihilation of the citizens, and so on.” Ghazaryan explains that this is why Azerbaijan is afraid to cross the border and go deeper into our state, because it is assessed as expansion, and no country or structure in the world can ignore it- it is forbidden. That is why Azerbaijan creates a controversial border issue over how it is their border.
Nelly BABAYAN
