More than two months after the Washington declaration, Tatev Hayrapetyan examines the widening gap between Baku’s diplomatic vows with on-the-ground reality: inflammatory rhetoric, sham trials, expansionist “Western Azerbaijan” narratives and divergent TRIPP talk signaling a performative peace narrative.

Despite agreeing to the text of a peace treaty in March, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev refuses to sign, escalating demands while promoting expansionist ideology and intensifying militarization in a calculated strategy to avoid reconciliation and prolong regional instability for political gain.

Azerbaijan has institutionalized the notion that Armenia is “Western Azerbaijan” through state-sanctioned textbooks, children’s literature, and academic curricula. Intensified since the 2020 war, this narrative reflects expansionist ambitions that extend beyond Nagorno-Karabakh—even as peace talks continue.

The sham trials of Nagorno-Karabakh’s former leaders and other Armenian prisoners in Baku expose Azerbaijan’s state-sponsored hatred against Armenians, fueling animosity, obstructing peace efforts and reinforcing Aliyev’s authoritarian grip.

Escalating his anti-Armenian rhetoric at COP 29, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev also broadened his attacks on Western institutions. Coupling state propaganda with inflammatory speeches, he framed the West as complicit in regional instability and intensifying tensions to deflect attention from his authoritarian regime.

A recent resurgence of inflammatory rhetoric and aggressive propaganda against Armenians by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, accompanied by a firm rejection of peaceful dialogue, raise significant concerns for stability in the South Caucasus. Tatevik Hayrapetyan explains.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's unyielding defiance against international criticism, and the West's failure to impose consequences emboldens his regime, setting a dangerous precedent for authoritarian leaders globally, writes Tatev Hayrapetyan.

Allegations against European institutions of being Islamophobic, a serious assertion by Azerbaijan, is part of a much larger anti-West campaign which is often insufficiently understood and analyzed by Western partners, writes Tatev Hayrapetyan.

Why did Aliyev call for snap presidential elections? What does this mean for the Armenia-Azerbaijan “peace process”? Tatevik Hayrapetyan writes that we may see a more aggressive and dangerous Azerbaijan, particularly if the West chooses to withdraw from the peace talks.

President Ilham Aliyev consistently delivered speeches full of hateful rhetoric directed at the Armenian people as the blockade of Artsakh was ongoing and even after the ethnic cleansing of the Armenians. Tatevik Hayrapetyan provides a compilation of some of Aliyev’s statements from the past year.