Turkish professor Mehmet Sukru Guzel, who is the founder president of the Center for Peace and Reconciliation Studies has presented analytical article to Eurasia Diary portal regarding the provocative attacks of the Armenian armed forces against Azerbaijan. 

Unfortunately once again illegally stationed armed forces of Armenia on Azerbaijan's occupied territories had violated the ceasefire on 27 September 2020 and launched a massive artillery attack targeting residential areas, as well as the armed forces of Azerbaijan along the line of contact. Just in one shelling of a house in Naftalan region of Azerbaijan five members of the same family, including children, were killed by Armenian forces.  Armenia especially targets civilians when violates the ceasefire to make fear among the civilians as a state policy for years after the establishment of ceasefire in 1994 to make another ethnic cleansing.

What I do believe is that the massive artillery attack of Armenian military was this time a military answer to the peaceful speech of the Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev in the UN last week. President Ilham Aliyev expressed his concern on the inactivity of OSCE Minsk Group and the strengthening of aggression in Armenia against Azerbaijan in his address at the general debates of 75th session of the UN General Assembly. According to him, negotiations must not be conducted just for the sake of negotiations, they must be target-oriented and meaningful.

Now let’s remember OSCE Minsk Group. The OSCE Minsk Group was created by the Conference on Security and Cooperation in 1992 to provide a political solution and a peaceful settlement to the dispute, over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, between Azerbaijan and Armenia. But in reality, the OSCE Minsk Group is being used to bypass the UN Security Council resolutions by Armenia till this time. Resolution 822 (1993) adopted by the UN Security Council on 30 April 1993 in its first operative paragraph asked for all occupying forces to withdraw from the Kelbadjar district and other recently occupied areas of Azerbaijan and in its second operative paragraph  urged the parties concerned immediately to resume negotiations for the resolution of the conflict within the framework of the peace process of the Minsk Group of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and refrain from any action that will obstruct a peaceful solution of the problem. Armenia uses the UN Security Council resolution 822`s second operative paragraph`s addressing the OSCE Minsk Group as the place to find a peaceful solution for the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as black hole and does not to respect UN Security Council resolution 822 and afterward resolutions till today. After UN Security Council resolution 822, Armenia has seizured additional territories of Azerbaijan by force. There are the UN Security Council resolutions of 853 (1993) of 29 July 1993 and 874 (1993) of 14 October 1993 which addressed the peace settlement to be achieved by the OSCE Minsk Group and by which Armenia has managed to bypass the UN Security Council resolutions’ operative paragraph related to withdrawal of the forces from the occupied Azerbaijan territories and in contrast occupied more territories.

When President Ilham Aliyev expressed his concern on the inactivity of OSCE Minsk Group at the general debates of 75th session of the UN General Assembly, in fact President Ilham Aliyev called the UN for action under its obligations arising from the UN Charter. Armenia has become the occupying power in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, as well as in the surrounding districts of Aghdam, Jabrail, Fuzuli, Kalbajar, Gubadli, Lachin and Zangilan of Azerbaijan by using proxy forces and a puppet so-called body. The European Court of Human Rights has accepted that it is clear from multiple reports and statements that Armenian military support “has been - and continues to be - decisive for the occupation of and continued control over the territories in issue, and the evidence, not least the 1994 ceasefire agreement, convincingly shows that the armed forces of Armenia and the puppet body that is Armenian overall control over de facto local authorities and  exert effective control over the territory of Azerbaijan”.

The failure of the OSCE Minsk Group to achieve peace in the last decades and being used as a legal shield by Armenia for its political road map to colonize Azerbaijan territory in reality nullifies the operative paragraphs of the past UN Security Council`s  address of the peaceful solution to be achieved by the OSCE Minsk Group. The failure of the OSCE Minsk Group violates the right to return back of the victims of ethnic cleansing of the 1 million Azerbaijan refugees. In contrast, Armenia tries to realize its political agenda by using OSCE Minsk Group as a legal shield in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan to promote the settlement of colonialist Armenians; bringing ethnic Armenians from Syria and Lebanon in violation of the UN Security Council resolutions. This reality is an enough reason for Azerbaijan to ask for a new UN Security Council resolution without addressing the OSCE Minsk Group for the liberation of Azerbaijan territories from the occupying Armenian military and ask a new operative paragraph addressing the UN Peacebuilding Architecture for the peaceful solution of the ongoing conflict subject to the 2020 Report of the Secretary-General on Peacebuilding and Sustaining Peace.

I should also add that Azerbaijan has all its rights arising from Article 51 of the United Nations Charter for self-defense including preventive measures.

We should remind that impunity for all the war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide is the state policy of Armenia. Armenia is a party to the four 1949 Geneva Conventions under international humanitarian law as well under international human rights law to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights, and the European Convention on Human Rights. Armenia remains bound by its international human rights law obligations in the territory it occupies. Azerbaijan can open a criminal court against not only the Armenian military personal for the gross violations of war crimes but as well to the President of Armenia for his responsibility of not preventing these crimes under the constitution of Armenia. This criminal court can well be organized by the UN` related bodie