Diplomacy!

If you’ve paid any attention to the news lately, you might have noticed that there have been some possibly inflammatory remarks launching from Armenia and Azerbaijan.  This is exciting.  First, Turkey and Armenia had discussions and agreements about reopening borders and warming diplomatic relations.  Then, Azerbaijan got worried because Turkey has always sort of been on Azerbaijan’s side with the land dispute in Karabakh.  Turkey reassured Azerbaijan of their stance, but now a new round of talks about Nagorno-Karabakh are taking place.

So far, what we’ve heard is that Azerbaijan is making some trumped up statement about using military force to retake it’s land in the west, and now Armenia is making another trumped up statement about formally recognizing Nagorno-Karabakh as an independent territory. We ain’t playing with toys, here, kids.

This is actually really exciting.  My prediction is that very little changes after these talks, and I’m most certainly not interested in armed conflict while I’m hanging out in the country.  I’m curious to see where it all goes.  The next round of talks will be the sixth set.  Some people have postulated that there has really just been a tacit agreement to wait and let the “next generation” of people vote on the Nagorno-Karabakh issue.  That’s sort of a strange tack to turn on, so we’ll see what happens after these “peace negotiations.”