Corridor Rhetoric vs. Sovereignty: Armenia’s Tightrope with Azerbaijani Claims

Armenia says peace is here; Azerbaijan keeps speaking as if passage is owed. That contradiction sits at the center of Yerevan’s most delicate moment in years, where every word about corridors and routes doubles as a test of sovereignty.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has been pushing a sweeping reset—his “Fourth Republic” vision — arguing that a fragile calm with Baku has opened space for big reforms. He points to the August 8 Washington summit with US President Donald Trump, which produced a declaration and a draft peace text, as proof that a corner has been turned. The declaration introduced the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, or TRIPP: a road, a railway and possibly energy lines across southern Armenia linking Azerbaijan to Nakhichevan, with the United States holding exclusive rights over those assets. On paper, Yerevan insists, nothing in those documents surrenders jurisdiction or creates an extraterritorial strip. In practice, the optics have been messy because President Ilham Aliyev keeps calling it the “Zangezur corridor,” a term that in Armenia reads like a territorial claim.

That is why Pashinyan used his UN podium time to swat down the phrase. He said it appears nowhere in the Washington documents and asked Aliyev to explain what exactly he means, because inside Armenia the language tracks with conflict, not reconciliation. Aliyev’s choice of words lands especially hard after years of pressure for a corridor outside Armenian control, and it lets Armenian opposition parties argue that the “peace” narrative is built on sand. They say a treaty that hinges on changing Armenia’s constitution and leaves core modalities vague doesn’t reduce coercion; it risks normalizing it. Pashinyan counters that the demarcation commissions are finally producing signed documents, the peace text was initialed in Washington, and there have been no cross-border casualties for more than a year. He even joined Aliyev in proposing Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, framing the Washington process as a breakthrough rather than a trap.

The domestic backdrop is just as tense as the regional one. Pashinyan’s political project isn’t only about a new constitutional order; it is also about shedding symbols that feed irredentist readings of Armenia’s identity. The decision to remove Mount Ararat from border stamps starting November 1, 2025, along with scrubbing Ararat references from his party materials, signaled a clean rhetorical break with the past. Many applaud the sobriety; many more see capitulation dressed as modernization. The split is sharpened by a public feud with the Armenian Apostolic Church. After mass protests led by Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan in 2024 over border demarcation, Pashinyan openly called for the removal of Catholicos Garegin II. In a country where the Church remains one of the most trusted institutions, that move risks turning a constitutional reform campaign into a broader crisis of legitimacy ahead of the 2026 elections.

All of that collides with a hyperactive foreign policy designed to minimize strategic loneliness. Yerevan is deepening work with Washington on a civilian nuclear “123 Agreement,” anchoring cooperation to non-proliferation rules and the August 8 memoranda. It is polishing its rule-of-law credentials with Strasbourg, talking EU alignment and even passing a law to start an accession process as a reform engine whether Brussels approves or not. Pashinyan highlights regular dialogue with Türkiye and newly opened diplomatic channels with Pakistan, and he insists relations with Iran and Georgia remain “brotherly,” both for trade and for strategic redundancy. The government keeps a hand in the 3+3 regional format with Russia, Türkiye and Iran, even as it courts China with a strategic partnership and seeks thicker ties to India, Japan, the Middle East and Central Asia. Hosting a NATO Parliamentary Assembly seminar in Yerevan and sending defense officials to high-visibility events like NATO Days in Ostrava add Western optics without a formal security bid. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan is busy too — deepening military links in Belarus, showcasing its officer corps to foreign attaches, and drilling in computer-assisted command exercises — reminding everyone that leverage in this neighborhood is built as much in staff colleges as in conference rooms.

The sovereignty stakes around TRIPP are the hinge on which all this balancing turns. If the passage looks or feels extraterritorial — if Armenian customs, police and emergency powers are limited in practice — the corridor rhetoric will become reality by default. If, instead, TRIPP is operationalized as a fully Armenian regime with American stewardship as a confidence-builder rather than a substitute for authority, the project could undercut the “Zangezur” narrative and expand regional trade at the same time. That requires more than declarations. It means transparent, binding rules on inspections, liability, data, incident response and dispute settlement, plus clearly defined “snap-back” conditions if security deteriorates. It also means separating constitutional reform from external bargaining. A charter rewritten under visible pressure from a neighbor is not a renewal of sovereignty; it is the opposite.

Deterrence still matters even when leaders pronounce peace. Armenia’s Defense Ministry has started calling out planted stories and fake quotes, a small but telling recognition that information operations are part of the battlefield. Border tech, air surveillance and mobility upgrades are unglamorous line items, yet they are what give diplomacy credibility. And at home, Pashinyan will need something he has not prioritized enough: a structured dialogue with the opposition, the Church and the diaspora about the peace text and TRIPP’s modalities. He does not need consensus to govern; he needs enough buy-in to keep a post-treaty Armenia from tearing itself apart the first time Baku presses for “clarifications.”

For now, the region is living with two parallel stories. In one, Armenia and Azerbaijan have turned the page, Washington has midwifed a workable transit scheme, and the South Caucasus is edging toward normal economic geography. In the other, corridor talk is a prelude to corridor facts, constitutional edits are leverage rather than law, and every handshake in public masks a harder squeeze in private. Armenia’s bet is that a deliberately balanced foreign policy, stripped of maximalist symbolism and grounded in institutional reform, can make the first story true. That bet will only pay if the red lines around sovereignty are enforced in the text, in the field and in the national conversation that precedes the 2026 vote.

“Peace requires daily care,” Pashinyan told the UN, and he is right.Care, though, is not the same as complacency. As long as Baku calls TRIPP a “Zangezur corridor,” words remain weapons, and Armenia’s balancing act remains a tightrope—walked best with a harness of clarity, deterrence and legitimacy firmly in place.