Baku, TurkicWorld
Azerbaijan is celebrating Victory Day. Six years ago, on November 8, 2020, Supreme Commander-in-Chief and President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev announced the liberation of Shusha.
Today, it is clear that Azerbaijan did not simply win a war. It brought to an end a conflict that had been considered insoluble for 30 years. As recently as 2019, Karabakh was cited as an example of a problem with no solution in sight – and seemingly no prospect of one in the future. President Ilham Aliyev, however, had a different view.
To understand the scale of this achievement, one need only look around the world. Cyprus has remained divided since 1974. The Annan Plan, on which the international community spent years of work, was rejected in a 2004 referendum, and the island has remained divided by a demarcation line ever since. Transnistria has been frozen in conflict since 1992, while Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region have remained unresolved since the early 1990s. The Minsk agreements on Donbas were intended to provide a diplomatic solution but proved to be little more than a pause before a major war. Serbia and Kosovo signed agreements in Brussels and Washington but have yet to establish normal relations. India and Pakistan have spent decades fighting over Kashmir, periodically exchanging strikes, with neither side able to secure victory or reach an agreement. Ethiopia and Eritrea signed a peace deal in 2018, for which Ethiopia's prime minister received the Nobel Peace Prize, yet the region was plunged into war again just two years later.
In all these cases, influential politicians, major powers, and respected mediators were involved. Some relied on negotiations, only to see them turn into an endless process without results. Others relied on force, which brought temporary gains that could not be consolidated. Almost no one managed to see the process through to the end.
The Karabakh conflict required solving three distinct challenges, each of which would, on its own, be considered a major achievement in a political career.
The first was military. It was not enough simply to win the war; it had to be won before the international community could intervene and prevent the achievement of its objectives. The 44 days of fighting in 2020 were the culmination of 17 years of preparation – in the military, economic and diplomatic spheres, as well as in relations with Türkiye, Russia, the West, and neighboring countries. The war began when Azerbaijan was ready for it and ended when its main objectives had been achieved. Knowing when to stop is a skill no less rare than knowing how to win.
The second challenge was bringing the conflict to a definitive end. After 2020, armed formations and a Russian peacekeeping contingent remained in Karabakh. Many believed at the time that this status quo would persist for years. The anti-terrorist measures in September 2023 lasted less than a day, and by spring 2024, the peacekeepers had left Azerbaijani territory. The country's sovereignty was fully restored, with no gray areas or "special arrangements" remaining.
The third challenge was diplomatic – and perhaps the most difficult. Military victory almost always creates the conditions for another conflict: the defeated side harbors resentment, seeks revenge, and waits for circumstances to change. This was the case with Germany after World War I and with dozens of other local conflicts that followed. Ilham Aliyev did what victorious leaders rarely do: he turned victory into a negotiating position, and that negotiating position into peace. On August 8, 2025, the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a Joint Declaration at the White House in the presence of the US President, while the two countries' foreign ministers initialed a peace agreement. A year after the Washington meeting, there is no gunfire along the border, and discussions between Baku and Yerevan are focused on transport, trade, and reopening communications.
The main lesson of Karabakh is not that force solves everything. If that were true, many powerful countries would have resolved all their outstanding conflicts long ago. The lesson is that force works only when backed by a clear political objective and an understanding of what comes next.
From the outset, Ilham Aliyev said that Azerbaijan wanted neither someone else's land nor endless hostility. It wanted its own territory and peace on its own terms – in accordance with international law and the principle of territorial integrity. This position did not change during years of fruitless negotiations, throughout the war, or in its aftermath. That is precisely why victory did not turn into endless confrontation, and why peace does not look like a temporary ceasefire.
Speaking at the World Forum on Intercultural Dialogue in Baku in October, the President recalled that the Karabakh negotiation format had initially been structured not to resolve the conflict but to freeze it, and that major powers appeared to have accepted this approach. They made one mistake: they failed to take into account what the Azerbaijani people wanted and what the Azerbaijani state was determined to achieve.
Today, the world is going through perhaps its most difficult period since the Cold War. Conflicts that were considered manageable for decades are once again turning into open hostilities. Leaders are searching for formulas that would allow them to end wars without creating new ones. In almost every case, those formulas are proving elusive.
Against this backdrop, Azerbaijan's path stands out as an exception. In six years, the country has moved from war to the full restoration of its sovereignty, and from there to peace recognized in Washington, Brussels, Moscow, and Beijing. Many leaders have faced and continue to face similar challenges: occupied territories, fruitless negotiations, and indifference from international institutions. Many have tried to resolve them through force, while others have relied on diplomacy. Ilham Aliyev has proved to be one of the very few leaders capable of combining the two and seeing the process through to the end.
That is why November 8 is more than a day of remembrance and pride. It is a day to recall that no conflict is frozen forever. What is often lacking is the political will to unfreeze it and the wisdom to build peace afterward. President Ilham Aliyev has shown that both can come together in one leader.
Happy Victory Day!
