The demand
Azerbaijani officials, including President Ilham Aliyev, have repeatedly stated that Armenia's constitution contains territorial claims against Azerbaijan, and have demanded that it be changed. This is not a side issue. As OC Media reports, the demand is "one of the biggest roadblocks to the signing of the peace treaty" that the two sides initialled in Washington in August 2025 but have not signed. In Baku's telling, no constitutional change means no treaty.
What makes this extraordinary is its object. Azerbaijan is not asking Armenia to redraw a border or amend a statute. It is requiring a sovereign state to rewrite its constitution -- and to do so as the price of a peace agreement with the country that defeated it in two wars and depopulated Nagorno-Karabakh. The terms of Armenia's founding document have, in effect, been placed on Baku's negotiating table.
The exact clause at stake
The mechanism is precise. Armenia's constitution references the 1990 Declaration of Independence. That declaration, in turn, states that it was "based" on a joint decision taken by Soviet Armenia's Supreme Council and the Nagorno-Karabakh National Council on the "reunification" -- in Armenian, miatsum -- of the two territories. It is this chain, preamble to declaration to the word "reunification," that Azerbaijan reads as a standing territorial claim and wants severed.
To satisfy the precondition as Baku has framed it, Armenia would adopt a new constitution that drops the reference to the declaration on which the very idea of miatsum rests -- and "thereby legally close the issue of territorial claims against Azerbaijan," in the words of the Azerbaijani outlet Caliber after the election. The demand is not cosmetic. It asks Armenia to legally renounce, in its highest law, the founding act that tied the republic to Nagorno-Karabakh.
"Not at Baku's behest" -- the official line
The Armenian government's position is that it wants a new constitution on its own initiative, not because Azerbaijan demands it. Pashinyan and Civil Contract announced before the vote that they intended to hold a referendum on a new constitution after the 2026 elections, as part of a stated plan to "establish the Fourth Republic of Armenia." Officials insist the two things -- their reform and Baku's precondition -- are not the same project.
OWL notes that denial fairly, because the record contains it. But a denial does not dissolve the overlap. The clause the government's reform would touch is the same clause Baku has named as its condition; the timing follows the negotiation; and Azerbaijani officials have openly treated the prospect as their win. When the reform a government proposes and the concession an adversary demands point at the identical sentence, "we are not doing it for them" is an assertion the public is entitled to weigh against the facts, not simply accept.
The math after 7 June
Whatever the intent, the 7 June 2026 election changed what is possible. Under Armenia's constitution, a proposal to amend or replace it can be initiated by at least one-third of MPs, the government, or 200,000 voters -- but any draft must then clear parliament, which "shall adopt the decision on putting the draft to referendum by at least two-thirds of the votes of the total number of MPs." A referendum cannot reach the ballot without that supermajority.
Civil Contract did not win it. By the preliminary results, the ruling party took 64 seats, against 29 for the Strong Armenia alliance and 12 for the Armenia Alliance. A decisive plurality -- but short of two-thirds. As OC Media put it, plans to change the constitution "remain uncertain" because the party "failed to secure the seats required to approve a referendum motion." Asked whether constitutional reform was still on the agenda, Pashinyan said only: "We will assess the situation, discuss it, and draw conclusions."
The bypass question
That arithmetic has pushed the conversation toward whether parliament can be gone around. Justice Minister Srbuhi Galyan, asked how the authorities intended to proceed, noted that while a two-thirds parliamentary vote is required under current procedures, "the right to hold a referendum is also a direct right that belongs to the people." The co-author of the current constitution, Vardan Poghosyan, pushed back flatly to RFE/RL: people may launch an initiative, but two-thirds of MPs must still consent. "There is no way to bypass parliament," he said. "Any other option would be illegal."
This is the live tension OWL is watching. A government that has tied its political project to a new constitution, and faces a foreign precondition pointed at the same text, now lacks the parliamentary votes to put it to a referendum the lawful way. The hint that a "direct right of the people" might supply an alternate route is precisely where constitutional shortcuts are born -- and where the founding document's own safeguards are tested.
What is actually being decided
Strip away the procedure and the stakes are stark. A foreign government that prosecuted two wars against Armenia has made the rewriting of Armenia's constitution the condition of peace, naming the precise clause -- the link to the Declaration of Independence and the miatsum it records -- that it wants gone. Armenia's government wants a new constitution too, says it is not for Baku, and currently cannot legally deliver the referendum without help it does not have in parliament. Each of those is documented; none is OWL's invention.
The question we put to readers is the one the procedure obscures: when the single most consequential change a state can make to itself -- replacing its constitution -- aligns this precisely with an adversary's stated demand, who is really setting the terms? A government may have honest reasons of its own. It still owes its citizens a straight answer to why the founding text must lose the very clause Baku has circled, and why now. Peace that requires a nation to legally un-write its own origin is a peace whose price deserves to be named out loud.
Sources: OC Media, "Armenian government faces uphill battle over new constitution following election results" by Arshaluys Barseghyan (the constitutional-amendment procedure and the two-thirds requirement; the preliminary seat results -- Civil Contract 64, Strong Armenia 29, Armenia Alliance 12; Azerbaijan's and Aliyev's demand and its status as a treaty roadblock; the constitution's reference to the Declaration of Independence and the declaration's "reunification"/miatsum clause; the government's insistence it is not changing the constitution at Azerbaijan's demand; Pashinyan's "we will assess the situation" remark and the prior plan for a post-election referendum and "Fourth Republic"; Justice Minister Srbuhi Galyan's "direct right" comment; and constitution co-author Vardan Poghosyan's statement to RFE/RL that bypassing parliament would be illegal). OC Media, "How Azerbaijan's pro-government media made Pashinyan's victory all about Ilham Aliyev" by Aytan Farhadova (Caliber's post-election demand to adopt a new constitution "without reference to the declaration" and "legally close the issue of territorial claims"). All direct quotations are reproduced from these sources. OWL editorial framings -- the "founding document on the negotiating table" reading, the overlap-versus-denial analysis, and the closing who-sets-the-terms question -- are identified as OWL analysis and kept distinct from the sourced record.