The Enclave Issue Re-Emergence
The issue of Armenian and Azerbaijani enclaves has re-emerged in the public discourse during Armenia's election campaign. On May 16, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan was asked about the matter during a campaign event. His multilayered and ambiguous response sparked competing interpretations across Armenia's deeply polarized political environment.
Responding to the question concerning Azerbaijani enclaves inside Armenia, Pashinyan stated that "solutions" would be found through the ongoing border-delimitation process with Azerbaijan. His remarks fueled renewed debate over whether the delimitation process could eventually involve the restoration or formal recognition of former Soviet-era enclaves. In 2025, both Armenia and Azerbaijan indicated that the enclave issue would be addressed within the broader delimitation framework.
The enclave issue's re-emergence in the campaign-period discourse is structurally significant because it intersects with the cycle's central territorial-sovereignty contestation. The enclave question -- the disposition of the Soviet-era territorial enclaves that the post-Soviet border-architecture inherited -- is one of the most sensitive dimensions of the Armenia-Azerbaijan delimitation process, with direct implications for the territorial-sovereignty questions that the cycle's opposition formations have foregrounded.
The Enclave Geography
The Soviet-era enclave geography of the Armenia-Azerbaijan border includes several distinct territorial units. The Azerbaijani enclaves historically located inside Armenian territory include Karki (Tigranashen), Yukhari Askipara, Barkhudarli, and Sofulu -- small territorial units that, under the Soviet administrative architecture, were administered by the Azerbaijani SSR despite being geographically surrounded by Armenian SSR territory. The Armenian enclave historically located inside Azerbaijani territory is Artsvashen -- the Armenian-administered unit surrounded by Azerbaijani territory.
The enclaves' post-Soviet disposition has been contested since the early 1990s. During the first Nagorno-Karabakh war and its aftermath, the enclaves changed effective control: the Azerbaijani enclaves inside Armenia came under Armenian effective control, while the Armenian enclave (Artsvashen) came under Azerbaijani effective control. The post-2020 environment, and particularly the post-2023 and post-Washington-Declaration framework, has re-activated the question of the enclaves' formal disposition within the delimitation process.
The substantive stakes of the enclave question: the formal disposition of the enclaves through the delimitation process would establish the precedent for how the broader Soviet-era border-architecture is translated into the post-Soviet formal border. The enclave-disposition precedent has implications beyond the specific enclaves -- it establishes the framework for the broader territorial-sovereignty questions that the delimitation process addresses.
The Competing Interpretations
Pashinyan's multilayered and ambiguous May 16 response produced competing interpretations across the polarized political environment. The interpretation favorable to the Civil Contract positioning: the "solutions through delimitation" framing treats the enclave question as a technical-territorial matter to be resolved through the established delimitation process, without the territorial-concession implications that the opposition interpretation emphasizes.
The interpretation favorable to the opposition positioning: the ambiguous response signals a willingness to make territorial concessions on the enclave question, with the "solutions through delimitation" framing functioning as the procedural mechanism for the concessions. Under this interpretation, the delimitation process could involve the restoration or formal recognition of the Azerbaijani enclaves inside Armenian territory -- a territorial-sovereignty concession that the opposition formations treat as evidence of the broader post-2018 strategic-loss trajectory.
The competing interpretations reflect the cycle's broader polarization. The same ambiguous statement is read by the Civil Contract supporters as evidence of pragmatic-technical conflict-resolution and by the opposition supporters as evidence of territorial-concession willingness. The ambiguity itself is structurally significant: by providing a multilayered response that supports competing interpretations, Pashinyan maintains the strategic-flexibility to pursue the delimitation process without committing to a specific enclave-disposition outcome that either interpretation would foreclose.
The Delimitation Framework
The Armenia-Azerbaijan border-delimitation process is the institutional framework within which the enclave question is being addressed. The delimitation process -- the formal demarcation of the Armenia-Azerbaijan border -- is one of the principal components of the post-Washington-Declaration settlement architecture. The process involves the translation of the Soviet-era administrative-border-architecture into the post-Soviet formal-international-border, with the enclave question as one of the most sensitive components.
The 2025 indication by both Armenia and Azerbaijan that the enclave issue would be addressed within the broader delimitation framework places the enclave question within the technical-delimitation process rather than as a standalone territorial-negotiation. The structural significance: by addressing the enclave question within the delimitation framework, both parties treat it as a technical-territorial matter to be resolved through the established process, rather than as a standalone territorial-concession negotiation.
The substantive enclave-disposition outcome -- whether the delimitation process restores the Soviet-era enclave architecture, formally recognizes the current effective-control architecture, or produces a negotiated alternative -- will be one of the principal post-cycle territorial-sovereignty questions. The outcome will establish the precedent for the broader delimitation process and will be the empirical test of the competing interpretations of Pashinyan's May 16 response.
The Tatul Hakobyan Connection
The enclave question intersects with the broader cycle discourse on the Armenia-Azerbaijan settlement that OWL has covered in separate investigations. The May 22 Tatul Hakobyan turnout-and-outcome interview (OWL's separate investigation) specifically raised the enclave-exchange question and the broader 300,000-Azerbaijani-resettlement topic as among the cycle's sensitive territorial-sovereignty questions.
The enclave question's campaign-period prominence reflects its position at the intersection of the cycle's territorial-sovereignty contestation and the post-Washington-Declaration settlement architecture. The opposition formations' positioning treats the enclave question as one element of the broader post-2018 strategic-loss trajectory; the Civil Contract positioning treats it as a technical-territorial matter within the pragmatic-settlement framework. The competing positionings produce the polarized interpretation environment that the enclave question's re-emergence has activated.
For the cycle's vote-aggregation arithmetic, the enclave question is one of the territorial-sovereignty dimensions on which voters evaluate the formations' strategic-policy positioning. Voters whose first-preference is for sustained territorial-sovereignty protection face the comparative choice between the formations' enclave-question positioning. The substantive enclave-disposition outcome, in the post-cycle period, will be the empirical test of which positioning the settlement process validates.
What We Are Watching Next
Three indicators will define the post-cycle enclave-question trajectory. (1) Whether the delimitation process produces a substantive enclave-disposition outcome in the post-cycle period, and which of the competing interpretations the outcome validates. (2) Whether the enclave-disposition precedent establishes the framework for the broader delimitation-process territorial-sovereignty questions. (3) Whether the post-cycle political environment produces sustained contestation over the enclave-disposition outcome, or whether the technical-delimitation framing prevails.
The EVN Report enclave-issue analysis is one of the most substantive Armenian-analytical engagements with the enclave question's delimitation-process context. The combination of the enclave-geography documentation, the competing-interpretations analysis, and the delimitation-framework analysis places this analysis at the center of the cycle's territorial-sovereignty analytical dimension. OWL covers this content as part of our broader documentary scope of the Armenian territorial-sovereignty and settlement-process environment.
Sources: EVN Report article "The Enclave Issue Between Armenia and Azerbaijan," May 2026, primary source for the enclave-issue re-emergence documentation, the May 16 Pashinyan ambiguous response, the competing-interpretations analysis, the 2025 delimitation-framework indication, and the enclave-geography context. OWL companion investigations on the May 22 Tatul Hakobyan turnout-and-outcome interview (enclave-exchange and 300,000-Azerbaijani-resettlement topics), the May 22 Arshakyan CIS IPA TRIPP / Crossroads of Peace address, the May 25 "Politics of Silence" Artsakh-memory analysis. Public-record information on the Soviet-era Armenia-Azerbaijan enclave geography (Karki/Tigranashen, Yukhari Askipara, Barkhudarli, Sofulu, Artsvashen). All factual claims sourced to the named EVN Report article and the public-record enclave-geography documentation; OWL editorial framings on the competing-interpretations analysis, the delimitation-framework analysis, the Tatul-Hakobyan connection, and the watch-list indicators are clearly identified as such.