Yerevan views prisoner release as vital for peace with Baku

Yerevan believes that letting Armenian prisoners go is a crucial step if they really want to make peace with Baku.

Armenian parliament speaker Alen Simonyan pointed out that reaching true reconciliation depends heavily on freeing the Armenian detainees currently kept in Azerbaijan. He also stressed the need to find out exactly what happened to those who went missing over the years. He shared these thoughts during the Inter-Parliamentary Union Assembly, which took place recently in Istanbul, Turkey.

Azerbaijan has gone on record to say they are keeping 19 Armenian prisoners. These individuals are serving time for a range of charges, and the group includes some former political and military figures from the old separatist setup in Karabakh. Earlier in January, four Armenian prisoners were sent back by Azerbaijan. Following this move, sources within the Azerbaijani government mentioned to friendly media outlets that letting go of the former Karabakh separatist leaders just was not going to happen. They took a similar stance on anyone accused of committing crimes against the people of Azerbaijan.

When it comes to the missing, we still do not know what happened to roughly 1,000 people from Armenia since things kicked off back in the late 1980s. Azerbaijan, on the other hand, says around 4,000 of their people are unaccounted for. Representatives from both sides actually sat down together in June 2025 to discuss how to handle this issue.

During his speech on Thursday, Simonyan kept the focus largely on making peace. He felt that after many years of doubting each other and holding grudges, both nations are finally entering a phase where they can start building trust from the ground up. He drew attention to how much regional relationships have improved lately. A big part of this is the Trump Route project, which he sees as a major stepping stone. He thinks it has a real chance to bring more stability and encourage economic teamwork across the South Caucasus and beyond.

He also brought up the fact that a little bit of trade started happening between the two countries in late 2025. This is actually a big deal since nothing like that has occurred since the early 1990s, and he views it as a positive sign that things might be getting back to normal. Looking back at the Washington summit from August 2025, Simonyan reminded everyone that they managed to sign an early draft of a peace treaty and work out the details for the Trump Route. He went as far as saying that peace has finally taken root in the area, calling it a milestone for history.

Beyond that, he mentioned that Armenia is looking at the bigger picture, which involves asking Turkey to join in on these regional peace initiatives. Because of this, he noted that they are quite keen on getting closer with Turkey. Ever since 2022, Armenia and Turkey have been trying once again to smooth out their relationship. Special envoys have met up at the border and in each other capitals to talk things out. Even with all these meetings, they still do not have formal diplomatic ties, and you still cannot cross the land border.

They did agree back in 2022 to let diplomats and citizens from other countries cross the border. But Turkey later made it clear that they would only take more steps forward if things keep improving between Armenia and Azerbaijan. For some background, Turkey initially shut that border way back in 1993 when the First Karabakh War was happening.

This year brings a bit of a change, as Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and Special Representative Ruben Rubinyan are skipping the Antalya Diplomatic Forum scheduled for mid-April. They had been going every year since 2022. This time around, Deputy Foreign Minister Vahan Kostanyan will step in to represent Armenia. The Foreign Ministry preferred not to say much to the press about why they made this switch. It is worth noting, though, that when Rubinyan went to the forum in 2025, he managed to have a side meeting with his Turkish counterpart Serdar Kilic.

While at the IPU Assembly, Simonyan also found time to meet with Sahiba Gafarova, who speaks for the Azerbaijani Parliament. From what the Armenian camp shared, both sides agreed that they need to keep talking on a parliamentary level if they want the people in both countries to trust each other more.