The two countries normalized their relations at an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) summit in Poland.
Following a two-day OSCE summit bringing together 58 countries in the city of Lodz in Poland, Armenia and Hungary decided on Thursday, December 1 to “fully restore their diplomatic relations“. This normalization was formalized after a bilateral meeting between Ararat Myrzoyan, the Armenian Foreign Minister, and Péter Szijjártó, the Hungarian Foreign Minister.
The Armenian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on its website stating that “the ministers exchanged views on the current state of relations between Armenia and Hungary. They agreed to restore full diplomatic relations, expressing their intention to open a new chapter based on mutual trust and respect for international law.“. The two parties have thus committed to appointing ambassadors in the near future.non-residentsto complete this process.
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In 2012, Armenia severed diplomatic relations with Hungary when Budapest authorized the extradition to Azerbaijan of an Azeri officer, Ramil Safarov Sahib, who had assassinated an Armenian officer, Gurgen Margaryan. “Neither the Armenian people nor I can accept this decision. The Armenian people will not forgive him“Serge Sarkissian, President of Armenia between 2008 and 2018, said at the time.
Ramil Safarov Sahib had killed his Armenian counterpart during a training course to learn English organized by NATO in 2004 in Budapest. The killing was particularly gruesome, with the Armenian officer killed in his sleep, receiving 16 ax blows to the head. Two years later, on April 13, 2006, Ramil Safarov Sahib was sentenced by a Hungarian judge to life imprisonment, six years before his extradition. Beyond the severance of diplomatic relations, this decision had been very badly received within the Armenian population. The Hungarian Embassy was stormed by demonstrators who threw tomatoes at the walls of the building, shouting: “Hungary should be ashamed».
Extradition for $7 million?
When Viktor Orban, the Hungarian Prime Minister in office since 2010, decided to extradite this Azeri soldier, he justified his decision by explaining that the Azeri President, Ilham Aliev, had promised him to keep the murderer in prison, with respect of the Strasbourg International Convention of 1983 governing extradition. But the Azerbaijani president did exactly the opposite. He pardoned Ramil Safarov Sahib, before offering him a military promotion, a “compensationeight years’ salary and a new apartment. The assassin thus became a national hero in Azerbaijan, symbol of a dictatorship which was slowly preparing for a new war against Armenia after the first Nagorno-Karabakh war (1988-1994).
In 2017, during an international investigation conducted by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and international media, investigative journalists from the media Atlatszo had discovered the existence of a transaction of 7 million dollars, carried out just at the time of the extradition of Ramil Safarov Sahib, from an investment fund belonging to oligarchs close to the Azeri power, to an account of a Hungarian bank, MKB Bank. In exchange for the extradition of Ramil Safarov Sahib, Hungarian officials were suspected of having received such a sum through the intermediary of Orkham Eyyubov, owner of the bank account in Hungary. In June 2012, Viktor Orban went to Azerbaijan for an official visit, where he was able to meet the First Deputy Prime Minister of Azerbaijan, in office since 2003, Yaqub Eyyubov, the father of Orkham Eyyubov. This visit reinforced the suspicions surrounding this extradition.
Armenia seeks new allies against Azerbaijan’s warmongering
It is in a difficult geopolitical context that Armenia has decided to normalize its relations with Hungary, even if the memory of the assassination of the Armenian officer in Budapest remains vivid within the Armenian population. Yerevan was recently again attacked militarily by Azerbaijan, between September 13 and 16, 2022, two years after the second Nagorno-Karabakh war of 2020, which ended in an Armenian defeat, the loss of two thirds of the territory that Armenia occupied in this exclave and a ceasefire under the aegis of Russian peacekeepers.
However, Russia mired in its war against Ukraine since last February 24 failed to dissuade Azerbaijan from carrying out a new attack against Armenia, by deciding not to involve the Organization of the Treaty of collective security – an organization based on the model of NATO in Central Asia and dominated by Russia.
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In this context, the current Armenian Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinian is looking for new partners and mediators to prevent a new military aggression from Azerbaijan, turning in particular to the United States and Europe. The re-establishment of diplomatic ties with Hungary is part of this new foreign policy and thus signals a desire for the Armenian side to wipe the towel over a terrible episode that has marked relations between the two countries for ten years.
Finally, the two countries also highlighted their common Christian heritage and the Armenian minority present in Hungary – around 30,000 people – to underline the closeness between the two peoples. “Both sides agreed that there are deep historical and cultural ties, as well as a common Christian heritage between the Armenian and Hungarian nations (…). They also underlined the role of the Armenian community in Hungary, as an officially recognized national minority, which is one of the bridges between the two nations.underlines in its press release the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
However, Hungary should not totally distance itself from Azerbaijan. If Viktor Orban claims the Christian heritage of Hungary, he also regularly invokes the distant Turkic origins of the Hungarian people. With this in mind, Hungary became an observer member in 2018 of the Organization of Turkic States, an organization which brings together Turkey, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and which aims to promote cooperation between states with Turkish roots. During the last summit of the organization on November 11, Viktor Orban addressed Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, comparing him to “a brother“. It will therefore remain to be determined whether the Hungarian leader will be able to continue to lead such a double challenge between Armenia and Azerbaijan while the tensions between the two countries have not subsided.
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