National self‐determination and the limits of sovereignty: Armenia, Azerbaijan and the secession of Nagorno‐Karabagh

The conflict over the Nagorno‐Karabagh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) began in 1988, when that Armenian‐inhabited enclave requested the Gorbachev government's permission to secede from the Azerbaijani SSR and to join the Armenian SSR. What began with peaceful protests has become, six years later, a bloody conflict that involves the NKAO, the now‐independent republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Russia and ‐ potentially ‐ neighbouring Turkey and Iran. This essay offers both a historical narrative and an analysis of the contemporary forces involved in the conflict, focusing on the problematic concepts of nation‐state sovereignty that motivate some of the regional actors.