In 2018, Serzh Sargsyan was ousted as Armenia’s leader by mass protests led by an unlikely challenger, Nikol Pashinyan, who now risks a similar fate as Armenia heads toward parliamentary elections in 2026. Though there are many differences between the two situations, there are also some similarities. What might hold the key to Pashinyan’s political future is normalizing Armenia's relations with neighboring Azerbaijan and Turkey while ushering in an era of peace and stability for the region.
At the end of March 2018, few took Nikol Pashinyan seriously when he set off on a 117-kilometer march from Armenia's second largest city of Gyumri to the capital, Yerevan. His goal was to stop the nation’s third president, Serzh Sargsyan, from clinging on to power after his second and final term ended the following month. In 2015, Sargsyan orchestrated constitutional changes that transformed Armenia from a presidential to a parliamentary system. This shift allowed him to bypass term limits by assuming the newly empowered role of prime minister, while relegating future presidents to largely ceremonial duties.
Despite initially denying any intention of clinging to power, it was clear that this had been his plan all along. Sargsyan had never enjoyed widespread public support. His long tenure in senior government positions under former president Robert Kocharyan, followed by his own presidency from 2008 to 2018, did little to bolster his standing. The violent crackdown that marked his rise to the presidency in 2008 remained vivid in the public memory, even though much of the blame for the post-election violence lay with Kocharyan.
It’s no wonder that Sargsyan’s 2018 bid to retain power triggered a swift and widespread public backlash. This time, however, he was up against a markedly different kind of opponent.
Nikol Pashinyan’s populism and use of modern digital tools to awaken a previously apathetic population proved successful.
Against all expectations, he forced Sargsyan to resign, culminating in what became known as the Velvet Revolution. While widely celebrated as a triumph of democracy, the movement arguably owed less to a push for reforms and more to a deep-seated public dislike of Sargsyan himself – whose unpopularity even surpassed that of the more authoritarian Kocharyan.
Pashinyan, a minor albeit firebrand opposition leader and former journalist, first emerged as a prominent political figure during the 2008 presidential election – an event that marked the transfer of power from Kocharyan to Sargsyan. Both men hailed from Nagorno Karabakh, a predominantly ethnic Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan that had seceded declared independence during the collapse of the Soviet Union. Their identities were deeply intertwined with the Karabakh leadership and the brutal war of the early 1990s that shaped the region’s fate.
Upon rising to power, Kocharyan and Sargsyan soon became derogatorily known as the Karabakh Clan. Both had played key roles in ousting Armenia’s first president, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, in early 1998, rejecting his proposed peace plan with Azerbaijan.
Rightly or wrongly, Ter-Petrosyan is frequently referred to as a political mentor to the younger Pashinyan. Indeed, that connection came into sharp focus during the 2008 presidential election, when Ter-Petrosyan sought to prevent Kocharyan’s handover of power to Sargsyan. After Ter-Petrosyan was placed under house arrest, it was Pashinyan who led mass protests in the streets. The demonstrations culminated in tragedy on March 1, 2008, when security forces violently dispersed the crowds, resulting in 10 deaths and prompting the declaration of a state of emergency.
Following the deadly crackdown, Pashinyan went into hiding, evading authorities before eventually surrendering. He was jailed on charges of inciting violence but released under a general amnesty in 2011. The following year, he was elected to parliament. By 2018, Pashinyan had built enough street credibility to turn public anger and dislike of Sargsyan into political capital.
Once in power, Pashinyan employed the very tactics that had propelled him to power – mobilizing pressure from the streets, wielding populist rhetoric, and embracing high-risk gambles to advance his personal vision for Armenia. Even in office, he often behaved more like a pugnacious maverick than a conventional statesman. He publicly shamed citizens for violating pandemic restrictions, and manipulated parliamentary procedures to force snap elections while rallying crowds outside to ensure all went his way.
His biggest gamble, however, played out on the geopolitical front. Pashinyan’s approach to the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict marked a sharp departure from his predecessors, revisiting key treaties and abandoning the OSCE Minsk Group negotiation process with Azerbaijan. His wife, Anna Hakobyan, posed for photographs in army fatigues brandishing a Kalashnikov rifle – a bizarre gesture she framed as part of her own peace initiative. Predictably, war followed.
In 2020, Azerbaijan launched a full-scale offensive – an action it had been warning for nearly a decade should negotiations fail. The result was a devastating defeat for Armenia and Karabakh, with significant territorial losses.
Despite the catastrophic defeat in the 2020 war, Pashinyan managed to win the 2021 snap elections with over 53 percent of the vote. His opponents, -- largely old guard figures -- remained even more unpopular. Still, his post-2018 honeymoon was clearly over. Pashinyan’s approval rating, once as high as 70 percent, had plummeted to just 20 percent by 2024. According to the latest survey by the International Republican Institute (IRI) public trust in him now stands at a mere 13 percent. Kocharyan fares even worse at 4 percent, while a striking 61 percent of respondents say they trust no one at all.
Electoral prospects paint a similar picture. Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party leads the pack, but only marginally, polling at 17-18 percent. Trailing is Kocharyan’s Hayastan parliamentary faction – dominated by the nationalist Armenian Revolutionary Federation – Dashnaktsutyun (ARF-D) with a combined 7 percent. Sargsyan’s Republican Party and the Pativ Unem (I Have Honor) bloc register just 2 percent, while all other political options hover around 1 percent. Notably, 28 percent of respondents say they won’t vote at all and another 22 percent are undecided.
This landscape leaves the political field wide open for the rise of a new third political force. One such possibility surfaced in June, when Russian-Armenian billionaire businessman Samuel Karapetyan – despite being ineligible to run because he holds dual citizenship -- announced plans to launch a political movement aimed at challenging Pashinyan in next year’s election. Karapetyan is currently in pre-trial detention, facing charges of allegedly inciting the violent overthrow of the government. The upcoming elections are expected to center primarily on the question of de facto peace with Azerbaijan, and potentially on the prospect of normalization with Turkey. Pashinyan’s “peace agenda,” championed during the 2021 snap elections, promised security and normalization. Instead, it has unfolded as a slow and painful process. Even before the mass exodus of over 100,000 ethnic Armenians from Karabakh in September 2023, Pashinyan publicly acknowledged the region as part of Azerbaijan just months before. An accompanying shift in tone since 2022 from invoking Karabakh by its nationalist local name of Artsakh, to emphasizing internationally recognized borders, reflects less an ideological evolution than a strategy for political survival. Yet, it marks a crucial turning point.
Europe and the United States has offered its support. In Armenia’s transition from what Pashinyan calls “Historical Armenia,” -- where the country will always be in conflict with Azerbaijan and Turkey -- to a vision of “Real Armenia,” which renounces territorial claims against its neighbors -- the geopolitical landscape is shifting. This evolution could significantly erode Moscow's influence in the region, aligning with U.S. and EU ambitions to establish new trade routes between Europe and Central Asia via the South Caucasus and bypassing Russia.
To date, Armenia’s strategic pivot away from Moscow had remained largely rhetorical. While Brussels and Washington offer diplomatic backing, they fall short of delivering the robust economic and defensive guarantees required for Yerevan to fully break from Moscow’s orbit. Nonetheless, small shifts are underway: Russian FSB border guards have been removed from Yerevan’s Zvartnots Airport and the Armenia-Iran border crossing, for example. Above all, Yerevan needs normalization with both Azerbaijan and Turkey.
Pashinyan’s shifting rhetoric, including the elevation of Mount Aragats within Armenia as a national symbol over Mount Ararat (Mount Ağrı in Turkey) signals a readiness for further symbolic concessions. He has hinted at removing Ararat from Armenia’s coat of arms and introducing a new constitution that omits references to the 1990 Declaration of Independence, a document viewed by Baku as harboring revanchist claims against Azerbaijan and Turkey.
Protests resurfaced in Yerevan in both 2022 and 2024, but last year marked a notable shift in their character. Rather than being led by traditional political opposition, they were led by Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan -- a revanchist cleric -- backed by the Armenian Apostolic Church. His march from Tavush, the northeastern province at the heart of ongoing demarcation talks, briefly stirred public concern and marked the Church’s first direct confrontation with the government. Yet despite Galstanyan’s status as a previously apolitical figure, the protests quickly lost momentum and ended.
At their peak, the demonstrations drew about 20,000 participants, though on most days only a few thousand attended. Still, the government was visibly rattled.
Like Karapetyan before him, Archbishop Galstanyan now sits in pre-trial detention, accused of plotting to overthrow the government-- a move widely seen as an effort to neutralize all serious opposition ahead of the 2026 parliamentary elections.
Meanwhile, Pashinyan’s political power increasingly hinges not on his achievements, but on the persistent weakness and discrediting of his opponents. For now, he benefits from the fact that allegations of corruption and human rights abuses under his leadership remain far less severe than those levelled against his predecessors. The risk, however, is that this comparative advantage may soon erode – especially as Pashinyan shows signs of leaning toward more authoritarian measures to maintain control.
What could concern Pashinyan is that even if his Civil Contract party gains most seats, it might not be enough to guarantee his reappointment as prime minister. The 2023 Yerevan City Council elections offered a preview of this vulnerability: Civil Contract won the most votes but fell short of a majority. Pashinyan’s candidate only became mayor with the support of a minor party led by a video blogger.
And earlier this year, Pashinyan’s preferred candidate, Sarik Minasyan, failed to become mayor in Gyumri, Armenia’s second-largest city. Opposition council members united to elect a former mayor widely seen as having governed the city like a personal fiefdom under the Kocharyan regime. Ironically, the vote occurred almost seven years to the day after Pashinyan’s dramatic march to Yerevan to depose Sargsyan.
Yet the political tide is not entirely turning against him. According to the recent IRI poll, 47 percent of respondents support signing a peace deal with Azerbaijan while another 10 percent say their support depends on the terms of the agreement. Crucially, there is broad recognition that any such a deal can only be brokered under Pashinyan’s leadership. Nonetheless, Pashinyan’s geopolitical maneuvers are riddled with contradictions and paradoxes that may well complicate Armenia’s path forward.
On 8 August in a much-heralded meeting with Azerbaijan’s Aliyev and U.S. President Donald Trump in the White House, Pashinyan gave the U.S. exclusive development rights on restoring road and rail links along its southern border with Iran connecting mainland Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave through Armenia. Tehran is outraged while public sentiment in Armenia tells a different if confusing story. According to the IRI poll, most respondents named Tehran as Armenia’s primary political and security partner. Russia ranked third, yet a sizeable number of respondents also saw Moscow as the country’s leading security threat despite strong strategic dependencies.
Nonetheless, if there was to be a referendum on European Union membership the week of the survey in June 2025, 49 percent of respondents would vote for it. However, that figure was 58 percent in September 2024. Moreover, only 14 percent supported a solely pro-EU course for the country. A combined 57 percent supported options where relations with both Russia and the EU were accommodated.
It’s worth recalling that as early as 2013, Sargsyan pursued closer ties with the European Union, aiming to sign both the Association Agreement and Deep and Comprehensive Free-Trade Agreement. However, under pressure from Moscow, Armenia instead joined the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union. Still, in 2017, the Sargsyan administration managed to sign the Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement with the EU.
Pashinyan's pivot toward the West hinges on normalizing relations and opening borders with Turkey – a goal that still depends on first resolving tensions with Azerbaijan. That process rests on a peace agreement, finalized in March, which remains stalled until Armenia amends its constitution. The prospect of a referendum to enable that change is uncertain -- not necessarily due to public opposition, but because it’s unclear whether enough voters would turn out at the polls.
Previous constitutional referendums in Armenia -- in 2005 and 2015 – were widely believed to have been have been manipulated to reach the minimum turnout threshold. Such tactics are unlikely to be viable for the current government, which faces greater scrutiny than before.
Many observers now believe that Pashinyan’s political future may hinge on Armenia's relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey. Ironically, Pashinyan’s predecessor, Sargsyan, also staked his leadership on normalizing ties with Turkey. Instead, just one month before his forced resignation and after surviving an attempted coup over Karabakh in 2016, Sargsyan annulled the 2009 Armenia-Turkey Protocols. It was a move widely seen as a humiliating admission of failure.
As the 2026 elections approach, Pashinyan will be hoping to avoid the same fate as his predecessor. Though the 8 August Trump-facilitated summit at the White House was a major step forwards, it is still unclear whether it is sufficient for Turkey to open its border with Armenia sooner rather than later. Although a declaration of intent was issued following the meeting, the bilateral treaty —finalized by both sides in March—remained unsigned and was only initialed. Nevertheless, it marked an important step forward.
As Armenia approaches the 2026 parliamentary elections, the stakes could not be higher. Pashinyan -- once the face of revolutionary change -- now finds himself in a battle for political survival. His grip on power appears to rely less on public trust and more on the lack of credible challengers, a fragile situation that cannot last indefinitely. With geopolitical pressures mounting, borders still sealed, and society increasingly polarized, Armenia stands at a crossroads, teetering on the edge of prolonged uncertainty. There is no doubt, however, that the situation has changed markedly since the White House summit with the meeting heralded globally as “historic.”
Pashinyan is also poised to benefit from next year’s European Political Community (EPC) Summit, scheduled to take place in Yerevan shortly before the June parliamentary elections. He has already announced plans to invite Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to attend. Whereas playing the nationalist card was once a reliable strategy for gaining or holding power in Armenian politics, the opposite now seems to be true.
Onnik James Krikorian is a journalist, analyst, and consultant from the United Kingdom based in Tbilisi, Georgia, since 2012. From 1998 until then he was based in Yerevan, Armenia, covering issues related to democracy, society, and conflict. In 1994 he first visited Karabakh as a journalist and photographer, also covered the August 2008 war between Georgia and Russia, and consulted for intergovernmental organisations on countering violent extremism. He writes news and analysis for international media and various analytical publications. He can be followed on X at @onewmphoto.