Published: 2 April 2025 Author: Stefan Talmon
From 30 March to 2 April 2025, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier paid the first official visit of a federal president to the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan. Upon his arrival in Armenia the presidential office posted a story about the visit on the President’s Instagram account. One of the images posted showed the flag of the ‘Republic of Artsakh’. The flag with its horizontal tricolour of red, blue, and orange with a white sideways zig-zag chevron in the fly, which is based on the Armenian tricolour of red, blue and orange, served as the national flag of the Armenian separatist entity that had existed in the Garabakh region of Azerbaijan between 1991 and 2023. In September 2023, Azerbaijan recaptured the Armenian-occupied area and the institutions of the self-declared ‘Republic of Artsakh’ announced their dissolution from 1 January 2024.
The accompanying caption read:
The conflict concerns the Nagorno-Karabakh region. According to international law, the region belongs to Azerbaijan. Mainly Armenians live there. Over the past decades, armed conflicts have occurred repeatedly.
The post caused a considerable diplomatic stir. Despite being deleted from the President’s Instagram page, the Government of Azerbaijan summoned the German ambassador to Baku to lodge a strongly worded protest. In a press release, the Foreign Ministry of Azerbaijan stated:
During the meeting, a strong protest was expressed against the post made in the official Instagram channel of German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier within his visit to Armenia, in violation of Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and sovereignty sharing so-called ‘flag’ of puppet regime previously established in Azerbaijan’s formerly occupied territories.
It was emphasized that this open political provocation made during the regional visit is unacceptable, and the German side was urged to issue a public apology for this post.
It was also highlighted that the German President’s post contradicts statement on support for Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, and undermines the ongoing peace process.
Additionally, it was noted that while the post referenced the Armenian residents of the Garabagh region, disregard of the rights of over one million Azerbaijanis who were forcibly displaced from Azerbaijan’s formerly occupied territories and Armenia is yet another indication of bias against Azerbaijan.
It was brought to the attention that the conflict, which lasted nearly 30 years, has been resolved through military and political means, restoring both the country’s territorial integrity and historical justice. It was also stressed that there is no administrative unit called ‘Nagorno-Garabagh’ in Azerbaijan, and all references to the region should avoid politically motivated or false terminology.
The German ambassador reportedly offered an ‘oral apology’ but the Azerbaijan Government insisted on an ‘public apology’. With calls in Azerbaijan for the president’s upcoming visit to the country to be cancelled, the head of the Office of the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, State Secretary Dinger, felt compelled to write to the assistant to the President of Azerbaijan, stating:
[F]or a short period of time, the wrong depiction of a flag and the accompanying text in reference to a region of Azerbaijan were published on the Federal President’s social media. Once the mistake was detected, the post was immediately retracted.The post was published due to a technical mistake and bears no significance with regard to Germany’s well-known position on the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan.
I am very unhappy about this mistake. I would like to sincerely apologise for the wrong impression the post has created among some people in Azerbaijan.
The upcoming visit of the Federal President intends to strengthen the Azerbaijan-German partnership and support the ongoing peace process in the region.
Although there was no public apology in the form of a German government official publicly apologizing for the post, the German Government apparently agreed that the letter of the head of the German President’s office be made public in the (Azerbaijani) media.
Formally, this was not an apology by the Federal Government or the Federal President but by the head of the President’s Office writing to her counterpart in the Azerbaijani presidential office. State Secretary Dinger apologized in her personal capacity for a ‘technical mistake’ that apparently happened within her area of responsibility. This was an elegant way to solve the diplomatic crisis between the two countries; allow each side to save face, and let President Steinmeier’s visit to Azerbaijan go ahead as planned. Azerbaijan was able to publish the State Secretary’s letter and thereby create the impression that Germany had publicly apologized, while Germany could maintain its position that this was simply a ‘technical mistake’ for which no apologies were necessary.
The Government of Azerbaijan considered the use of the flag of the ‘Republic of Artsakh’, the reference to the Azerbaijani region in question as ‘Nagorno-Karabakh’ and the statement that it was mainly Armenians that live in that region as a ‘violation of Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and sovereignty’. While the Instagram post stated that according to international law the region belonged to Azerbaijan and thus paid lip-service to Azerbaijan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, the use of the flag of the former self-declared ‘Republic of Artsakh’ and the assertion that ‘mainly Armenians live there’ may have created the impression that Germany was in favour of re-establishing an ethnic Armenian entity in what is part of Azerbaijan in order to resolve the so-called ‘conflict over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh’. This impression could not be completely dismissed, as in the past Germany had repeatedly emphasized ‘the right of self-determination of the citizens of Nagorno-Karabakh’ and stated that the principles of territorial integrity and self-determination were equally important. In addition, the federal government at times had been equivocal about the fact that the region belonged to Azerbaijan. If anything, the diplomatic incident forced Germany to take a clear position. During a press conference on 2 April 2025, Federal President Steinmeier stated in response to a question about the Garabakh region of Azerbaijan: ‘We have always said that this is your [Azerbaijani] territory, and today we reaffirm this direct and clear position of Germany.’
While the post as such was not illegal, it was at least politically insensitive. By giving the impression that the question of the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan was still open, only weeks after Armenia and Azerbaijan had concluded negotiations on a historic peace treaty, may also have been counterproductive to the peace process between the two countries. However, a formal apology was not called for. An apology in international law is a form of satisfaction which is due if an injury caused by an internationally wrongful act cannot be made good by restitution or compensation. As there was no internationally wrongful act on the part of Germany, there was no legal basis for the requested ‘public apology’.
Category: Territorial sovereignty
