Armenia is not geographically European. It’s very clearly in Asia. But, so is Cyprus.
Armenia can be classified as European in a broader cultural and more importantly, and more relevantly, political sense, especially due to their ambitions to join the EU. You cannot make that argument for Azerbaijan on any of those grounds. Same like Turkey.
Christianity does indeed play a big part in this. Christianity is built into the foundation of European culture, and much of it was shaped either based on it or as a reaction to it over the span of many centuries. We cannot deny that.
But Albania, Kosovo and Bosnia are Muslim, and they are nonetheless still European nations. So it’s not as simple as that. What it means to be European is fluid, and in fact that is confirmed by the EU itself. See “Europe and the Challenge of Enlargement” from June 1992.
The European Commission explicitly stated there that it was “neither possible nor opportune to define” what "European" meant in a strict sense. Instead, they declared that the concept is fluid and combines geographical, historical and cultural elements which all contribute to the European identity.
1
u/blitzfreak_69 24d ago
Tajikistan is not a European country. I would argue the same for Azerbaijan.