Stages of ethnic cleansing of Azerbaijanis in Armenia and the creation of a mono-ethnic Armenian state

Western Azerbaijan is a geographical area including the present Republic of Armenia, historically inhabited by Azerbaijanis.

Today, the territory of the state called the Republic of Armenia is part of the states of Urartu, the Sasanids, the Arab Caliphate, the Sajids, the Shaddadids, the Seljuks, the Eldanizids, the Ilkhanids, the Timurids, the Qara Qoyunlu, Aq Qoyunlu, the Safavids, the Afsharids, the Qajars, and Tsarist Russia. The first Armenian state in history was established only in 1918 in the South Caucasus, on the historical land of Azerbaijan.

Armenians were the last ethnic group to settle in the South Caucasus. When the Saks, Cimmerians, Huns, Barsils, Oguzes, Kipchaks, who were ancient Turks, were ruling the Caucasus, there was no trace of Armenians in the region. Sabunchu, Baharli, Bayandur, Gajar, Kangar, Kazakh, Afshar, Khalaj, Shamli, Ustakli, Turkman, Ayrym, Karapag, Karamanli, Mughanli and other Turkic tribes historically lived on the territory of modern Armenia. The names of places in these territories belonging to each of the 24 Oghuz tribes are reflected in historical literature and maps.

The history of the community of people calling themselves at present “Hay” is adapted from the holy book of Christians the Bible and mythological sources of various peoples. The prototypes of the persons whose names are given there are fictitious and the names of places are given with false dates.

In 1441, with the consent of Jahan Shah, the ruler of Garagoyunlu, the Armenian Catholic Church was transferred from Cilicia to Uchkilse (Echmiadzin), located in the village of Vagharshabad near Iravan. From that time the settlement of Armenians in the neighbourhood of Iravan began.

In the documents of purchase and sale stored in Matenadaran, it is mentioned that the area where Uchkilsa is located is situated in the Chukhur-Saad province of the state of Azerbaijan.

After the death of Nadir Shah in 1747, the Iravan khanate existed as a feudal state on the territory of Chukhur-Saad province until 1828.

An analysis of the events that took place over the past 200 years shows that the state of Armenia emerged as a result of massacres, genocides and deportations of Azerbaijanis in the territory of Western Azerbaijan and mass resettlement of Armenians to this territory. The ethnic cleansing of Azerbaijanis of Western Azerbaijan was carried out in five stages.

The “Western Azerbaijan” project provides users with articles on each of these stages.

Phase I

The initial period of Azerbaijani Turk refugees from Western Azerbaijan, which is the present territory of Armenia began in 1801 after Russia annexed Eastern Georgia, bringing the regions of Shamshadin and Lori-Pambak into Russian hands. On 20 October 1805, Shorael Sultan Budag and Prince Sisianov signed a document in Ganja to hand over Shorael to Russia permanently. After this the mass influx of Armenians to these regions began.

According to the Treaty of Gulistan signed between Russia and Iran on 12 October 1813, all the khanates of Northern Azerbaijan, with the exception of the Nakhchivan and Iravan khanates, joined Russia.

On 26 June 1827, Russian troops captured the city of Nakhchivan, on 20 September – Sardarabad fortress, and on 1 October – Iravan fortress. According to the Turkmenchay Treaty signed on 10 February 1828, the last khanates of Northern Azerbaijan – Iravan and Nakhchivan khanates joined Russia. Right after the Turkmanchay Treaty the Russian Emperor Nicholas I on March 20, 1828 declared the establishment of “Armenian Province” (“Armenian Oblast”) in the territory of Iravan and Nakhchivan khanates of Azerbaijan. According to the results of the census carried out in “Armenian province” in 1829-1832, 57,266 Armenians (10,631 families) were resettled from Iran and Türkiye to the territory of Iravan and Nakhchivan khanates. As a result of the Russian-Iranian (1826-1828) and Russian-Turkish (1828-1829) wars, 359 Muslim villages were destroyed, a significant part of their population was massacred, and the rest became refugees. At that time Armenians lived only in 62 villages (near Armenian churches) out of 1111 settlements of the “Armenian province”. Armenians resettled from Iran were settled in 119 villages of Iravan khanate, 72 villages of Nakhchivan khanate, and Armenians resettled from Türkiye in 128 villages of Iravan khanate and 4 villages of Nakhchivan khanate. Colonel of the Russian army of Armenian origin Lazarev, who led the resettlement of Armenians from the territory of Iran, wrote that they were given a “new homeland” in the lands of Azerbaijan. As a result, between 1828 and 1830, 40,000 Iranian and 84,000 Turkish Armenians were resettled in the South Caucasus. 1300 Armenian families resettled from Iran settled in Zangazur and Karabakh. After the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878, tens of thousands of Armenians were resettled in the territories of the former Azerbaijani khanates. At this stage, for the first time in history, Armenians began to outnumber Azerbaijanis on the territory of present-day Armenia.

Phase II

As a result of the Armenian uprisings in Türkiye in the 1990s, about 300,000 Armenians moved to the Caucasus, bringing turmoil to the region. The Dashnaktsutyun and Hnchak parties changed their programmes in the early years of the twentieth century and shifted the centre of gravity of their activities from Türkiye to the South Caucasus.

Taking advantage of the pro-Armenian stance of the ruling circles of tsarist Russia, in 1905-1906, Armenians began a policy of ethnic cleansing in the territories inhabited by Azerbaijanis in order to lay the foundations of a new Armenian state in the South Caucasus. In general, in 1905-1906, Armenians in 15 counties of the South Caucasus (Iravan, Nakhchivan, Sharur-Daralayaz, Echmiadzin, Alexandropol, Novo-Bayazid, Surmeli, Shusha, Javanshir, Jabrail, Zangazur, Ganja, Gazakh, Aresh, Borchali) and 8 cities (Baku, Iravan, Nakhchivan, Gyumri, Shusha, Ganja, Gazakh, Tbilisi) committed massacres. During the massacres of 1905-1906 in the South Caucasus 286 villages and 8 towns were destroyed. According to our calculations, about 200 destroyed villages and towns belonged to Azerbaijani settlements.

During those years, there began a feud between 1.3 million people resulting with a split of the population in two rival camps in 15 counties of the South Caucasus. More than 15,000 families (about 100,000 people) were forced to leave their homes. About 10,000 people were killed. Some of the destroyed Azerbaijani settlements have since turned into ruins. It was then that enclaves consisting only of Armenians were created. The pogroms committed by Armenians in 1905-1906 are a stage of a series of genocide and deportations to which Azerbaijanis were subjected in the 19-20th centuries. These massacres are considered to be the first stage and part of the ethnic cleansing policy pursued by Armenians in the South Caucasus to acquire new lands for the establishment of their state.

Phase III

The crimes committed by Armenians against Azerbaijanis in 1918-1920 are characterised as genocide, because these massacres were the result of a policy of occupation and ethnic cleansing carried out by the independent state of Armenia.

Immediately after the November coup of 1917 in Russia, Armenian soldiers and officers who fought against Türkiye as part of the Russian troops on the Caucasus front returned to the South Caucasus with their weapons. Moreover, about 260,000 Armenian refugees from Eastern Anatolia, which Armenians call “Western Armenia”, arrived in the South Caucasus during this period and found shelter in Iravan province. Until March 1918, Armenian armed detachments destroyed 198 villages – 32 in Iravan province, 84 in Echmiadzin province, 7 in Novo-Bayazid province and 75 in Surmalin province, and in these incidents about 135 thousand of our compatriots were genocided. The aim of Armenians, who pursued a policy of ethnic cleansing against Azerbaijanis, was to create a state of “Armenia without Turks” on the territory of Iravan province.

At the beginning of tragic March events, the Baku Soviet and Dashnaksutyun Party, under the pretext of combating counter-revolutionary elements, set about the plan to liquidate Azerbaijanis throughout the Baku Province. Genocide of the Azerbaijanis by the Dashnaks was not limited to Baku. Within a short period of time, in March-April-May, Armenians committed massacres in Shamakhi, Guba, Khachmaz, Aghsu, Kurdamir, Salyan, Lankaran. As a result, more than 50 thousand of people were killed with utmost barbarity, settlements were destroyed, cultural monuments, mosques and cemeteries were razed to the ground.

On 28 May 1918, the independence of Azerbaijan and Armenia was proclaimed. On 29 May, at a meeting of the Muslim National Council, it was decided to cede the city of Iravan as the capital to Armenia.

According to the Treaty of Peace and Friendship signed in Batumi between the Ottoman Empire and Armenia on 4 June 1918, the territory of the Republic of Armenia was approximately 9 thousand square metres and the population was 321 thousand (including 230 thousand Armenians, 80 thousand Muslims, 5 thousand Yezidis, 6 thousand other peoples). The territory of this republic included the Novo-Bayazet district, three fifths of Iravan district, one fourth of Echmiadzin district and one fourth of Alexandropol district, except for Basarkechar. After the signing of the Batumi Agreement, Muslim refugees who had been forced to leave their homes on the territory of Iravan province began to return to their homeland.

The Extraordinary Investigation Commission (EIC) was established by ADR on July 15, 1918, in order to investigate the violence against Azerbaijani population committed in March 1918. At the first stage, the Commission was involved in investigating the March genocide and the brutalities and grave crimes committed by Armenians in the provinces of Shamakhi and Iravan. A special authority was established at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to increase the world community`s awareness of the truth about these tragedies. A special authority was established at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to increase the world community’s awareness of the truth about these tragedies. In 1919 and 1920, Azerbaijan Democratic Republic commemorated 31 March as a National Day of Mourning. In fact, it was the first attempt to give political recognition to the genocide perpetrated against Azerbaijanis and to the occupation of our lands, which lasted for more than one century.

According to the Armistice of Mudros signed on 30 October 1918, after the withdrawal of Turkish troops from the South Caucasus, the second stage of mass robberies and massacres of Armenians against Azerbaijanis on the territory of Iravan province began.

The Armenian government, having completely cleansed Zangazur of Azerbaijanis and seized it, and later, having seized Karabakh and Nakhchivan, intended to put the Paris Peace Conference before the fact and implement the resolution of the Dashnak parliament of 28 May 1919 on the creation of “United Armenia”. In 1918-1920, Armenian armed formations destroyed 166 settlements in Zangazur, 300 in Iravan province, 82 in Kars province, hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis were killed, almost one million people were expelled from their historical and ethnic lands.

Armenian armed formations destroyed 130 villages inhabited by Azerbaijanis in the territory of Armenia turning them into ruins. If in 1916 there were 373,582 Azerbaijanis living in Iravan province, in November 1920 only 10,000 Azerbaijanis remained in the territory of the Armenian SSR. In 1922, only 130,000 Azerbaijanis were able to return to Soviet Armenia.

Only 80 years later, on 26 March 1998, in order to give legal and political assessment to the genocide and deportation committed by Armenians against Azerbaijanis in 19-20th centuries, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev signed the Decree “On the Genocide of Azerbaijanis”. Thus, 31 March was declared the Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis for commemoration of the genocide’s victims. 

Phase IV

In the 1930s, more than 50,000 Azerbaijanis were subjected to repression in Soviet Armenia, and a significant part of them were exiled to Kazakhstan and Central Asia. The leaders of Armenia, who met no resistance in implementing their plan, managed to carry out another action – deportation of Azerbaijanis in the late 40s and early 50s.

After the Second World War, the USSR made territorial claims against Türkiye. The territorial claims of Armenians against Turkey coincided with the USSR’s plans of attack. Stalin wanted to restore the 1914 borders between Russia and Türkiye, i.e. to separate the provinces of Kars and Ardahan from Turkey again. However, there was a problem of settling the territories that the USSR wanted to separate from Türkiye. They wanted to solve this issue by resettling Armenians from abroad on the territory of Armenia.

In November 1945, Based on the Armenian government request, the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR adopted a decree of 21 November 1945 “On Measures for the Return of Armenians from Abroad to Soviet Armenia”.

At the beginning of 1946, 130 thousand foreign Armenians expressed their desire to relocate to Armenia. At the end of 1945, at the beginning of 1946, the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Armenia, G. Arutyunov, based on the mass repatriation of Armenians from abroad, raised before Moscow the issue of annexation of Nagorno-Karabakh and Nakhchivan to Armenia. In response to this proposal of the Armenian statement, Mir Jafar Baghirov proposed Moscow another solution: all territories of Nagorno-Karabakh are given to Armenia, except for Shusha, on condition that the Azizbekov, Vedi and Garabaghlar districts of Armenia would be annexed to Azerbaijan. After that this issue was closed, instead the issue of deportation of Azerbaijanis from Armenia became serious. In 1946-1948, about 100 thousand Armenians were resettled to Armenia from abroad.

On 23 December 1947, the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted a resolution “On the resettlement of collective farmers and other Azerbaijanis from the Armenian SSR to the Kura-Araz lowlands of the Azerbaijan SSR”. According to this decree, it was planned to resettle 100 thousand Azerbaijanis from 26 regions of Armenia. Paragraph 1 of the decree envisaged resettlement of 10 thousand people in 1948, 40 thousand in 1949 and 50 thousand in 1950. During the implementation of this decree, the existing repressive rules of the authoritarian-totalitarian regime were implemented by violent methods. Thus, about 100 thousand Azerbaijanis were deported from more than 200 settlements of 26 regions and the city of Iravan.

The decrees adopted by the USSR government on the resettlement of Azerbaijanis gave the Armenian government the opportunity to deport Azerbaijanis and once and for all remove from the map most of the Azerbaijani settlements around the city of Iravan and along Armenia’s borders with Iran and Türkiye.

Phase V

At this stage, the ethnic cleansing of Azerbaijanis in Armenia ended. In the mid-1960s, anti-Turkish and anti-Muslim propaganda began to be promoted in Armenia again. The adoption of a decree to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the so-called “Armenian genocide” further fuelled Armenian chauvinism. After Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985, Armenia, under the pretext of realising the right to self-determination of the ethnic group of Armenians living in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, openly pursued plans to annex the territories of Azerbaijan. The only person who could prevent the implementation of the plan of Azerbaijan’s annexation for the self-determination of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh was Heydar Aliyev. In October 1987, under pressure from the Armenian lobby, he was expelled from the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee and removed from the post of 1st Deputy Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers.

On 20 February 1988, an extraordinary session of the Council of People’s Deputies of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, held with the participation of only Armenian deputies, adopted a decision on the withdrawal of the region from Azerbaijan and its inclusion in the administrative-territorial division of Armenia. After the Supreme Soviet of the Azerbaijan SSR rejected the unconstitutional decision of the Council of People’s Deputies of the NKAO, the nationalist leaders of Armenia began to implement the programme of the “Dashnaktsutyun” party “Armenia without Turks”.

On 27-28 February 1988, after the rally carried out in protest against the violence towards Azerbaijanis in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, mass riots took place in Sumgayit under the scenario of the State Security Committee and with the direct involvement of Armenian extremists. This was followed by a new wave of refugees from Armenia. Russian historian Yuri Pompeyev described the deportation of Azerbaijanis from Armenia in the autumn of 1988: “Defenceless and unarmed Azerbaijanis, often without clothes and belongings, were driven out of their homes: “Get out of Armenia, you damned Turks!” On 22 November, at an extraordinary session of the Supreme Soviet of the Armenian SSR, held without the participation of Azerbaijani deputies, district leaders were instructed to complete the action to cleanse Armenia of Azerbaijanis within a week, i.e. by 28 November.

The leaders of Kalinin, Spitak, Gugark, Noyemberyan, Krasnosel, Vardenis, Yeghegnadzor, Azizbekov, Ararat, Masis, Sisian and Meghri districts were particularly eager to complete the deportation action within the specified timeframe. In 1988-1989, as a result of Moscow’s support, 170 exclusively Azerbaijani and 94 mixed settlements were devastated in what is now Armenia. The last Azerbaijani settlement in Armenia from where Azerbaijanis were expelled on 8 August 1991 was Nuvedi village of Meghri region. More than 250,000 Azerbaijanis living in 22 districts and 6 cities of Armenia were forcibly expelled from their historical and ethnic lands.

In general, over the last 200 years, more than two thousand Azerbaijani settlements in the territory of present-day Armenia were excluded by various means (by deportation, expulsion by force of arms, committing genocide, burning and destruction of villages, etc.), and a mono-ethnic Armenian state was established on the historical lands of Azerbaijan.

 

Nazim Mustafa,

Doctor of Philosophy in History