WHY AZERBAIJAN HAS NO LEGAL RIGHT TO CLAIM NAGORNO KARABAKH

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW...

Artsakh known as Nagorno Karabakh, is an enigma wrapped up inside the Armenian Highlands falsely renamed "Caucasus". Having an extremely rugged mountainous surface covered by dense forests, it has some of the most beautiful landscape in the region. It is a ‘country’ recognized by no-one. Even the name is something of a mystery, being made up from words of three different languages: nagorno means mountainous in Russian, kara means black in Turkish and bakh means garden in Persian. The name “Mountainous Black Garden” was given to it because its forests are so dense it’s dark inside.

This stunning Armenian region has over 5000-year old history. In its remote forests there are hundreds of hidden moss-covered Armenian monasteries, stone-crosses, witnesses of the true owners of this land.

Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh) had never been a part of the independent Republic of Azerbaijan neither in 1918-1920 (this is when Azerbaijan appeared as a country) and since 1991. It was Joseph Stalin who decided to annex the region to Azerbaijan in 1921 after the Great October Revolution. So Artsakh was under the rule of Soviet Azerbaijan only for 70 years. However, the population of Artsakh remained largely Armenian even before the conflict (76.4%) in 1988.

Soviet Azerbaijan doesn't exist any more. The USSR collapsed and all the countries declared their independence including Nagorno Karabakh (the Independence Day is on 2 September 1991). The people of Nagorno Karabakh expressed a wish to join the Armenian SSR in 1987 after Gorbachov had announced about the policy of "Perestroyka" and "Glastonost" giving an opportunity for a freedom of speech. Kremlin was against the will of the people of Artsakh to join their historical motherland. As a response to the peaceful protests of the Armenians, a massacre of the the Armenian population of Sumgait (in Azerbaijan) was organized. In 1990 in Baku the Armenian families were being massacred. The Armenians were among the builders of the flourishing city of Baku. They were deported from their homes. In 1991 the deportation of the Armenians began from all over Azerbaijan including Nagorno Karabakh. A war broke out in 1991. The Armenians won the war in 1994 as they were defending their homes, the land of their ancestors.

The Republic of Nagorno Karabakh is not recognized internationally. It has a population of 150.000 inhabitants.

If the region was controlled by Azerbaijan during the Soviet era, it doesn't mean Azerbaijan has a legal right to claim the land which has been population by the Armenian people for thousands of years.

It is enough to read about the recent history of the region to understand the reason why Azerbaijan has no LEGAL right to claim Nagorno Karabakh.

Nagorno Karabakh was under Persian rule in 1805 when, along with other areas in eastern Transcaucasia, it was annexed to the ‘everlasting rule’ of the Russian Empire. The Gulistan Treaty of 1813 signed by Russia and Persia ratified this. The collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917 resulted in a changed arrangement of states in the Caucasus. The newly formed Republic of Armenia and the equally new Azerbaijan Democratic Republic made territorial demands for large areas of historic Armenia, even though the Tsarist census of the whole Karabakh region showed in 1917 a population which was 72% Armenian. Taking advantage of the confused state of affairs resulting from World War I, the collapse of the Russian Empire and continuous persecution of Armenians by Turks, Turkish forces along with Azeri military units destroyed hundreds of ethnically Armenian villages. Only in Nagorno Karabakh did the Armenian population succeed in repelling the attacks.

In July 1918, the First Armenian Assembly of Nagorno Karabakh declared the region to be self-governing and created the Karabakh National Council. In August 1919, this National Council entered into a provisional treaty arrangement with the Azerbaijani government to try to halt the military conflict. This, however, did not prevent Azerbaijan’s violation of the treaty, culminating on 28 March 1920 with the massacre of Armenians, accompanied by burning and plundering, in Shushi, then the capital. As a result the Karabakh Aseembly nullified the treaty and declared the union with Armenia.

The First League of Nations had its inaugural meeting in late 1920. Applications for members were considered by the 5^th committee, chaired by Chile, which recommended that Azerbaijan should not be admitted (mainly because of its Bolshevik government) while consideration of Armenia’s admission should be postponed (because it was occupied). However, the League of Nations, before final resolution of the issue, recognized Nagorno Karabakh as a disputed territory since it had not in practice been ruled by any outside power since the Russian collapse in 1917. That only changed when Bolshevik forced occupied Nagorno Karabakh in 1920. Immediately following the establishment of the Soviet regime in Armenia, the Azerbaijan Revolutionary Committee on 30 November 1920 formally recognized Nagorno Karabakh, as well as Zangezur (southern Armenia) and Nakhichevan to be parts of Armenia and in June 1921, Armenia itself declared Nagorno Karabakh to be part of Armenia.

Meanwhile the Bolshevik leaders in Russia were having vision of an imminent international communist revolution and believed and believed that the new Turkish government under Ataturk was a believer of their cause. This resulted in a change in attitude regarding Turkey’s ethnically close relations with Azerbaijan and the question of the disputed territories including Nagorno Karabakh. Stalin, Commisar of the Nationalities of the Council of People’s Commissars in Moscow, therefore persuaded the Caucasian Bureau of the Russian Communist Party to adopt on 5 July 1921 a policy of annexing Nagorno Karabakh to Azerbaijan rather than Armenia. This was despite the fact that both Armenia and Azerbaijan were still independent, albeit communist controlled, countries: The Soviet Union into which they would be incorporated along with Russia was not formed until December 1922 and it was no business of the Russian Communist Party to decide on the wishes of the Karabakh population. This decision was put into effect but with the proviso that Nagorno Karabakh would be granted the status of an autonomous region.

On 7 July 1923, the Soviet Azerbaijan Revolutionary Committee resolved to dismember Nagorno Karabakh and to create – on only part of its territory amounting 4,400 sq. km – the promised autonomous region. A large part of the remainder, comprising the present-day districts of Lachin and Kelbajar (Karvachar), became the Kurdistan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Thus Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh were ow separated by the territory of Kurdistan. In 1929, Kurdistan was abolished and the territory fully incorporated into Azerbaijan, so that from 1929 onwards, Armenia was separated from Nagorno Karabakh by Azerbaijan proper.

To be continued...

The map of Armenia and Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh Republic)

The statue "We are Our Mountains" , tenderly called "Grandpa & Grandma", is a national landmark symbolizing our ancestors roots are in the soil of Artsakh. This is why you can see their heads only. The statue was erected in 1968 in the capital city, Stepanakert

The dome of the Armenian medieval monastery of Gandzasar with exquisite carvings built in the 13th century truly nicknamed "the encyclopedia of the Armenian architecture"