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Month: October 2023
YEREVAN, Armenia — Azerbaijan issued an arrest warrant for former Nagorno-Karabakh separatist leader Arayik Harutyunyan, the country’s prosecutor general said Sunday.
Harutyunyan led the breakaway region, which is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but largely populated by ethnic Armenians, between May 2020 and last month, when the separatist government said it would dissolve itself by the end of the year after a three-decade bid for independence.
Azerbaijani police arrested one of Harutyunyan’s former prime ministers, Ruben Vardanyan, on Wednesday as he tried to cross into Armenia along with tens of thousands of others who have fled following Baku’s 24-hour blitz last week to reclaim control of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Harutyunyan and the enclave’s former military commander, Jalal Harutyunyan, are accused of firing missiles on Azerbaijan’s third-largest city, Ganja, during a 44-day war in late 2020, local media reported. The clash between the Azerbaijani military clash and Nagorno Karabakh forces led to the deployment of Russian peacekeepers in the region.
The arrest warrant announcement by Prosecutor General Kamran Aliyev reflects Azerbaijan’s intention to quickly and forcefully enforce its grip on the region following three decades of conflict with the separatist state.
While Baku has pledged to respect the rights of ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, many have fled due to fear of reprisals or losing the freedom to use their language and to practice their religion and cultural customs.
In a briefing Sunday, Armenia’s presidential press secretary, Nazeli Baghdasaryan, said that 100,483 people had already arrived in Armenia from Nagorno-Karabakh, which had a population of about 120,000 before Azerbaijan’s offensive.
Some people lined up for days to escape the region because the only route to Armenia — a winding mountain road — became jammed with slow-moving vehicles.
Armenian Health Minister Anahit Avanesyan said some people, including older adults, had died while on the road as they were “exhausted due to malnutrition, left without even taking medicine with them, and were on the road for more than 40 hours.”
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan alleged Thursday that the exodus of ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh amounted to “a direct act of an ethnic cleansing and depriving people of their motherland.”
Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry strongly rejected Pashinyan’s accusations, saying the departure of Armenians was “their personal and individual decision and has nothing to do with forced relocation.”
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Pope Francis called during the Sunday prayer on Azerbaijan and Armenia to dialogue on the situation of forcibly displaced people from Nagorno-Karabakh, Rai Radio 1 reports.
He also prayed for “suffering Ukraine and all lands wounded by war”.
More than 100,000 people left their homes in Nagorno-Karabakh and fled to Armenia after Azerbaijan’s September 19 military aggression against Karabakh.
On September 28, the president of the self-declared republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, Samvel Shahramanyan, announced that it would cease to exist on January 1, 2024. According to a decree that he has signed, all state institutions will have been dissolved by this date.
It follows Azerbaijan’s military takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh and the subsequent flight of large parts of the ethnically Armenian population, a dramatic turn in the long-running conflict over the region, which revolves largely around the question of the disputed region’s independence. Azerbaijan, which is predominantly Muslim, is supported by Turkey, while Russia has acted as a protective power for Armenia, which is majority Christian.
Geopolitical consequences
The self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, which declared independence in 1991, has a predominantly Armenian population but is located on Azerbaijani territory. According to international law, it belongs to Azerbaijan, not Armenia.
Armenia has never recognized the breakaway republic. Even though some consider the region to be an “inseparable part” of Armenia, draft laws to recognize Nagorno-Karabakh’s independence have been blocked in the Armenian parliament and by the government.
The conflict has geopolitical relevance far beyond the two states due to several major oil and gas pipelines in the region that transport millions of barrels a day from the Caspian Sea to Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Azerbaijan has been supplying the EU with more gas.
Disputed for centuries
The conflict between Armenians and Azerbaijanis has its origins in the seventh century, when Christian Byzantines fought for control against Muslim Arabs. Under later Ottoman rule, the Armenian population looked to Russia for protection.
As Christian Armenians came under pressure from Persia in the 18th century, the Russian tsarina, Catherine the Great, issued letters of protection for them.
After Nagorno-Karabakh came under Russian control as a result of the Russo-Persian War of 1804 to 1813, the Christian Armenian population received preferential treatment over the Turkic Muslims of the wider region, later known as Azerbaijanis.
Armenian Genocide
The Armenian Genocide of 1915-1916 in the Ottoman Empire led many Armenians to flee to Nagorno-Karabakh, and exacerbated the conflict with the Azerbaijani population. In March 1918, there were pogroms against Azerbaijanis, and then there were anti-Armenian pogroms in the Azerbaijani capital Baku. In 1920, pogroms in the city of Shusha in Nagorno-Karabakh claimed the lives of over 30,000 Armenians.
After the fall of the Russian Empire, the Russian Revolution, and the First World War, the region continued to be disputed between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which both enjoyed a brief period of independence.
In 1922, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia formed the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, but it was dissolved in 1936 and disintegrated into individual Soviet republics. However, riots and pogroms between Armenians and Azerbaijanis did not stop.
There have been tens of thousands of casualties on both sidesImage: AP/dpa/picture alliance
Collapse of Soviet Union
In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Armenia and Azerbaijan declared their independence. The region of Nagorno-Karabakh followed suit on September 3, 1991. Two months later, Azerbaijan lifted its autonomy and launched an energy blockade.
The conflict escalated again and in early 1992, there were more mass killings in both Azerbaijani and Armenian villages. On May 12, 1994, a cease-fire agreement came into force that strengthened Nagorno-Karabakh.
Some 35,000 people are estimated to have died in the 1990s and over 1.1 million were displaced.
A Second Nagorno-Karabakh War broke out in 2020 after which the region suffered major territorial losses despite support from Armenia. The war came to an end due to a cease-fire agreement brokered by Moscow that helped Azerbaijan regain parts of the disputed territory.
From the Armenian perspective, Azerbaijan at no time guaranteed autonomy to Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan, on the other hand, stated repeatedly that it recognized “broad autonomy” for the region, but not independence.
This article was translated from German.