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Events from the year 2020 in Azerbaijan.
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Events from the year 2020 in Azerbaijan.
The Azerbaijani Armed Forces were re-established according to the Law of the Republic of Azerbaijan on the Armed Forces from 9 October 1991. The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR) had originally formed its own armed forces from 26 June 1918 but were dissolved after Azerbaijan was absorbed into the Soviet Union as the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic from 28 April 1920. After the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991–92, the armed forces were reformed based on Soviet bases and equipment left on Azerbaijani soil.
Tovuz District is one of the 66 districts of Azerbaijan. It is located in the north-west of the country and belongs to the Gazakh-Tovuz Economic Region. The district borders the districts of Gadabay, Shamkir, Samukh, Agstafa, as well as the Tavush Province of Armenia and Kakheti region of Georgia. Its capital and largest city is Tovuz. As of 2020, the district had a population of 177,200. A major train line runs through the center, stopping at Tovuz Station.
The First Nagorno-Karabakh War was an ethnic and territorial conflict that took place from February 1988 to May 1994, in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in southwestern Azerbaijan, between the majority ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh backed by Armenia, and the Republic of Azerbaijan. As the war progressed, Armenia and Azerbaijan, both former Soviet Republics, entangled themselves in protracted, undeclared mountain warfare in the mountainous heights of Karabakh as Azerbaijan attempted to curb the secessionist movement in Nagorno-Karabakh. The enclave's parliament had voted in favor of uniting with Armenia and a referendum, boycotted by the Azerbaijani population of Nagorno-Karabakh, was held, in which a majority voted in favor of independence. The demand to unify with Armenia began in a relatively peaceful manner in 1988; in the following months, as the Soviet Union disintegrated, it gradually grew into an increasingly violent conflict between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, resulting in ethnic cleansing, including the Sumgait (1988) and Baku (1990) pogroms directed against Armenians, and the Gugark pogrom (1988) and Khojaly Massacre (1992) directed against Azerbaijanis. Inter-ethnic clashes between the two broke out shortly after the parliament of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) in Azerbaijan voted to unite the region with Armenia on 20 February 1988. The declaration of secession from Azerbaijan was the culmination of a territorial conflict. As Azerbaijan declared its independence from the Soviet Union and removed the powers held by the enclave's government, the Armenian majority voted to secede from Azerbaijan and in the process proclaimed the unrecognized Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is an ethnic and territorial conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, inhabited mostly by ethnic Armenians, and seven surrounding districts, inhabited mostly by Azerbaijanis until their expulsion during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. Some of these territories are de facto controlled, and some are claimed by the breakaway Republic of Artsakh although they have been internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan. The conflict has its origins in the early 20th century, but the present conflict began in 1988, when the Karabakh Armenians demanded transferring Karabakh from Soviet Azerbaijan to Soviet Armenia. The conflict escalated into a full-scale war in the early 1990s which later transformed into a low-intensity conflict until four-day escalation in April 2016 and then into another full-scale war in 2020.
Seyran Musheghi Ohanyan is an Armenian general and politician currently serving as a deputy in the National Assembly of Armenia. He served as Defence Minister of Armenia from 14 April 2008 until 3 October 2016. A native of Nagorno-Karabakh, he participated in both the first and second Karabakh wars, and from 2000 to 2007 served as defence minister of the unrecognized Republic of Artsakh.
There are no diplomatic relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan, largely due to the ongoing Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The two neighboring states had formal governmental relations between 1918 and 1921, during their brief independence from the collapsed Russian Empire, as the First Republic of Armenia and the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan; these relations existed from the period after the Russian Revolution until they were occupied and annexed by the Soviet Union, becoming the constituent republics of Soviet Armenia and Soviet Azerbaijan. Due to the two wars waged by the countries in the past century—one from 1918 to 1921 and another from 1988 to 1994—the two have had strained relations. In the wake of ongoing hostilities, social memory of Soviet-era cohabitation is widely repressed.
The Armenian-occupied territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh were areas of Azerbaijan, situated outside the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO), which were occupied by the ethnic Armenian military forces of the breakaway Republic of Artsakh with the military support from Armenia, from the end of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War (1988–1994) to 2020, when the territories were returned to Azerbaijani control by military force or handed over in accordance to the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire agreement. In Armenia and Artsakh, these territories were frequently referred to as the "security belt" or as the "liberated territories". Subsequently, these territories were included by the de facto authorities of the Artsakh Republic into its administrative-territorial structure.
Zakir Asker oghlu Hasanov is an Azerbaijani politician and Colonel General who has been the Minister of Defence of Azerbaijan since 2013.
2020s political history refers to significant political and societal historical events of the 2020s, presented as a historical overview in narrative format.
The July 2020 Armenian–Azerbaijani clashes began on 12 July 2020 between the Armenian Armed Forces and Azerbaijani Armed Forces. Initial clashes occurred near Movses in Tavush Province of Armenia, and Ağdam in Tovuz District of Azerbaijan at the Armenian–Azerbaijani state border.
Polad Israyil oghlu Hashimov was an Azerbaijani military officer, National Hero of Azerbaijan and a major general who served as the Deputy Commander and the Chief of Staff of the 3rd Army Corps of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces.
Protests in Mali began on 5 June 2020 when protesters gathered in the streets of Bamako, calling for Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta to resign as president of Mali. The protests ended after a coup d'état on 18 August. Both the president and prime minister of Mali were detained that afternoon, and in the evening they announced their resignations.
The 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war was an armed conflict in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding territories. It was a major escalation of an unresolved conflict over the region, involving Azerbaijan, supported by Turkey and Syrian mercenaries, and Armenia, along with the breakaway Republic of Artsakh with an Armenian ethnic majority but internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, supported by Armenian diaspora volunteers.
This is an account of engagements which occurred during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, primarily based on announcements from the belligerents. The war has been characterized by the use of armoured warfare; drone warfare, especially the use of Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 and Israeli loitering munition Harop drones; heavy artillery; rocket attacks; and trench warfare. It has also featured the deployment of cluster munitions, which are banned by the majority of the international community but not by Armenia or Azerbaijan: Azerbaijan states that Armenia has deployed cluster munitions against civilians, and international third parties have confirmed evidence of Azerbaijan's use of cluster munitions against civilian areas of Nagorno-Karabakh. A series of ballistic missile attacks have inflicted mass civilian casualties in Ganja, Azerbaijan, while civilian residences and infrastructure in Stepanakert, and elsewhere have been targeted, inflicting casualties and causing extensive damage.
Aras Valley campaign was a military operation launched by Azerbaijan against the breakaway Republic of Artsakh along the Aras River in the Azerbaijan–Iran border during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war.
The 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire agreement is an armistice agreement that ended the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. It was signed on 9 November by the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, the Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan and the President of Russia Vladimir Putin, and ended all hostilities in the Nagorno-Karabakh region from 00:00, 10 November 2020 Moscow time. The president of the self-declared Republic of Artsakh, Arayik Harutyunyan, also agreed to an end of hostilities.
Ilgar Anzor oglu Mirzayev was an Azerbaijani military officer, National Hero of Azerbaijan, and colonel serving in the Azerbaijani Armed Forces until his death during the July 2020 Armenian–Azerbaijani clashes. He also had participated in the April 2016 clashes.
The bombardment of Tartar was the bombardment of the cities, towns, and villages in Tartar District of Azerbaijan by the Armenian Armed Forces and the self-proclaimed Artsakh Defence Army with artillery, missiles, and cluster munitions during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. The bombardment of the district started on the second day of the war, on 28 September, when the Armenian forces shelled the city of Tartar, the administrative center of the district, and Shikharkh, which was built for the Azerbaijani refugees of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War.
The 2020 Azerbaijani protests, also known within Azerbaijan as the Karabakh March, were series of civil protests from 12 to 15 July in various cities and towns in Azerbaijan. They erupted within the framework of the Armenian–Azerbaijani border clashes, and the protestors demanded full-scale war with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
The military forces of Armenia and Azerbaijan have been engaged in a border conflict since 12 May 2021, when Azerbaijani soldiers crossed several kilometers into Armenia in the provinces of Syunik and Gegharkunik, occupying about 41 square kilometres (16 sq mi) of Armenian territory. Azerbaijan has not withdrawn its troops from internationally recognised Armenian territory despite calls to do so by the European Parliament, United States and France – two of three co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group.
Starting from the afternoon on July 12, units of the Armenian armed forces, grossly violating the ceasefire on the direction of the Tovuz region of the Azerbaijani-Armenian state border, subjected to fire on our positions using artillery mounts.