Throughout the 20th century, Armenian and the Turkic-speaking inhabitants (then known as "Caucasian Tatars," later as Azerbaijanis)[a] of Transcaucasia have been involved in numerous conflicts, contributing to the animosity between the two groups.[24] From 1918 to 1920, organized killings of Armenians occurred in Azerbaijan, especially in the Armenian cultural centers in Baku and Shushi.[25]
According to Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of the journal Russia in Global Affairs, "Armenophobia is the institutional part of the modern Azerbaijani statehood and Karabakh is in the center of it".[37] According to historian Jeremy Smith, "National identity in post-Soviet Azerbaijan rests in large part, then, on the cult of the Aliyevs, alongside a sense of embattlement and victimisation and a virulent hatred of Armenia and Armenians."[38][39]
Early period
The establishment of the Azerbaijani state is historically linked to ethnic violence against Armenians.[40][41][42][43] For over a century, Turkish and Azerbaijani authorities have cultivated racism against Armenians. In a secret 21 July 1920 letter, Soviet Karabakh leader Asad Karayev urged his counterpart Nariman Narimanov to "kill a Russian soldier and accuse the Armenians of the crime," then wipe out Zangezur’s Armenians and their wealth so "this accursed tribe can never rise again."[44]
Other incidents include the Armenian–Tatar massacres (1905-1906),[45] and the Armenian–Azerbaijani war (1918–1920) which included the Muslim uprisings in Armenia (1919-1920). Scholars consider these incidents to be precursors or extensions of the Armenian Genocide.[46][47][48] Between 1914 and 1918, pan-Turkic military campaigns—coordinated between the Ottoman Empire and local Caucasian Tatars (Azeris)—sought the elimination of Armenian presence and autonomy in the Caucasus.[49][50][51][52] In this period, although all sides engaged in violence, the balance of power was skewed against Armenians,[53] in part due to the policies of Turkey[54] and Britain.[55][56][57]Vahakn Dadrian, professor of sociology, describes Turkey’s collusion with Azeris as a deceitful "Ittihadist pattern of genocide," citing statements from Turkish General Karabakeir who wrote "under the pretext of protecting the rights of Muslim minorities, there is ground for constant intervention" and "arming the Turks of the area little by little, toward the goal of linking up east and west in the area, and molding Azerbaijan into an independent Turkish government through the creation of a national force structure."[52]
Anti-Armenian sentiment was well-established before and during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and formed a foundational element of Azeri nationalism.[78][79][80] The incorporation of Armenia into the USSR prevented the complete annihilation of the Armenian nation.[81][82][83] Despite this, during the Soviet Era, the Armenians of Nakhichevan[84] and of Lachin[85] were subjected to gradual ethnic cleansing by Soviet Azeri authorities[86][87][88] resulting in the exodus of all Armenians from the region. During the Soviet Era, Armenians were scapegoated for state, societal and economic shortcomings in Azerbaijan.[89][78] Although the Soviet government tried to foster a peaceful co-existence between the two ethnic groups, but many Azerbaijanis resented the high social status of Armenians in Azerbaijan, as many Armenians were deemed part of Azerbaijan's intelligentsia.
Suppression of Armenian culture in Nagorno-Karabakh
Between 1921 and 1990, under the control of the Azeri SSR within the USSR, Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh faced economic marginalization, deportation,[90][91] and cultural discrimination,[92] leading to a significant exodus.[93][94] Meanwhile, authorities encouraged the inflow of Azeris from outside Nagorno-Karabakh.[95] This policy – sometimes called a "White Genocide"[96][97][98][99][100][101] – aimed at "de-Armenizing" the territory culturally and then physically and followed a similar pattern to Azerbaijan's treatment of Armenians in Nakhchivan.[102] The suppression of Armenian language and culture was widespread; many Armenian churches, cemeteries, and schools were closed or destroyed, clerics arrested, and Armenian historical education was banned.[103] The Armenian educational institutions that remained were under the administration of the Azeri Ministry of Education, which enforced prohibitions against teaching Armenian history and using Armenian materials and led to a curriculum that significantly differed from that of Armenia itself.[102][104][105] Moreover, restrictions limited cultural exchanges and communication between Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians and Armenia, with significant neglect in transportation and communication infrastructure.[93] The Azerbaijani government's decree in 1957 that Azerbaijani was to be the main language and the alteration of educational content to favor Azerbaijani history over Armenian exemplify the systemic efforts to assimilate the Armenian population culturally.[106] The 1981 "law of the NKAR" denied additional rights, restricted cultural connections between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia, and removed provisions that had explicitly listed Armenian as a working language to be used by local authorities.[107] In the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, Armenians protested against the cultural and economic marginalization they faced in the region.[108] In the 1980s, resentment against what was perceived as a forced "Azerification" campaign led to a mass movement for reunification with Armenia.[109][110][111]
Multiple sources state that the anti-Armenian pogroms in Azerbaijan involved elements of premeditation, such as the use of lists to target Armenians specifically and hand-made weapons.[127][128][129] The perpetrators targeted the victims based solely on their Armenian ethnicity.[130][131] The apartments of Armenians (which were marked in advance) were attacked and the residents were indiscriminately murdered, raped, and mutilated by the Azerbaijani rioters.[132][133][134] Looting, arson and destruction of Armenian property was also perpetrated.[135] Azerbaijani authorities took no action to stop the atrocities,[136] and the failure to conduct a timely, thorough investigation or hold the perpetrators accountable,[137][138] further escalated inter-ethnic tensions.[139] Many of those who participated in the massacre were later hailed by numerous Azeri demonstrators as national heroes.[140][141][142]
The anti-Armenian violence between 1988 and 1992, described by Genocide Watch as a "campaign of terror,"[143] heightened fears of another Armenian genocide,[144][145][146] leading to the flight of 350,000 Armenians from Azerbaijan.[147][24][148] Russian political writer Roy Medvedev and USSR Journalists' Union described the events as genocide of the Armenian population.[149][150] Sociologist Donald E. Miller and historian Richard Hovannisian, note that the 1988 pogroms against Armenians, while horrific, only explained the mass flight of Armenians when seen as a precursor to genocide, as many who fled left behind well-established homes, jobs, and property.[151] Many observers compared the plight of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh with those that were persecuted in Turkey and Azerbaijan during the Armenian Genocide.[152][153][154] In 1989, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov wrote "the Armenian people are again facing the threat of genocide...for Nagorno-Karabakh this is a question of survival, for Azerbaijan—just a question of ambition."[155]
In 1990, a group of 130 prominent academics — including Jacques Derrida, Isaiah Berlin, Alain Finkielkraut, Richard Rorty — published a letter condemning anti-Armenian violence in Azerbaijan. They warned that "flagrant violations of human rights a half century after the genocide of the Jewish people in Nazi concentration camps" reflected the enduring threat of racism and called for international action. Citing repeated attacks that "followed the same pattern," the signatories argued these were no "accidents or spontaneous outbursts," but that "crimes against the Armenian minority have become consistent practice – if not consistent policy – in Soviet Azerbaijan."[156] Azeri academic Ziya Bunyadov, gained notoriety for his article "Why Sumgait?" in which he blamed the Armenian victims themselves for orchestrating the pogrom—a stance that led British journalist Thomas de Waal, to describe him as "Azerbaijan’s foremost Armenophobe."[157]
In 1991, two groups of independent international experts visited the Caucasus and concluded that Azerbaijan was the primary aggressor in the conflict, aiming to ethnically cleanse Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh.[158][159] The experts cited several reasons for their conclusion: the brutal deportations, the blockades of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, and the use of particular military equipment against civilians and civilian areas.[160][161]
Influence on Azerbaijani national identity
The formation of Azerbaijani nationalism is intertwined with historical conflicts with Armenians and anti-Armenian hostility – both during its founding years (1918-1920)[162][163] and in its contemporary post-Soviet form.[164][165] Multiple historians state that Azeri authorities used Soviet ethno-national policies and historical revisionism to promote a monolithic Azeri identity, assimilate ethno-religious minorities, and support expansionist claims over historically Armenian territories.[166][167][168] The hostility of Azeris towards Armenians is inherited from the pan-Turkic ideologies of the Young Turks, the architects of the Armenian Genocide.[168][169] Certain sources state that the origin of Azerbaijan as a nation state is fundamentally anti-Armenian[170] and linked to the genocide of Armenians.[171][172]
Historian Dorfmann-Lazarev writes "the promotion of the Turkophone majority of Azerbaijan to the status of its unique titular nation was accompanied by the persecution of the populations of diverse ethnic origins long-established on the same territory" and that Soviet Azeri leaders "interpreted the republic as 'Azerbaijan for Muslims'," leading them to expel Armenians to barren lands devoid of essential resources.[173] The ensuing historiography and identity of Azerbaijan, originally cultivated by Soviet authorities, and later by the Aliyev family,[174][175] facilitated expansionist claims to Armenian territory as well as the ethnic and cultural erasure of Armenians.[168][166]
Azerbaijan's inability to suppress the Karabakh Movement (1988-1991) escalated Azeri nationalism,[176] described by multiple sources as institutionally anti-Armenian.[177][178][78]Genocide Watch states that the "exclusionary ideology of the Aliyev regime" is a genocide risk factor for Armenians.[175] According to the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, Soviet rule curbed "the genocidal anti-Armenianism of Azeri nationalists," but since Azerbaijan's independence, this hostility now runs unchecked.[179] Historian Stephen Badalyan Riegg states that "the Aliyev dictatorship's revanchist, seemingly neo-imperial policy of conquest and displacement is accompanied by a primordialist agenda of erasing the physical evidence of long-standing Armenian life in Karabakh and other districts under Baku's expanding control...Indeed, in Aliyev's zero-sum equation, Azerbaijani nationhood is incompatible with any tangible proof of Armenian historic presence."[180]
Vladimir Kazimirov, the Russian Representative for Nagorno-Karabakh from 1992 to 1996 and co-chairman of the OSCE Minsk Group, has many times accused certain forces in Azerbaijan up to the level of state authorities of inciting anti-Armenian sentiment.[181] At the beginning of 2004, characterizing the decade following the conclusion of the ceasefire, Kazimirov stated:
Having found itself in the position of long-term discomfort, Baku has actually started pursuing a policy of a total 'cold war' against the Armenians. All types of economic "dampers" as well as any contacts with the Armenians (even those on the societal level) are rejected from the very start and those who maintain these contacts are prosecuted. In the enlightened Soviet state someone would be quite willing to instill such sentiments as fundamentalism, revanchism and Armenophobia, which as such only prevent the elimination of both causes and consequences of the conflict. Currently there is growing fanaticism and extremism even on the level of non-governmental organizations.[182]
At the 2009 Eurovision contest, Azerbaijani security services summoned 43 Azerbaijanis who voted for Armenia at Eurovision for questioning, accusing them of lack of patriotism and "ethnic pride."[184][185][186] In 2014, prominent human rights defenders Leyla Yunus and her husband Arif Yunus — who were known for actively pursuing reconciliation with Armenia — were detained by the authorities for allegedly spying for Armenia.[187]
Azerbaijani national media and state officials routinely perpetuate hate speech against Armenians,[15][16] including negative caricatures — such as being untrustworthy, deceitful, culturally derivative, and cowardly, thereby reinforcing public prejudice.[18]
In 2011, a report from the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) on Azerbaijan stated that "the constant negative official and media discourse" against Armenia fosters "a negative climate of opinion regarding people of Armenian origin, who remain vulnerable to discrimination."[17] adding that Azerbaijani mainstream does not make "a clear distinction between that state and persons of Armenian origin coming under the jurisdiction of Azerbaijan."[17] It further implicates certain TV channels, prominent citizens, politicians, and local and national authorities in the "fuel[ing of] negative feelings among society towards Armenians."[11] According to the watchdog, anti-Armenian prejudice is so deeply built in people's conscience that describing someone as an Armenian may be considered as an insult so strong that it justifies initiating defamation lawsuits, which in some cases is true even if the person who is called that way is an Armenian.[17]
According to Amnesty International, the Azerbaijani government targets journalists and activists, particularly those who advocate for peace with Armenia.[188] Azeri journalist and human rights activist Arzu Geybullayeva received numerous threats in various social media circles stemming from Azerbaijan over her cooperation with the Armenian newspaper Agos.[189] In 2024, Bahruz Samadov, Azeri political scientist and peace activist, was sentenced to 15 years on charges of treason. An outspoken advocate for peace with Armenia,[190][188] he was targeted by the Azerbaijani government for his criticism of Azeri nationalism[191] and of its anti-Armenian stance.[192]
There is also wide media coverage of some statements made by Azerbaijani public figures and statesmen which demonstrate intolerance.[193][14] For instance, in 2008, Allahshukur Pashazadeh, the religious leader (Grand Mufti) of the Caucasus Muslims made a statement that "falsehood and betrayal are in the Armenian blood."[194][195][196] Degrading rhetoric from high-level leaders has seeped into Azerbaijani society. In a nationwide address in September 2020, President Aliyev's phrase "Azerbaijani soldiers drive [Armenians] away like dogs." became extremely popular across Azerbaijani social media.[197] Nurlan Ibrahimov, the public relations and media manager of an Azerbaijani football club said, "We must kill Armenians. No matter whether a woman, a child, an old man. We must kill everyone we can and whoever happens (sic). We should not feel sorry; we should not feel pity. If we do not kill (them), our children will be killed."[197]
Indoctrination in schools
An Azerbaijani website surveyed experts who acknowledged the presence of Armenophobia in Azerbaijani textbooks, with many of them justifying it.[198] The Azerbaijani historian Arif Yunus has stated that various Azerbaijani school textbooks label Armenians with epithets such as "bandits", "aggressors", "treacherous", and "hypocritical".[199] The historian also states that patriotic education is a prominent theme in Azerbaijani education, rooted in the ideology of combating enemies—primarily portrayed as Armenians—and emphasizes a readiness to die for the homeland and engage in a "heroic struggle" against adversaries.[200] He and his wife were jailed for allegedly spying for Armenia.[201]
One prominent example is the story titled Armenian, authored by Elkhan Zeynalli — a member of the Union of Azerbaijani Writers — and named “Story of the Year” in 2008 by Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Youth and Sports.[202] This story, which fosters Armenophobic sentiments, is incorporated into Azerbaijan’s school curriculum for home reading. In this story, Armenians are depicted in overwhelmingly negative terms, with multiple instances of dehumanizing language that include phrases such as "blood-sucker," "double-faced," "kill all Armenian dogs," "rape all Armenian women," and "strangle the Armenian children."[202]
Yasemin Kilit Aklar in her study titled Nation and History in Azerbaijani School Textbooks comes to the following conclusion:
Azerbaijani official textbooks misuse history to encourage hatred and feelings of ethnic and national superiority. The Armenians... are presented as historical enemies and derided in very strong language. [The fifth grade history textbook by] Ata Yurdu stimulates direct hostility to Armenians and Russians. Even if the efforts to establish peace in Nagorno-Karabagh are successful, how can it be expected to survive? How can a new generation live with Armenians in peaceful coexistence after being inculcated with such prejudices? As of now, the civic nationalism that Azerbaijani officials speak of appears to be a distant myth or a mere rhetorical device.[203]
The Azeri revisionist steamroller takes many forms: irreversible destruction, degradation (Armenian cupolas modified, Armenian inscriptions erased, crosses removed), reassignment (churches become mosques), reappropriation through outright denial of its Armenian origins.[204]
Multiple observers — including those from government,[206] genocide experts,[207][208][209] and others[210][211] — state that Azerbaijan engages in historical revisionism to support its territorial claims,[212] deprive Armenians of their own territorial claims,.[213][214] and eliminate traces of historical Armenian presence.[215][216] This has involved the organized denial,[217][218] and falsification of history,[219][220] alongside the erasure of Armenian cultural heritage sites,[221][222] and place-names.[223][224][225] as well as the imposition of a state monopoly over Armenian cultural studies, which limits independent research and enforces official narratives.[226][227][228] Petrosyan et al. state that Azerbaijan's use of historical falsification aim "to neutralize the Armenian identity of Artsakh."[229]
Under Mir Cəfər Bağırov's leadership as First Secretary of the Azeri SSR, efforts began to erase the historical Armenian presence in Azerbaijan and elevate the Azeri majority to the sole titular nation.[230] Anti-Armenian historical revisionism developed in the 1950-1960s,[216][231] and promoted the false narrative that Azerbaijanis are descendants of the indigenous Caucasian Albanians.[232][233] These revisions, driven by Soviet and later post-Soviet nationalism,[234] contributed to ethnic tensions and paved the way for the ethnic cleansing of Armenians.[230][235] In certain instances, Azeri historiography explicitly prohibits mentions of Armenians, with the intention of erasing the historical presence of Armenians.[236][237] Arsène Saparov, Caucasus expert, states that "the persistent Azerbaijani policy of denial of the Armenian presence and cultural heritage in the Caucasus...has been institutionalized since Ilham Aliyev became president."[224]
Genocide scholars Edita Gzoyan et al. wrote "we are witnessing a systematic, scholarly, political, and military attempt to de-Armenize the land, its names, geography, and history. This process resembles Lemkin’s notion of genocide—the destruction of the national pattern of the targeted group and the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor."[238] Analysts have observed that Azerbaijan is distinct from other genocidaires insofar as it not only attempts to erase the history of Armenians in the Caucasus but denies their very existence, thereby attempting to minimize the nature of the crime.[219][239][240] The European Centre for Law and Justice states "to accomplish complete cultural erasure, Azerbaijan has gone beyond merely destroying Armenian heritage—Azerbaijan is also denying it ever existed," adding that "Azerbaijan seeks to erase...even the memory of the Armenian people."[241]
Alexandra Xanthaki, the UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights expressed concern over the "ongoing pattern of destruction and appropriation of Armenian historically, culturally, and religiously significant sites and objects....[including]...the organised reinterpretation of the history of Nagorno-Karabakh to erase the traces of the presence of Armenians," adding concern that the "allegations that the combined attacks to people, monuments and symbols, the falsification of the historical narrative and erasure of place names...may amount to cultural cleansing."[242]
Despite the constitutional guarantees against religious discrimination, numerous acts of vandalism against the Armenian Apostolic Church have been reported throughout Azerbaijan. These acts are clearly connected to anti-Armenian sentiments brought to the surface by the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan.[243]
Starting in 1998, Azerbaijan began embarking on a campaign of destroying a cemetery of Armenian khachkar carvings in a cemetery in Julfa.[244][245][246][247] Several appeals were filed by both Armenian and international organizations, condemning the Azerbaijani government and calling on it to desist from such activity. In 2006, Azerbaijan barred members of the European Parliament from investigating the claims.[248] In the spring of 2006, a visiting journalist from the Institute for War and Peace Reporting reported that no visible traces of the Armenian cemetery remained.[249] In the same year, photographs taken from Iran showed that the cemetery site had been turned into a military firing range.[250]
As a response to Azerbaijan barring on-site investigation by outside groups, on 8 December 2010, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) released an analysis of high-resolution satellite photographs of the Armenian Julfa cemetery site taken in 2003 and 2009. The AAAS concluded that the satellite imagery was consistent with the reports from observers on the ground, that "significant destruction and changes in the grade of the terrain" had occurred between 2003 and 2009, and that the cemetery area was "likely destroyed and later leveled by earth-moving equipment."[251]
In 2019, Azerbaijan's destruction of Armenian cultural heritage was described as "the worst cultural genocide of the 21st century" in Hyperallergic, exceeding the destruction of cultural heritage by ISIL. The devastation included 89 medieval churches, 5,840 intricate cross-stones, and 22,000 tombstones.[252][253] An investigation by the organization Caucasus Heritage Watch described Azerbaijan’s destruction of Armenian heritage within Nakhichevan as a "striking portrait of cultural erasure that, in its surgical precision, totality, and surreptitiousness, has few parallels."[254][255] The research program stated that there was “conclusive forensic evidence that silent and systematic cultural erasure has been a feature of Azerbaijan’s domestic ethnic policies" adding that "by 2011, all physical traces of Armenians in Nakhichevan were effectively gone, with rare exceptions appearing to have resulted from oversight rather than intent."[255]
In 2020 during the second Nagorno-Karabakh War, Azerbaijani forces shelled the historical 19th century Ghazanchetsots Cathedral in Shusha,[256] which was the seat of the Diocese of Artsakh of the Armenian Apostolic Church.[257] During the war, a group of genocide scholars issued a statement on the "imminent genocidal threat deriving from Azerbaijan and Turkey," adding that the destruction of Armenian cultural heritage was consistent with the "policy of the cultural genocide" that Azerbaijan had implemented over the past 30 years in Nakhichevan.[258] In addition, the scholars stated that "a case can be made that there is conspiracy to commit genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, and [an] attempt to commit genocide."[258] An article from Cultural Property News stated that "the vast scale and deliberate nature of the elimination of Armenian heritage by Azerbaijani officials makes clear that it is not an accident of war but a state-sponsored attempt to eliminate a people’s history."[259]
Following Nagorno-Karabakh's de facto incorporation into Azerbaijan following a military offensive in 2003, the Azerbaijani government has undertaken a campaign of Turkification and the destruction of Armenian cultural sites, which aims at denying Armenians' historical presence and justifying their expulsion.[260][261][262][263] Historian Vincent Duclert, states that "the long-drawn-out genocide to which the Armenians have been subjected is leading now not only to the disappearance of the Armenian population in Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh)...but to the eradication of all evidence of their habitation there over millennia."[264]
Azerbaijani authorities have glorified acts of violence against Armenians, including by granting awards or other privileges to individuals responsible for such atrocities.[265][266] Viktor Krivopuskov, who previously served as an officer of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR and a member of a peacekeeping mission in Nagorno-Karabakh gives the following assessment of Azerbaijan's current state policy:
"The criminals are promoted to the rank of heroes, monuments are erected on their burial places, which comes to prove that the government of Azerbaijan actually continues the policy of genocide which was initiated at the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th centuries."[267]
In 2004, the Azerbaijani lieutenant Ramil Safarov murdered Armenian lieutenant Gurgen Markaryan in his sleep at a Partnership for PeaceNATO program in Hungary. In 2006, Safarov was sentenced to life imprisonment in Hungary with a minimum incarceration period of 30 years. In 2012, after his request under the Strasbourg convention he was extradited to Azerbaijan, where he was greeted as a hero by a huge crowd,[268][269][270] pardoned by the Azerbaijani president despite contrary assurances made to Hungary,[271][272] promoted to the rank of major, and given an apartment, and eight years of back pay.[273] Armenia cut all diplomatic ties with Hungary after this incident.[272] The Government of Azerbaijan reportedly offered to buy 2-4 billion dollars of Hungarian sovereign bonds in order to secure the release of the convicted murderer.[274][275][276] On 19 September 2013, President Aliyev stated that "Azerbaijan has returned Ramil Safarov—its officer to homeland, given him freedom and restored the justice."[277]Amnesty International noted that Azerbaijan’s treatment of Safarov following his extradition suggest that "Margaryan’s brutal murder based on his ethnicity was, retroactively, a state-sponsored hate crime."[278]
In 2016, Azerbaijani President Aliyev awarded a medal to an Azerbaijani soldier who had beheaded 19-year-old Artsakh soldier Kyaram Sloyan and shared photos on social media showing himself with Sloyan’s severed head.[279] In 2022, Azerbaijani soldier Gardashkhan Abishov — investigated for abusing Armenian soldiers and sharing a video of the mutilation of a female service member — was nonetheless awarded by President Aliyev for "protecting Azerbaijan's borders."[279]
Multiple human rights advocates,[280][281][282] including former UN officials[283][284] have stated that Azerbaijani forces have tortured ethnic Armenian civilians and prisoners of war. Human rights organizations – including the Lemkin Institute,[285][286] the IAGS,[287] and the University Network for Human Rights[288] state that Azerbaijani forces have used torture with genocidal motives. A 2024 fact-finding mission jointly prepared by Freedom House and other organizations documented torture, physical abuse, and degrading treatment of Armenian captives:[289] concluding that Azerbaijan's actions satisfied the criteria for "ethnic cleansing." During Azerbaijan’s 2023 offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh, the Lemkin Institute issued a genocide warning, stating that "Azerbaijan has committed atrocities against almost all Armenian civilians and POWs it has captured in the wars of 2016, 2020 and 2022."[286]
In numerous instances Armenian captives were forced to declare "Karabakh is Azerbaijan" while undergoing torture and killed while wrapped in the flags of Artsakh, indicating an ethnic dimension of these actions against Armenians.[290][288][291] Other forms of abuse, including physical and psychological torture, lack of hygiene, inadequate medical care, extreme temperatures, and insufficient food and water, have been reported to occur in secret detention phases.[292] Incidents of torture, presented by Armenia at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), have been cited as evidence that Azerbaijan targets Armenians based on their ethnicity.[293][294][295] In December 2021, following concern from multiple UN officials, the ICJ ordered Azerbaijan to protect Armenian detainees from violence and uphold their rights in accordance with international law.[296] In September 2022, the UN CERD issued a report expressing concern about allegations of grave human rights violations committed during and after the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War by Azerbaijani military forces against Armenians – including extrajudicial executions, torture, and other ill-treatment and arbitrary detention.[297]
Azerbaijani forces have filmed the mutilation of bodies, engaging in gruesome acts such as chopping off limbs, severing heads, carving messages into torsos, and spreading the documentation on social media.[298] Azerbaijani forces have used these tactics as tools of psychological warfare aimed at terrorizing the Armenian population into leaving.[297] An instance which attracted media attention was that of Anush Apetyan, an Armenian soldier who was tortured, mutilated, and raped during Azerbaijan’s invasion of Armenia in 2022. Videos emerged online of Azerbaijani soldiers celebrating and mocking her mutilated body. Both Juan Mendez (the first UN Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide) and Anahit Manasyan (the Human Rights Ombudsman of Armenia) reported that bodies returned to Armenia after Azerbaijan's 2023 military assault bore signs of torture and mutilation.[299][300][301]
During and following the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War, Azeri forces carried out extrajudicial executions of Armenian civilians[305][306][307] and prisoners of war (POWs).[308][309][210] One video shows two Azerbaijani soldiers beheading an elderly Armenian as he is begging for his life by repeatedly saying "For the sake of Allah." After the Armenian was decapitated, the victim's head was placed on the nearby carcass of a pig. The men then addressed the dead body in Azerbaijani, saying, "you have no honour, this is how we take revenge for the blood of our martyrs," and, "this is how we get revenge — by cutting heads."[310][311]Human Rights Watch reported on the physical abuse of Armenian prisoners of war by their Azerbaijani captors, noting that most of the perpetrators showed no fear of accountability, as their faces were clearly visible in the videos.[298]
Many victims were elderly or disabled who could not flee, making them especially vulnerable.[321][322] Extra-judicial executions, often broadcast on social media by Azeri soldiers, served to terrorize Armenians[323] and humiliate the families of the deceased.[324] An investigation by University Network for Human Rights corroborated 150 cases of extrajudicial executions, with the majority of them occurring after the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War.[325] Certain human rights advocates stated that the widespread nature of extrajudicial executions suggest a systematic practice aimed at instilled fear among the population.[326][327]
Azerbaijan bars entry to anyone with an Armenian-sounding names[328][329][330] — even those who are not ethnically or nationally Armenian[331][332][333] — and denies the right of return to former Armenian residents who have fled.[334][335] Regardless of your citizenship, possessing an Armenian-sounding name endangers your safety.[336][337] In one case, an Armenian woman was abducted after she attempted to return to Shushi to collect her belongings following the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire agreement.[338] Multiple human rights observers,[339][340][341] and government officials,[342] including from the United Nations, ICJ,[343] Switzerland,[344] and the European Parliament,[345] have called on Azerbaijan to ensure the rights of former Armenian residents to return safely to their homeland. Amnesty International stated that "the right [of ethnic Armenians] to remain in their own homes and other rights should not be made conditional on accepting Azerbaijani citizenship."[346]
In 2011, Diana Markosian, a journalist of American and Russian citizenship, was prevented from entering Azerbaijan due to her Armenian ethnicity.[347][348] Zafer Noyan, an ethnic Turkish professional arm-wrestler, was barred from entering Azerbaijan because his last name looked Armenian.[349][350][351] In May 2016, an eight-year-old Russian boy, Luka Vardanyan, was detained for several hours and denied entry into Azerbaijan during a school trip, while his classmates were allowed through, due to his Armenian surname.[352][353] In 2017 Russia formally complained to Azerbaijan, stating that 25 Russian citizens were barred from entering Azerbaijan because of their Armenian names.[330] In 2019, Azerbaijani officials barred the entry of Russian citizen Kristina Gevorkyan.[354] In 2021, Nobel Arustamyan, a Russian journalist and football commentator of Armenian descent, was denied accreditation for UEFA Euro 2020 at the request of Azerbaijan.[355]
In addition to denying entry of people for their Armenian ethnicity, Azerbaijan considers blacklists people (personae non gratae), if they have previously visited the former Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) without a visa from the Azerbaijani government.[356] Azerbaijan considered entering these territories through Armenia a violation of its visa and migration policy. Foreign citizens who enter these territories were permanently banned from entering Azerbaijan and were included on the list of people who are personae non gratae by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan.[357]
Precarity of Armenians remaining within Azerbaijan
Privately, some Armenians who live in Azerbaijan report enduring human rights violations but remain silent publicly out of fear.[364] Sources estimate that between a handful[369][370] to as many as 3000 Armenians remain in Azerbaijan outside of Nagorno-Karabakh, most of whom are either married to Azerbaijanis or are of mixed Armenian-Azerbaijani descent.[371][372]Minority Rights Group International considers the official 2009 census figure of 30,000 to be "almost certainly an exaggeration."[373]
The handful of Armenians who stayed behind in Nagorno-Karabakh[374] after 99.9% of the population fled in 2023 are believed to be elderly or disabled,[375][376] and Azerbaijan has confiscated their passports and monitors their communications.[377][378] Another particularly vulnerable subgroup—estimated at 645 individuals (36 men and 609 women)—is not of mixed heritage or intermarried. More than half live in Baku. These individuals are also thought to be elderly and sick and probably have no family members.[371][379][380] A 1993 report from the US INS states that Armenians were denied exit visas from Azerbaijan after being removed from the country's resident registry.[381] According to a 2011 report by the ECRI, "people of Armenian origin are at risk of being discriminated against in their daily lives." Many hide their identity,[364] with some born to mixed families choosing "to use the name of their Azerbaijani parent so as to avoid problems in their contacts with officialdom."[382]
An earlier 1993 U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service report concluded:[383]
It is clear that Armenians are the target of violence from societal forces and that the Azerbaijani government is unable or in some instances unwilling to control the violence or acts of discrimination and harassment. Some sectors of the government, such as the Department of Visas and Registrations mentioned above, appear unwilling to enforce the governments stated policy on minorities...Armenian inhabitants of Azerbaijan will have no guarantees of physical safety.
Arbitrary arrest and detention
Since 2020, Azerbaijan has detained over 160 Armenians, including civilians,[384] former soldiers, and leaders[385][386] of Nagorno-Karabakh.[387][388] It is a common practice for Azerbaijan to arbitrarily detain civilians.[389] Arbitrary arrests and detentions of Armenians have occurred within territories acquired by Azerbaijan following the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War, within internationally recognized Armenian territory,[390] and within areas of the Armenia-Azerbaijani border.[384][391]
A fact-finding mission jointly conducted by multiple human rights organizations concluded, "in all documented instances of civilian detention..., Azerbaijani authorities failed to provide justifiable grounds, rendering these detentions arbitrary under both IHL [ International Humanitarian Law] and IHRL [ International Human Rights Law]."[392] Multiple human rights organizations and experts condemned Azerbaijan for its detention of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh,[393][394][395][396] describing the actions as a "war crime,"[397] illegal,[398] or considering the charges to be fabricated to support sham trials.[399][400][401]
The European Parliament, Nobel Prize laureates, business leaders, former heads of state, and humanitarians[402] have called on Azerbaijan to release Armenians who have been arrested.[403][404] Other human rights advocates stated that the incarceration of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh, including their leaders, is genocidal[387][405][406] or aims to legitimize the ethnic cleansing of the region.[407] A fact-finding mission carried out by Freedom House and other human rights organizations concluded that — together with other actions — Azerbaijan’s practice of arbitrary arrest and detention of civilians “meet the criteria for ethnic cleansing as understood in the context of the former Yugoslavia conflict.”[408]
Threats and acts of sexual violence have been interpreted as deliberate measures aimed at facilitating ethnic erasure.[424][425][426][427] The use, threats, and dissemination of sexual violence in media by Azerbaijani forces' instilled fear in the Armenian community of Nagorno-Karabakh and according to the University Human Rights Network, was "reinforced by incitement to hatred in official discourse and propaganda...[which]...all but guaranteed the mass exodus of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh."[428] These practices raised concerns about a systematic intent behind them,[429] potentially meeting criteria under international conventions on genocide and crimes against humanity.[430][431][432]
Official statements
Azerbaijani officials have threatened to eliminate Armenians from the Caucasus on multiple occasions[433][434][435] as well as denied and condoned the historical elimination of Armenians. Multiple sources including genocide studies experts,[436][437][438] and political observers[439][440] interpret this rhetoric as revealing genocidal intent or incitement to genocide.[197] Certain scholars state that the language employed by Azeri authorities — including the description of Armenians as "dogs" and as "leftovers of the sword" — is reminiscent of language used by the Young Turks during the Armenian Genocide.[441][442][443] The hate speech is not new but has worsened since 2020.[44][197] Henry Theriault, genocide scholar, writes "any reasonable analysis of the statements and actions by Azerbaijan and Turkey show the present campaign of conquest and destruction to be an extension of the unfinished Armenian Genocide of 1915."[444]
Statements by President Ilham Aliyev
A common refrain, repeated, for example by President Ilham Aliyev, was that the capital of Armenia— Yerevan —"was a gift to the Armenians in 1918. This was a great mistake. The Iravan khanate was Azerbaijani land, the Armenians were guests here."
Naira Sahakyan, genocide scholar, states that the rhetoric of Azeri President Ilham Aliyev, displays genocidal components or "genocidal thinking" against Armenians:[446] including racism, expansionist territorial claims that deny Armenians historic presence,[447] cults of antiquity that mythologize an Azerbaijan free of Armenians, and cults of cultivation that contrast Azeris as "hard-working" to Armenians as "destroyers."[434] Critics have condemned Azeri President Aliyev’s dehumanizing characterizations of ethnic Armenians as "rats," "dogs," "devils," "terrorists," "fascists," “usurping interlopers," as well as "barbarians and vandals."[448][238][449][450]
On 28 February 2012, during his closing speech at the widely reported conference[451][452][453] on the results of the third year of the state program on the socioeconomic development of districts for 2009–2013, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev stated:
"...there are forces that don't like us, our detractors. They can be divided into several groups. First, our main enemies are Armenians of the world and the hypocritical and corrupt politicians under their control."[454]
"Our main enemy is the Armenian lobby ... Armenia as a country is of no value. It is actually a colony, an outpost run from abroad, a territory artificially created on ancient Azerbaijani lands."
"I am sure that the majority of the Armenian population living in Karabakh today is ready to accept Azerbaijani citizenship. It’s just that these leeches, these wild animals, the separatists [referring to the officials of the de facto Republic of Artsakh] don’t allow it."
Statements by other Azeri officials
In the weeks prior to Azerbaijan’s final offensive on Nagorno-Karabakh, Elchin Amirbeyov – the representative of the Azeri president – warned that "a genocide may happen" if the local self-proclaimed Armenian government did not surrender.[459][460] The former Ppresident of Azerbaijan, Heydar Aliyev, stated in a 1999 speech: "In times of trouble, the people of Azerbaijan saw the help of Turkey and the Turkish people and is grateful for that. Particularly, in 1918-1919, during the struggle for independence under the leadership of the great Atatürk, who cleansed his land of Armenians and other enemies, the Turkish people and Turkey offered their help to Azerbaijan, to Nakhchivan."[461]
In response to a March 2023 resolution released by the EU parliament which condemned Azerbaijan's invasion of Armenia in September,[462] Azerbaijan's parliament accused MEPs of being influenced by "Armenia and the Armenian diaspora, long since a cancerous tumor of Europe."[463] Former Azerbaijani parliamentarian, lman Mammadov, said "Turkey and Azerbaijan could together wipe Armenia off the face of the Earth at a blow, and the Armenians should beware of that thought."[197]
Armenian genocide denial
Azerbaijan and Turkey are among two countries which officially deny the Armenian Genocide and glorify previous genocidal acts against Armenians.[464][465][466] Former President of AzerbaijanHeydar Aliyev stated "In history there was never such a thing as the ‘Armenian genocide,’ and even if there had been, it would be wrong to raise the matter after 85 years."[467] His son and current President Ilham Aliyev tweeted that "Turkey and Azerbaijan work in a coordinated manner to dispel the myth of the 'Armenian genocide' in the world."[468]
Eldad Aharon, foreign policy analyst, states that Turkey's denial of the Armenian Genocide is "fundamental to Azerbaijan's national identity," reinforcing their solidarity within the "one nation, two states" framework.[469][197]Vicken Cheterian states that the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan is deeply influenced by the denial of the Armenian Genocide.[426] Human rights advocates have also criticized Azerbaijan for denying contemporary violence against Armenians.[470][471][472] Roxanne Makasdjian, executive director of The Genocide Education Project, has stated that "Turkey and Azerbaijan collaborate in a policy of denying the Armenian genocide" in order to erase Armenia and "pave the way for a large ‘Pan-Turkic’ bloc'."[261]
Henry Theriault states that in Turkish and Azeri society denial coexists with the celebration of genocidal acts because there is no accountability: “in such situations, denial is inverted into celebratory or invective declaration...Thus, Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s supporters can make explicit statements about completing the genocide of 1915 to eliminate all Armenians, referred to...by Erdoğan as 'leftovers of the sword[s]' that were swung one hundred five years ago...”[464]
The stamp with the accompanying illustration showing a specialist "disinfecting" Nagorno-Karabakh
On 30 December 2020 Azermarka, which works under the Ministry of Transport, Communication and High Technologies of Azerbaijan, issued "Azerbaijan 2020" postage stamps, which according to the Ministry, were dedicated to the significant events of 2020: the COVID-19 pandemic and the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War.[479] Postage stamps were provided with an accompanying illustration showing a disinfection specialist standing over an Azerbaijan map and fumigating the area of Nagorno-Karabakh, seemingly depicting ethnic Armenians in the area were a virus in need of "eradicating". This sparked outrage on social media and accusations of anti-Armenian sentiment.[480]
Military Trophy Park
Helmets of deceased Armenian troops and wax mannequins of captured Armenian soldiers of 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war showcased at Baku military park. President Ilham Aliyev shown in the first image during a visit to the park.
Following the 2020 war, the Military Trophy Park was opened in Baku, showcasing the helmets of dead Armenian soldiers, as well as wax mannequins of them. Armenia strongly condemned it accusing Baku for "dishonoring the memory of victims of the war, missing persons and prisoners of war and violating the rights and dignity of their families".[481] The Human Rights Defender of Armenia, the country's ombudsman, called it a "clear manifestation of fascism," saying that it is a "proof of Azerbaijani genocidal policy and state supported Armenophobia."[482] Furthermore, in a resolution, the European Parliament said that the park may be perceived as a glorification of violence (by Azerbaijan) and risks inciting further hostile sentiment, hate speech or even inhumane treatment of remaining POWs and other Armenian captive civilians kept by Azerbaijan in violation of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire agreement, thereby perpetuating the atmosphere of hatred and contradicting any official statements on reconciliation. The EU Parliament also added that they deplore the opening of the military park and urged its immediate closure, saying it would deepen the long-lasting hostilities and further decrease trust between the nations.[483]
Azerbaijani boycott of goods and services linked to Armenians
In 2008, under pressure from Azerbaijan's state-owned airline AZAL, the Dutch ticketing company Kales Airline Services was forced to fire an employee solely because of her Armenian ethnicity. AZAL had threatened to end its partnership with the ticketing company if any ethnic Armenians continued to sell their tickets.[484][485][486]
Azerbaijani social media users have also launched boycotts against international companies perceived as siding with Armenia or challenging Azerbaijan's stance on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, with McDonald’s and Johnson & Johnson among the most prominent targets. McDonald’s faced backlash after its U.S. branch removed a post by its Azerbaijani division showing a map asserting "Karabakh is Azerbaijan," while Johnson & Johnson was criticized for using the Armenian name "Artsakh" for the region.[487] These boycotts, sparked by controversial social media posts, quickly gained traction online and translated into visible consumer action, such as protests and store bans.
In July 2020, a major Azerbaijani-owned distribution hub in Moscow, blocked 50 truckloads of Armenian apricots; the tensions resulted in violence with at least 25 people were arrested in a mass brawl where attackers targeted cars with Armenian license plates, and one Armenian man was stabbed.[488]
In 2025, Azerbaijani authorities publicly destroyed Armenian-made goods, including books, cognac, and souvenirs. In one case, a book on Nagorno-Karabakh that an Azerbaijani journalist brought into Azerbaijan was confiscated and marked as "extremist literature."[489]
Baku has turned Armenophobia into state propaganda, at a level that is far beyond dangerous. It is not only our assessment; the alarm has also been sounded by international structures specializing in combating racism and intolerance. Even more dangerously, Armenophobic ideas are spread among the young Azerbaijani generation, imperiling the future of peaceful coexistence.[490]
In May 2011, Shavarsh Kocharyan, the Armenian Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister, suggested a connection between the high level of anti-Armenian sentiment in Azerbaijan and the low level of democracy in that country, stating that: "Azerbaijan's leadership could find no factor to unite his people around the hereditary regime except the simple Armenophobia."[491]
On 7 October 2008, the Armenian Foreign Affairs Ministry statement for the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights claimed that "anti-Armenian propaganda is becoming more and more the essential part of Azerbaijan's official policy."[492] The statement blamed the Azerbaijani government for "developing and implementing large-scale propaganda campaign, disseminating racial hatred and prejudice against Armenians. Such behaviour of the Azerbaijani authorities creates a serious threat to regional peace and stability" and compared Azerbaijan with Nazi Germany stating "one cannot but draw parallels with the largely similar anti-Jewish hysteria in the Third Reich in the 1930s and early 1940s, where all the above-mentioned elements of explicit racial hatred were also evident."[492]
The Armenian side also claimed that the Azerbaijani government "actively uses academic circles" for "distortion and re-writing of historic facts." It also accused Azerbaijan for "vandalism against Armenian cultural monuments and cemeteries in the lands historically inhabited by Armenians, as well as against Armenian Genocide memorials throughout the world" and called the destruction of the Armenian Cemetery in Julfa "the most horrific case."[492]
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan denies it is in any way propagating anti-Armenian sentiments. President Ilham Aliyev, when confronted with the allegations, started talking about Armenia's crimes during the Nagorno-Karabakh war instead.[493] The delegation of Azerbaijan to the OSCE Review Conference stated that "Armenia should not overlook that the most telling refutation of its mendacious allegations of Azerbaijan in anti-Armenian propaganda and hate dissemination is undoubtedly the fact that, unlike Armenia, which has purged its territory of all Azerbaijanis and other non-Armenians and became a uniquely mono-ethnic State. Azerbaijan has [a] worldwide recognized record of tolerance and peaceful coexistence of various ethnic and religious groups. This tradition is routed in the country's geographic location at the crossroads between East and West, which created opportunities for the Azerbaijani people to benefit from cultural and religious values of different cultures and religions."[494]
Europe
European Union – On 10 March 2022, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the destruction of cultural heritage in Nagorno-Karabakh, condemning Azerbaijan's continued policy of erasing and denying the Armenian cultural heritage in and around Nagorno-Karabakh:[495]
"The European Parliament … strongly condemns Azerbaijan’s continued policy of erasing and denying the Armenian cultural heritage in and around Nagorno-Karabakh, in violation of international law and the recent decision of the ICJ...;Acknowledges that the erasure of the Armenian cultural heritage is part of a wider pattern of a systematic, state-level policy of Armenophobia, historical revisionism and hatred towards Armenians promoted by the Azerbaijani authorities, including dehumanisation, the glorification of violence and territorial claims against the Republic of Armenia...;deplores the fact that the conflicts in the Nagorno-Karabakh region have led to the destruction, pillaging and looting of common cultural heritage, which has fuelled further distrust and animosities.[496]
Council of Europe – The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) published five reports on Azerbaijan and noted a general “negative attitude towards Armenians” in each of them. The ECRI wrote:
“Political leaders, educational institutions and media have continued using hate speech against Armenians; an entire generation of Azerbaijanis has now grown up listening to this hateful rhetoric. Human rights activists working inter alia towards reconciliation with Armenia have been sentenced to heavy prison terms on controversial accusations”[497]
↑ John F. R. Wright; Suzanne Goldenberg; Richard N. Schofield (1996). Transcaucasian boundaries. New York: St. Martin's Press. p.100. ISBN9781857282351. The Tatar army entered Shushi on 4 April 1920, and sacked the Armenian part of the town, slaughtering the inhabitants.
↑ Transcaucasian boundaries, 1996, p. 99 "...the Sultanov family to demonstrate its "traditional" method of showing authority: a massacre of 600 Armenians took place, which centered on the Armenian village of Khaibalikend on 5 June 1919."
↑ Allen, Tim; Eade, John (1999). Divided Europeans understanding ethnicities in conflict. The Hague: Kluwer Law International. p.64. ISBN9789041112132. ...during the anti-Armenian pogroms' in Kirovabad and several attacks on the Armenian quarters in Baku.
↑ DeRouen, Karl (2007). Civil wars of the world major conflicts since World War II. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. p.157. ISBN9781851099191. January 13–15, 1990 Anti-Armenian pogroms occur in Baku
↑ Juviler, Peter (1998). Freedom's ordeal: the struggle for human rights and democracy in post-Soviet states. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. p.61. ISBN9780812234183.
↑ "Report on Azerbaijan"(PDF). Strasbourg: European Commission against Racism and Intolerance. 15 April 2003. p.2. Archived from the original(PDF) on 21 September 2013. Retrieved 22 January 2013. Due to the conflict, there is a widespread negative sentiment toward Armenians in Azerbaijani society today." "In general, hate-speech and derogatory public statements against Armenians take place routinely.
↑ (in Russian)Fyodor Lukyanov[ru], editor-in-chief of the journal Russia in Global Affairs"Первый и неразрешимый". Vzglyad. 2 August 2011. Archived from the original on 22 June 2014. Retrieved 12 January 2013. Армянофобия – институциональная часть современной азербайджанской государственности, и, конечно, Карабах в центре этого всего. "Armenophobia is the institutional part of the modern Azerbaijani statehood and Karabakh is in the center of it."
↑ Burtin, Shura (12 November 2013). "It is like being pregnant all your life..."rusrep.ru. Russian Reporter. The word "Armenian" is a terrible curse in Azerbaijan, akin to a "Jew" or "Nigger" in other places. As soon as you hear "you behave like an Armenian!" – "No, it's you, who is Armenian!" – that is a sure recipe for a brawl. The word "Armenian" is equivalent to "enemy" in the most deep and archaic sense of the word....
1 2 "Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities". Council of Europe. 3 September 2013. pp.15–16. ...the Advisory Committee is deeply concerned by the levels of official involvement in endorsing and disseminating such views, as they are often directed also against Azerbaijani citizens of ethnic Armenian origin as well as anybody else who may be seen as affiliated with Armenia. The term 'Armenian' indeed appears to be used and understood as an insult, which may contribute to the fact that very few ethnic Armenians identify themselves as such by, for instance, registering their ethnicity in the census.
1 2 3 Minority Rights Group International (2018). "World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples - Azerbaijan: Armenians". Refworld. Retrieved 25 July 2025. ...conditions for those Armenians remaining in Azerbaijan outside of Armenian-controlled territory remain extremely unfavourable. Hate-speech against Armenians continues to be a staple of officially sanctioned media.
1 2 Gzoyan, Edita; Chakhmakhchyan, Svetah; Meyroyan, Edgar (30 December 2023). "Ethnic Cleansing In Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh): Issues of Definition and Criminal Responsibility". International Journal of Armenian Genocide Studies. 8 (2): 56–85. doi:10.51442/ijags.0045. ISSN1829-4405. Prejudice against Armenians 'is so ingrained that describing someone as an Armenian in the media' is considered to be 'an insult that justifies initiating judicial proceedings against the persons making such statements.' Given also the Government's own 'condon[ing] [of] racial hatred and hate crimes,' offenses against Armenians go unpunished...This anti-Armenian rhetoric is being organized and encouraged on a state level. The president of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev is routinely using derogatory terms to label Armenians as 'bandits', 'vandals', 'fascists', and 'barbarians', and as having a 'cowardly nature', comparing them with 'animals', especially 'dogs'. Other government institutions and high-ranking officials are also following this wording. The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance has observed that 'Azerbaijan's leadership, education system and media are very prolific in their denigration of Armenians', and that 'an entire generation of Azerbaijanis has now grown up listening to this hateful rhetoric.' Similarly, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination expressed concern about 'the repeated and unpunished use of inflammatory language by [Azerbaijani] politicians speaking about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and its adverse impact on the public's view of ethnic Armenians.'
↑ "Where Scenes of Catastrophe Reappear: On Armenian and Palestinian Solidarities – Social Text". socialtextjournal.org. Retrieved 28 July 2025. Disregarding millennia-long historical records that attest to Armenian Indigeneity in the region, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has announced, "Nagorno-Karabakh is our land." As well: "This is the end…We are chasing them like dogs." Azerbaijan's officialdom routinely deploys similar dehumanizing language to describe Armenians and plainly signal genocidal intent.
↑ Theriault, Henry (1 March 2022). "The Ethics of Genocide Scholarship and New Trends in Rhetorical Manipulation in Genocide Studies". Genocide Studies International. 14 (1): 65–90. doi:10.3138/gsi.2021.12.13.07. ISSN2291-1847. During the war and after, Turkish leaders, including authoritarian Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Azerbaijani leaders, including dictator Ilham Aliyev, who inherited the presidency of Azerbaijan from his father in 2003, used genocidal anti-Armenian rhetoric that was completely consistent with their massive military assault. Erdogan and followers invoked the expansionist notions of pan-Turkism, a key element of the ideology that drove the 1915 Armenian Genocide, while Aliyev has been quite clear about his desire to rid the region of Armenian 'dogs.' What is especially troubling is that, after the surrender of Armenia and partial withdrawal from Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijani forces have invaded the Armenian Republic itself. Not only do they occupy significant areas of Armenia, but they also continue attempts to conquer Armenian territory. Any reasonable analysis of the statements and actions by Azerbaijan and Turkey show the present campaign of conquest and destruction to be an extension of the unfinished Armenian Genocide of 1915.
↑ Sahakyan, Naira (2 October 2023). "The rhetorical face of enmity: the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the dehumanization of Armenians in the speeches of Ilham Aliyev". Southeast European and Black Sea Studies. 23 (4): 863–882. doi:10.1080/14683857.2022.2153402. ISSN1468-3857. Based on narrative and discourse analysis of the speeches, this article demonstrates the main discursive practices used by [President Ilham] Aliyev to dehumanize Armenians. These analyses uncover three main components: identification of Armenians as the sole menace for Azerbaijan and Azerbaijanis, depiction of Armenians as non-human and barbaric in essence, and stressing the superiority of Azerbaijan to eliminate the threat emanating from Armenians.
1 2 3 Bournoutian, George (2018). Armenia and Imperial Decline: The Yerevan Province, 1900-1914. Routledge. p.35 (note 25).
1 2 Dawisha, Karen; Parrot, Bruce (1994). The International Politics of Eurasia. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. p.242. ISBN9781563243530.
↑ de Waal, Thomas (2003). Black garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through peace and war(PDF). New York: New York University Press. p.286. ISBN9780814719459. Archived from the original(PDF) on 22 September 2013. Retrieved 5 July 2013. This means that the combined area of Azerbaijan under Armenian occupation was approximately 11,797 km2 or 4,555 square miles. Azerbaijan's total area is 86,600 km2. So the occupied zone is in fact 13.62 percent of Azerbaijan—still a large figure, but a long way short of President Aliev's repeated claim.
↑ "Statement on Self-Determination of Armenians in Artsakh (South Caucasus): There is No Peace or Prosperity through Genocide". Lemkin Institute. Retrieved 15 July 2025. Soviet domination kept in check the genocidal anti-Arminianism of Azeri nationalists...When the Soviet Union fell, Artsakhsis again petitioned to secede from the Azerbaijani SSR and join the Armenian SSR. In response, Azerbaijani authorities terrorized Armenians all over Azerbaijan through a series of genocidal pogroms in Azerbaijani cities...which...demonstrated that the security of Armenian life in independent Azerbaijan was nonexistent.
↑ Gzoyan, Edita; Chakhmakhchyan, Svetah; Meyroyan, Edgar (30 December 2023). "Ethnic Cleansing In Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh): Issues of Definition and Criminal Responsibility". International Journal of Armenian Genocide Studies. 8 (2): 56–85. doi:10.51442/ijags.0045. ISSN1829-4405. Prejudice against Armenians 'is so ingrained that describing someone as an Armenian in the media' is considered to be 'an insult that justifies initiating judicial proceedings against the persons making such statements.' Given also the Government's own 'condon[ing] [of] racial hatred and hate crimes,' offenses against Armenians go unpunished...This anti-Armenian rhetoric is being organized and encouraged on a state level. The president of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev is routinely using derogatory terms to label Armenians as 'bandits', 'vandals', 'fascists', and 'barbarians', and as having a 'cowardly nature', comparing them with 'animals', especially 'dogs'. Other government institutions and high-ranking officials are also following this wording. The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance has observed that 'Azerbaijan's leadership, education system and media are very prolific in their denigration of Armenians', and that 'an entire generation of Azerbaijanis has now grown up listening to this hateful rhetoric.' Similarly, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination expressed concern about 'the repeated and unpunished use of inflammatory language by [Azerbaijani] politicians speaking about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and its adverse impact on the public's view of ethnic Armenians.'
↑ Peroomian, Rubina (2021). "Religion: A driving force but not a major cause of the Turkish Genocide of Armenians". In Brudholm, Thomas; Meier, Jørgen (eds.). The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Mass Atrocity, and Genocide. Routledge. pp.109–125. ISBN9781032122748. There have been systematic attempts of ethnic cleansing and historical revisionism, presenting the medieval Armenian cultural and religious monuments as expressions of Azerbaijani ancestral heritage, destroying churches and cross-stones, and denying the presence of Armenians in Historic Armenia's eastern regions. In the words of Arif Yanus, an Azerbaijani historian and human rights defender living in the Netherlands, 'Ilham Aliyev upgraded Armenophobia to the level of Fascist Germany's anti-Semitism.'... Nothing much has changed. Armenians still face similar genocidal challenges and threats of further usurpation of the small homeland they live in today.
↑ Antonyan, Yulia (2 January 2025). "Political Regimes and Religious Co-existence: When is the Covenant Possible? The Case of Armenia". The Review of Faith & International Affairs. 23 (1): 75–87. doi:10.1080/15570274.2025.2454807. ISSN1557-0274. Armenophobia in Azerbaijan...would later become an effective tool in the hands of the authoritarian regime of the Aliyev clan led by the current president Ilham Aliyev during the second Karabakh war...of 2020. This ideology would make it impossible for Azerbaijanis and Armenians to live together on the territory of Karabakh, and as a result, in September 2023, ethnic cleansing would be carried out there and all 150,000 Armenians would be forcibly evicted from the territories of their habitation for more than two thousand years.
↑ Theriault, Henry (March 2022). "The Ethics of Genocide Scholarship and New Trends in Rhetorical Manipulation in Genocide Studies". Genocide Studies International. 14 (1): 65–90. doi:10.3138/gsi.2021.12.13.07. ISSN2291-1847. Because Turkey has never gone through a rehabilitative process, the anti-Armenianism and genocidality have remained, surfacing at points of stress and in different ways, for instance with the assassination of Turkish Armenian journalist and anti-genocide activist Hrant Dink in 2007. The population that became Azeri in the twentieth century had a similar hatred of Armenians, engaged in violence against them prior to the Soviet Union, and engaged in a campaign of de-development and discrimination against Armenians in the historically Armenian Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh area throughout the Soviet period.
↑ Avetisian, Hrant (3 November 2022), "The 'Caucasian Home' and Pan-Turkist Aspirations", Commonwealth and Independence in Post-Soviet Eurasia (1ed.), London: Routledge, p.80, doi:10.4324/9781003340379-4, ISBN978-1-003-34037-9, retrieved 14 July 2025, As was reported by the newspaper Kavkazskoe slovo, the Musavatist government intended - with the help of Turkish soldiers - to disarm the Armenian population of Karabakh and Azerbaijan, to arm the Muslims and destroy the Armenians in their indigenous land, confronting the Constantinople conference with a ifait accompli
1 2 Mutafian, Claude (5 December 2023), "Survey of Historical Geography of the South Caucasus from the Middle Ages to the Present Day", Monuments and Identities in the Caucasus, Brill, p.37, doi:10.1163/9789004677388_003, ISBN978-90-04-67738-8, retrieved 22 July 2025, ...a racist hatred has skillfully been cultivated by Turkish and Azeri authorities for more than a century. Examples abound. Thus, a secret letter dated 21 July 1920 and sent by Asad Karayev (the Azeri president of the Karabakh revolutionary committee and a close associate of Narimanov) to his counterpart in Zangezur reads as follow: 'In order to weaken the Armenians in areas where the guerrilla is active, kill a Russian soldier and accuse the Armenians of the crime (…). Leave no honest man alive in Zangezur and no wealth so that this accursed tribe can never stand on their feet again.'
↑ Kazemzadeh, Firuz (1981) [1st Pub. 1951]. The struggle for Transcaucasia, 1917–1921. Westport, Connecticut: Hyperion Press. pp.18–19. ISBN9780830500765.
↑ Shaw, Madeleine . "Legacy of Loss: The Armenian Genocide in the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict." Journal of Peace and War Studies (2023): 204. "The [Armenian] genocide did not stop after 1915; Armenians remaining in Turkey were systematically forced into conversion, massacred, or imprisoned. From 15–17 September 1918, Nuri and Enver Pasha murdered an estimated 30,000 Armenian civilians in Baku after taking the city from the Russian army via the newly-formed Islamic Army of the Caucasus."
↑ Ohanian, Ani Garabed (August 2023). "The Karabakh Flashpoint: Turkish Authoritarian Rule and the Recurrence of Genocide". Genocide Studies International. 15 (1): 60–68. doi:10.3138/GSI-2023-0721. ISSN2291-1847. ...1917, a period of imperial decline, which occurred during the ongoing process of the Armenian Genocide. The cooperation between Turkish and Azerbaijani actors between 1917 to 1921 demonstrates the intent to undermine the Armenian national pattern in the Karabakh region, as well as other regions including Zangezur, and Nakhichevan. Present-day grievances reflect similar Turkish and Azerbaijani intentions.
↑ Minassian, Gaïdz (2020). The Armenian Experience. I.B. Tauris. pp.53–55. doi:10.5040/9780755600700. ISBN978-0-7556-0070-0. Between 1914 and 1923, the Caucasus and Eastern Anatolia were the scenes of massacres, forced displacement, and other abuses. Armenians often found themselves on the wrong side of the balance of power, subjected to massacres in their homelands. Driven out of Baku, Tbilisi, and other ethnically mixed regions, Armenians turned out to be the big historical losers
↑ Walker, Christopher J. (2014). Armenia: a very brief history (Second, expandeded.). Yerevan: "MIA" pablishers. p.32. ISBN978-5-9986-0176-7. The British refused to hand over Nagorno Karabagh to Armenia, even though 90% of its inhabitants were Armenian and requested many times that their land be designated part of Armenia. British officers preferred to keep a local big Azeri landlord in control: one of 'our traditional friends', similar to a landlord in Scotland or Ireland; therefore his links with the ousted murderers who had run the Ottoman Empire were overlooked.
↑ Chorbajian, Levon; Donabédian, Patrick; Mutafian, Claude (1994). The Caucasian knot: the history & geopolitics of Nagorno-Karabagh. Politics in contemporary Asia. London: Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Zed Books. pp.123–124. ISBN978-1-85649-287-4. The anti-Armenian policies of Great Britain in Karabagh, openly allied with the Musavats of Azerbaijan... In both cases, the 'allies' contributed to clearing these areas of their Armenian populations....It is not an exaggeration, however, to say that the present problems in Karabagh are due in large part to the diplomacy of London during the first months of 1919: that is what prevented the permanent reunification of Mountainous Karabagh with Armenia.
↑ Dorfmann-Lazarev, Igor, and Haroutioun Khatchadourian. Monuments and identities in the Caucasus: Karabagh, Nakhichevan and Azerbaijan in contemporary geopolitical conflict. Vol. 31. Brill, 2023. P.25-26
↑ Bell, Andrew (1996). Ethnic cleansing (1st.ed.). New York: St. Martin's Press. p.24. ISBN978-0-312-10792-5.
↑ Kévorkian, Raymond H.; Kévorkian, Raymond H. (2011). The Armenian genocide: a complete history. London: I. B.Tauris. pp.710–712. ISBN978-1-84885-561-8. The clearest symptom of the genocidal logic masked by the military campaigns was Bahaeddin Şakir's presence in Baku...Is there any need to point out that the head of the Teşkîlât-ı Mahsûsa [Special Organization] was there, together with two of his CUP comrades, in order to honor the promise that he had made to his Caucasian interlocutors in 1906, that he would 'put an end to the importance and the influence of the Armenians in the Caucasus.' The human and material costs of the occupation of Azerbaijan were extensive. Without distorting the facts, one can affirm that the centuries-old Armenian presence in the regions of Urmia, Salmast, Qaradâgh, and Maku had been dealt a blow from which it would never recover.
↑ Andreopoulos, George (1997). Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, ISBN0-8122-1616-4, p. 236.
↑ Hovannisian, Richard. The Republic of Armenia: Vol. I, The First Year, 1918–1919. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971, pp. 176–177, notes 51–52.
↑ "The Nagorno-Karabagh Crisis:A Blueprint for Resolution"(PDF). Public International Law & Policy Group and the New England Center for International Law & Policy. June 2000. p.3. In August 1919, the Karabagh National Council entered into a provisional treaty agreement with the Azerbaijani government. Despite signing the Agreement, the Azerbaijani government continuously violated the terms of the treaty. This culminated in March 1920 with the Azerbaijanis' massacre of Armenians in Karabagh's former capital, Shushi, in which it is estimated that more than 20,000 Armenians were killed.
↑ Balakian, Peter (2004). The burning Tigris: the Armenian genocide and America's response (1. Perennialed.). New York: Perennial. pp.329–330. ISBN978-0-06-055870-3.
↑ Astourian, Stephan H.; Kévorkian, Raymond H. (2021). Collective and state violence in Turkey: the construction of a national identity from empire to nation-state. New York (N.Y.): Berghahn. pp.164–165. ISBN978-1-78920-450-6.
↑ Chorbajian, Levon; Donabédian, Patrick; Mutafian, Claude (1994). The Caucasian knot: the history and geopolitics of Nagorno-Karabagh. Politics in contemporary Asia. London: Zed Books. p.136. ISBN978-1-85649-288-1.
↑ Chorbajian, Levon; ebrary, Inc, eds. (2001). The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh: From Secession to Republic. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire New York: Palgrave. pp.210–212. ISBN978-1-349-41594-6.
↑ Alexandre Bennigsen, S. Enders Wimbush (1986). Muslims of the Soviet empire: a guide. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p.145. ISBN9780253339584. The Armenian presence is strongly felt by Azeris traditionally, the Azeri elite have regarded the Armenians as rivals. Before and during the Revolution this anti-Armenianism was the basis of Azeri nationalism, and under the Soviet regime Armenians remain the scapegoats who are responsible for every failure.
↑ Dorfmann-Lazarev, Igor; Khatchadourian, Haroutioun (14 December 2023). Monuments and Identities in the Caucasus: Karabagh, Nakhichevan and Azerbaijan in Contemporary Geopolitical Conflict. BRILL. pp.1–11. doi:10.1163/9789004677388_002. ISBN978-90-04-67737-1. The promotion of Azerbaijan's Turkish-speaking majority to the status of sole titular nation was accompanied by the persecution of peoples of different ethnic origins rooted in the same territory.... Mir Dzhafar Bağırov, already elected First Secretary of Azerbaijan's Communist Party...was responsible for the deportation of numerous minority groups, the suppression of their languages, and the systemic discrimination against Armenians.
↑ Laurila, Juhani. "Power Politics and Oil as Determinants of Transition: the case of Azerbaijan." (1999). "The Azerbaijanis can be accused of depriving the 130 000 Armenians living in the Nogorno-Karabakh of their possibilities to watch TV broadcasts from Yerevan, of their right to study Armenian history and their access to Armenian literature. The Azerbaijani government, too, can be said to have conducted racial, cultural and economic discrimination against the Nagorno Karabakh Armenians. Over 80 000 Nagorno-Karabakh residents signed an address asking for annexation of Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia. Based on this address the Council of Representatives of Nagorno-Karabakh turned to Supreme Council of the USSR, Azerbaijan and Armenia with request to transfer the Nagorno-Karabakh under Armenia."
↑ Starovotova, Galina Vasilevna. Sovereignty after empire: self-determination movements in the former Soviet Union. Vol. 31. No. 19. US Institute of Peace, 1997. "Limited employment opportunities and discrimination against Armenians contributed to the gradual emigration of the Armenian population from the region, while republican authorities encouraged the inflow of Azeris from outside Nagorno-Karabakh."
↑ New Times, New Times Publishing House, 1994 "This would inevitably result in a "final solution," a new carnage of Karabakh Armenians or, at best, if international control is established, in "white genocide," that is, the breaking up and ousting of the national group by economic means...".
↑ Tsypylma Darieva, Wolfgang Kaschuba. Representations on the Margins of Europe: Politics and Identities in the Baltic and South Caucasian States, Campus Verlag GmbH, 2007, ISBN9783593382418, p. 111 "Thus, the notion of 'genocide', as perceived by the people, included the expressions 'white genocide' (bearing in mind the example of the ethnic cleansing of Nakhichevan and Nagorno- Karabagh of Armenians)...".
↑ Ole Høiris, Sefa Martin Yürükel. Contrasts and solutions in the Caucasus, Aarhus Univ. Press, 1998, ISBN9788772887081, p. 234 "...the Azerbaijanization of Nakhichevan is called a 'white genocide', that is, one that operates by erasure of evidence of Armenian residence"
1 2 Walker, Christopher J., ed. (1991). Armenia and Karabagh: the struggle for unity. Minority Rights Publications. London: Minority Rights Group. ISBN978-1-873194-00-3. [The exodus of many Armenians is] not a matter of chance, but is due to the persistent policy of Baku, whose aim is to 'Nakhichevanize' the territory, to de-Armenize it, first culturally and then physically.
↑ Chorbajian, Levon. The making of Nagorno-Karabagh: from secession to republic. Springer, 2001. "There was overwhelming evidence demonstrating the existence of anti-Armenian policy in Nagorno-Karabagh sanctioned by Azerbaijan. Accounts of forced migrations and resettlement were substantiated by the decreasing and increasing percentage of Armenians and Azeris respectively in the population.61 The lack of economic development and demographic manipulations had been accompanied by cultural suppression. In the 1930s, 118 Armenian churches were closed, clerics arrested and text- books on Armenian history banned from schools. During the 1960s, 28 Armenian schools were closed, churches and cemeteries destroyed and Azeri was imposed as the official language of the republic. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, cultural ties with Armenia were severed and Azeris began to be appointed in Nagorno-Karabagh’s law enforcement and economic bodies."
↑ "Ethnicity, Nationalism and Conflict in the South Caucasus: Nagorno-Karabakh and the Legacy of Soviet Nationalities Policy". Routledge & CRC Press. Retrieved 29 January 2024. The Armenian schools were attached to the Azerbaijani Ministry of Education and were prohibited from teaching Armenian history. The employed staff was Azerbaijani. Armenian books and journals from neighbouring Armenia and the Armenian diaspora were totally banned. These measures were taken to 'hamper Armenian cultural development' in N-K [Nagorno-Karabakh].
↑ "Ethnicity, Nationalism and Conflict in the South Caucasus: Nagorno-Karabakh and the Legacy of Soviet Nationalities Policy". Routledge & CRC Press. Retrieved 29 January 2024. 80 per cent of the population of Mountainous Karabakh are Armenians and they constitute about 130,000 individuals. The region is about 4500 square kilometers. There are 187 Armenian schools, which unfortunately are administered not by the Ministry of Education of Armenia, but that of Azerbaijan, in which there is not a single inspector or a single person who knows Armenian. This is a very dangerous thing and it is harming us.
↑ Malkasian, Mark. Gha-ra-bagh!: The Emergence of the National Democratic Movement in Armenia. Wayne State University Press, 1996
1 2 Chorbajian, Levon; Donabédian, Patrick; Mutafian, Claude (1994). The Caucasian knot: the history & geopolitics of Nagorno-Karabagh. Politics in contemporary Asia. London: Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Zed Books. p.37. ISBN978-1-85649-287-4.
↑ Cox, Caroline. "Nagorno Karabakh: Forgotten People in a Forgotten War."Contemporary Review 270 (1997): 8–13. "These operations were part of a policy designated Operation Ring, comprising the proposed ethnic cleansing (a word used in relation to Azerbaijan's policy before it became familiar to the world in the context of the former Yugoslavia) of all Armenians from their ancient homeland of Karabakh."
↑ Walker, Christopher J., ed. (1991). Armenia and Karabagh: the struggle for unity. Minority rights publications. London: Minority Rights Group. p.107. ISBN978-1-873194-20-1. Since November 1989 Mountainous Karabagh has been ruled from Baku and the Azerbaijani authorities there are doing all that they can to make life impossible for the population with the apparent aim of driving them out and re-populating the territory with Azerbaijanis. In July 1990 the Second Secretary of the Azerbaijan Communist Party seriously formulated a plan for deporting all Armenians from Nagorno=Karabagh — a grisly echo of the 1915 massacres. The Azeris have employed every means to isolate Mountainous Karabagh.
↑ Chorbajian, Levon (2001). The making of Nagorno-Karabagh: from secession to republic. Basingstoke New York: Palgrave. p.16. ISBN978-0-333-77340-6. The killings of Armenians in Sumgait were, therefore, exemplary crimes and bear strong similarities to the lynching of African-Americans in the USA and the victims of other pogroms and genocides. In all these cases, even though the victims were individuals, the purpose of the crimes was to intimidate the entire community of people to which the victims belonged.
↑ Shahmuratian, Samvel; Jones, Steven, eds. (1990). The Sumgait tragedy: pogroms against Armenians in Soviet Azerbaijan. Zoryan Institute files. New Rochelle, N.Y.: Cambridge, Mass: Aristide D. Caratzas; Zoryan Institute for Contemporary Armenian Research and Documentation. pp.xi-page 8. ISBN978-0-916431-31-0. Pogroms involve the violation of a number of human rights, including the right to life for the victims both as individuals and as members of an ethnic group. According to the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, these pogroms can be defined as genocides. By any standard, these are genocidal acts...Understanding the factors which make pogroms possible, just as understanding factors which make genocides possible, should not evolve into such empathy that there is reluctance to call a pogrom by its name. Explanations become excuses, understanding turns in justification. Ultimately, such ostensibly detached characterizations of pogroms [namely, that it was only a result of political and economic purposes], is most insulting to and paternalizing of the culture and religion of Azeri Turks, the majority of whom did not participate in the pogroms and many of whom helped Armenians at the risk of their own lives.
↑ Kaufman, Stuart J. (2001). Modern hatreds: the symbolic politics of ethnic war. Ithaca: Cornell university press. p.77. ISBN9780801487361.
↑ Kaufman, Stuart J. (2001). Modern hatreds: the symbolic politics of ethnic war. Cornell studies in security affairs. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. p.70. ISBN978-1-5017-0199-3. The next day, a massive wave of attacks on Armenians in Baku got underway, with strong evidence of government involvement but also with evidence of material motivations, as many rioters appear to have been homeless refugees who occupied Armenians' apartments immediately after ejecting them.
↑ O'Ballance, Edgar (1997). Wars in the Caucasus, 1990-1995. London s.l: Palgrave Macmillan UK. p.23. ISBN978-1-349-14229-3. Violent attacks on resident Armenians suddenly erupted [in 1990]...The violence gathered momentum and developed into what amounted to an attempt at ethnic cleansing, as it was generally Azeris attacking Armenians, some of whom were killed and many others injured.
↑ Kushen, Robert; Neier, Aryeh (1991). Conflict in the Soviet Union: Black January in Azerbaidzhan. A Helsinki Watch/Memorial Report. Human Rights Watch (Organization), Inter-Republic Memorial Society. New York: Human Rights Watch. p.7. ISBN978-1-56432-027-8.
↑ De Waal, Thomas (2004). Black garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through peace and war (1st publ. in paperbacked.). New York: New York Univ. Press. p.35. ISBN978-0-8147-1945-9.
↑ Chorbajian, Levon, ed. (2001). The making of Nagorno-Karabagh: from secession to republic. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave. p.16. ISBN978-0-333-77340-6. The victims of these crimes are best seen as representatives of the Armenian people as a whole and not as individual Armenians. The killings of Armenians in Sumgait were, therefore, exemplary crimes and bear strong similarities to the lynching of African Americans in the USA and the victims of other pogroms and genocides. In all these cases, even though the victims were individuals, the purpose of the crimes was to intimidate the entire community of people to which the victims belonged. The victims were chosen for who they were—in this case, Armenians—and not for anything they may have done. The killings were a response to the protests in Karabagh and Armenia that challenged the hierarchy of ethnic relations and threatened to alter the subordinated status of the Karabagh Armenians.
↑ Cheterian, Vicken (2008). War and peace in the Caucasus: Russia's troubled frontier. London: Hurst & Co. p.111. ISBN978-1-85065-929-7. OCLC243545841.
↑ Kaufman, Stuart J. (2001). Modern hatreds: the symbolic politics of ethnic war. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. pp.65, 205. ISBN978-1-5017-0199-3. OCLC1160511946.
↑ Hovannisian, Richard G., ed. (1998). Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. p.187. ISBN978-0-8143-2777-7.
↑ Golubiewski, Mikolaj, Joanna Kulas, and Krzysztof Czyżewski, eds. A Handbook of Dialogue: Trust and Identity. Wydawnictwo Pogranicze, 2011. p 229-240
↑ Miller, Donald E. (1998). "Chapter 8: The role of historical memory in interpreting events in the Republic of Armenia". In Hovannisian, Richard G. (ed.). Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide. Wayne State University Press. p.197.
↑ Glasnost:: Vol. 2, Issue 1, Center for Democracy (New York, N.Y.)– 1990, p. 62, cit. 'The massacre of Armenians in Sumgait, the heinous murders in Tbilisi—these killings are examples of genocide directed by the Soviet regime against its own people.', an announcement by USSR Journalists' Union
↑ Time of change: an insider's view of Russia's transformation, Roy Medvedev, Giulietto Chiesa– 1991– p. 209
↑ Hovannisian, Richard G., ed. (1998). Remembrance and denial: the case of the Armenian genocide. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. pp.187, 197. ISBN978-0-8143-2777-7.
↑ Cox, Caroline; Eibner, John; Bonnėr, Elena (1993). Ethnic cleansing in progress: war in Nagorno Karabakh. Zürich; Washington: Institute for Religious Minorities in the Islamic World. ISBN978-3-9520345-2-1. The available evidence points to historic continuity between the genocide of ethnic minorities in Turkey and the war against Nagorno-Karabakh.
↑ Chorbajian, Levon; Donabédian, Patrick; Mutafian, Claude (1994). The Caucasian knot: the history & geopolitics of Nagorno-Karabagh. Politics in contemporary Asia. London: Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Zed Books. p.1. ISBN978-1-85649-287-4.
↑ Gluecksmann, Andre; Zelnick, Reginald E.; Wiehl, Reiner; Taylor, Charles; Shestack, Jerome J.; Ricoeur, Paul; Poulain, Jacques; Levinas, Emmanuel; Hooks, Benjamin L. (27 September 1990). "An Open Letter on Anti-Armenian Pogroms in the Soviet Union". The New York Review of Books. Vol.37, no.14. ISSN0028-7504. Retrieved 21 July 2025.
↑ Cox, Caroline; Rogers, Benedict (2011). The very stones cry out: the persecuted church: pain, passion and praise. London; New York: Continuum. p.82. ISBN978-0-8264-4272-7.
↑ Cox, Caroline; Eibner, John (1993). Ethnic cleansing in progress: war in Nagorno Karabakh. Zürich: Institute for Religious Minorities in the Islamic World. pp.66–67. ISBN978-3-9520345-2-1.
↑ Cox, Caroline; Eibner, John; Bonnėr, Elena (1993). Ethnic cleansing in progress: war in Nagorno Karabakh. Zürich; Washington: Institute for Religious Minorities in the Islamic World. pp.66–67. ISBN978-3-9520345-2-1.
↑ Chorbajian, Levon; Donabédian, Patrick; Mutafian, Claude (1994). The Caucasian knot: the history & geopolitics of Nagorno-Karabagh. Politics in contemporary Asia. London: Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Zed Books. p.40. ISBN978-1-85649-287-4.
↑ Sperling, James; Kay, Sean; Papacosma, S. Victor, eds. (2003). Limiting institutions?: The challenge of Eurasian security governance. pp.59–61. doi:10.7228/manchester/9780719066047 (inactive 21 July 2025). ISBN978-0-7190-6604-7. The awakening of a self-conscious Azerbaijani nation occurred in the aftermath of the 1905–6 'Armeno-Tatar War' (Azerbaijanis at that time being called Tatars) and the fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan in 1918–20. Armenians thus came to be identified as the enemy of the Azerbaijani nation, and Karabagh's secessionist ambitions came to be seen as a mortal threat to the 'statehood' that was at the core of Azerbaijani identity.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of July 2025 (link)
↑ Cheterian, Vicken (3 July 2018). "The Uses and Abuses of History: Genocide and the Making of the Karabakh Conflict". Europe-Asia Studies. 70 (6): 884–903. doi:10.1080/09668136.2018.1489634. ISSN0966-8136. National identity in post-Soviet Azerbaijan rests in large part, then, on the cult of the Aliyevs, alongside a sense of embattlement and victimization and a virulent hatred of Armenia and Armenians...As part of this process, the 'Armenian' became the negative 'other' against which Azeri identity was to be defined. In doing so, the authorities in Baku have sought to foster support from an Azeri diaspora while simultaneously presenting Azerbaijan as the real victim of genocide.
↑ Riegg, Stephen Badalyan (2023). "Neo-Primordialism in the Making of Nations: The Tragedies of Karabakh". Ab Imperio. 2023 (3): 171–183. doi:10.1353/imp.2023.a915233. ISSN2164-9731. The Aliyev dictatorship's revanchist, seemingly neo-imperial policy of conquest and displacement is accompanied by a primordialist agenda of erasing the physical evidence of long-standing Armenian life in Karabakh and other districts under Baku's expanding control. The goal is to 'prove' that Azerbaijanis belong on the lands they have claimed by negating Armenian claims to those same lands based on physical evidence rooted in distant historical epochs. Centuries-old Armenian churches, monasteries, cemeteries, and engraved-cross stones – silent but emphatic witnesses to a millennium of settlement – are targeted for annihilation as much as military outposts, as an American team of researchers from Cornell and Purdue Universities has been documenting. Indeed, in Aliyev's zero-sum equation, Azerbaijani nationhood is incompatible with any tangible proof of Armenian historic presence.
↑ Polonski, Andrei. Ислам в контексте общественной жизни современного Азербайджана (in Russian). Газета "История". № 28/1999. Издательский дом "Первое сентября". Archived from the original on 22 June 2014. Retrieved 22 January 2013. Обстоятельства благоприятствовали абстрактным размышлениям интеллектуалов о национальных корнях, об истории и традиции, о своем месте и миссии в мире. Впрочем, в Азербайджане расслабленного гуманизма было меньше, чем в большинстве республик СССР. Карабахский кризис и нарастающая армянофобия способствовали формированию устойчивого образа врага, который в известной степени повлиял на характер новой идентичности (первоначально агрессивно-победительной).
↑ Smith, Jeremy (2013). Red nations: the nationalities experience in and after the USSR. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p.296. ISBN978-0-521-12870-4.
↑ Что делать?! А не "Кто виноват?": ответ Владимира Казимирова армянским НПО (in Russian). Regnum. 13 December 2005. Retrieved 19 January 2013. ...в Азербайджане больше раскручивают кампанию неприязни и даже ненависти к армянам, чем наоборот; больше угроз вернуться к силовому решению, пренебрежения к обязательствам и обещаниям. Но всё это идёт вовсе не от азербайджанского народа и не от НПО, а именно от руководства Азербайджана.
↑ Владимир Казимиров: Опиум для своего народа: Как пропагандисты вредят урегулированию по Карабаху (in Russian). Regnum. 17 March 2004. Retrieved 19 January 2013. Очутившись надолго в дискомфортном положении, Баку практически взял курс на тотальную "холодную войну" против армян. Отвергаются с порога и экономические "амортизаторы", и любые контакты с армянами (даже по линии общественности); травят тех, кто поддерживает эти контакты. В просвещенном светском государстве кое-кто рад был бы насадить подобие фундаментализма, реваншизма и армянофобии, что лишь мешает устранению как причин, так и последствий конфликта. Все больше проявлений фанатизма и экстремизма даже на уровне общественных организаций.
↑ "Haji Allahshukur Pashazadeh: "Falsehood and treason run through Armenians' blood"". Today.az. 22 July 2008. Archived from the original on 22 June 2014. Retrieved 25 January 2013. We are making all efforts to solve this problem peacefully and holding meetings for this goal, but we don't see results of these meetings, because falsehood and treason run in Armenian's blood. They ate our bread, but spoke against us while leaving".
↑ Глава Духовного управления мусульман Кавказа: "Ложь и предательство в крови у армян"[Head of the Spiritual Board of Muslims of the Caucasus: "Lies and betrayal in the blood of Armenians"] (in Russian). Day.az. 22 July 2008. Archived from the original on 22 June 2014. Retrieved 20 January 2013. "Мы делаем все возможное для урегулирования конфликта мирным путем. С этой целью проводим встречи. Однако не видим результатов этих встреч. Потому что ложь и предательство в крови у армян. Они сидели за нашим столом и ели наш хлеб, а, выйдя на улицу, говорили против нас".
↑ Yunusov, Arif. Мифы и образы "врага" в исторической науке и учебниках по истории независимого Азербайджана(PDF) (in Russian). Georg-Eckert-Institut. pp.6–8. Archived from the original(PDF) on 8 January 2014. Retrieved 25 January 2013. В дальнейших разделах учебника авторы все больше и больше внимание уделяют армянам, которые и начинают восприниматься как "главные неверные в черных одеяниях". При этом, в отношении армян также используются все возможные негативные эпитеты ("бандиты", "агрессоры", "коварные", "лицемерные" и т.д.). Именно "коварные" армяне помогли России в покорении Азербайджана, именно в результате "восстания армянских бандитов" в Карабахе в 1920 г. основные силы азербайджанской армии оказались оттянуты от северных границ, чем воспользовалась 11-ая Красная Армия и вторглась в Азербайджан. Таким образом, "неверные в черных одеяниях вновь сделали свое черное дело".
↑ Peroomian, Rubina (2021). "Religion: A driving force but not a major cause of the Turkish Genocide of Armenians". In Brudholm, Thomas; Meier, Jørgen (eds.). The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Mass Atrocity, and Genocide. Routledge. pp.109–125. ISBN9781032122748. There have been systematic attempts of ethnic cleansing and historical revisionism, presenting the medieval Armenian cultural and religious monuments as expressions of Azerbaijani ancestral heritage, destroying churches and cross-stones, and denying the presence of Armenians in Historic Armenia's eastern regions. In the words of Arif Yanus, an Azerbaijani historian and human rights defender living in the Netherlands, 'Ilham Aliyev upgraded Armenophobia to the level of Fascist Germany's anti-Semitism.'... Nothing much has changed. Armenians still face similar genocidal challenges and threats of further usurpation of the small homeland they live in today.
↑ Geukjian, Ohannes (2016). Ethnicity, nationalism and conflict in the South Caucasus: Nagorno-Karabakh and the legacy of Soviet nationalities policy. Post-Soviet politics. London New York: Routledge. pp.27–29. ISBN978-1-138-27903-2.
↑ Caucasus Heritage Watch. "CHW Special Report #1 -- Silent Erasure: A Satellite Investigation of the Destruction of Armenian Cultural Heritage in Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan." (September 2022). p.6 "In 2005, a Scottish traveler, Steven Sim, went to Nakhchivan to investigate the condition of Armenian monuments there. He was detained by authorities, who insisted that Armenians had never lived in the region, and then expelled him from the country. A year later, in August 2006, Azerbaijan barred a delegation from the European Parliament seeking to evaluate an Armenian cemetery near Jugha/Julfa (N.307). In 2011, the U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan, Matthew Bryza, was likewise denied access to that same site."
↑ "The Systematic Erasure of Armenian Christian Heritage in Nagorno-Karabakh". European Centre for Law and Justice. 18 July 2024. Retrieved 21 July 2025. Despite numerous requests from Armenia and various international institutions, Azerbaijan has repeatedly refused to allow foreign observers to monitor Nagorno-Karabakh's cultural sites. Thus, Armenia's heritage can only be monitored via satellite surveillance, and access to sources regarding the ongoing cultural destruction is limited.
↑ Flores, Marcello (5 December 2023), "Introduction", Monuments and Identities in the Caucasus, Brill, pp.1–11, doi:10.1163/9789004677388_002, ISBN978-90-04-67738-8, retrieved 21 July 2025, He [Dorfmann-Lazarev] recalls how 'the promotion of Azerbaijan's Turkish-speaking majority to the status of sole titular nation was accompanied by the persecution of peoples of different ethnic origins rooted in the same territory.' It was precisely during the years of the Great Terror that the figure of Mir Dzhafar Bağırov, already elected First Secretary of Azerbaijan's Communist Party in 1933, emerged prominently...Bağırov was responsible for the deportation of numerous minority groups, the suppression of their languages, and the systemic discrimination against Armenians. Later archaeological findings, in the 1940s and 1950s, continued to be interpreted according to the principles of ethnogenesis, the claim that the dominant ethnic group in Soviet times had been the original group in a given territory for centuries or millennia. As a result...Caucasian Albania was referred to as the direct ancestor of Azerbaijan, and 'the Armenian scholars were not allowed to participate in the investigation of Caucasian Albanian antiquities, although the main sources on the history of this civilization are written in ancient Armenian.'
1 2 Dorfmann-Lazarev, Igor (5 December 2023), "Stalin's Legacy in the Post-Soviet Nations and the Genesis of Nationalist Extremism in Azerbaijan", Monuments and Identities in the Caucasus, Brill, pp.237–305, doi:10.1163/9789004677388_011, ISBN978-90-04-67738-8, retrieved 18 July 2025, [Mir Cǝfǝr/Dzhafar] Bağırov's rule marks the beginning of the historiographical erasure of the republic's Armenian past, a process which would have numerous sequels…With Bağırov's accession to power, the discrimination against non-titular nations of the republic acquired a new amplitude…The promotion of the Turkophone majority of Azerbaijan to the status of its unique titular nation was accompanied by the persecution of the populations of diverse ethnic origins long-established on the same territory. The invention of the Azerbaijanis' autochthonous ethnic ancestors was thus a direct result of the Soviet politics of nationalities and of the transformation of the Turkophone populations of Azerbaijan into a unitary, and exclusive, titular nation of the republic…The historiography developed in the USSR thus gradually prepared the ground for cultural erasure. In the claims concerning the Armenians' extraneousness to the territories of Azerbaijan, such as those voiced by [Farida] Mamedova [Buniyatov's disciple, Fəridə Məmmədova], some penetrating minds had, early on, also recognised a promise of future ethnic cleansing.…In Karny's interview with Suren Zolyan, Zolyan critiques Mamedova's Albanian hypothesis as the ideological groundwork for ethnic cleansing, arguing, 'If the Armenians are considered outsiders, as proponents of the Caucasian Albania theory assert, then they are seen as candidates for expulsion. If they are deemed illegitimate occupants of this land, then repression against them is justified.'
↑ Yilmaz, Harun (2015). National identities in Soviet historiography: the rise of nations under Stalin. Central Asia research forum. New York, N.Y: Routledge. p.34. ISBN978-1-138-09842-8.
↑ "We are No One: How Impunity for Three Years of Atrocities is Erasing Nagorno-Karabakh's Armenians". University Network for Human Rights. Retrieved 18 July 2025. These violations relate to others by Azerbaijan described in this report. As evidenced above, Azerbaijani officials' incitement to hatred against Armenians promoted, or was used as a justification for the destruction of cultural and religious buildings as well as the destruction of Armenian local history in Nagorno-Karabakh. The villainization of Armenians through the dangerous revisionist narratives of Caucasian Albania and Western Azerbaijan in turn serves to further fuel that ethnic hatred.
↑ Hewsen, Robert H.; Salvatico, Christopher C. (2001), Armenia: a historical atlas (1. dred.), Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, p.291, ISBN978-0-226-33228-4
↑ "Azerbaijan: The Status of Armenians, Russians, Jews and other minorities"(PDF). Washington, DC: Immigration and Naturalization Service. 1993. p.10. Retrieved 25 January 2013. Despite the constitutional guarantees against religious discrimination, numerous acts of vandalism against the Armenian Apostolic Church have been reported throughout Azerbaijan. These acts are clearly connected to anti-Armenian sentiments brought to the surface by the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
↑ Peter G. Stone; Joanne Farchakh Bajjaly (2008). The destruction of cultural heritage in Iraq. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press. p.xi. ISBN9781843833840.
↑ Adalian, Rouben Paul (2010). Historical dictionary of Armenia. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press. p.95. ISBN9780810860964.
↑ Dorfmann-Lazarev, Igor; Khatchadourian, Haroutioun, eds. (5 December 2023), "Foreword", Monuments and Identities in the Caucasus, Brill, ISBN978-90-04-67738-8, retrieved 29 July 2025
↑ Webteam, Web (7 September 2012). "Prisoner Without Conscience Pardoned and Promoted". Amnesty International USA. Retrieved 23 July 2025. While swift to imprison peaceful domestic dissidents, the authoritarian regime of Azerbaijani president, Ilham Aliyev, spared no effort to release the criminal, by reportedly showering Hungary with an as much as $3.8 billion loan offer, enabled by the Caspian's energy riches.
↑ Council, Atlantic (7 September 2012). "A New Low for the Hungarian Government?". Atlantic Council. Retrieved 23 July 2025. Intensive bilateral discussions, statements, and media reports of late have all been pointing to an impending Azeri purchase of Hungarian government bonds worth 2-3 billion euros. Shortly after the extradition of Safarov, Orbán "unfriended the IMF" on Facebook: a move against the allegedly unacceptable preconditions involving steep cuts in social spending....Thus, at the very least, the Hungarian government is guilty of negligence. But it is widely assumed that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's government made the deal to extradite Safarov in exchange for a money infusion that would help ensure his political survival.
↑ Cox, Caroline; Eibner, John (1993). Ethnic cleansing in progress: war in Nagorno Karabakh. Zürich: Institute for Religious Minorities in the Islamic World. ISBN978-3-9520345-2-1.
↑ Forgey, Elisa von Joeden (30 December 2023). "Why Prevention Fails: Chronicling the Genocide in Artsakh". International Journal of Armenian Genocide Studies. 8 (2): 89. doi:10.51442/ijags.0046. ISSN1829-4405. The [UN] report asks readers to believe that the UN officials who were present during the mission could not understand that people do leave in a 'sudden manner' if they are being attacked by a state that has previously tortured, humiliated, and beheaded members of their group, especially one that had, only a few days earlier, threatened them with 'genocide.'
↑ International Association for Genocide Scholars (September 2024). "IAGS Resolution on Nagorno-Karabakh"(PDF). genocidescholars.org. Retrieved 16 July 2025.
↑ "Statement on the Genocidal State of Azerbaijan Hosting COP29". Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention. 4 June 2024. Retrieved 16 July 2025. These documented atrocities include beheadings, mutilations of Armenians while still alive, torture, and ritual humiliations of Armenians solely because of their identity, as evidenced by the use of flags and songs.
↑ Preliminary Ad Hoc Report on Results of Fact-Finding Missions Conducted from Sept 24 to Sept 30, 2023(PDF) (Report). Human Rights Defender of the Republic of Armenia. 2023. p.44. The fourteen cases presented below are the casualties of the attacks of Azerbaijani armed forces on Nagorno-Karabakh on September 19–20, 2023. The information about cases of alleged torture/mutilation that was available in public media and revealed by the interviews has been confirmed by the state competent authorities upon the Defender's request. 123. Out of the fourteen dead bodies, four belong to children aged twelve and younger, three to older persons, one to a female, and five to males. The dead bodies that have been transferred to Armenia from Nagorno-Karabakh, demonstrate physical traces of violence and signs of alleged torture/mutilation that should be determined by the forensic examination.
↑ Forgey, Elisa von Joeden (30 December 2023). "Why Prevention Fails: Chronicling the Genocide in Artsakh". International Journal of Armenian Genocide Studies. 8 (2): 100. doi:10.51442/ijags.0046. ISSN1829-4405. In our second SOS Alert, published on September 22, we voiced our grave concern that the people of Artsakh, 'currently under the yoke of the armed forces of the Republic of Azerbaijan,' are 'in critical danger of genocide.' Many stories of atrocity turned out to be true.
↑ "Is Armenia's Move to Join the ICC a Strategic Necessity or Geopolitical Suicide?". Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Retrieved 18 July 2025. Advocates of ratification cite the extrajudicial execution of at least seven Armenian soldiers taken prisoner by Azerbaijani troops—an alleged war crime—during the September [2022] incursion into Armenia.
↑ "The Tip of the Iceberg". humanrightsnetwork.shorthandstories.com. Retrieved 18 July 2025. We documented atrocities perpetrated by Azerbaijani forces against ethnic Armenians during the 44-Day Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020, after the ceasefire, during the 2022 attacks in sovereign Armenia, as well as in times of relative peace. Among these are extrajudicial killings of civilians, including the elderly and disabled; enforced disappearance of Armenian troops; torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners of war; death threats, intimidation, and harassment of residents of border communities; and life-threatening restrictions on freedom of movement and access to vital infrastructure.
↑ University Network for Human Rights (August 2024). "Chapter 4: Unlawful Killings and Mutilation of the Deceased". We Are No One: How Impunity for Three Years of Atrocities Is Erasing Nagorno-Karabakh's Armenians(PDF) (Report). University Network for Human Rights. p.104. Retrieved 18 July 2025. ...the widespread nature and cruelty of these killings suggest a systematic practice within the Azerbaijani state forces, rather than isolated or fringe cases.
↑ nikama (11 November 2024). "Human rights report accuses Azerbaijan of ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh". Jamnews in English. Retrieved 18 July 2025. 'We have documented several systemic and severe human rights violations and international crimes. It's crucial to highlight that these actions were widespread, systematic, and part of Azerbaijan's state policy aimed at cleansing the territory of ethnic Armenians.'
1 2 Civilnet (6 July 2017). "Russia Complains To Azerbaijan About Discrimination Against Armenians". CIVILNET. Retrieved 28 July 2025. Russia has formally complained to Azerbaijan about "ethnic discrimination" against Russian citizens of Armenian origin, saying that 25 Russians so far this year have been denied entry to Azerbaijan because they had Armenian names.
↑ Chakelian, Anoosh (21 May 2019). "Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Azerbaijan, and having an Armenian surname". New Statesman. Retrieved 28 July 2025. Arsenal midfielder Henrikh Mkhitaryan, who is Armenian, won't be playing in the Europa League final against Chelsea because it's in Azerbaijan. And visas have been denied for fans with "ian" or "yan" surnames (usually an Armenian tell, but apparently even Cornish Trevelyans don't make it into the country).
↑ "Why Are There No Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh?". Freedom House. p.25. Retrieved 18 September 2025. ...the first 'Great Return' program, launched by Baku, and the administrative changes made in the country in July 2021 showed no pathways for Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians to enter those communities which Azerbaijan had taken.
↑ "The Fragility (End?) of Language at the Limits of Situated Knowledges". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 28 July 2025. Armenians and Azerbaijanis know that having an Armenian last name (or an Armenian sounding name) endangers your safety and thus precludes your entry into Azerbaijan, no matter what citizenship you hold.
↑ "Enemies in love". MEYDAN.TV. 11 July 2016. Retrieved 28 July 2025. 'Even when they started coming through the different neighborhoods and profiling people by their last names, we were lucky. By a miracle, we got through it… My aunts hid in our home for a couple of months, then left. All their belongings—they left everything they owned behind...' In the beginning, it was very difficult for Sofia's mother. She was on self-inflicted house arrest.
↑ "Nagorno Karabakh: One Year After the Ethnic Cleansing". www.globalissues.org. 18 September 2024. Retrieved 18 July 2025. Two months after the mass displacement, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Azerbaijan must ensure the "safe and unhindered return" of these displaced, and so did a European Parliament resolution adopted last March... On 2 September 2024, the International Association of Genocide Scholars — a US-based non-partisan organization — released a resolution condemning Azerbaijan's "genocidal actions" in Nagorno-Karabakh and calling on the international community to "recognise these atrocities, guarantee the right of Armenians to return to their homeland and ensure their security."
↑ Memorandum from the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights to John D. Evans, Resource Information Center, 13 June 1993.
↑ "Implementation of the Helsinki Accords: Human Rights and Democratization in the Newly Independent States of the former Soviet Union" (Washington, DC: U.S. Congress, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, January 1993), p. 118.
↑ Azerbaijan: The status of Armenians, Russians, Jews and other minorities, report, 1993, INS Resource Information Center, p. 10
↑ "Stereotypes and the "image of the enemy" in Azerbaijan – Public dialogs". 4 December 2020. Retrieved 28 July 2025. This does not stop even the pro-government [Azeri] media from simultaneously recognizing that many Armenians are trying to hide their nationality in Azerbaijan, are forced to change their names and surnames, and introduce themselves as Russian or Jewish. At the same time, journalists from pro-government media do not think about a logical question: why are Armenians who have no problems while living in Azerbaijan forced to change their names and surnames and why do they have to introduce themselves as Russian or Jewish?
↑ The Danish Immigration Service (2000). Report on roving attaché mission to Azerbaijan, Armenia and Russia 14 June - 1 July 2000(PDF) (Report). pp.11–13. According to our sources, including the Danish Refugee Council and a Western Embassy which wished to be anonymous, many Armenian women had therefore changed their Armenian surnames to Azeri ones to conceal their ethnic background, and had then changed their passports. Often the last syllable of the Armenian surname, which identifies a person as an Armenian, namely "-jan", is simply removed...Children from mixed Azeri and Armenian marriages generally choose the ethnic identity of the Azeri parent, so that henceforward they are shown in their documents as ethnic Azeris. Once ethnic identity has been determined at the age of 16 it cannot be changed again. A Western Embassy which wished to be anonymous believed that since the children of mixed marriages customarily took their Azeri father's surname, in most cases the outside world did not know that those children were half Armenian...The sources also added that Armenians generally kept a very low profile and did not publicly draw attention to themselves.
1 2 3 "Implementation of the Helsinki Accords: Human Rights and Democratization in the Newly Independent States of the former Soviet Union" (Washington, DC: U.S. Congress, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, January 1993), p. 118
↑ "Increased Harassment of Refugee Applicants," U.S. Department of State Cable from American Embassy in Baku to the State Department, 29 April 1993.
↑ "Ban on Armenian names". stophatespeech.net. Archived from the original on 21 April 2022. Retrieved 1 August 2025. Armenian names were included in the red list of prohibited names. According to Rasim Aliguliyev, 'it is unacceptable in Azerbaijan to name your baby Andranik.' That comes to say that if a Lezgin wants to name his son Arsen - a name very popular both among Armenians and Lezgins, or if a Talysh wants to name his son Armin - a name quite popular among both Armenian and Talysh people, he will have to apply to the commission for a special authorization.
↑ "Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities: Third Opinion on Azerbaijan adopted on 10 October 2012". Council of Europe: Secretariat of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. 2012. Retrieved 25 July 2025. At the same time, the Advisory Committee was surprised to learn that only 306 persons indicated an ethnic Armenian origin in the 2009 census, particularly considering the regularly cited official estimate that some 30,000 ethnic Armenian citizens of Azerbaijan live in the territory outside the Nagorno Karabakh region. This raises obvious questions as to why only one per cent of this group feel inclined to indicate their ethnic background in line with the right to free self-identification contained in Article 3 of the Framework Convention, or whether, indeed, the group is smaller than estimated.
↑ Yunusov, A. (12 March 2001). "Этнический состав Азербайджана (по переписи 1999 года)". Demoscope Weekly (in Russian). Archived from the original on 15 August 2019. Хотя на деле, реально численность армян вне Нагорного Карабаха должна быть чуть больше, в пределах 2–3 тысяч, поскольку многие сменили фамилии и не попали в материалы переписи.
↑ Human Rights in Azerbaijan: The Tragic Fate of Armenian, Azeri, & French Prisoners(PDF) (Report). European Center for Law and Justice. November 2024. pp.5–6. Retrieved 14 July 2025. More than a hundred Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh, 23 of whom are formally identified and therefore personally defended by lawyers, are still imprisoned to this day, in arbitrary, degrading and inhuman conditions of detention... The illegal and brutal detention of Armenian civilians and prisoners of war does not date back to September 2023, or even to the 2020 war. Azerbaijan is regularly challenged by the European Court of Human Rights on this issue.
↑ Chorbajian, Levon; Donabédian, Patrick; Mutafian, Claude (1994). The Caucasian knot: the history & geopolitics of Nagorno-Karabagh. Politics in contemporary Asia. London: Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Zed Books. p.38. ISBN978-1-85649-287-4. Two months later, in July 1991, a follow-up delegation from the Andrei Sakharov Memorial Congress became the first international delegation to visit Nagorno-Karabagh. They found a number of types of human rights violations carried out by the Azerbaijani authorities, including forced deportations, detentions, the abuse and harassment of civilians, including rape, and the closure and destruction of churches.
↑ Cox, Caroline; Eibner, John; Bonnėr, Elena (1993). Ethnic cleansing in progress: war in Nagorno Karabakh. Zürich; Washington: Institute for Religious Minorities in the Islamic World. p.60. ISBN978-3-9520345-2-1.
↑ Apsel, Joyce; Verdeja, Ernesto, eds. (2013). Genocide matters: ongoing issues and emerging perspectives. London; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. p.93. ISBN978-0-415-81489-8.
↑ Cox, Caroline; Eibner, John; Bonnėr, Elena (1993). Ethnic cleansing in progress: war in Nagorno Karabakh. Zürich; Washington: Institute for Religious Minorities in the Islamic World. pp.3, 35, 45. ISBN978-3-9520345-2-1.
↑ "We are No One: How Impunity for Three Years of Atrocities is Erasing Nagorno-Karabakh's Armenians". University Network for Human Rights. pp.59, 60, 112. Retrieved 16 July 2025. This is particularly apparent in the widely circulated videos of soldiers using discriminatory rhetoric as they attack soldiers and civilians, including the sexual mutilation of bodies of female combatants and other forms of extreme violence. The widespread regard for Armenians as a people to be eradicated from or supplanted in the region has underlain Azerbaijani soldiers' practice, recounted in our interviews with victims and documented widely, of forcing captives to declare Nagorno-Karabakh to be Azerbaijan's and Azerbaijan's alone.
↑ Watch, Genocide (13 September 2023). "Lemkin Institute Report on Genocide Risks in Artsakh". genocidewatch. p.123. Retrieved 16 July 2025. In both of these wars, Azerbaijan committed several crimes that clearly amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, and that may satisfy the intent required by the Genocide Convention. These crimes included, but were not limited to, the forced displacement of people, instances of torture, extrajudicial executions through beheadings, large-scale homicides, sexualized violence, the use of prohibited weapons in warfare, and the destruction of cultural heritage (churches, tombstones, and sites of worship) representative of Armenian identity in the region.
↑ Gamaghelyan, Phil (1 January 2010). "Rethinking the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict: Identity, Politics, Scholarship". International Negotiation. 15 (1): 33–56. doi:10.1163/157180610X488173. ISSN1571-8069. The nationalistic public rhetoric of the Azerbaijani authorities often directly calls for war and ethnic cleansing... As the then Azeri President Elchibey said in June 1992, 'If there is a single Armenian left in Karabakh by October of this year, the people of Azerbaijan can hang me in the central square of Baku.'
↑ IAGS EB & AB: Statement Condemning the Azerbaijani Blockade of the Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh). (2020, October 26). "The government of Azerbaijan, encouraged by its ally Turkey, has long promoted official hatred of Armenians, has fostered impunity for atrocities committed against Armenians, and has issued repeated threats to empty the region of its indigenous Armenian population."
↑ "Why Are There No Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh?". Freedom House. p.90. Retrieved 17 July 2025. These words are accompanied by historically revisionist narratives that challenge the legitimacy of the Armenian presence in Nagorno- Karabakh—a trend that has become common in Azerbaijani media and government discourse. Aliyev frequently asserts that Armenians never lived in Karabakh in pre-modern times, a talking point used to promote an exclusionary sense of ownership over the contested territory.
↑ "Country Report: Azerbaijan"(PDF). Genocide Watch. Retrieved 14 July 2025. Due to its frequent denial of past atrocities against Armenians, its frequent use of hate speech, and the current targeting of civilians, Genocide Watch considers Azerbaijan to be at Stage 9: Extermination and Stage 10 Denial.
↑ Panossian, Lisabelle (2023–2024). "Protecting Humanity's Cradle of Civilization: Advancing the Right to Self-Determination for Indigenous Peoples in the Middle East & South Caucasus". Northwestern Journal of Human Rights. 22: 149. Several statements by Azerbaijani officials—spanning approximately two decades—indicate a genocidal intent that the Azerbaijani government harbors toward people of Armenian descent. Azerbaijani former Defense Minister Safar Abiyev stated in 2004 that "within the next 25 years there will be no state of Armenia in the South Caucasus. These people have no right to live in this region." In 2005, Hajibala Abutalybov, the former mayor of Azerbaijan's capital Baku, told a municipal delegation from Bavaria, Germany, that Azerbaijan's "goal is the complete elimination of Armenians. You, Nazis, already eliminated the Jews in the 1930s and 1940s, right? You should be able to understand us." The sitting president of Azerbaijan at the time of this paper's publication, Ilham Aliyev, has kept a tweet on his social media page, published in 2015, stating that "Armenia is not even a colony, it is not even worthy of being a servant." During the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, Azerbaijani President Aliyev stated in a televised address that the Azerbaijani army was "driving [NK Armenians] away like dogs! Azerbaijani soldiers drive them away like dogs!" Toward the end of 2020, Azerbaijan released a stamp commemorating their victory in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war depicting a person in a hazmat suit "defumigating" Nagorno-Karabakh. In turn, "an entire generation of Azerbaijanis has now grown up listening to" and viewing this hateful and dehumanizing rhetoric toward Armenian people.
↑ Anzhela Elibegova, Armine Adibekian (2021). Armenophobia in Azerbaijan. Aegitas. p.64. ISBN978-0-369-40559-3. The Netherlands company Kales Airline Services, which is a partner of Azerbaijan Hava Yollari (Azerbaijani airlines), was forced under the pressure from Baku to fire its ticket sales agent Mary Sargsyan only because she was Armenian.
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