Baku Hosts Conference to Seek Justice for Azerbaijanis Expelled from Armenia

On Thursday, the 2nd International Conference on "The Right to Return: Advancing Justice for Azerbaijanis Expelled from Armenia," organized by the Western Azerbaijan Community, commenced in Baku, Azerbaijan.

The two-day conference is attended by 101 representatives from 51 countries, including Türkiye, the USA, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Belgium, France, Norway, Saudi Arabia, and others.

Additionally, representatives from 25 diplomatic missions accredited in Azerbaijan are also participating in the event.

In his address to the conference attendees, President Ilham Aliyev highlighted that at present over 120 million people are victims of forcible displacement, including hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis who were expelled from their historical homeland in Western Azerbaijan, a part of present-day Armenia’s territory.

“In the aftermath of particularly horrific deportations in 1918–1921, 1948–1953 and 1987–1991, hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis were driven from their ancestral homeland and sought refuge in Azerbaijan. As a result of those atrocious deportations, not a single Azerbaijani remained in Armenia, which became a mono-ethnic state,” President Aliyev stated.

He noted that Armenia spared no effort to deny the Azerbaijani people's centuries-long presence and cultural heritage in their ancestral lands. Historical sites, cemeteries, mosques, and settlements in Western Azerbaijan, created by Azerbaijanis over thousands of years, have been destroyed by Armenia.

The Western Azerbaijan Community (WAC) advocates for the restoration of the rights of ethnic Azerbaijanis expelled from present-day Armenia. Since 1989, WAC has been spearheading efforts to facilitate the peaceful and dignified return of deported Azerbaijanis to their homeland in modern-day Armenia.

WAC Chairman Aziz Alakbarli said Armenia had been blocking a UNESCO mission to investigate the state of Azerbaijani cultural heritage within its territory, clearly aligning with its policy of creating and preserving a mono-ethnic state in a region known for its rich cultural, religious, and ethnic diversity.

WAC is actively engaging with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to address its Concept of Return, which involves planning and executing repatriation, reintegration, rehabilitation, and reconstruction efforts. A series of appeals have been directed to UNESCO, EU, PACE, and other international organizations, calling for support in achieving justice for Azerbaijanis striving to return to their homeland.

President Aliyev said Armenia deliberately portrays the activities of WAC as a threat to its territorial integrity.

“However, the goal of the Community is to facilitate a peaceful, safe and dignified return of our compatriots displaced from Western Azerbaijan to their ancestral lands. This is a purely human rights issue. The fact that Armenia labels the Community’s activities as a threat represents an attempt to distort the true essence of the issue and deny the right of return enshrined in international law,” the president of Azerbaijan stated.

Western Azerbaijan to modern-day Armenia

The western edge of Azerbaijan historically encompassed lands inhabited by ethnic Azerbaijanis. However, these lands were included in destructive plans developed by the Russian imperial and Soviet authorities. The city of Iravan (modern-day Yerevan) and the Zangezur region were among the centers of Azerbaijani population and culture before their forcible separation from the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR) in 1918 and 1920, respectively.

Iravan was originally inhabited by ethnic Azerbaijanis, whose ancestors established the city. Although Iravan was handed over “willingly” to the newly established Armenian state by the ADR government, historical sources claim that this act was organized and implemented forcibly under foreign pressure.

Zangezur is historically an Azerbaijani region that now forms the southern part of the present-day Armenia as well as a portion of Azerbaijan’s territory.

During the 11th and 12th centuries, Zangezur was part of the Seljuk Empire, which further expanded Turkic-Islamic influence within the region. Subsequently, Zangezur faced invasions from Mongol-Tatar tribes and the Timurid Empire. From the 15th to the 18th century, the region was part of medieval Azerbaijani states, including Garagoyunlu, Aghgoyunlu, and Safavids.

Demographic changes occurred in Iravan and the Zangezur region during the rule of Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union. Under the Russian Empire, Armenians from Ottoman and Iranian territories relocated in massive numbers to the South Caucasus, including Iravan, Zangezur, and other Azerbaijani territories.

Similar population transfers continued from 1904 to 1915, resulting in the relocation of over 260,000 ethnic Armenians to Azerbaijani territories. Protests against these actions were largely disregarded, and approximately 130,000 Armenians were relocated to Azerbaijani provinces such as Iravan and Yelizavetpol (the name of Azerbaijan’s Ganja city during Tsarist Russia's period).

During the years of 1905-1907 and 1914-1921, Armenian armed groups committed massacres in Zangezur, resulting in the deaths of approximately half a million indigenous Azerbaijanis and other local Muslims. During this period, 115 Muslim villages in Zangezur were completely destroyed.

Iravan was ceded to the newly established Armenian Republic on May 29, 1918. Following the subjugation of the ADR by Bolshevik forces on April 28, 1920, a significant part of the Zangezur region was also ceded to the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic on November 30, 1920.

These territorial annexations were facilitated by the Soviet Empire, which forced the Azerbaijani authorities to make concessions. Consequently, Nakhchivan became an exclave separated from the Azerbaijani mainland.

The annexation of Iravan had severe consequences for its indigenous Azerbaijani population and the cultural heritage of Azerbaijanis. In 1916, there were over 373,000 Azerbaijanis living in Iravan. However, according to census records from 1922, only 12,000 Azerbaijanis were registered.

In 1933, the territory of the Armenian SSR was divided into districts, and the name Zangezur was changed to new district names such as Gafan, Gorus, Garakilsa (Sisian), and Mehri.

The final phase of the “Armenianization” of Western Azerbaijan occurred in 1988 when over 300,000 ethnic Azerbaijanis were forcibly expelled from their ancestral lands. This expulsion was accompanied by anti-Azerbaijan sentiments, pogroms, and persecution of ethnic Azerbaijanis in Armenia.

The underlying reason for this ethnic conflict was Armenia’s illegal territorial claims, particularly regarding the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. The deportation of Azerbaijanis set the stage for Armenia’s full-scale military attack on Azerbaijan, leading to the First Karabakh War from 1991 to 1994 and the subsequent occupation of internationally recognized Azerbaijani territories.