What We’ve Lost

Armenians are the indigenous people of the South Caucasus region of the Armenian Highlands of Western Asia.  Our history is millennia long and complex. The ruins of Urartu, the ancient empire that unified the native Nairi tribes in 861 BC, remain in both modern Armenia and the lands now occupied by modern Turkey.  Living at a crossroads of empires for thousands of years, we have lost and regained our indigenous lands to invaders and occupiers many times.  We have learned to live with and shared our culture with a long list of foreign powers, enriching the cultures of all. After centuries of institutionalized racism, in 1915 the Ottoman Turkish government began the systematic extermination of its indigenous Armenian citizens in a campaign of slaughter, the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Although they were convicted and sentenced to death, the perpetrators were allowed to escape and reside in various places including Germany, a collaborator of Ottoman Turkey, Italy and Georgia.  The Armenian Genocide of 1915 represented the loss of ninety percent of indigenous Armenian lands, an incalculable loss for us.  Turkey has perpetuated a campaign of denial, victim blaming and cultural genocide since then.  The tiny minority of ethnic Armenians still living in Turkey is subjected to systemic racism by the Turkish government.  Several treaties were drafted to provide reparations to the remaining Armenians after the Genocide, but Armenians have been repeatedly sold out by Western powers, including Britain and the United States, refusing to enforce any punishment or reparations on Turkey for committing genocide.

The Republic of Artsakh as it is known to the indigenous Armenian people, or Nagorno Karabakh, NKR, is a republic formed in 1991 by a democratic vote for self-determination by the majority of the population of Artsakh, in accordance with the human right of self determination and the law in effect at the time.  This region has historically been a part of Armenia and had a majority indigenous Armenian population.  It was forcibly transferred to Azerbaijan, an ally of Turkey, along with other indigenous Armenian territories, in 1921 by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in a bid to win an alliance with Turkey.  At the decline of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, Azerbaijan began a series of pogroms to ethnically cleanse its territories of Armenians, resulting in the deaths and displacement of hundreds of thousands of Armenian men, women, and children, echoing the Armenian Genocide of 1915 committed  by Ottoman Turkey.  After seeing what became of Armenians in Azerbaijan who did not fight back, the people of Artsakh saw no choice but to vote for self-determination, a fundamental human right.  The government of Azerbaijan then unleashed a bloody, full-scale war on the inhabitants of this tiny country, in direct violation of their human rights.  Vastly outnumbered, with antiquated weapons and a total blockade by Azerbaijan and Turkey, they did what anyone would do.  They took up arms to defend their lives, homes and families.

A 1994 ceasefire ended the conflict, but was repeatedly violated by Azerbaijan as Artsakh’s population of 160,000 struggled to rebuild.  In April of 2016, Azerbaijan launched a full scale war on Artsakh which lasted four days.  On September 27, 2020 Azerbaijan again launched a full scale war on Artsakh.  Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented war crimes committed by Azerbaijan.  Turkey aided Azerbaijan in its campaign of ethnic violence, sending soldiers, arms and with devastating impact on the region, foreign militants. The war ended on November 10th when Russia imposed an agreement on Armenia and Artsakh forcing them to cede indigenous Armenian land to Azerbaijan and allowing the ethnic cleansing of Armenians from those areas.  The areas now under Azeri control include the cultural capital of the region, Shushi.  It is probable that many historical sites and art treasures will be destroyed under Azeri control, as UNESCO has documented in the Azerbaijani enclave of Nakhijevan.