The Armenians fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh en masse still remember the first years after the Soviet Union fell apart, when their community suffered war and mass slaughter. 

But they also remember the more distant history of the genocide perpetrated against their countrymen by the Ottoman Empire. Consequently, they are rightly unwilling to rely on the mercy of the Azeri security services, who in recent years haven’t hesitated to attack Armenian civilians and civilian targets and commit war crimes in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Starting in the second decade of the 21st century, Israel has been helping Azerbaijan commit war crimes and defeat the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. Israel has a strategic relationship with the Azeris that includes arms deals worth billions of dollars, stemming from both Israel’s war against Iran and the fact that it buys a significant portion of the oil it needs from Azerbaijan.

In the past, security ties between the two countries remained discreet. 

But in recent years, Azerbaijan has proudly displayed advanced Israeli weaponry, including missiles and suicide drones, in its military parades. It has also revealed that a factory that produces Israeli suicide drones exists on Azeri soil, and it has once again released official videos in which its forces are seen using Israeli weapons.

On March 6, Haaretz reported that over the past seven years, 92 Azeri cargo planes landed at the Ovda airbase – the only airfield from which explosives can be exported.

In addition, an Israeli suicide drone has been documented attacking an antitank battery in Armenia itself (Haaretz, March 15, 2021). Haaretz also reported that Azeri journalists and opposition activists have been targeted for surveillance with NSO’s Pegasus spyware (May 25, 2023).

Throughout this period, Israel hasn’t just supplied Azerbaijan with arms. It has also helped it distort history.

During legal proceedings in 2020, the Foreign Ministry admitted that Israel’s refusal to recognize the Armenian genocide – which it defines merely as a “tragedy” – stems in part from its relationship with the Azeri government. 

At the same time, Israel is also assisting Azerbaijan’s campaign for international recognition of the “Khojaly genocide,” which the Armenians allegedly perpetrated against the Azeris. Admittedly, there are conflicting stories about what happened in the battle of Khojaly during the first Nagorno-Karabakh war of 1992. But there’s one thing the international community agrees on regarding this issue – no genocide took place there, according to the accepted definition of the term.

What is happening in Nagorno-Karabakh isn’t the first case of ethnic cleansing that has Israel’s fingerprints on it. 

The persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar and the Muslims during the Bosnian War are just two examples out of many. 

Israel ought to have from the Jewish people’s own history that when you mix massive amounts of weaponry with a distortion of history, it’s a recipe for disaster.

The above article is Haaretz’s lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.

By Harut Sassounian,

With each passing day, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s statements contradicting Armenia’s national interests are getting increasingly alarming

Pashinyan started by denigrating Mt. Ararat, the preeminent Armenian symbol. He then mocked Armenia’s coat of arms, questioning why there is a lion on it, claiming that there are no lions in Armenia. With this statement, Pashinyan made three factual errors:

1) He did not seem to realize that the lion symbolizes courage and strength. It has nothing to do with whether there are lions in Armenia or not;

2) There are over a dozen countries that have a lion on their coat of arms without having a single lion in their countries;

3) He is also incorrect that there are no lions in Armenia. A well-known oligarch has had several lions in his Yerevan mansion for many years.

The Prime Minister then made abusive remarks about Armenia’s national anthem using the excuse that it contains the word “enemy.” There are several other countries that have the word enemy in their national anthems.

Pashinyan went on to complain that what is now called “Army of Armenians” (Hayots Panag) should be “Armenia’s Army” (Hayastani Panag), and that textbooks on the “History of Armenians” (Hayots Badmoutyoun) should be called “Armenia’s History” (Hayastani Badmoutyoun). He also wants to distance today’s Armenia from its past by contrasting “Real Armenia” with “Historical Armenia.” He then suggested, in line with Pres. Aliyev’s demand, that Armenia adopt a new constitution deleting the references to Artsakh and the Armenian Genocide.

Last week, I wrote about one of Pashinyan’s top lieutenants’ incredible suggestion to make a list of all 1.5 million victims of the Armenian Genocide. This is an indirect way of questioning the veracity of the Armenian Genocide.

All of these statements indicate that Pashinyan is retreating from Armenia’s and Armenians’ nationalistic stands to appease Azerbaijan and Turkey.

To make matters worse, on April 24, 2024, the Prime Minister issued a statement full of confusing words which reflect his unstable mental state. He referred to the Armenian Genocide as Meds Yeghern (Great Crime) 11 times and only four times as Genocide. Meds Yeghern is a term that Armenians used until the 1940’s to describe the Genocide before the term genocide was coined by Raphael Lemkin. Since then, the proper and legal term that should be used is Genocide or Tseghasbanoutyoun, in Armenian.

It does not come as a surprise that Pashinyan, in his April 24 statement, once again obfuscated the meaning of the term genocide thus continuing his attempts to downplay Armenian national symbols and terminology.

Pashinyan complained that due to the Meds Yeghern, Armenia often deals with other countries in a state of trauma or shock: “for this reason, sometimes we cannot correctly distinguish the realities and factors, historical processes and predictable horizons. Maybe this is also the reason why we get new shocks, reliving the trauma of the Armenian Genocide as a legacy and as a tradition.”

By making such a statement, Pashinyan is blaming the trauma from the Genocide of 1915 for his incompetent decisions and mismanagement of the State. While it is true that there is such a thing as transgenerational trauma, I would advise the Prime Minister to look at his own inability to rule rather than the trauma from the Genocide.

Pashinyan then surprisingly suggested that Armenians “stop searching for a homeland, because we have found that homeland, our Promised Land, where milk and honey flow.”

It appears that Pashinyan has lost all perceptions of reality! He is describing Armenia with its existential problems as “the Promised Land where milk and honey flow!” More likely, he and his family are the ones living a luxurious life at the Armenian taxpayers’ expense.

The only people who were pleased with Pashinyan’s April 24 message are the Presidents of Azerbaijan and Turkey, Ilham Aliyev and Recep Tayyip Erdogan. An indication of that pleasure was the crowd of Turks gathered on April 24 in front of the Turkish Embassy in Washington, D.C., chanting: “Pashinyan, Pashinyan, Pashinyan,” in the faces of Armenian protesters.

The President of Turkey, as he has done on every April 24 ever since 2014, issued a statement trying to fool the international community that he is acknowledging the Armenian Genocide. He actually lumped together Armenians and Turks and everyone else “who passed away or were martyred as a consequence of armed conflicts, rebellions, gang violence and terrorist acts” during “World War I.” He thus misrepresented the Armenian victims of genocide as war casualties. He described “the 1915 events” not as genocide, but a “tragedy in which both sides suffered casualties.”

In a direct message to Pashinyan, Erdogan stated that “Türkiye’s ties with Armenia … appear to depend on Yerevan’s stance on the issue [of genocide]… A new order is being established in the region, and it is time to set aside baseless claims. It is time to move forward with realities on the ground. It is better than moving forward with fabrications, tales.” This sounds very similar to what Pashinyan is trying to do. Erdogan made the intent of his message more obvious when he said: “Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan understands this [reality].” As a final dig, Erdogan stated: “I hope Armenia escapes from the darkness it was condemned to, thanks to its diaspora, and chooses the path of new beginnings.”

The true meaning of Erdogan’s words was revealed when the Istanbul Governor’s Office once again banned the commemoration of the Armenian Genocide on April 24. Actions speak louder than words!

By Stephan Pechdimaldji,

The 2024 presidential race is shaping up to be one of our country’s most hotly contested elections. With an electorate that has become more polarized than ever, independents and select demographic groups promise to play a more pivotal role in this year’s election. It is why Arab Americans in Michigan raised a lot of eyebrows when they turned against Joe Biden in the state’s primary, signaling their anger with the president’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war. But Arab Americans are not the only group feeling betrayed by President Biden these days. Armenian Americans are also deeply frustrated with President Biden and how he allowed Azerbaijan to ethnically cleanse more than 120,000 ethnic Armenians from their ancestral homeland of Nagorno-Karabakh last year.

To fully understand why Armenian Americans feel let down by President Biden, one must examine the rising authoritarianism in Azerbaijan under President Ilham Aliyev and how Joe Biden has turned a blind eye to the petro-dictator’s tyrannical rule as a geopolitical trade-off. Since taking power from his father nearly two decades ago, Aliyev has embarked on a campaign to wipe Armenia off the map that started in the fall of 2020 when he launched an illegal and unprovoked war against ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. The war was soon followed by a nearly 10-month blockade of the only road linking Armenians in the region to the outside world that culminated last September when Azerbaijan forced Armenians to leave their homes, upending a civilization that stood for a thousand years overnight.

As a candidate running for president in 2020, Joe Biden vowed to hold Azerbaijan accountable for its actions toward Armenia and rightly criticized the Trump administration for coddling Turkey in its efforts to support and help Azerbaijan. For Armenian Americans, that version of Joe Biden was consistent with his record as a U.S. senator who for years fought for Armenian American issues including the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. Biden was a reliable friend to our community, which explains why Armenian Americans overwhelmingly supported his campaign for president in 2020.

That is why Armenian Americans were so excited when President Biden officially recognized the Armenian Genocide, something no other president had done since President Reagan, by fulfilling his campaign promise to hold Turkey responsible for the first genocide of the 20th century.

It was a watershed moment for Armenian Americans as politicians from both political parties had used the Armenian Genocide for political purposes. Looking for votes and money, President George W. Bush and Barack Obama both promised to recognize the Armenian Genocide as candidates but then bowed to Turkish pressure once in office.

Armenian Americans believed that the Armenian Genocide was no longer a political football for both parties to kick around. Political expediency finally took a backseat to common sense and truth.

So, while we welcomed this historic and long overdue statement, the spirit of its intent was short-lived as Biden made a fateful decision before the ink was even dry.

Days after recognizing the Armenian Genocide, he waived Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act that bans foreign aid to Azerbaijan, which was a harbinger of things to come. With a stroke of his pen, Biden essentially recognized a genocide, only to allow another one to continue.

Since then, Joe Biden has arguably been the most anti-Armenian president to occupy the Oval Office. He has refused to hold Azerbaijan accountable for its war crimes or enforce any sanctions against its leadership. His administration did nothing to help Armenians during the blockade while they starved and blocked countless United Nations initiatives to condemn Azerbaijan or support resolutions that would enable the safe return of Armenians to Nagorno-Karabakh.

And his silence on Armenian political prisoners like the humanitarian Ruben Vardanyan, who currently sits in Azeri jails, has been deafening.

Biden’s failure and lack of leadership on issues that are important to Armenian Americans have come to a head. It is one of the reasons why community and coalition leaders from organizations like the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) have urged Armenian Democrats to vote “uncommitted” in their primary elections as a protest vote against Joe Biden’s complicity in Azerbaijan’s genocidal campaign.

With more than 200,000 Armenian Americans across Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin, this small but powerful group has the potential to tip the outcome of a race that could come down to slim margins in these battleground states.

But it’s not too late for President Biden. With little less than nine months until election day, Biden has an opportunity to use his remaining time in office to set the record straight on Azerbaijan. He can start by holding Azerbaijan responsible for its war crimes, levying sanctions where appropriate, and directing the United States Agency for International Development to distribute more help and aid to Armenian refugees. He needs to stop emboldening Azerbaijan while he’s still in a position of power and be more vocal about these critical issues on the campaign trail.

President Biden has lost the trust of Armenian Americans. If he wants to earn our vote back, he has a lot of work left to do. Time is running out.

Stephan Pechdimaldji is a communications strategist living in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is a first-generation Armenian American and the grandson of survivors of the Armenian genocide.

By Harut Sassounian,

There is a dispute among those who want to struggle for the recovery of Artsakh and those who say that Artsakh is lost forever and that we should forget about it. The latter shameful position is promoted by the current regime in Armenia which is responsible for losing Artsakh and is now doing everything possible to bury its memory.

I would like to share with the readers my decades-long view on the recovery of Western Armenia and its parallels to actions we need to take for Artsakh.

After every lecture I have given around the world on the Armenian Genocide and Western Armenia, some of the attendees immediately ask: what is the point of pursuing such a lost cause, particularly since the powerful Turkish military is occupying our historic lands?

I respond by saying that the worst thing Armenians can do now is to forget about Western Armenia. That is the surest way of losing forever our Armenian territories.

In addition to doing everything possible now, Armenians need to transmit to the next generation our demands for Artsakh and Western Armenia in order to keep the dream alive. If we don’t, our future generations, not knowing anything about our historic lands, will have no idea that they belong to us. Consequently, even if someday the geostrategic situation on the ground changes and an opportunity arises to recover our lost lands, our future generations will not show any interest in them.

Remember that for over 2,000 years, the Jewish people had lost their homeland and were dispersed throughout the world. The succeeding Jewish generations passed on the knowledge of their homeland to their offspring. For more than 2,000 years, parents transmitted the memory of Jerusalem and Israel to their children and they in turn passed it on to their children, and so on. They did not forget their roots and history while living in exile in Russia, Europe and elsewhere. They repeatedly told their children and grandchildren, ‘next year in Jerusalem!’ Two thousand years later, when the opportunity arose to recover their lands, they took advantage of it and realized their long-held dream. Palestinians, who were and still are forcefully displaced from their lands, are in a similar situation. They too are struggling to keep their dream alive and are proclaiming the right of return to their ancestral homes.

If Jewish people can keep their dream of returning to their homeland for 2,000 years, why can’t Armenians keep their dream alive of returning to Artsakh and Western Armenia someday? Armenians should tell their children and grandchildren: ‘next year in Shushi’ and ‘next year in Van’.

The question is: how can Armenians return to their lands someday if powerful enemies are occupying Artsakh and Western Armenia? We should not forget that nothing remains constant forever. There is not a single country in the world that has had the same boundaries since the beginning of history. Over the years, some countries have enlarged their borders, while others lost their territories. Some have become large empires, while others have disappeared from the face of the earth. But one thing is clear: No one can claim that today’s boundaries of Azerbaijan and Turkey will remain the same forever. Just 100 years ago, the vast and powerful Ottoman Empire was reduced to the much smaller territory of the Republic of Turkey. Even though it is not possible to predict the exact date when the boundaries of Azerbaijan and Turkey will change, they will certainly not remain the same. How will such changes come about? There are several scenarios, such as regional wars, even world war, civil war, and nuclear or other types of disasters. Such events have happened in the past and will surely happen again in the future.

When changes on the ground do take place, will future generations of Armenians know and have the memory that Artsakh and Western Armenia are part of their historic homeland or will they be clueless, having never heard of Shushi and Van? If they are deprived of that knowledge, when opportunities arise in the future, even if an unlikely benevolent Azeri or Turkish leader returns those lands to our grandchildren, they will not be interested in them, since they had never heard of them.

In conclusion, my advice is to keep the dream alive. While we are deprived of our lands due to the actions of our enemies, it is up to us not to lose the memory and dream of someday returning to our lands. Let’s pass on our demands to future generations. The enemy took away our lands, but did not and cannot take away our memory. By forgetting about our historic lands, we ourselves will be helping our enemies put the final stone on the grave of our cause!

Hrant Dink, the founder and editor-in-chief of our newspaper, is commemorated at the place where he was shot on the 17th anniversary of his murder. There are also commemoration events in different cities and countries.

The commemoration will take place on January 19 at 15.00 in front of the old Agos office, as every year.

You can watch the commemoration meeting from 14.00 on the following link:

Hrant’s Friends, who organized the commemoration, included the following statements in the call text:

“The shooter of the Hrant Dink murder was 17 years old when he shot Hrant Dink 17 years ago. Today he walks freely among us. Those who said to shoot that day are still on duty. A shameful performance was staged under the name of trial. Hrant Dink Murder remains a huge stain in the history of this country.

We object, we rebel, we demand justice.

“We are at the place where they shot him, in front of 23.5 Memory Place (former Agos office), at 15.00 on Friday, January 19, at 15.00, on Friday, January 19, to express our rebellion more and louder, side by side, and to commemorate Hrant Dink on the 17th anniversary of his murder.”

Other events

Hrant Dink will be commemorated with different events throughout the week.

The title of the talk that will take place on Thursday, January 18 at 19.00 at Nostalji Kitap Cafe in Pangaltı is “Hrant Dink and the Struggle for Justice in Turkey”. The moderator of the conversation, in which Masis Kürkçügil was the speaker, is Sesil Artuç. Address: Teyyareci Fehmi Street, Şişli.

On Thursday, January 18, Agos Armenian pages editor Pakrat Estukyan will meet with the students of Surp Haç Tıbrevank School and share passages from Hrant Dink’s life.

Anatolian Music Cultures Association and METU Alumni Association are also holding a commemoration program for Hrant Dink on Friday, January 19 at 20:00 at METU Alumni Association Vişnelik Facilities. Akis Music Group will take the stage in the program titled “Sonic Witnesses of Migration – Gomidas Folk Songs/Ah Cilicia”. The guests of the event, where L. Doğan Tılıç was the speaker, are İsmail Hakkı Demircioğlu and Sabri Ejder Öziç.

A commemoration event is held at the Gorky Theater in Berlin on January 19, as every year. At the event, Can Dündar, former editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet newspaper, will read a selection of Hrant Dink’s texts together with Saro Emirze and Sesede Terzyan, accompanied by the music of François Regis, in memory of Hrant Dink. The address of the event, which will start at 19.30 local time, is Am Festungsgraben 2, 10117 Berlin.

Continuing its work in Germany, AKEBI (Activist Action Union Against Racism, Nationalism and Discrimination) is organizing an event in Berlin on January 19 at 19.00 local time. At the event, where lawyer Hülya Deveci and Bülent Aydın from Hrant’s Friends Initiative will speak via live connection, Stepan Gantralyan, Selim Kırılmaz and Efe Bahadır, as well as the Mozaik Berlin choir, will stage their musical performances. The event was organized by Akebi e. V. Böckhstr. at 24, 10967 Berlin.

The commemoration event, which will be jointly organized by the German-Armenian Society of the Turkey Germany Cultural Forum in Cologne, Stimmen Der Solidaritat and Tüday, will start on the evening of January 19 at 19:00 local time. The address of the event where the artist Yaşar Kurt will give a musical concert as follows: Hohenzollernbrücke, 50679 Köln Am Armenischen Genozid-Mahnmal

The commemoration event in Nuremberg, Germany, on January 19 will be moderated by Eylem Çamuroğlu Çığ from Bayrueth University. Vartan Estukyan from Agos and writer Kemal Yalçın will take part in the panel as speakers. The European Assembly of Exiles (ASM) is among the organizers of the event, which will start at 18.00 local time. The address of the event is Kulturladen Villa Leon Philipp-Koerber-Weg 1

Dialogues Without Borders Initiative is holding a commemoration event on Saturday, January 20. Registration is required to participate in the event that will be broadcast on YouTube. Özgür Sevgi Göral, Rober Koptaş and Adnan Çelik are the speakers at the event moderated by Başak Ertür. Artist Suna Alan will also contribute with his musical performance.

The Orange County Armenian Genocide Memorial Committee hopes to start construction in the first half of 2026,

By HANNA KANG,

Irvine is getting closer to erecting a memorial dedicated to the victims of the Armenian genocide within the Great Park.

Early plans for the memorial, approved by the Great Park Board on Tuesday, Jan. 9, include a potential location, the size of the memorial and how the memorial will be funded. City leaders unanimously approved the Orange County Armenian Genocide Memorial Committee’s proposal and directed staff to work with the committee in developing a schematic design and budget.

The proposed location is what will be called the Heart of the Park, a yet-to-be-completed area of the Great Park in its expansion over 300 acres of amenities. Because it is surrounded by a dense forest, the location will provide privacy and peace, said assistant city manager Pete Carmichael.

And the size of the memorial will be consistent and commensurate with the vertical and horizontal area provided within the surrounding forest, approximately 20 feet wide and 15 feet high, said Lauren Jung, the city’s senior management analyst.

The Orange County Armenian Genocide Memorial Committee, comprised of 11 members representing various Armenian organizations from around the county, hopes for construction to begin in the first half of 2026 and be completed in 2027, according to a staff report.

The Heart of the Park, where the memorial will be located, is slated for initial grading beginning this year with subsequent construction starting in 2026. That area “is a mix of quiet contemplation and social interaction,” Carmichael said.

The committee is in the process of incorporating as a nonprofit in California and requesting nonprofit status with the IRS to fundraise for the cost of the memorial’s design and construction, said chairperson Kev Abazajian.

Per city rules regarding monuments and memorials, the project proponent must foot the bill for the project while the city is responsible for the daily maintenance and upkeep of the memorial.

Abazajian said he anticipates the state designation to be made within the month while the 501(c)(3) designation may take a couple more months.

The process of homing an Armenian genocide memorial in Irvine began in 2022 after a video surfaced in which Mayor Farrah Khan appeared to joke and laugh with representatives of local Turkish groups, among them a man who has been outspoken in denying the genocide.

Khan, at the time, said the genocide was not a topic of conversation and the video was released out of context. Members of the Armenian community met with Khan, and she said she would support finding a place in the city for a memorial.

“Irvine is home to people from all over the world, including many like Armenians, who have faced a devastating genocide. We currently have Armenian community members whose family members are facing forced displacement in Armenia, Azerbaijan and in Jerusalem,” Khan said. “This is one of the ways that we, as a city, can provide a safe space for people to reflect on the past and strive to do better in the future.”

An estimated 1.2 million Armenians died during the genocide that began in 1915 in the Ottoman Empire, widely considered to be the first genocide of the 20th century, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. While most historians — and the White House — agree the deaths that occurred constitute a “genocide,” the Turkish government has denied a genocide occurred, contesting the estimated death toll.

In February 2023, city leaders directed staff to work toward the dedication of a memorial within the Great Park to the Armenians who died, according to the staff report, and in September, the Great Park Board adopted a policy dictating how the city considers requests for monuments and memorials within the park.

“Out of something horrific and divisive, something beautiful can come out of it,” said Garo Madenlian, a member of the Orange County Armenian Center.

Madenlian said the city moving forward with a plan for the memorial means a lot to the Armenian community in Orange County since many are descendants of genocide survivors.

“My grandparents were orphaned in the Armenian genocide,” he said. “This is really important for us to remember and never forget.”

The committee has planned for April a small commemoration of the start of the Armenian genocide, April 1915, which may take place at the project site.

“We are excited to move something like this forward of this gravity,” said Councilmember Mike Carroll, who also chairs the Great Park Board.

Staff is set to return in March with the schematic design and budget, Jung said.

Newly available satellite imagery suggests a possible basis for rumors Azerbaijan was preparing to imprison the region’s residents.

Late last spring, Armenian residents in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh heard the clamors and loud noises of construction work. At night, from their sleepy village of Khramort, they could see bright lighting and hear screeching noises emanating from the nearby region of Aghdam, across the de facto border in Azerbaijan. “We can’t be sure what they were building,” said Aren Khachatryan, a boutique winemaker whose vineyards were only 500 yards from Azerbaijani military positions, “but the sound wouldn’t stop.”

Simon Maghakyan Simon Maghakyan is an investigative researcher

Artyom Tonoyan Artyom Tonoyan is a sociologist and Karabakh conflict researcher

Siranush Sargsyan Siranush Sargsyan is a refugee journalist from Nagorno-Karabakh

Lori Berberian Lori Berberian is a geospatial analyst

As gentle breezes gave way to the hot summer months, the specter of violence for those living in the ethnically Armenian enclave increased. Azerbaijani soldiers would periodically open fire on the harvesters picking grapes for Khachatryan and his father, Arkadi, the two men told New Lines.

Soon, rumors swirled that Azerbaijani soldiers had prevented a man from leaving Nagorno-Karabakh to seek medical treatment in Armenia, promising him a bleaker future than dying untreated: He would instead be sent to a large prison complex being built for the men of the self-declared republic. In September 2023, after nine months of living under a siege that cut off access to essential goods including food and medicine, Nagorno-Karabakh was captured by Azerbaijan in a rapid military operation. Since the assault, the overwhelming majority of the region’s 100,000 people have fled for neighboring Armenia. Baku has said it seized control of territory that was rightfully part of Azerbaijan — “Azerbaijan restored its sovereignty as a result of successful anti-terrorist measures in Karabakh,” said the country’s President Ilham Aliyev in a televised address on Sept. 20, while Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan accused its neighbor of “ethnic cleansing.”

The goal Aliyev had long sought — “If they do not leave our lands of their own free will, we will chase them away like dogs,” he proclaimed in an October 2020 wartime address to his nation — was now a reality: The long Armenian presence in Nagorno-Karabakh, or Artsakh, as it is known to Armenians, had ended. On Jan. 1, the self-declared republic formally ceased to exist, a condition of the cease-fire that ended Azerbaijan’s military operation.

Using satellite imagery of both the site of a potential prison and surrounding areas, applying lessons drawn from the politics of memory and the region’s history of heritage crime, and constructing a timeline leading up to the depopulation of the region, New Lines has pieced together the role played by intimidation in the dissolution of Nagorno-Karabakh, cultivated by Azerbaijan over many months leading up to the September attack. Nagorno-Karabakh’s violent end is a chilling lesson of the risks involved in aspirant statehood, and one that feels especially relevant today.

The top court of the United Nations recently acknowledged how coercion by Baku has played a role in the conflict. In mid-November, judges at the International Court of Justice ordered that Azerbaijan allow those who recently fled their homes to return to Nagorno-Karabakh “in a safe, unimpeded and expeditious manner” and “free from the use of force or intimidation” that caused them to flee.

In August of last year, Ara Papian, a former Armenian ambassador to Canada and leader of a pro-Western party, said on an Armenian talk show hosted by online media outlet Noyan Tapan that Azerbaijan was building a “concentration camp for 30,000 males.” The Armenian newspaper Hraparak reported the same a month later, citing an unnamed military source. Speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, a high-ranking Armenian government official told New Lines that Yerevan possessed classified knowledge of the construction of such a structure before the September attack, saying the government believed it was intended for over 10,000 individuals.

The risk of incarceration was already high: Over the summer of 2023, four male civilians were detained by Azerbaijan in what local human rights groups have decried as arbitrary arrests and abductions. The most publicized of these cases is that of Vagif Khachatryan (no relation to the winemaker Aren), whom Baku accused of killing its civilians in the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the 1990s, charges he denied in a court of law. The 68-year-old was heading for Armenia for an urgent heart procedure, as noted by the members of the International Committee of the Red Cross who accompanied him, when he was arrested by Azerbaijani authorities. On Nov. 7, after a trial that involved a translator who occasionally misconstrued his statements — as shown on courtroom video released by the Azerbaijani authorities — Khachatryan was sentenced in Baku to 15 years in jail. This followed the detention, in late August, of three university students from the enclave who were charged with “violating” Azerbaijan’s national flag. They were later released.

Also currently awaiting trial are eight high-ranking officials of the breakaway government, including three previous presidents. Among them is Ruben Vardanyan, a former state minister. The Russian-Armenian philanthropist and businessman, who founded an international high school in the Armenian countryside, was detained in September while trying to cross into Armenia and is now languishing in an Azerbaijani jail.

Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to New Lines’ request to clarify the nature of the construction identified by satellite imagery.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, driven in part by a century-long enmity between Christian-majority Armenians and Muslim-majority Azerbaijanis, saw its first intercommunal clashes during the Russian Revolution of 1905. The Soviet Union, to which both countries belonged, largely managed to keep ethnic tensions at bay, but these unfroze as the superpower began to crumble in the late 1980s. Deep-rooted distrust and ethnic hatred on both sides has been intensified by the four wars that have since ensued.

Buoyed by independence movements across the Soviet bloc, ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, which had been designated by Moscow as an autonomous region within Soviet Azerbaijan, sought unification with Soviet Armenia. The peaceful 1988 protests in the regional capital of Stepanakert were met with violence elsewhere in Soviet Azerbaijan, including anti-Armenian pogroms and expulsions, which prompted the formation of Armenian self-defense units, transforming both the nature and the scope of the conflict. Years of war and mutual bloodletting followed. By the time a Russian-brokered cease-fire was signed in 1994, at least 1 million people had been displaced, according to Human Rights Watch. In October last year, the New York-based group estimated that 700,000 ethnic Azerbaijanis were then either expelled or displaced from Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding districts, while 300,000 to 500,000 ethnic Armenians fled or were expelled from Azerbaijan.

Defeated and traumatized, Azerbaijan soon developed into an oil-producing, authoritarian and dynastic regime whose political legitimacy depended almost exclusively on its revanchist posture. Equally important was the cultivation of the image of the Armenians as the leading existential enemy of the people of Azerbaijan. Hatred has been common on both sides — some Armenian nationalists belittle Azerbaijanis by declaring that “Coca-Cola is older than Azerbaijan,” an English-language phrase that first appeared a decade ago on the online Armenian news site mamul.am. Accompanied by a photo of the drink with the year 1892 and the flag of Azerbaijan with the year 1918, the phrase became a popular social media meme during the 2020 war — a nod to the notion that Armenia is an ancient state while its enemy is an extension of Turkey and not a real country in its own right. The Azeri language is Turkic, and Armenians often refer to Azerbaijanis as “Turks,” a terminology that connects them in the Armenian psyche with the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Until the early 20th century, Azerbaijanis were referred to as “Tatars,” a generic name for Turkic-speaking people.

Yet unlike in Armenia or Nagorno-Karabakh, following the 1990s war the hatred of the enemy in Azerbaijan became institutionalized, from popular culture to news. The official virtual presidential library, ebooks.az, features regime-approved titles like “Armenian Terror” and “Armenian Mythomania,” while books that acknowledge Armenian antiquity and suffering — like prominent Azerbaijani author Akram Aylisli’s novella “Stone Dreams” — are banned on the president’s orders. “It was only a matter of time before the revanchist machinery would realize its deadly potential,” Artak Beglaryan, Nagorno-Karabakh’s former human rights ombudsman, told New Lines.

A closer inspection of the timeline leading up to the September offensive shows how Azerbaijan’s international partners paved the way for what Armenia and prominent human rights activists, like the former International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, say has been a concerted effort to intimidate Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh and permanently remove them from the region.

In September 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Azerbaijan, with the aid of the Turkish military and Syrian rebel fighters, launched a war against Nagorno-Karabakh. Lasting 44 days, that war came to a halt when Russian President Vladimir Putin brokered a cease-fire. Azerbaijan began to nurse other plans. Restocking its depleted military arsenal and riding a new wave of popular support following its military victory, Azerbaijan’s strongman ruler Aliyev initiated a new push to solve the question of Nagorno-Karabakh once and for all. “There will be no trace of them left on those lands,” Aliyev said in an October 2020 wartime address.

In December 2022, after having secured a wide-ranging alliance with Russia that included military cooperation, Azerbaijan once again closed the Lachin Corridor, the lifeline of Nagorno-Karabakh and its only supply route to Armenia and connection with the world at large. At the time, Azerbaijan said it did this to protect the environment. Protestors blocked transportation, saying they were acting against mining operations — but the head of Ecofront, an independent Azerbaijani environmental group, described the protest as “fake.” People who called themselves “eco-activists” were sent by a state whose economy is completely dependent on oil and gas, as Azerbaijan prohibited all traffic through the Russian-patrolled corridor.

Beglaryan, now a refugee in Armenia, said that he first heard whispers about a mass prison being built in Aghdam for Armenian men well over a year ago. “Later I received some confirmation from intelligence services that the Azerbaijani authorities had such an idea and project, but I couldn’t independently verify the information.” Nagorno-Karabakh’s authorities did not publicize the information. “Firstly,” Beglaryan explained, “we couldn’t make sure of its full reality, and secondly, we didn’t want to contribute to the Azerbaijani psychological terror against our people. However, this didn’t stop rumors from spreading.”

The fear of mass imprisonment in a country devoid of a real justice system and fostering institutional anti-Armenian hatred “significantly influenced people’s behavior during and after the September genocidal aggression,” Beglaryan said, “deepening the panic and prompting the decision to flee their homeland.” During the later stages of the blockade and the early hours of Azerbaijan’s assault, he added, “Many current and former military servicemen discarded their uniforms and destroyed their documents in an attempt to eliminate any potential evidence and facts that could be used against them.”

In Stepanakert, New Lines witnessed several incidents of people setting light to military documents and medals, creating large dumpster fires on the streets. As they fled, some families discarded photos of fallen soldiers in uniform, leaving behind, burning, shredding or hiding their visual memories of the men and women who died on the battlefields. According to at least three conversations with residents, some buried uniforms in their backyards before they departed, in the hope that they would one day return.

Following the 2020 war, numerous reports emerged of Azerbaijani torture against Armenian POWs, both physical and psychological. Armenia’s human rights defender at the time, Arman Tatoyan, the official ombudsman, reported several cases of religious discrimination against illegally held Armenian POWs. Some had their baptismal pendant crosses confiscated and desecrated; in one instance, a tattoo of a cross was burned with cigarettes. One Armenian serviceman was told to convert to Islam. When he refused, “his leg was burned, and [he] was severely beaten and ridiculed. We have never recorded anything like this before,” Tatoyan wrote in his report. Mutilations and the rape of female Armenian soldiers have been documented and publicized by invading Azerbaijani forces on social media that have been reviewed by New Lines. In the fall of 2022, at least seven Armenian POWs were executed unlawfully, apparently by Azerbaijani soldiers, Human Rights Watch reported, calling it “a heinous war crime.”

The signs of an impending invasion were visible in early September, following a high-stakes meeting on Sept. 4 between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Putin where they discussed key regional issues, including Ukrainian grain exports. On Sept. 7, the Armenian government expressed official concern over Azerbaijan’s military buildup around its sovereign borders, as well as around Nagorno-Karabakh. A few days prior, the investigative Armenian publication Hetq reported that there had been an increase in Azerbaijani cargo flights to the Ovda military base in southern Israel, where munitions are also stored.

In the past, as documented by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, this had often been an indication of an impending attack. There have been Israeli arms sales worth billions of dollars over the years to Azerbaijan, the newspaper reported, including a diverse range of weaponry from sophisticated radar systems to a wide range of drones and antitank missiles.

Utilizing Planet Labs satellite imagery, we have identified a site of interest that is the likely basis for the “concentration camp” fears. Nestled directly south of a key archaeological complex, near the village of Shahbulaq, there is a large, recently built but unfinished structure. To assess whether the complex was an intended prison, we applied spatial analysis methods to identify characteristics commonly associated with correctional facilities in the wider region, particularly the “medieval torture” facilities analyzed by Crude Accountability in Turkmenistan and political prisons reported by Foreign Policy in Turkey, both of which were identified in satellite imagery as well.

Pattern recognition allowed us to detect recurring elements, while feature-matching helped us compare these elements with known prison structures. Deductive reasoning enabled us to infer, from the presence of these features, the possibility that the facility in question could be an intended prison. The construction progress of the Aghdam facility, as seen in a May 2023 satellite image, reveals gridlike structures, the kind used in prison housing units or military sleeping quarters. Despite the absence of operational prison features such as guard towers and perimeter barriers, the incomplete project’s centralized layout in a desolate landscape and substantial gaps hinting at future recreational yards suggest that the secure facility is the basis for the prison rumors.

Much of the Aghdam region, where the potential prison is located, was destroyed and looted in the 1990s after it fell under Armenian control and became a de facto part of Nagorno-Karabakh. It was seized by Azerbaijan in the war of 2020; by then, Aghdam had become a ghost town.

Since late 2020, the Aghdam region has served as a site for military activities by Azerbaijani forces and retains the trenches, burn scars and military vehicle tracks of past and recent wars: In early 2021, the Cornell University-based Caucasus Heritage Watch satellite monitoring project raised the alarm over likely military installations near a seventh-century Armenian church. The complex we have identified is nearby.

A time series of satellite imagery from the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel–2A satellite revealed construction for the approximately 500,000-square-foot site likely began in July 2022. High spatial and temporal resolution satellite imagery (50 centimeters) from the Planet SkySat Constellation confirmed our initial findings.

The identified site contains features that could be associated with a mass incarceration facility: a single entry point, open-air space for inmates and uniform gridded structures. In places where government transparency is limited, such as the authoritarian regime in Azerbaijan, we acknowledge the importance of further corroborating these findings with various independent sources wherever possible.

That the Aghdam facility is, at the bare minimum, a state building is corroborated by its proximity to another government structure — a temporary tent camp: In September, more than 200 oversized tents could be seen installed in an enclosed area, likely as either lodgings for the Azerbaijani military or a planned detention center for Armenians.

Satellite imagery suggests that the complex’s construction, which appears to have started in July 2022, stopped in late August or early September 2023. It was shortly before this period that Aliyev described in an interview with Euronews TV that he was seeking an end to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Referring to the November 2020 cease-fire declaration between the two countries, Aliyev said, “That was a capitulation act by Armenia. Therefore, we started to put forward some initiatives in order to find the final solution to our conflicts with Armenia.”

Read More: https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/investigation-armenian-fears-of-a-concentration-camp-in-nagorno-karabakh-may-have-been-warranted/

Simon Maghakyan Simon Maghakyan is an investigative researcher

Artyom Tonoyan Artyom Tonoyan is a sociologist and Karabakh conflict researcher

Siranush Sargsyan Siranush Sargsyan is a refugee journalist from Nagorno-Karabakh

Lori Berberian Lori Berberian is a geospatial analyst