by Sofia Gevorgian
University of California, Los Angeles
Introduction
Since the Ottomans, the Turkic world—stretching from Anatolia to Central Asia—has sought ethnic, cultural, economic, and, most notably, physical unity. Today, Azerbaijan and Turkey are at the helm of this pursuit. Armenia, standing at the crossroads of Eurasia, separates Turkey from Azerbaijan and the remainder of the Turkic world, and in an ongoing effort to achieve unity, Turkey and Azerbaijan are impeding Armenia’s safety and sovereignty following the success of taking full control over Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia’s geographic location in the South Caucasus holds potential to facilitate trade, transportation, and energy between Europe and Central Asia and the Middle East, contingent on the establishment of a stable connection; such regional potential explains Turkey and Azerbaijan’s interest in holding control over this territory, especially Armenia’s southernmost province, Syunik.
In September 2023, Azerbaijan waged a final war against Nagorno-Karabakh, a de facto nation with a historic Armenian majority but situated within the international territorial borders of Azerbaijan. Within a day of bombardment, Azerbaijan forced the utter capitulation of the state, subjugating Nagorno-Karabakh’s 120,000 Armenians to ethnic cleansing. All civilians of Nagorno-Karabakh have since evacuated to Armenia, while former government officials have become political prisoners.
The ongoing Armenian-Azerbaijani dispute is not new. With the rise of nationalism and independence of states within the Ottoman Empire in the late 1800s, Ottoman authorities sought scapegoats to mitigate their failures and proceeded to single out all those instigating instability. Armenians of the Empire looked to gain independence, so fearing that they would unite with Eastern Armenia under the Russian Empire’s rule, Ottoman authorities led a coordinated campaign targeting Armenians and other Christian or ethnic minorities. The Ottoman authorities in 1915 initiated a mass ethnic-cleansing campaign—a genocide—during which 1.5 million Armenians, 300,000 Assyrians, and 900,000 Pontic Greeks were killed. In the Ottoman Empire’s view, the minorities’ mere existence stood in opposition to a stable Ottoman state.
Turkey’s first President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk held similar views and supported a mono-ethnic “Turkish” identity. Its foundational ideology “Kemalism” promoted “nationalism” via unity in the Turkish language, homeland, and race and origin. Moreover, the reformed nation passed the “Law of Abandoned Properties” to confiscate properties of Armenians who could not return due to death or displacement and implemented legislation to revoke the citizenship of Ottoman subjects who did not return to Turkey in 1923. In an ongoing resistance to first the Russian Empire and then the growing Soviet Union, such laws quelled aspiration or opportunity for alliances and collaboration between Armenians in Anatolia and other states, particularly Russia, as the remnants of Armenians in the new Turkish nation were assimilated, expelled, or massacred.
Recently, a similar outlook came into fruition in Nagorno-Karabakh and could also be on the horizon in Armenia proper. As a result of the First Karabakh War, Turkey has had its border closed to Armenia since 1993 in firm support of Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Having dubbed themselves “one nation, two states,” in contrast to Atatürk’s commitment to isolationism, Azerbaijan and Turkey have joined in the continued ethnic cleansing of Armenians.
Militant aggression against Armenians is a state policy. While Turkic people hold significant minority percentages in the bordering nations of Georgia, Iran, and Russia, stronger national attachment to their home rather than their Azerbaijani, or Turkish, homeland dissuades them from advocating for pan-Turkism. Along these lines, the Turkish government underwent a shift in foreign policy from Ataturk’s sole focus on Turkey with Turgut Ozal’s acknowledgment of other Turkic identities. Rather than homogenizing all under Ataturk’s “mono-ethnic” Turkish identity, Ozal advocated for the inclusion of Turkic people and citizens of Turkey of varying ethnic groups as individuals under a reformed ethnic millet system. Such a system rejected the homogeneity that Kemalism promoted, and today, Recep Tayyip Erdogan maintains Ozal’s collaboration between varying Turkic backgrounds in his steadfast alliance with Azerbaijan.
In May of 2020, Erdogan referred to the remaining Christian minority in Turkey as “leftovers of the sword.” Blatantly acknowledging the genocides in conjunction with his government’s policy of denial, Erdogan has reiterated Turkey’s century-old stance on Armenia’s sovereignty. Only a few months later in July, Azerbaijan launched an attack on Armenia’s northern province of Tavush, and Turkey announced it “will continue, with all its capacity, to stand by Azerbaijan in its struggle to protect its territorial integrity [in Nagorno-Karabakh].” Azerbaijan frames the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as solely regarding territorial integrity, but the hypocrisy is patent as it carries out attacks within Armenia’s borders. Turkey and Azerbaijan held joint-military exercises and increased weaponry purchases by 12,809% from July to August in 2020, thus setting the stage for Turkey’s bold-faced and blood-stained support of Azerbaijan in the coming months.
Fueling the Nagorno-Karabakh War
Nagorno-Karabakh has maintained an Armenian majority for millenia, even while Turkic khanates (mid-18th century to 1805) and the U.S.S.R. Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (1923 to 1991) were established and dissolved. As the Azerbaijani identity increased in the region, so did their wish for sovereignty, leading to overlapping Armenian and Azerbaijani claims to the region upon the First Republic of Azerbaijan’s establishment in 1918. The U.S.S.R. froze the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict until 1991, when Armenians militarily gained control over the oblast and additional territories. In the following three decades, Nagorno-Karabakh, with backing from Armenia, grew into a developing democracy, but all the while, Azerbaijani oil production and exports surged, providing an income for stockpiling weaponry and building relations with global leaders, often by fraudulent means. Portraying Nagorno-Karabakh as a stolen homeland, Azerbaijan established and funded a narrative of belonging and reunification few would look to speak against. As such, on September 27, 2020, Azerbaijan launched a devastating offensive on Nagorno-Karabakh to take the entire region by force. In 44 days, over 8,000 people were killed, and lands falling under Azerbaijani rule were ethnically cleansed of Armenians. These regions, which had never had an Azerbaijani ethnic majority, were cleared of both Armenians and their cultural monuments in Azerbaijan’s effort to dispel evidence of Armenian habituation and paint the image of a historically homogenous Azerbaijani homeland.
Russia showed no aid to Armenia, who on paper is a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), as the attack was not on sovereign Armenian soil. However, Turkey has demonstrated a strong commitment to Azerbaijan’s quest both during and after the 2020 war. As the war began, Turkey announced it would support Azerbaijan “on the battlefield, and at the negotiation table,” and it did. During the war, Azerbaijan heavily utilized Turkey’s Bayraktar TB2 drones—in addition to HAROP kamikaze drones, LORA, and Spike missiles from Israel—against Armenia’s ground forces and Soviet-era equipment. Turkish officers collaborated with the Azerbaijani army and transported 2,500 Syrian mercenaries to fight as cannon fodder for Azerbaijan, a transaction that both parties ardently deny.
While Turkey is not Azerbaijan’s largest arms supplier, it has largely supported the building of the Azerbaijani military, thereby ingraining itself in Azerbaijan both economically and culturally. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan could have developed its army following either a Russian or Turkish model, but considering the prevalent anti-Russian sentiment in the nation and closer cultural ties to Turkey, Azerbaijan established relations with the latter. Turkey was the first country to recognize Azerbaijan’s independence, and their shared language and culture further strengthened Azerbaijan’s bond with Turkey. Turkish investment companies instantly expanded into Nagorno-Karabakh as the Azerbaijani government initiated large-scale construction plans, and joint operations and exercises have grown more prevalent as Azerbaijani officers attend Turkish military academies or are trained by Turkish officers.
Only a month after the 2020 war’s ceasefire agreement during the Baku Victory Parade, Erdogan again highlighted Turkey’s unity with Azerbaijan at the expense of Armenia’s safety as he triumphantly declared, “Today the soul of Nuri Pasha, Enver Pasha, brave soldiers of the Caucasian Islamic Army will rejoice.” It should be noted that Enver Pasha was one of the three primary perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide. This was the second reference to the Armenian Genocide that day, as a few moments before, President Ilham Aliyev had drawn parallels between the tragedy of the Armenian Genocide to the Azerbaijani Khojali massacre in an attempt to equate the Armenian people’s suffering as synonymous.
Justification of Genocide
In 387 A.D., the Armenian nation split into Western Armenia and Eastern Armenia between Byzantine and Sassanid rule, respectively. In the 16th century, Western Armenia was transferred to Ottoman control, and considering that it was this region that was ethnically and culturally cleansed of Armenians during the Armenian Genocide, the term “Western Armenia” pays remembrance to this historical homeland and generational loss of life. Moreover, while much of the world much the Khojaly Massacre as such, the Azerbaijani and Turkish authorities have named this the “Khojaly Genocide,” further highlighting the mirror propaganda conducted at the state level.
Azerbaijan is a young nation, but in an attempt to justify its territorial claims, its government is creating a story similar to that of the Armenians, namely also with the concept of “Western Azerbaijan,” which is the irredentist policy of return to a Western Azerbaijani homeland and includes a claim to the Republic of Armenia’s Sevan, Syunik, and Yerevan—the last of which is Armenia’s capital city. Notably, this assertion is the state initiative of Azerbaijan. As he has done for the past decade, President Aliyev of Azerbaijan openly laid claim to Armenia’s land during the 2022 Baku Victory Parade, pointedly stating that “Present-day Armenia is our land…I am saying this as a historical fact.”
The Azerbaijani government is fabricating a new history of its country to compete with the millennia of Armenian existence. The Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan’s website itself states their version of history, where “The oldest indigenous population of…the Armenia Republic…was the aboriginal owners of the territory, the Azerbaijani Turks.” Moreover, the government claims that the Azerbaijani people descended from the ancient kingdom of Caucasian Albania, which they describe is where Nagorno-Karabakh is located. Seeing that Armenian churches and monuments attest to a historic Armenian presence, it is evident that the government has falsified the history of the region as it plans to “eliminate the so-called traces written by Armenians on Albanian religious temples.”
Only the thin, southernmost province of Armenia, Syunik, stands between Azerbaijan and Azerbaijan’s region Nakhichevan and Turkey. At present, Azerbaijani citizens traveling from the mainland to their brethren in Azerbaijan’s autonomous region Nakhichevan must circumvent Armenia by traveling through Iran or by traveling north through Georgia and then Turkey. Extended travel resulting from circumventing Armenia makes trade and transport by automated vehicle difficult, especially considering that Turkey is Azerbaijan’s second-largest trade partner. On the other hand, access to a land bridge through Armenia will ensure more efficient travel, and ownership of the land the road would pass through, Syunik, will secure reliable transportation. This is without mentioning Syunik’s economic potential through its rich mines.
The ceasefire agreement of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War requires that “All economic and transport connections in the region shall be unblocked,” but the Azerbaijani and Turkish governments are promoting a narrative wherein the Azerbaijan government would have the right to own a landbridge through Syunik called the “Zangezur Corridor.” Aliyev pompously declared that “the Zangezur corridor passing through here will unite the whole Turkic world. Both Azerbaijan and Turkey are taking practical steps to implement the Zangezur corridor.” Even after campaigning to maintain Azerbaijani territorial integrity in the case of Nagorno-Karabakh, the Azerbaijani government is openly threatening Armenia and launching further attacks on the country to pressure it into ceding this land; starting with attacks in May 2021 to the present, Azerbaijan now occupies 215 square kilometers of Armenia’s territory.
The current state of Nagorno-Karabakh attests to this inevitable truth. Upon the signing of the ceasefire agreement, only Russian troops were sent to the region as peacekeepers as Azerbaijan rejected any other parties, and as Russia invaded Ukraine, Azerbaijan saw an opportunity to further apply pressure on the remaining Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh. From December 12, 2022, and for the following nine months, Azerbaijan blockaded the Lachin Corridor, which is the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia. Surrounded by Azerbaijani forces, Nagorno-Karabakh faced starvation, in addition to lacking medical care due to a deficiency of supplies and utter road closure.
Despite advisors such as inaugural ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Ocampo declaring the Lachin blockade “genocide by starvation,” the humanitarian crisis persisted. On September 19th, Azerbaijan then launched a full-scale war on this territory, and following the seizure of the entire state, today, for the first time in thousands of years, no Armenians remain on the land of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Stroking Isolation and Hate
Without third-party intervention concretely opposing Azerbaijan’s irredentist discourse, Azerbaijan will continue attacking Armenia and preventing peace regionally. The European Union has condemned Azerbaijan’s statements “regarding so-called ‘West Zangezur’ and referring to the territory of the Republic of Armenia as Azerbaijani ‘ancestral land.’” While elaborating that “such statements are highly irresponsible and threaten to undermine regional security further” they have done little to prevent further violence. Contrastly, they have referred to Azerbaijan as a “reliable, trustworthy partner” and doubled gas imports from Azerbaijan upon Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Azerbaijan has strong backing from Turkey and works closely with the other Turkic nations. As a part of the Cooperation Council of Turkic Speaking States, these nations have increased cooperation in terms of “political solidarity, economic cooperation, strengthening commercial and cultural contacts.” Though separating Turkey from these countries by land, Armenia does not hinder Turkey’s connection to the Turkic world; within these Turkic organizations, Turkey asserts influence over the greater region, and yet, it continues ingraining itself in Azerbaijan’s politics and promotes Azerbaijan’s incessant invasions of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. Inadvertently identifying with this shared social identity represents support for Azerbaijan within these nations, even if the governments do not pursue the same level of involvement as Turkey. Viewing Armenians as “other,” Christian, and non-Turkic has led to an “in-group, out-group” relationship between Armenia and these nations. NATO unites the Western world and the Cooperation Council of Turkish Speaking States promotes collaboration between Turkic states, but Armenia is left only with the CSTO, which has either remained neutral or sided with Azerbaijan during the perpetual border incursions. In addition to their Turkic identity, nations part of the CSTO also fail to end the incessant border crisis of Armenia largely due to many still being offshoots of a Russian government from the U.S.S.R.
In terms of Nagorno-Karabakh, the increasing boldness in escalations over the past three years only has demonstrated unchecked and maximalist aggression by Azerbaijan, and the antagonism between Armenia and Azerbaijan, as well as Turkey by association, also excludes Armenia from regional participation. It is clear that economic interests motivate intentional blindsightedness, such as is the case with the E.U.’s investment in Azerbaijani oil and Turkish investment in Nagorno-Karabakh’s construction development. Moreover, though not a Turkic nation, Georgia heavily relies on Turkey for trade, and these positive relations allowed for the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline to connect these three countries; on the other hand, Armenia was only later able to accept an E.U. monitoring mission, a two-year long program where European observers will work to deter future escalations at their deployed outposts along the border, which Russia promptly condemned. Western mediation is not prevalent in the region, which the deployment of only Russian peacekeepers to Nagorno-Karabakh—even during a blockade and war—underscores. Until the current Armenian government began, in contrast to previous administrations, speaking more critically of Russia, Armenia was often perceived merely as a “satellite state” of Russia. However, the growing shift in Armenia’s foreign policy, in addition to Russia’s own vested priorities in Ukraine, has unprecedentedly garnered far greater Western attention and criticism of Azerbaijan during the September 2022 attacks and the Lachin blockade than ever before.
Nonetheless, while economic factors largely motivate state interests, the underlying social unity in each of these communities is strongly impacted by emotion, which Pan-Turkism supports. With this affinity lending itself to political pressure, the concept of “Pan-Turkism”, in a modern world, does unite the Turkic nations. It also strengthens the “in-group” relationship, fueling the exclusion and eventual opposition to Armenia and Armenian sovereignty.
To fully achieve “Pan-Turkism” means the Turkic states of Azerbaijan and Turkey gaining control over Armenia and the persecution of Armenians. At present, Azerbaijan and Turkey have ethnically cleansed Nagorno-Karabakh of Armenians and are continuing to threaten Armenia proper’s sovereignty as Azerbaijan’s military occupies Armenian territory and kidnaps Armenian soldiers from their soil. Moreover, the Azerbaijani government is actively encouraging encroachment as it promotes a return to “Western Azerbaijan,” present-day Armenia, and trivializes the history of Armenians in the region. Azerbaijan’s steady export of oil only continues to sustain its mounting weapon stockpile and provides an income for “caviar diplomacy” to dissuade foreign actors from standing against Azerbaijan’s increasing maximalist military aggression on Armenia. Pan-Turkism and the pursuit of a greater state will likely continue to strengthen in the region, as observed also south of Armenia. In December 2024 upon the fall of Assad, the Turkmen commander of the Syrian Brigade commented to the Armenians in northern Latakia that “we [the opposition] are the children of the Ottoman Empire.” By backing the Syrian rebels, Turkey has secured further access and power over the region, reflecting its growing dominance and objective to exert control over minorities.
Unless a greater power, such as the UN Security Council, implements the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures that demand an end to Azerbaijan’s perpetual discrimination of Armenians, enforces adherence, and sanctions its oil industry to force compliance, Azerbaijan will complacently disregard international mandates to halt its attacks on Armenia. If this growing reality is not acknowledged, the current binary status quo will continue to negate respect toward the Armenian nation. Encouraging apathy or prolonged hate towards this population will only augment the millennia-long struggle between Pan-Turkism and the Armenian existence.
