KARABAKH PEACE PROCESS MUST BE FULLY INCLUSIVE: AZERBAIJANI-AMERICAN COUNCIL DIRECTOR GENERAL

Today.Az
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Sept 2 2009
Azerbaijan

The dispute over the Azerbaijani region of Nagorno-Karabakh has
festered for more than two decades. One of the keys to finding a
peaceful resolution of the conflict is achieving the normalization of
relations between the region’s ethnic Armenian and Azeri communities.

In 1992, a mission of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in
Europe (CSCE, precursor to the OSCE) headed by then-U.S. Secretary
of State James Baker worked out the so-called Baker Rules, which
were agreed to by all sides in the conflict. Those rules recognized
the two communities of Nagorno-Karabakh as "interested parties,"
and Armenia and Azerbaijan as "principal parties."

In this context, one could only welcome the headline of an RFE/RL
commentary by Robert Avetsiyan, a representative of Nagorno-Karabakh’s
ethnic Armenian community, entitled "Nagorno-Karabakh Must No Longer Be
Barred From The Negotiating Table." Unfortunately, the author stopped
short of mentioning the ethnic Azeri community that, prior to the
1988 conflict, comprised one-third of Nagorno-Karabakh’s population
and 99 percent of the population of seven other adjacent districts
of Azerbaijan currently occupied by Armenian forces.

Falling into the general pattern of Armenian-Azerbaijani
disagreements, Avetsiyan’s piece quickly shifted from discussing
the legal and political aspects of conflict resolution to
counterproductive historical allegations attempting to deny the Azeri
identity. Unfortunately, some of these assertions need to be addressed.

First Christians In The Caucasus

The modern Christian heritage of Nagorno-Karabakh has its roots in the
ancient kingdom of Caucasian Albania, called Aghvank in Armenian. While
the Armenian language belongs to the Indo-European family of languages,
Caucasian Albanians — the pre-Islamic ancestors of modern Azerbaijanis
— spoke an indigenous Caucasian language. Both Caucasian Albania
and Armenia were converted to Christianity in the fourth century.

The religion was first brought to Armenia by an ethnic Parthian noble,
St. Gregory the Illuminator, but the first Christian church in the
Caucasus was built in Albania. The church of Kish was established in
the present-day Sheki region of Azerbaijan by St. Eliseus, a disciple
of St. Thaddeus, who in 201 A.D. converted King Abgar IX of Edessa,
making Osroene the first Christian state.

The territory of present-day Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) belonged
to Caucasian Albania in the first century A.D. ("Great Soviet
Encyclopedia," 1973). Upon the Islamic conquest of the Caucasus
in the ninth century, Artsakh was ruled by the Albanian princes
(C. J. F. Dowsett, "A Neglected Passage In The ‘History Of The
Caucasian Albanians’", BSOAS, 19(3), 1957), while the Albanians in
the eastern plain of Karabakh mixed with the Turkic population and
became Muslims (R.G. Suny, "Looking Towards Ararat: Armenia In Modern
History," 1993). Thus the "Canons Of Aghvan," composed in the fifth
century, were a part of the Caucasian Albanian historical heritage
shared by present-day Azerbaijanis.

The monasteries of Amaras and Gandzasar remained the citadels of an
autochthonous Albanian Apostolic Church up until 1836, when the Russian
authorities incorporated it into the Armenian Apostolic Church. At the
time, Gandzasar was the see of the Catholicate of Caucasian Albania,
while the Amaras monastery was first claimed by the Armenian Church
only in 1848.

Territory Of Karabakh

The first independent state in Nagorno-Karabakh was the 18th-century
Karabakh khanate, established with a capital in present-day Shusha
circa 1751 and ruled by an Azeri khan (R. Hewsen, "Journal Of The
Society For Armenian Studies," Vol. 6, 1995, p. 270). Throughout the
19th century, Armenians remained a minority on the territories of
Karabakh and present-day Armenia despite their major resettlement
from Ottoman and Persian domains after the Russian conquest.

Upon the fall of the Russian Empire, in 1918-20, the territory of
Nagorno-Karabakh was under the control of the Azerbaijan Democratic
Republic, whose authority over Karabakh was officially recognized by
the Allied powers. After the establishment of the Azerbaijan SSR in
1921, the Bolshevik Kavburo voted to not to incorporate but to retain
Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan.

While the nationality of "Azerbaijani" was first indicated in the
1939 Soviet census, the millions of Azeris did not appear out of
nowhere. The formulation of a uniform Azerbaijani identity started in
pre-Christian Caucasian Albania and Atropatene, incorporating Islamic
and Turkic elements in medieval times, to become the first secular,
democratic Muslim nation in 1918.

Prior to 1939, Azerbaijanis were called Turks, until Stalin decided to
disassociate the Turkic people of the Caucasus and Central Asia from
Turkey. In a similar move in the 1920s, Soviet authorities granted the
Zangezur region to Armenia, separating Azerbaijan into two disjoined
parts, and got rid of the Turkestan toponym in Central Asia.

Violence Erupts

The Armenian side often claims that the Sumgait events of February
27, 1988, were a precursor to the violence in Nagorno-Karabakh. But
the first acts of violence took place in the Gugark region of Armenia
in the fall of 1987. Subsequently, thousands of Azerbaijani refugees
were forced to flee Armenia and were settled in Sumgait by the Soviet
authorities.

These events were followed by clashes in the Askeran region of
Nagorno-Karabakh on February 22, 1988, when two ethnic Azeris were
killed by an ethnic Armenian mob. Among the convicted perpetrators
of the Sumgait events were also three ethnic Armenians who killed a
quarter of the 26 ethnic Armenians who died in the violence, according
to the deputy prosecutor-general of the USSR at the time.

While Sumgait is often highlighted in the context of Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict, less attention is paid to the 1992 Khojaly massacre of
ethnic Azeris by Armenian forces. Named the "largest massacre" of
the conflict by Human Rights Watch, Khojaly’s civilian death toll
was some 20 times that of Sumgait.

While both Azerbaijani and Armenian perpetrators in Sumgait were tried
and sentenced by the court of law, those responsible for Khojaly were
never brought to justice, despite the fact that the then-military
commander in Nagorno-Karabakh (and now the president of Armenia),
Serzh Sarkisian, has admitted Armenian responsibility for this atrocity
(Thomas De Waal, "Black Garden: Armenia And Azerbaijan Through Peace
And War," NYU Press, 2004).

In its efforts to settle historical differences with Turkey, the
Armenian side often appeals to the notion of justice. Yet the so-called
Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) is an unjustly established monoethnic
Armenian entity in the Caucasus. It is not independent, because it
cannot sustain itself without the existence of its sponsor, Armenia.

But most importantly, it was established after the exodus of one ethnic
group forced by another. The self-proclaimed "NKR officials" cannot
speak on behalf of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, because one-third
of them were stripped of the right to choose their leaders due to
their ethnicity. Therefore, Azerbaijan — along with all reputable
organizations including the United Nations, the Council of Europe,
and the OSCE — consider the "NKR elections" and "NKR officials"
illegitimate. Moreover, in the words of then-U.S. Assistant Secretary
of State Elizabeth Jones, these "NKR officials" constitute "criminal
secessionists."

Contrary to the Armenian allegations that Azerbaijan intended to
cleanse Nagorno-Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian population, in a letter
addressed to the UN Security Council on November 9, 1993, the
chairman-in-office of the CSCE Minsk Conference on Nagorno-Karabakh
detailed the territories occupied by Armenian forces and outlined the
required timetable for their withdrawal. Additionally, all four of the
1993 UN Security Council resolutions on Nagorno-Karabakh call for the
immediate withdrawal of Armenian forces from the occupied territories
of Azerbaijan. It has been 16 years since the "NKR officials" and their
protectors in Yerevan refused to fulfill these international demands.

At present, Armenia’s military occupation of the region precludes
the much-desired participation of Nagorno-Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian
community in the peace process, because the region’s ethnic Azeris
were stripped of this right. Lasting peace in Nagorno-Karabakh
cannot be achieved without a return of the region’s ethnic Azeri
population and their harmonious coexistence with the ethnic Armenian
community. Furthermore, to reestablish the much-needed trust between
the two nations, it is important for both Armenians and Azerbaijanis
to refrain from any hostile, derogatory, or inflammatory rhetoric.

by Javid Huseynov

Dr. Javid Huseynov is general director of the Azerbaijani-American
Council. He was assisted in the preparation of this article by
U.S. Azeris Network Managing Director Dr. Adil Baguirov, Azerbaijani
National Cultural Association (Hungary) founder Dr. Vugar Seidov,
and Azerbaijan Society of America President Tomris Azeri. All four
are originally from the once Azeri-populated regions currently under
Armenian military occupation. The views expressed in this commentary
are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL.