On Feb. 3 the Azerbaijani government announced that it would target hundreds of sacred sites that bear witness to Armenian Christian history in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. “A working group of specialists,” pro-government media quoted culture minister Anar Karimov as saying, “has been set up to remove the fictitious traces written by Armenians.”

Fictitious traces? Armenian presence in the area goes back thousands of years and can be seen in innumerable monuments. Some churches have roots in the early fourth century, and no serious scholar disputes their authenticity. But Azerbaijan, a majority-Muslim country that conquered much of the region in a 2020 war, is deploying a government-promoted conspiracy theory that casts Armenian cultural monuments as fake. As the Cornell University-based Caucasus Heritage Watch shows in its satellite research, even Armenian cemeteries haven’t been safe from Azerbaijan’s wrath since 2020. Tombstones, new and old alike, are bulldozed in the name of construction.

Azerbaijan proclaims that Armenians did not exist in Nagorno-Karabakh until the 19th century. This conspiracy theory references Caucasian Albania, a kingdom northeast of Nagorno-Karabakh that ceased existence in the ninth century. During the Soviet era, to compete with Armenian and Georgian narratives, Azerbaijani scholars claimed Caucasian Albanians as their ancestors, eventually extending the discredited theory to proclaim that Armenian heritage is stolen Caucasian Albanian heritage. In 2020, Azerbaijan introduced a new conspiracy theory, claiming that Armenian khachkar monuments are “artificially aged.”

Between 1997 and 2006, Azerbaijan covertly flattened every trace of Armenian Christianity in historically disputed areas it controlled already. Azerbaijan now says that the thousands of destroyed monuments, including the prominent churches of Agulis and the celebrated necropolis of Djulfa, never existed. That Baku would extend this project to its new dominions is brazen but unsurprising.

In December, the International Court of Justice ordered Azerbaijan to “take all necessary measures to prevent and punish acts of vandalism and desecration.” The organization was particularly concerned with Azerbaijan’s practice of relabeling Armenian monuments as Caucasian Albanian. After some backlash, Azerbaijan’s Culture Ministry walked back part of the Feb. 3 announcement in a new text that was less threatening, but the milder language should fool no one. A 2005 commission created by the Azerbaijani authorities in Nakhichevan identified a list of surviving Armenian monuments for erasure but didn’t explicitly mention destroying them. The monuments were swiftly flattened.

As a natural-gas producer, Azerbaijan is taking advantage of the war in Ukraine: European countries looking to reduce dependence on Moscow are turning to Baku. Some of the isolation it faced from Brussels and Washington after the 2020 war is ending. As the world is distracted with the bloodshed in Ukraine, Baku projects power over newly conquered territory by destroying cultural artifacts.

The goal is to push Armenians out entirely. As their sacred sites are targeted—and their secular infrastructure is deliberately damaged—many will become demoralized and voluntarily leave. In this part of the world, if you don’t have a place of memory, you have nothing.

Azerbaijan’s government might cast the destruction of Armenian monuments as revenge for damage caused to Islamic monuments that were under Armenian control in Nagorno-Karabakh until 2020. But this is a false equivalence. Many sites sustained damage, but there is no evidence of systematic, let alone state-sponsored, erasure. That’s why the International Court of Justice rejected Azerbaijan’s counter-accusation against Armenians last year.

Not that Armenians are blameless. Before the war, Azerbaijanis couldn’t access their sacred sites in the area controlled by Armenians. Now the roles are flipped. Had Armenian and Azerbaijani religious leaders promoted mutual pilgrimages after the first Nagorno-Karabakh war ended in 1994, perhaps more monuments would have survived. Ideas for practical confidence-building measures, like installing public video monitors at churches and mosques, remain ideas.

As a researcher of cultural politics who wishes to prevent more erasure, I try to encourage dialogue. In February, I sent an email to Azerbaijan’s Sheikh-ul-Islam Allahshukur Pashazade. “Your Virtue,” I asked the religious leader of Azerbaijan, “did you approve the building of a mosque in your honor on the site of a destroyed church?” Caucasus Heritage Watch satellite images showed that a mosque built a few years ago in Nakhichevan in his honor replaced a medieval Armenian church that once stood there. Earlier, he attended the opening of at least one other mosque built in place of an Armenian church in Abrakunis.

I didn’t receive a response, but I still pray that the sheikh will use his voice to advocate for resuming Armenian pilgrimages to Dadivank, one of the most sacred Armenian sites to come under Azerbaijan’s control in 2020.

The practice of erasing a culture only feeds conflict. Azerbaijan’s religious leader, despite effectively serving at the pleasure of the president, has more power than global institutions like the European Parliament to stop cultural erasure in Nagorno-Karabakh. He has an opportunity to end this vicious circle—if he has the courage to act.

Mr. Maghakyan is a visiting scholar at Tufts University and executive director of Save Armenian Monuments.