As I write this, the lives of more than 150,000 people hang in the balance. I am referring to the ethnic Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh who, on Sept. 27, awoke to news that Azerbaijan had started a wide-ranging military campaign against their population.
Located in the South Caucasus, Karabakh is a territory populated by nearly all ethnically Christian Armenians. Unluckily for these people, during the early years of the Soviet Union, communist leaders gerrymandered the South Caucasus to include the Karabakh Armenians within the territorial boundaries of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan.
The pairing was fraught with difficulties from the beginning because Azerbaijan is a dominantly Muslim and Turkic country, and not particularly hospitable to Armenians. Even still, the Soviet leadership was able to impose peace for decades.
That all ended in the late 1980s. As the Soviet Union began to disintegrate, the Karabakh Armenians sought to exercise their right to self-determination and obtain independence from Azerbaijan. Instead of seeking to address the grievances of the local Armenians, Azerbaijan began a military operation to quell what it considered separatists. On its part, Armenia was pulled into the conflict on the side of the Karabakh Armenians as it was not inclined to see their ethnic kin cleansed from the region.
The war lasted some six years, and by 1994, tens of thousands had died on both sides and many more had become displaced. Ultimately, the Karabakh Armenians emerged on top, and in May 1994, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Karabakh signed a ceasefire, under which the Karabakh Armenians were able to retain large swaths of their native land.
A ceasefire, however, did not mean lasting peace. While Azerbaijan and Armenia held peace talks after 1994, negotiations were not fruitful. Azerbaijan took a maximalist position and demanded that Karabakh be handed back to them, which was unworkable for obvious reasons.
Primarily, it ignored the reality on the ground. It ignored that Azerbaijan had just fought a bloody and bitter war against people it considered its own citizens. Those people firmly refused to live under Azeri rule.
Thus, Azerbaijan never really came to terms with the type of compromises a lasting peace would require. Instead, the Azerbaijani government — run by a dictator — became emboldened by the flow of petro-dollars and support from Turkey, its main patron.
While purporting to participate in the peace process, Azerbaijan purchased billions worth of high-tech weaponry, and regularly vowed to take Karabakh back by force. Unfortunately, for many years, Azerbaijan’s revanchist statements and actions were written off by the Western powers as mere rhetoric.
This illusion came to an end on Sept. 27. After months of silent planning, Azerbaijan launched a massive ground and air invasion of Karabakh using tanks, jets, drones, rockets, and the like.
Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Defense, in a statement on Sept. 28, claimed it was “carry[ing] out combat operations to destroy the enemy and liberate [the] occupied lands.” The same day, it stated that Azerbaijan had “liberated from occupation seven villages.”
By then, the Karabakh Armenians had reported dozens of casualties.
Azerbaijan’s military offense and their dictatorship’s cynical claims of liberation should cause concern to every reader. It’s a claim that begs the question: who are these villages being liberated from and what is Azerbaijan planning on doing with these villages, which are home to thousands of peaceful Armenians? Without a clear answer, many Armenians understand it means ethnic cleansing.
What is equally alarming is Turkey’s involvement. Turkey, which committed a genocide against Armenians in the early 20th century, is actively and vocally supporting Azerbaijan — both militarily and diplomatically. In recent days Turkey has been accused by France and Russia, and most western media, of sending thousands of jihadi fighters from northern Syria to fight the Armenians.
For many following geopolitics in this region, Turkey’s involvement in Karabakh is just the next chapter in Turkey’s expansionist ambitions fueled by its ultra-nationalist leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan. For Armenians, it makes this conflict a matter of existence; which is to say that, sadly, history may be repeating itself and the Armenians, again, appear to face the risk of destruction.
Zaven Sargsian is an attorney based out of Salt Lake City.