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Marus insisted that Ayvazyan was suffering from an illness that, he believed, could only be eased by solitary time spent inside the cathedral. In August 2005 the region’s authorities detained another visiting scholar. Scottish researcher Steven Sim had traveled to post-Soviet Nakhichevan to assess the condition of the Armenian churches photographed earlier by Ayvazyan. Instead of medieval churches, Sim found vacant plots with no vegetation. His police interrogators had a quick response as to why there was nothing for Sim to study: "Armenians came here and took photographs … Armenia … There were no Armenians ever living here - so how could there have been churches here? " he was told. At the end of the interrogation, Sim was given until midnight to exit Nakhichevan, leaving with photographs of empty lots. But at least some of the toppled headstones of Djulfa, which he had seen from his window during a train ride, were still there.

If you beloved this article and you simply would like to acquire more info with regards to Eskort DiyarbakıR kindly visit our own page. Despite fervent denial, the most gripping evidence of the erasure of Nakhichevan’s Armenian heritage comes from within the Azerbaijani government itself. On December 6, 2005, days before Djulfa’s catastrophic destruction, Nakhichevan’s local autocrat Vasif Talibov, a relative of President Aliyev, issued public decree No. 5-03/S, ordering a detailed inventory of Nakhichevan’s monuments. Three years later, the investigation was summed up in the bilingual English and Azerbaijani Encyclopedia of Nakhchivan Monuments, co-edited by Talibov himself. Missing from the 522-page "Encyclopedia" are the 89 medieval churches, 5,840 intricate khachkars, and 22,000 tombstones that Ayvazyan had meticulously documented. There is not so much as a footnote on the now-defunct Christian Armenian communities in the area - Apostolic and Catholic alike. Nevertheless, the official Azerbaijani publication’s foreword explicitly reveals "Armenians" as the reason for No. 5-03/S: "Thereafter the decision issued on 6 December 2005 … Azerbaijan’s government has also not shied away from reinventing long-lost Armenian monuments as "ancient Azerbaijani" landmarks.

Nevertheless, many Armenian ruins - and a few renovated churches - do survive today across historical Armenia’s western regions in what is today Eastern Turkey. In contrast, Azerbaijan has left no Armenian stone unturned in Nakhichevan. Unlike Armenian scholars, Azerbaijani dissidents often see the destruction of Nakhichevan’s Armenian heritage as part of a domestic crackdown on all forms of opposition to Azerbaijan’s ruling elite. This repression seemingly intensified after the May 2005 inauguration of the lucrative Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline. Vasif Talibov authorized decree No. 5-03/S, the effective order for erasing the last remnants of Armenian Nakhichevan, just months after the Europe-bound pipeline’s opening. But Talibov’s entourage did not just attack khachkars. They also shutdown most of the region’s numerous privately-owned teahouses, the traditional center of Azerbaijani social life, where discussing politics was as commonplace as indulging in hot tea. Simultaneously, Talibov has been unveiling mosques and statues honoring the ruling dynasty’s patriarch Heydar Aliyev.

A response issued by the Embassy of Azerbaijan in Brussels in January, insisted that Armenian allegations were made "to delude the international community" and detract attention from "atrocities committed by the Armenian troops in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, where no single Azerbaijani monument has been left undamaged". It also contained an implied historical claim on the Jugha cemetery stating that it was not Armenian but created by "Caucasian Albanians". The Azerbaijani allegations, which claim the destruction of hundreds of mosques, religious schools, cemeteries and museums in the Shusha, Yerevan, Zangazur and Icmiadzin districts of Armenia, have undoubtedly compounded the reluctance of international organisations to get involved in a situation described to The Art Newspaper by Guido Carducci, the head of Unesco’s International Standards Section, as "a political hot potato". According to Baroness Cox, even during the war, mosques in Armenia were generally protected by the Christian population, but with so many emotive claims and counter claims being made, and both sides accusing each other of rewriting history, non-partisan monitoring and verification of all alleged cultural crimes seems more important than ever.

According to Netherlands-based independent Azerbaijani historian and prominent human rights defender Arif Yunus, who was previously jailed in Azerbaijan on what Amnesty International considers trumped-up charges of "treason," the Azerbaijani president’s anti-Armenian posture is inflated jingoism aimed at cementing his regime. "After replacing his father in 2003 as president," Yunus told us, "Ilham Aliyev upgraded Armenophobia to the levels of fascist Germany’s anti-Semitism." The final purge of Nakhichevan’s medieval Armenian monuments, according to Yunus, was conceived by Ilham Aliyev to boost his nationalist credentials, while Vasif Talibov happily complied to remain in charge. While some Azerbaijanis have embraced their government’s vandalism as either righteous revenge or a national security measure against potential Armenian territorial claims, other Azerbaijanis - in addition to the humanist author Akram Aylisli - have mourned the destruction. According to an Azerbaijani historian, who requested anonymity, many among modern Nakhichevan’s almost half-million population (virtually all of whom are Muslim), are devastated by the recent disappearance of the area’s Christian heritage.