• 목록
• 답변
• 글쓰기
• 게시판 리스트 옵션
  • 수정
  • 삭제

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.

Yet, two days later, on March 21, Azerbaijan once again cut off gas supply to Artsakh and the people there remain deprived of natural gas and heat ever since. Azerbaijan’s military aggression has also been on the rise for several months. According to reports from the ground, Azerbaijan intensively fires toward Artsakh villages, threatens residents, and hinders their agriculture work. The European Union is "concerned" over the latest ceasefire violations and the disruption of natural gas supply, Toivo Klaar, the EU’s special representative for the South Caucasus and the crisis in Georgia, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Armenian Service. From September 27 to November 9, 2020, Azerbaijan-with the support of its closest ally, Turkey-committed many atrocities and bombed towns and villages across Artsakh, including homes and maternity hospitals. The actual number of deaths is still unknown, but around 5,000 Armenians were reportedly killed, and approximately 90,000 were forcibly displaced from their ancestral lands.

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.

Its 2005-2006 demolition was the "grand finale" of Azerbaijan’s eradication of Nakhichevan’s Armenian past. Since Azerbaijan banned international fact-finders from visiting Nakhichevan, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) employed remote sensing technologies in its pioneer investigation into cultural destruction. Their 2010 geospatial study concluded that "satellite evidence is consistent with reports by observers on the ground who have reported the destruction of Armenian artifacts in the Djulfa cemetery." In November 2013, dressed in the guise of a pilgrim to a Djulfa chapel now preserved on the Iranian side of the border, one of the authors of this article saw desolate grasslands across the river in Azerbaijan. The breathtakingly ornate stones of the world’s largest medieval Armenian cemetery were no more. Except for the peculiarity of flat fields on otherwise uneven terrain, it was as if no human had ever touched the landscape, just as Azerbaijani leaders intended. "Absolutely false and slanderous information … Armenian lobby." These were the words used by Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev - successor to and son of KGB-leader-turned-President Heydar Aliyev - to describe reports of Djulfa’s destruction in an April 2006 speech.

According to a letter dated December 3, 2021, by the permanent representative of Armenia to the United Nations addressed to the secretary-general: Dozens of video and photo materials have been circulating in social media illustrating the violent and inhuman treatment of those captured - beheadings or mutilations, killings and other violence towards servicemen and civilians, including the execution by Azerbaijani forces in Hadrut region of the Republic of Artsakh of two captured Armenians. In addition, 38 civilians, citizens of the Republic of Artsakh, mainly elderly, remained in villages that came under the control of Azerbaijan were killed through physical violence, stabbing, beheading, close-range shot, and other direct means. In fact, all the civilians who did not leave their homes in territories which fell under Azerbaijan’s control were killed. By cutting off the gas pipeline to the population of Artsakh, firing at residents frequently, and still illegally holding Armenian prisoners of war in its jails, the Azerbaijani government appears to aim to ethnically cleanse the region of indigenous Armenians by destroying their peaceful life and violently forcing them to flee their ancestral lands.

For those who have virtually any questions concerning wherever in addition to how to make use of Eskort DiyarbakıR, you are able to call us from the web-page.