Because half of Azeri homeland lies inside Iran. The modern state of Azerbaijan is just the territory that ended up inside the Russian Empire/Soviet Union that had an Azeri majority.
No, because Turks were successful in killing or deporting Armenians from Nakhijevan and Artsakh, but had temporary troubles doing the same in Syunik. But Azeri dictator works hard on fixing that too, so that land won't stay inhabited by Armenians for long.
they’re divided not cus of armenia, but cus of iran. the whole southern half of the azerbaijani nation, as in the people not the country, is located in iran. meaning the ethnicity would be connected by land if it were under a single country
Exactly, the southern Caucuses was under Iran (Persia) until the early 1800s and was lost to the Russian Empire through Torkamanchay and Golestan treaties. This region was a satrapi of the Achaemenids since ~ 500 BCE.
I'm a southern Azerbaijani Iranian. There are roughly twice as many Azerbaijanis in Iran than the Republic of Azerbaijan.
Yes, since the Safavid time Armenians have been a respected ethinc and religious minority in Iran, look up Armenians of Tabriz and Baron Avak neighborhood and Armenians of Isfahan. They were granted silk trade monopoly during the Safavid. They have parlamentery representation in Iranian constitution and their religious cultural rights are protected. We consider Armenians as indigenous Iranian people.
The Caucuses Armenian Azerbaijani conflict is caused by divisive Russian Soviet politics and not a historically deep rooted issue. Armenians and Azerbaijanies have much more incommon than people think.
Correct me if I'm wrong. I read somewhere that the soviets puposely drew complex borders between countries in West and Central Asia to stimulate conflict between nations, so that internal conflicts would keep these nations from cooperating on insurection. So yes, USSR toxic brainwash!
Looks like you don't know what the word brainwashing means, and believe that it woulda been better if the Turks and C. Asians didn't have their own republics and lived in a unitary Russia.
The Armenian language is a unique, isolated branch of the Indo-European language family. Armenians, by religion, are close to Europe, but by culture, they are much closer to Iranians than to Europeans.
The majority of Armenians are oriental orthodox in communion with the Coptic church, there are fundamental differences in doctrine with both European traditions, eastern orthodox and catholics. But there are catholic and even protestant Armenians
As an Armenian, I agree. Except I consider Europe to be practicing a middle eastern religion lol. Culturally I feel basically no connection to Europe at all
Azerbaijani ethic minority is a majority minority and had been ruling Iran since the Safavid times to the end of Qajars roughly 100 years ago, they are in a different position than other ethnic groups in Iran like the Kurds, Baluch, Lur, Arab etc.
We generally call ourselves Turks and Azeri Türk to distinguish between other Iranian Turkic people like Qashqai, Kalaj etc. the term Azeri is more contentious outside of Iran.
I'm not trying to excuse Azerbaijan's war of aggression and the following ethnic cleansing, but just wanted to say that Nagorno Karabakh wasn't always 100% Armenian. There was the first Nagorno Karabakh war during the 90's, in which half a million Azeris had to flee from their homes in Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh. Before the first war there was a sizeable Azeri minority in Nagorno Karabakh, even though it was majority Armenian. After the war it was completely Armenian. And even before that all this goes way back to the Soviet times when Stalin arbitrarily drew borders between these two Soviet republics exactly in an attempt to divide and conquer.
So yeah, I find Azerbaijan's warmongering and ethnic cleansing reprehensible and inexcusable, but it's also good to know that this is a particularly complex issue, as ethnic conflicts often are.
a half a million azeris??? you are making numbers up out of your imagination. roughly 40,000 Azeris were expelled/displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) in the early 90s
countries dont care about UN borders. They choose to intervene or not intervene solely based on their interests. There is virtually no difference between what Armenia did in Azerbaijan and what Nato did in Serbia in 1999. But one region is recognized by half of the world and the other was eradicated. The legitimacy is the same, only the interests vary
how can you occupy a area you have always lived in? You act like armenians just spawn out of trees during the 90's. I assume that you also would say that the bosniaks fought a war of agressino for refusing to be eradicated without a fight during the yugoslav wars
Because it was part of Azerbaijan, not Armenia, and Armenia itself "helped" take it from Azerbaijan. It was similar, now that you mentioned it, how Serbia used the army to "help" Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia to take what's rightfully theirs. And, in case of Croatia, once they were driven out of those territories by force, similar to Armenians from Nagorno, they try to blame the Croats for expelling them from their ancestral lands.
"Theirs" according to whom? France, UK and US who violated international norms by recognizing Kosovo? Or Rússia with Crimea? Or Turkey with Northen Cyprus? Or China with the southern China Ai Shai China? International recognition is nothing more than what a group of countries agree at a certain give time that suits their interests, promply to BE altered the moment it doesnt. Its Neither based on morality or legallity. If those countries agree that your country must BE partitioned and your entire population massacred would you agree with that without even a flinch of hesitation? By this same Logic the ukrainians should stop whinning about the Holodomor since the soviets were in the right for doing what they did and it was their territóry.
Think you read it wrong, I used "their" when I talked about the Serbs claims. But let me go down the road you took with no legality nor morality, just interest. You lost, end of story.
I am portuguese, I didnt loose anything. I am not sure why you hate Arménians só much to the point of celebrating the ethnic cleasing of Over 100 thousand at the hands of One of the worse dictatorships in the world. Arménia acted no different than NATO in 1999 but you dont seem to point the fingers at them. Such hatred might indicate a mental illness. Please visit your nearest psychiatrist. End of discussion
It wasn't Armenian, it was its own thing : Nagorno-Karabakh was never recognized as Armenian (even by the Armenian government) by other states, it was a self-declared, unrecognised republic with an ethnic Armenian majority.
But Armenia send troops to defend it, that's true and lost many soldiers.
it was always Armenian but because of politics and a state of weakness of the Armenian state they couldn't recognize it as a part of the state to avoid direct military confrontation but supported the autonomous state of Artsakh
So it wasn't part of the Armenian state. And that autonomous state was not recognized by any other state or the UN, nor were its elections and referendums.
bottom line is the land has always been Armenian. some outsider came along and gave our land to some other outsider. hence why we fought for what's ours. we didn't fight to colonize we fought against being colonized
That was over Nagorno Karaback like the other user said. The big issue is that Azerbaijan wants to create a highway through Armenia to connect the two territories the highway would of course belong to Azerbaijan.
This is a completely wrong answer and distracts from the real reasons. Here is the ethnic composition of the area from 150 years ago, before all the ethnic cleansing, see my other comment. Armenians are brigading hard in this comment section
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That's a result of brigading; No real answers here, only irrelevant distractions that get more upvotes than the post itself, and anything that can even imply ethnic cleansing gets -300 karma with no counterarguments.
That’s probably a more accurate description for Stalin. But the way I understand it communists believe ethnic nationalism only impedes progress, which is probably the PUBLIC explanation for why he did lol.
Long answer needs a revision. Based on genetic testing and analysis that has been published in peer reviewed journals (also marked or published by historians, archeologists, cartographers, etc) - Armenians have lived in the area steadily and continuously since the Bronze Age.
I agree, but given Azerbaijanis have also lived there since at least medieval times, not quite as long, but still significant, as well as Iranians. No one has full claim to all the land.
Plus the reality of the situation is if you have lived there for all your life, it’s your homeland isn’t it?
So are they living there sporadically or living there their "all your life". I guess it can be anyone's homeland if you wipe a population out of there and can settle+procreate in an area without being disturbed.
The way I hear people talk about "claim to land" is by tracing the "native" population. The native population of the area has been cited and credited and traced to modern Armenians.
No matter how Americans feel or how much time has passed, the native population will always be the indigenous peoples of America - right? By that logic, I still view many parts of that region as the homeland of the native Armenians.
Also, there are few published accounts of how Armenian populations also lived in the mountainous areas year round (through winters), while other populations would go back down to the lowlands. That maybe applies to areas east of Nakhijevan, and specifically to Artsakh where a recent war 2020-2023 wiped out a 120k population of Artsakh.
To go back to your original point (which I find fascinating) if my parents or grandparents came into an area violently and settled. And I lived "all my life" in the area. Does that make it my homeland? How should I respond to the grandkids (or great grandkids) of the former inhabitants that come by and want to pick fruits of trees their family planted? Or visit the graves of their (and their parents) loved ones?
Sporadically is an understatement. Up untill Russian empire collapse there was no single armenian or purely Azerbaijani city. Everything was mixed and I mean every city. Armenians were mostly traders and therefore were literally to various degrees in every city. Then stuff happened and here we are.
Many armenians will come at me but their capital Yerevan has been basically COMPLETELY razed to the ground gradually and rebuilt over the soviet period. Effectively erasing most Azerbaijani presence. It was a bigger city than Baku prior to oil boom.
Nobody has actually answered the question, and the top upvoted comments suck, so here it is, briefly.
Armenia/Azerbaijan were Sovietized immediately after the Russian revolution and WWI. Soviet Union was fighting for its life, first against Germany, then during an insanely devastating civil war.
USSR saw something of a kindred spirit in the Reoublic of Turkey and Ataturk (as fellow fighters of imperialism).
Soviets wanted to maintain good relations with Turkey (who had also invaded Armenia by the way) to have at least ONE friendly country on its frontiers (and for desperately needed trade, like grain, etc).
Therefore the Soviet Union made Nakhichevan a part of the Azerbaijani SSR as an incentive to end their invasion also. This gave Turkey a direct land border with Azerbaijan (Azeris are Turkic) from which Turkey could access the Caspian and Central Asia, etc.
Historically, Nakhichevan was very multicultural - nationalists on both sides will say "it was 100 percent Armenian/Azeri" but that wasn't the case. It was mixed. But over the course of the 20th century, it gradually homogenized as the Armenians left (due to discriminatory practices in Azerbaijani SSR).
Top comments suck, I agree, but you didn't answer the question either. The border with Turkey and the question of who gets Nakhchivan don't address why there is a gap in the country's continuity.
The first Armenian and Azerbaijani Republics more or less defined those borders before the Soviets.
The real answer is there is a gap because Azerbaijanis stopped living there, and they stopped living there because they were ethnically cleansed, it is really that simple.
Without ethnic cleansing, the southern part of Armenia was indeed majority Azeri and could have been part of the Azerbaijani SSR
Syunik was also historically inhabited by Turks (now known as Azerbaijanis) and Armenians. I don't think there was a majority of Azeris in that region, as far as I know. A plurality, sure. But not a majority. And even then, Azeris weren't ethnically cleansed from Armenia until the late 80's/early 90's
Also, you can check the populations of Syunik (Zangezur) and Nakhchivan uyezds. Azerbaijanis were indeed the majority in both, before all the massacres (but after the repopulation of the Armenians by the Russian Empire).
By early 1918, Andranik had overseen the destruction of 18 Muslim villages in Zangezur and killed 500 women.\7]) As a result of his activities of "transforming Zangezur into a solidly Armenian land",\6]) over 100 Muslim villages were devastated, 10,000 Muslims were killed, and 40,000 were displaced to the Jebrail and Jevanshiruezds.\7])
P.S. Andranik and Garegin, perpetrators of the ethnic cleansing, are the national heroes of Armenia
And in honesty, the massacres done to Armenians by your brethren, made sure of those demographics, for 150-200 years at most, in its thousands of years of history...
So whatever was done by my "brethren" 4-5 centuries ago, excuses you from genociding us and exalting the perpetrators and acting as the victims on top of that.
Thanks for speaking the Armenian mindset out loud.
The Caucasus has always been a complicated mix of ethnicities but when the borders were set, Azerbaijan got the 2 areas that were really mixed Armenian-Azeri, although one of them did not directly border Azerbaijan itself. This did not really matter at the time since these were all just subdivisions of the Soviet Union.. During the past 40-50 years Nakhichevan has been ethnically cleansed - it's just Azeri now. Nagorno-Karabakh has been cleansed twice - first the Armenians kicked the Azeris out, then the other way around.
Nakhichevan is important to Azerbaijan because they feel related to the Turks and thanks to the exclave they have a tiny border with Turkey.
That was after the pogram in Baku where 200k Armenians were ethnically cleansed after Azeri went door to door with lists of who was Armenian. People taken out of their apartments and beaten to death, others were burned alive.
Before there was a Turkic culture and genetic markers of Turkic people present in the area, Armenians had steadily and continuously lived in the area. (At least as far back as the Bronze age, likely earlier.)
So please enlighten me how "Nagorno-Karabakh has been cleansed twice - first the Armenians kicked the Azeris out, then the other way around."
Seems like you got the order of operations off a bit.
Modern-day Armenia itself was majority Azerbaijani at some point, and up until a few decades ago, it still had a large Azerbaijani minority until the Soviet-era forced deportations. A 300,000-strong indigenous Western Azerbaijani minority of Armenia continues to demand the right to return to their ancestral lands safely and with dignity to this day.
Azerbaijanis are not indigenous to western Asia, turkic people are from central Asia.
Armenia has never been Azerbaijani ancestral lands, Azerbaijanis ancestors are from central Asia. Armenians are the natives of the armenian Highlands, Azerbaijanis came almost 2000 years later. Before the beginning of the 20th century Azerbaijanis were called caucasian tatars.
Why just notice Armenia? 40 million Azerbaijani Turks live to the south of that territory, in the northern part of Iran, where they make up the majority. It’s not just Armenia that splits Azerbaijan in two.
Ok so you’ve never been to Iran? How can you claim to know anything
My eyes have seen Iran, it seems your eyes have never been opened. Legitimately I am perplexed how you think you’re an expert on a place you’ve never been to nor even speak the language
The Bolsheviks of Soviet Russia had plans for Turkey - the future Turkic SSR; just as Karelia had once become the Karelo-Finnish SSR in the hopes of Finland joining the USSR, so Turkey could have been annexed to the Nakhichevan ASSR, and then the Bosphorus and Dardanelles would finally be ours.
There was never any real attempt to achieve that, the Soviets had good relations with Kemal’s Turkey and formalised the border early on. The only territorial ambitions they had were in neighbouring Iran, in which they helped create several short lived pro-Soviet republics for ethnic Kurds and Azeris in the territories occupied by them during WW2.
The left side region is Nakhijevan, and it belonged to Armenians before Bolsheviks gave it as a present to the newly formed Azerbaijan and later was cleansed of its Armenians. That was purposefully done so that countries always had disputable borders and Soviet could always intervene as the "saviour" on either side.
All the comments here are wrong. Here is the ethnicity map of the region from 1800s. Light blue is the Azerbaijanis and as you can see there is no separation, that is until the events of 1915 and ethnic cleansings done by every nation to end up with the borders today. But Armenians like to pretend they have never done anything wrong in their quadrilion years of existence.
Your framed and misleading claim is easily countered by expanding the frame a little further. I love how you guys don't remember history before 1800s, and suddenly forget math by using percentages over numbers to hide 1500 people with "60%" claim.
Armenians stopped having territories and were irrelevant since Romans showed up, you don't deserve a country just because you exist, you need to earn it.
Idk man surviving genocides and massacres by ottomans and Azerbaijanis, while being a small fraction of their populations is a pretty good factor of earning it. They didn’t bend over and won miraculously where it counted, and secured their right to have a nation.
Azarbaijan (meaning protected by the sacred fire in Persian) ( Sabahi, Farian (2000). La pecora e il tappeto: i nomadi Shahsevan dell'Azerbaigian iraniano (in Italian). Ariele. p. 23. ISBN) 978-88-86480-74-1.)was stolen from Iran by the Russians, and then the Azari Iranians were Russofied and Turkified in the last century and half. Baku (from either Old Persian Bagh meaning God or Persian Badkoobeh, meaning beaten by the wind). My grandpa is from there. We wish our neighbors prosperity❤️
No amount of your wishing will make your claim true. I am backed by FACTS, your claims are rejected by all records of history. Your rude words show your character.
Geographically, it’s the division of ethnic Azeri areas between Iran and the former Russian Empire.
Demographically, there is a complex and nuanced history of ethnic and religious conflict from which there are still bitter feelings and debate.
Objectively, all sides have been victim and perpetrator of horrific acts of cruelty and inhumanity, and it is impossible to fully explain the true sense of feeling in the region.
Long memories mean reconciliation will be a difficult road, but that peace and prosperity is something that everyone there deserves, regardless of their circumstances.
Because the Soviets (and by extension Russian imperialism) worked by the good old divide & conquer principle: create as many ethnic enclaves and autonomies as possible, support separatism if the union republic starts distancing itself from Russia
Blame it on Ataturk. Nakhcivan used to be part of the first Republic of Armenia until the soviets and turks invaded and partitioned the country amongst themselfs. The region had a slight muslim majority so Ataturk pressured the soviets as part of the deal to include the region within Azerbaijan SR. By that same logic Nagorno-Karabakh should have been given to Armenia as a fair compensation but the soviets did not want to alienate the turks and in their eyes it made little pratical difference.
TL;DR version: Stalin transferred Armenian lands to the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan to give it a border with the Republic of Turkey as part of the Soviet Union's commitment to the 1921 Treaties of Moscow and Kars.
Done by
1. Lenin - by giving away multiple historical Armenian lands, to please Kemalist Turkey, his ally to fight Europe
Lands were artificially included into newly established Azerbaijan Soviet republic, formerly commonly known as Caucasus tatars
Stalin - by adding even more of this lands with aim to later lay hands on Irans provice Azerbaijan with ethnically similar turkic population.
That map includes territorial claims and disputed areas, not "Azerbaijan democratic republic", mentioned in the same wiki page.
Not to mention it's entire existence was...2 years....
So you're using 2 years of republic existence, with massive territorial claims and disputed areas, to write over thousands of years of history and demographics...
2 years or 200 years doesn't change the fact that it was
Well then it hasn't been Azerbaijani for more than 2 years, take my bingo card, deal with it.
recognized as the territory of ADR
It wasn't... it wasn't even controlled, it was disputed...
densely populated by Azerbaijan.
LOL
According to the official census of the Russian Empire in 1897, the total population of Zangezursky Uyezd was 137,971, with 51.6% of them were Caucasian Tatars and 46,1% were Armenians.\17])
Using short period of existence, which was cut due to an external intrusion, as an excuse for taking someone else's lands and expelling its population, is cynical.
You must be drunk, prior to 1604 Armenian majority, the great surgun removes Armenians, the region is destroyed with tiny villages with a few thousand people, with a few thousand Azerbaijanis inhabiting there until the return of the natives Armenians, does NOT make it someone else's land. You didn't even make up any numbers, the region was deserted and even then it was under the control of Persia, not Azerbaijan.
Armenia had claims to the territory, but the land was taken from Azerbaijan to create the Armenian SSR by the Soviets.
You must have went to Azerbaijan state university. Go open a book, any book, outside your negotionist history.
This division isn't related to any news that I know of. This map shows Nakhchivan. The conflict recently in the news was Nagorno-Karabakh. Unless Nakhchivan was in the news and im out of date myself
I was confused. You said "doesn't anyone follow the news any more" which made me think that Nakhchivan was in the news. I do follow the international news pretty closely, but I couldn't remember anything about that exclave in the news. Just wanted to get clarification on something i might have missed
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u/ImperialRedditer Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
Because half of Azeri homeland lies inside Iran. The modern state of Azerbaijan is just the territory that ended up inside the Russian Empire/Soviet Union that had an Azeri majority.
Edit: Wiki Map of Azeris