| Armenian-Azerbaijani war (1918 – 1920) | |||||||
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| Part of World War I and the Russian Civil War | |||||||
Soldiers of Azerbaijan Democratic Republic in 1919 |
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| Belligerents | |||||||
| Democratic Republic of Armenia Republic of Mountainous Armenia Nagorno-Karabakh rebels Only for the Battle of Baku: United Kingdom Centrocaspian Dictatorship |
Azerbaijan Democratic Republic Only for the Battle of Baku: Ottoman Empire After April 1920: Russian SFSR Turkish Revolutionaries Azerbaijan SSR |
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| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Andranik Ozanian Lionel Dunsterville |
Samedbey Mehmandarov | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| Dunsterforce (1,000 elite Australian, British and New Zealand soldiers) | |||||||
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The Armenian-Azerbaijani war, which started after the Russian Revolution, was a series of brutal and hard to classify conflicts in 1918, then from 1920 to 1922 that occurred during the brief independence of Armenia and Azerbaijan and afterward. Most of the conflicts did not have a principal pattern with a standard armed structure. The Ottoman Empire and British Empire were involved in different capacities: the Ottoman Empire left the region after the Armistice of Mudros but British influence continued until Dunsterforce was pulled back in 1920s. The conflicts involved civilians in the disputed districts of Kazakh-Shamshadin, Zanghezur, Nakhichevan and Karabakh. The use of guerrilla and semi-guerrilla operations were the main reasons for the high civilian casualties, which occurred during the nation-building activities of the newly-established states. The reasons behind the conflict are still far from being resolved after nearly a century.
The story of this campaign has very different perceptions; according to Armenian historians, the Democratic Republic of Armenia aimed to include Nakhichevan among the basic (Eastern Armenian) territories of Yerevan province, as well as the eastern and southern parts of Elisavetpol (present-day Ganja) province.
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The first clashes between the Armenians and Azeris took place in Baku in February 1905. Soon, the conflict spilled over to other parts of the Caucasus, and on August 5, 1905 the first conflict between the Armenian and Azeri population of Shusha took place.
In the March 1918, ethnic and religious tensions grew and the Armenian-Azeri conflict in Baku began. Musavat and Committee of Union and Progress parties were accused of Pan-Turkism by Bolsheviks and their allies. Armenian and Muslim militia engaged in armed confrontation, which resulted in heavy casualties. Many Muslims were expelled from Baku, or went underground.
Meanwhile the arrest of General Talyshinski, the commander of the Azerbaijani division, and some of its officers all of whom arrived in Baku on March 9, increased the anti-Soviet feelings among the city's Azeri population. On 30 March the Soviet based on the unfounded report that the Muslim crew of the ship Evelina was armed and ready to revolt against the Soviet, disarmed the crew which tried to resist [1] This led to 3-day fighting resulting in the death of up to 12,000 Azeris.[2][3][4]
The Bolshevik account of the events of March 1918 in Baku is presented by Victor Serge in Year One Of the Russian Revolution: "The Soviet at Baku, led by Shaumyan, was meanwhile making itself the ruler of the area, discreetly but unmistakably. Following the Moslem rising of 18 March, it had to introduce a dictatorship. This rising, instigated by the Mussavat, set the Tartar and Turkish population, led by their reactionary bourgeoisie, against the Soviet, which consisted of Russians with support from the Armenians. The races began to slaughter each other in the street. Most of the Turkish port-workers (the ambal) either remained neutral or supported the Reds. The contest was won by the Soviets."
At the same time the Baku Commune was involved in heavy fighting with the advancing Caucasian Ottoman Army in and around Ganja. Enver Pasha, the Ottoman Empire, began to move forward with the newly established Army of Islam. Major battles occurred in Yevlakh and Agdash, where the Turks routed and defeated Dashnak and Russian forces.
Dunsterville ordered the evacuation of the city on September 14, after six weeks of occupation, and withdrew to Iran; most of the Armenian population escaped with British forces. The Ottoman Army of Islam and its Azeri allies, led by Nuri Pasha, entered Baku on September 15 and slaughtered between 10,000 - 20,000 Armenians in retaliation for the March massacre of Muslims.[5] The capital of the Azerbaijan was finally moved from Ganja to Baku. However, after the Armistice of Mudros between the United Kingdom and the Ottoman Empire on October 30, Turkish troops were substituted by the Triple Entente. Headed by British general W. Thomson, who had declared himself the military governor of Baku, 1,000 Commonwealth soldiers arrived in Baku on November 17, 1918. By General Thomson's order, martial law was implemented in Baku.
The Armenian government tried several times to seize Shusha militarily. Beginning with 1918, Republic of Mountainous Armenia was declared in the region. However throughout the summer of 1918, Armenians in the mountainous Karabag region, under the leadership of Andranik Toros Ozanian resisted the Ottoman 3rd army.[6] After the Armistice, the Ottoman Empire began to withdraw its forces and Armenian forces under Andranik seized Nagro-Karabagh.[7] Armstice of Mudros brought General Adriank the chance to create a base for further expansion eastward and form a strategic corridor extending into Nakhichevan.[7] In January 1919 Armenian troops advanced towards Shusha, captured and destroyed 9 Azeri villages on their way but eventually had to retreat. Just before the Armistice of Mudros was signed, Andranik was on the way from Zangezur to Shusha, to control the main city of the Karabakh. The Armenian government tried several times to seize Shusha militarily, before. In January 1919, while Armenian troops advancing, the British military command ordered Andranik back to Zangezur, and gave him the assurances that this conflict can be solved with the Paris Peace Conference, 1919. Andranik pulled back his units and British command at Baku gave the control to Khosrov bey Sultanov, a native of Karabakh, who was appointed the general-governor of Karabakh. He had three Armenian and three Azeri aides.
The largest massacre of Azeri people in Shusha took place on March–April 1920. On the night from March 21–22, 1920 when the Azeris were celebrating Spring Equinox (Novruz Bayram), the Armenians of Karabakh began to revolt and organized a surprise attack.(Also,on March 1918 all over the Azerbaijan, thousands of Azeri people are slaughtered, burned and killed by Armenian army who were led by Saumyan. One armenian soldier says: we began killing children with our knives for lack of bullets and guns, there were huge stones and we squashed their heads with those stones)
They seized the approaches to Shusha, Khankendi, and the Askeran fortress, attacking the Azeri part.
In early April 1920 the Republic of Azerbaijan was in a very troubled situation. In the west, the Armenians still controlled large parts of territory claimed by Azerbaijan; in the east, the local Azeri communists were rebelling against the government; and to the north the Russian Red Army was steadily moving southward, having defeated Denikin's White Russian forces.
On April 27, 1920 the government of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic received notice that the Soviet army was about to cross the northern border and invade the ADR. Faced with such a difficult situation, the government officially surrendered to the Soviets, but many generals and local Azeri militias kept resisting the advance of Soviet forces and it took a while for the Soviets to stabilize the newly-proclaimed Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, headed by the leading Azeri Bolshevik Nariman Narimanov.
While the Azeri government and army were in chaos, the Armenian army and local Armenian militias used the opportunity to assert their control over parts of Azeri territory, taking Shusha, Khankendi, and other important cities. By the end of April the Armenian forces were in control of most of western Azerbaijan including all of Karabakh with the surrounding areas. Other areas captured included all of Nakhichevan and much of Kazakh-Shamshadin district. In the meantime, the Armenian communists attempted a coup in Armenia, but ultimately failed.
In 1920-21 the only 'solution' of this dispute could come either by military victory – as basically happened in Anatolia, Zangezur and Nakhichevan – or by the imposition from above of a new structure by an imperial power. After the British failed to impose a settlement, the imperial arbiters turned out to be the Bolsheviks, whose 11th Army conquered Karabakh in May 1920. On 5 July 1921 the Bolsheviks' Caucasian committee, the Kavburo, under the chairmanship of Stalin ruled that the mountainous part of Karabakh would be part of Azerbaijan. In July 1923 the Nagorny (or Mountainous) Karabakh Autonomous Region (NKAO) was created within Azerbaijan, with borders that gave it an overwhelming Armenian population of 94 per cent of the total inhabitants.
In late November, there was yet another Soviet-backed communist uprising in Armenia. On November 28, 1920 blaming Armenia for the invasions of Sharur (20.11.1920) and Karabakh (21.11.1920) which are historically Azerbaijan lands, the 11th Red Army under the command of Anatoli Gekker, crossed the demarcation line between Democratic Republic of Armenia and Soviet Azerbaijan. The second Soviet-Armenian war lasted only a week.
The Armenian national liberation movement was exhausted by the 6 years of permanent wars and conflicts; the Armenian army and population were incapable of any further active resistance.
On December 4, 1920, when the Red Army entered Yerevan, the government of the Democratic Republic of Armenia effectively surrendered. On December 5, the Armenian Revolutionary Committee (Revkom; made up of mostly Armenians from historical territories of Azerbaijan also entered the city. Finally, on the following day, December 6, Felix Dzerzhinsky's dreaded secret police, the Cheka, entered Yerevan, thus effectively ending all existence of the Democratic Republic of Armenia.[8]
The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic was then proclaimed, under the leadership of Aleksandr Miasnikyan.
The violence in Transcaucasia was finally settled in a friendship treaty between Turkey and the Soviet Union. The peace Treaty of Kars was signed in Kars by representatives of the Russian SFSR, Azerbaijan SSR, Armenian SSR, Georgian SSR, and Turkey. Turkey had another agreement, the "Treaty on Friendship and Brotherhood", also called the Treaty of Moscow, signed on March 16, 1921 with Soviet Russia.
By this treaty Nakhichevan was granted the status of an autonomous region within Azerbaijan. Turkey and Russia became guarantors of Nakhichevan's status. Turkey agreed to return Alexandropol to Armenia and Batumi to Georgia.