The Azerbaijanis in Armenia (Azerbaijani: Ermənistan azərbaycanlıları) were the largest ethnic minority, but have been virtually non-existent since in 1988–1991 when most Azerbaijanis fled the country as a result of the Nagorno-Karabakh War and the ongoing conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. UNHCR estimates the current population of Azeris in Armenia to be somewhere between 30 and a few hundred persons,[1] with majority of them living in rural areas and being members of mixed couples (mostly mixed marriages), as well as elderly and sick. Most of them are also reported to have changed their names and maintain a low profile to avoid discrimination.[2][3]
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Upon Seljuk conquests in 10th century, the mass of the Oghuz Turkic tribes who crossed the Amu Darya towards the west left the Iranian plateau, which remained Persian, and established themselves more to the west, in Armenia the Caucasus and Anatolia. Here they divided into Ottomans, who were Sunni and settled, and Turkmens who were nomads and in part Shiite (or, rather, Alevi). The latter were to keep the name "Turkmen" for a long time: from the 13th century onwards they "Turkified" the Iranian populations of Azerbaijan, thus creating a new identity based on Shiism and the use of Turkish. These are the people today known as Azeris[4]
After centuries of constant warfare on the Armenian Plateau, many Armenians chose to emigrate and settle elsewhere. It is probable that the Armenians formed the majority of the population of Eastern Armenia at the turn of the seventeenth century, but following Shah Abbas I's massive relocation of Armenians in 1604-05 their numbers began to decrease gradually, eventually becoming a minority among their Muslim neighbors.[5] According to the Armenian-American historian George Bournoutian[6]:
In the first quarter of the 19th century the Khanate of Erevan included most of Eastern Armenia and covered an area of approximately 7,000 square miles. The land was mountainous and dry, the population of about 100,000 was roughly 80 percent Muslim (Persian, Turkic groups, Kurdish) and 20 percent Christian (Armenian)
After the incorporation of the Erivan khanate into the Russian Empire in 1828, many Muslims (Azeris, Kurds, Lezgis and various nomadic tribes) left the area and were replaced with the tens of thousands of Armenian refugees from Persia.[7][8] By 1832 Muslims in what had been the Erivan khanate were already outnumbered by the repatriated Armenians.[9] According to the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, by the beginning of the 20th century a significant population of Azeris still lived in Russian Armenia. They numbered about 300,000 persons or 37.5% in Russia's Erivan Governorate (roughly corresponding to most of present-day central Armenia, the Iğdır Province of Turkey, and Azerbaijan's Nakhichevan exclave).[10] Most lived in rural areas and were engaged in farming and carpet-weaving. They formed the majority in 4 of the governorate's 7 districts, including the city of Erivan (Yerevan) itself where they constituted 49% of the population (compared to 48% constituted by Armenians).[11] At the time, Eastern Armenian cultural life was centered more around the holy city of Echmiadzin, seat of the Armenian Apostolic Church.[12] Traveller Luigi Villari reported in 1905 that in Erivan the Azeris (to whom he referred as Tartars) were generally wealthier than the Armenians, and owned nearly all of the land.[13]
For Azeris of Armenia, the 20th century was the period of marginalization, discrimination, mass and often forcible migrations[14] resulting in significant changes in the country's ethnic composition, even though they had managed to stay its largest ethnic minority until the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. In 1905–1907 Erivan Governorate became an arena of clashes between Armenians and Azeris believed to have been instigated by the Russian government in order to draw public attention away from the Russian Revolution of 1905.[15]
Tensions rose again after both Armenia and Azerbaijan became briefly independent from the Russian Empire in 1918. Both quarreled over where their common borders lay.[12] Warfare coupled with the influx of Armenian refugees resulted in widespread massacres of Muslims in Armenia[16][17][18][19][20] causing virtually all of them to flee to Azerbaijan.[14] Andranik Toros Ozanian and Rouben Ter Minassian were particularly prominent in the destruction of Muslim settlements and in the planned ethnic homogenisation of regions with once mixed population through populating them with Armenian refugees from Turkey.[21] Relatively few of the evicted Azeris returned, as according to the 1926 All-Soviet population census there were only 78,228 Azeris living in Armenia, comprising 8.8% of the population.[22] By 1939 their numbers had increased to 131,000.[23]
In 1947, Grigory Arutyunov, then First Secretary of the Communist Party of Armenia, managed to persuade the Council of Ministers of the USSR to issue a decree entitled Planned measures for the resettlement of collective farm workers and other Azerbaijanis from the Armenian SSR to the Kura-Arax lowlands of the Azerbaijani SSR.[24] According to the decree, between 1948 and 1951, the Azeri community in Armenia became partly subject to a "voluntary resettlement" (called by some sources a deportation[25][26][27]) to central Azerbaijan[28] to make way for Armenian immigrants from the Armenian diaspora. In those four years some 100,000 Azeris were deported from Armenia.[22] This reduced the number of those in Armenia down to 107,748 in 1959.[29] By 1979, Azeris numbered 160,841 and constituted 5.3% of Armenia's population.[30] The Azeri population of Yerevan, that once formed the majority, dropped to 0.7% by 1959 and further to 0.1% by 1989.[26]
Civil unrest in Nagorno-Karabakh in 1987 led to Azeris' being often harassed and forced to leave Armenia.[31] On 25 January 1988 the first wave of Azeri refugees from Armenia settled in the city of Sumgait.[31][32] On 23 March, the presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union—that is the highest institution in the Union—rejected the demands of the Karabakh Soviet to be joined to Armenia without any possibility of appeal. Troops were deployed in Yerevan to prevent protests to the decision. In the following months, Azeris in Armenia were the subject of further harassment and were forced to flee. In the district of Ararat, four villages were burned on the 25th of March. On 7 June, Azeris were evicted from the city of Manis near the Armenian-Turkish border, and on the 20th of the same month five further Azeri villages were cleansed in the Ararat region.[33] Another major wave occurred in November 1988[32] as Azeris were either expelled by the nationalists and local or state authorities,[34] or fled fearing for their lives.[2] Violence took place as a result of ethnic conflicts;[35] in November 1988, 25 Azeris were killed, according to Armenian sources (of those 20 in the town of Gugark);[36] and 217, according to Azerbaijani sources.[37]
Thus, in 1988–91 the remaining Azeris were forced to flee primarily to Azerbaijan.[34][38][39] It is impossible to determine the exact population numbers for Azeris in Armenia at the time of the conflict's escalation, since during the 1989 census forced Azeri migration from Armenia was already in progress. UNHCR's estimate is 200,000 persons.[2]
With the departure of Azeris, not only did the Azeri cultural life in Armenia cease to exist, but its traces were being vigorously written out of history, according to journalist Thomas de Waal. In 1990 a mosque located on Vardanants Street was demolished by a bulldozer.[40] Another Islamic site, the Blue Mosque (where most of the worshippers had been Azeri since the 1760s) has since been often referred to as the "Persian mosque" intending to rid Armenia of the Azeri trace by a "linguistic sleight of hand," according to de Waal.[41] Geographical names of Turkic origin were changed en masse into Armenian-sounding ones,[42] (in addition to those continuously changed from the 1930s on[22]) a measure seen by some as a method to erase from popular memory the fact that Muslims had once formed a substantial portion of the local population.[43]
Some Azeris continue to live in Armenia to the current-day. Hranoush Kharatyan, the head of Department on National Minorities and Religion Matters of Armenia, stated in February 2007:
| “ | Yes, ethnic Azerbaijanis are living in Armenia. I know many of them but I can't give numbers. Armenia has signed a UN convention according to which the states take an obligation not to publish statistical data related to groups under threat or who consider themselves to be under threat if these groups are not numerous and might face problems. During the census, a number of people described their ethnicity as Azerbaijani. I know some Azerbaijanis who came here with their wives or husbands. Some prefer not to speak out about their ethnic affiliation; others take it more easily. We spoke with some known Azerbaijanis residing in Armenia but they haven't manifested a will to form an ethnic community yet.[44] | ” |