Anti-Armenian sentiment in Azerbaijan


Anti-Armenian sentiment or Armenophobia is widespread in Azerbaijan, mainly due to the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. According to the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, Armenians are "the most vulnerable group in Azerbaijan in the field of racism and racial discrimination." According to a 2012 opinion poll, 91% of Azerbaijanis perceive Armenia as "the biggest enemy of Azerbaijan." The word "Armenian" is widely used as an insult in Azerbaijan. "Negative stereotypes about Armenians are present in the majority of mass media outlets in Azerbaijan. Those stereotypes are somewhat shared by the public, and they definitely do not come out of nowhere. Stereotypical opinions circulating in the mass media have their deep roots in the public consciousness."
Throughout the 20th century, Armenians and the Muslim inhabitants of the Caucasus—Azerbaijanis were called "Caucasian Tatars" before 1918— had been involved in numerous conflicts. Pogroms, massacres and wars solidified oppositional ethnic identities between the two groups, and have contributed to the development of national consciousnesses among both Armenians and Azeris. From 1918 to 1920, organized killings of Armenians occurred in Azerbaijan, especially in the Armenian cultural centers in Baku and Shusha, under the Russian Empire.
However, contemporary Armenophobia in Azerbaijan traces its roots to the last years of the Soviet Union, when Armenians demanded that the Moscow authorities transfer the mostly Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast in the Azerbaijan SSR to the Armenian SSR. In response to those Armenian demands, anti-Armenian rallies were held in various cities, where nationalist groups encouraged anti-Armenian feeling that led to pogroms in Sumgait, Kirovabad and Baku. An estimated 350,000 Armenians left between 1988 and 1990 as a direct result of the violence directed towards them.
Disputes over the ownership of Nagorno-Karabakh eventually escalated into a large-scale military conflict, where Armenian forces took control of most of former NKAO and seven adjacent districts. According to HRW, systematic abuse of human rights was carried out by Karabakh Armenian forces and by the governments of Azerbaijan and Armenia. A cease-fire was achieved in 1994 and still remains in effect as the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic is de facto independent, while de jure inside Azerbaijan's borders. The unresolved conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh as well as the presence of up to 880,000 refugees and IDPs in Azerbaijan contributed significantly to aggravating the economic, social and political situation in Azerbaijan, with around 14% of the country's territory occupied by Armenian forces.
The Armenian side has accused the Azerbaijani government of carrying out anti-Armenian policy inside and outside the country, which includes propaganda of hate toward Armenia and Armenians and the destruction of Armenian cultural heritage.
According to Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of the journal Russia in Global Affairs, "Armenophobia is the institutional part of the modern Azerbaijani statehood and Karabakh is in the center of it". In 2011, the ECRI report on Azerbaijan stated that "the constant negative official and media discourse" against Armenia fosters "a negative climate of opinion regarding people of Armenian origin, who remain vulnerable to discrimination."

Early period

There have been numerous cases of anti-Armenianism in Azerbaijan throughout history. Between 1905 and 1907, the Armenian–Tatar massacres resulted in the deaths of thousands of Armenians and Azerbaijanis. According to the history professor Firuz Kazemzadeh, "it is impossible to pin the blame for the massacres on either side. It seems that in some cases the Azerbaijanis fired the first shots, in other cases the Armenians."
after destruction by the Azerbaijani army in 1920.
A wave of anti-Armenian massacres in Azerbaijani-controlled territories started in 1918 and continued until 1920, when both Armenia and Azerbaijan joined the Soviet Union. First in September 1918, a massacre of the Armenians of Baku took place, leaving an estimated 10,000 to 30,000 ethnic Armenians dead in retaliation of the March Days. The event was later called September Days. On 5–7 June 1919 another massacre of Armenians was carried out in Khaibalikend in Nagorno-Karabakh. Up to 700 Armenians were killed in a massacre organized by Karabakh's Governor-General Khosrov bek Sultanov and led by his brother, Sultan bek Sultanov. In March 1920 a pogrom of Shusha's Armenians occurred in retaliation of the Novruz attack committed by Armenians against the local Azerbaijanis as well as the Azerbaijani army. Estimates of casualty figures are uncertain and vary from few hundred to 20,000–30,000 victims. Before and during the Russian Revolution of 1917 anti-Armenianism was the basis of Azeri nationalism, and under the Soviet regime Armenians remain the scapegoats who are responsible for state, societal and economic shortcomings. During the Soviet era, the Soviet government tried to foster a peaceful co-existence between the two ethnic groups, but many Azeris resented the high social status of Armenians in Azerbaijan, as many Armenians were esteemed as part of Azerbaijan's intelligentsia. When the atrocity-laden conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh broke out, however, the public opinion in both countries about the other hardened.

During the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict started with demonstrations in February 1988 in Yerevan, Armenia SSR, demanding the incorporation of Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast of the Azerbaijan SSR into the Armenian SSR. Nagorno-Karabakh's regional council voted to secede from Azerbaijan and join with the Armenian SSR. These events led to the Sumgait Pogrom where between 26 February, and 1 March, the city of Sumgait was subjected to four days of violent anti-Armenian riots during which 32 people were murdered. The pogrom was marked with a great number of atrocities – the apartments of Armenians were attacked and the residents were indiscriminately murdered, raped, and mutilated by the Azerbaijani rioters. The Azerbaijani authorities took up no measures whatsoever to stop the atrocities, the local police took no action. A number of international and Soviet sources described the events as genocide of the Armenian population.
After several days of ongoing unrest Moscow authorities occupied the city with paratroopers and tanks. Almost all the 14,000 Armenians in Sumgait fled the city after the pogrom. British journalist Thomas de Waal, who in 2005 published a documentary book Black Garden on the Karabakh conflict, writes: "The first-ever mass violence of the late Soviet era" was the pogrom of Armenians in Sumgait – unrest sparked on ethnic grounds in the town of Sumgait in Azerbaijan SSR in February 1988, accompanied by mass violence against the Armenian population of the town along with looting, arson, murders and destruction of property. On February 1988 at the session of Politburo of the Central Committee in Moscow it was officially acknowledged that mass pogroms and murders in Sumgait were carried out based on ethnicity. It was then that the academician Ziya Bunyadov, whom Tom de Waal calls "Azerbaijan's foremost Armenophobe" in his book, became famous with his article "Why Sumgait?" in which he blamed the Armenian victims for organizing the pogrom.
Sumgait pogrom was never given due assessment by the state; the perpetrators not only remained unpunished but some of them gained titles of national heroes as well as high positions in the government. This led to further escalation of the conflict, as assessed by Memorial.
Following the Sumgait massacre, new pogroms took place in Kirovabad and later in Baku in 1990. In November 1988 the Kirovabad pogrom was put down by Soviet troops, prompting a permanent migratory trend of Armenians away from Azerbaijan.
As time went by, the tension between two nations grew rapidly. In January 1990, Azeri nationalists organized a pogrom of Armenians in Baku, killing at least 90 Armenians and displacing a population of nearly 200,000 Armenians. De Waal stated that the Popular Front of Azerbaijan was responsible for the mass pogrom, as they shouted "Long live Baku without Armenians!"
In July 1990 "An Open Letter to International Public Opinion on Anti-Armenian Pogroms in the Soviet Union" was signed by 130 intellectuals and scholars all over the world, which stated,
During the war, on 10 April 1992, Azerbaijanis carried out the Maraga Massacre, killing at least 40 Armenians.

Post-1994 era

From 1991 to 1994 the inter-ethnic conflict evolved into large-scale military actions for the control over Nagorno-Karabakh and some of the surrounding regions. In May 1994 a ceasefire was signed, but which did not definitively settle the territorial dispute to the satisfaction of all parties. Today the Armenian forces control a considerable territory beyond the borders of the NKR, the question of refugees is still unresolved and Azerbaijan continues to enforce an economic blockade on the breakaway territory. The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance stated that the "overall negative climate" in Azerbaijan is a consequence "generated by the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh."

Influence on Azerbaijani national identity

The Russian historian, poet, essayist :ru:Полонский, Андрей Валентинович|Andrei Polonski, who has researched the formation of the Azerbaijani national identity at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, pointed out that "the Karabakh crisis and growing Armenophobia contributed to the formation of the stable image of the enemy which has to a great extent influenced the nature of the new identity.
:ru:Казимиров, Владимир Николаевич|Vladimir Kazimirov, the Russian Representative for Nagorno-Karabakh from 1992 to 1996, Co-Chairman of the OSCE Minsk Group, has many times accused certain forces in Azerbaijan up to the level of state authorities of inciting anti-Armenian sentiment. At the beginning of 2004, characterizing the decade following the conclusion of the ceasefire, Kazimirov stated:

In the Media

ECRI notes that the mainstream media of Azerbaijan "is highly critical, without drawing a clear distinction between that state and persons of Armenian origin coming under the jurisdiction of Azerbaijan." It further implicates certain TV channels, prominent citizens, politicians, and local and national authorities in the "fuel negative feelings among society towards Armenians" According to the commission, anti-Armenian prejudice "is so ingrained that describing someone as an Armenian in the media is considered by some people – including by certain Armenians themselves – to qualify as an insult that justifies initiating judicial proceedings against the persons making such statements." There is also a wide media coverage of some statements made by Azerbaijani public figures and statesmen which demonstrate intolerance. In 2008, Allahşükür Paşazadə, the religious leader of the Caucasus Muslims made a statement that "falsehood and betrayal are in the Armenian blood."

Indoctrination in schools

The Azerbaijani historian Arif Yunus has stated that Azerbaijani school textbooks label Armenians with epithets such as "bandits", "aggressors", "treacherous", and "hypocritical". He and his wife were jailed for allegedly spying for Armenia.
Yasemin Kilit Aklar in her study titled "NATION AND HISTORY IN AZERBAIJANI SCHOOL TEXTBOOKS" comes to the following conclusion:
Azerbaijani official textbooks misuse history to encourage hatred and feelings of ethnic and national superiority. The Armenians... are presented as historical enemies and derided in very strong language. Ata Yurdu stimulates direct hostility to Armenians and Russians. Even if the efforts to establish peace in Nagorno-Karabagh are successful, how can it be expected to survive? How can a new generation live with Armenians in peaceful coexistence after being inculcated with such prejudices? As of now, the civic nationalism that Azerbaijani officials speak of appears to be a distant myth or a mere rhetorical device.

Destruction of cultural heritage

According to the US Department of Justice:
Starting in 1998, Armenia began accusing Azerbaijan of embarking on a campaign of destroying a cemetery of Armenian khachkar carvings in the Armenian cemetery in Julfa. Several appeals were filed by both Armenian and international organizations, condemning the Azerbaijani government and calling on it to desist from such activity. In 2006, Azerbaijan barred European Parliamentarians from investigating the claims, charging them with a "biased and hysterical approach" to the issue and stating that it would only accept a delegation if that delegation visited Armenian-controlled territory as well. In the spring of 2006, a visiting journalist from the Institute for War and Peace Reporting reported that no visible traces of the Armenian cemetery remained. In the same year, photographs taken from Iran showed that the cemetery site had been turned into a military firing range.
As a response to Azerbaijan barring on-site investigation by outside groups, on 8 December 2010, the American Association for the Advancement of Science released an analysis of high-resolution satellite photographs of the Julfa cemetery site taken in 2003 and 2009. The AAAS concluded that the satellite imagery was consistent with the reports from observers on the ground, that "significant destruction and changes in the grade of the terrain" had occurred between 2003 and 2009, and that the cemetery area was "likely destroyed and later leveled by earth-moving equipment.

Incidents of violence and hatred

In 2004, the Azerbaijani lieutenant Ramil Safarov murdered Armenian lieutenant Gurgen Markaryan in his sleep at a Partnership for Peace NATO program. In 2006, Safarov was sentenced to life imprisonment in Hungary with a minimum incarceration period of 30 years. After his request under the Strasbourg convention, he was extradited on 31 August 2012 to Azerbaijan where he was greeted as a hero, pardoned by the Azerbaijani president despite contrary assurances made to Hungary, promoted to the rank of major and given an apartment and over eight years of back pay. The Republic of Armenia cut all diplomatic ties with Hungary after this incident.
In 2007, the leader of Azerbaijani national chess team, Teimour Radjabov, gave to a question on how he felt about playing against the Armenian team and he responded "the enemy is the enemy. We all have feelings of hate towards them."
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On 4 April, during the 2016 Armenian–Azerbaijani clashes, it was reported that Azerbaijani forces decapitated an Armenian soldier of Yezidi origin Karam Sloyan, with videos and pictures of his severed head posted on social networks.

Denying entry to Azerbaijan

Unless a visa or an official warrant is issued by Azerbaijani authorities, the government of Azerbaijan condemns any visit by foreign citizens to the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh, its surrounding territories and the Azerbaijani enclaves of Karki, Yuxarı Əskipara, Barxudarlı and Sofulu which are de jure part of Azerbaijan under Armenian control. Azerbaijan considers entering these territories through Armenia a violation of its visa and migration policy. Foreign citizens who enter these territories will be permanently banned from entering Azerbaijan and will be included on the list of people who are personae non gratae by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan.
In addition those declared personae non gratae, several other visitors have been barred from entering the country due to their ethnic Armenian identity. Diana Markosian, a journalist of American and Russian citizenship, who is also an ethnic Armenian, was prevented from entering Azerbaijan due to her ethnicity in 2011. Zafer Zoyan, an ethnic Turkish professional arm-wrestler, was barred from entering Azerbaijan because his last name resembled that of an Armenian.

Official position

During a 2009 hearing at the United States House of Representatives, Congressman Howard Berman said that he was "deeply concerned by the series of increasingly bellicose statements made over the past year about Nagorno-Karabakh by senior Azerbaijani officials," such as those by Azerbaijani Defense Minister Safar Abiyev's spokesman in 2004, who stated that "Within the next 25 years there will be no state of Armenia in the South Caucasus. These people... have no right to live in this region. Modern Armenia was built on historical Azerbaijani lands. I think that in 25–30 years its territory will again come under Azerbaijan's jurisdiction." In 2005, the mayor of Baku, Hajibala Abutalybov during at a meeting with a municipal delegation from Bavaria, Germany stated
Our goal is the complete elimination of Armenians. You, Nazis, already eliminated the Jews in the 1930s and 40s, right? You should be able to understand us."

Victor Krivopuskov, at the time an officer of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR and a member of a peacekeeping mission in Nagorno-Karabakh gives the following assessment of Azerbaijan's current state policy:
The criminals are promoted to the rank of heroes, monuments are erected on their burial places, which comes to prove that the government of Azerbaijan actually continues the policy of genocide which was initiated at the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th centuries."

On 16 July 2020, during the 2020 Armenian–Azerbaijani skirmishes the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry threatened with missile strike on nuclear power plant in Armenia.

Statements by President Ilham Aliyev

On 28 February 2012, during his closing speech at the conference on the results of the third year into the State Program on the socio-economic development of districts for 2009–2013, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev stated:
Aliyev's line that "our main enemies are Armenians of the world and the hypocritical and corrupt politicians under their control" was widely reported in the international media.
On 20 November 2012, President Aliyev tweeted several excerpts from his speech on 16 November at the 20th anniversary celebration of New Azerbaijan Party. He in particular made statements such as:
The speaker for Armenia's ruling Republican Party said in response: "Aliyev shows by his cynical proclamations that there are still supporters of fascism in the 21st century, and that this ideology flourishes thanks to leaders like him", adding that " remarks recall the 1930s–1940s and Hitler".
On 19 September 2013 during the opening ceremony of the "Genocide Memorial Complex built in the north-eastern town of Guba to honor victims of massacres committed in the area by Armenian and Bolshevik forces in 1918", President Aliyev stated that "Azerbaijan's state flag should be waved in Shusha, Khankendi and Azerbaijanis should live in their historical lands in future. Our historical lands are Irevan khanate, Goyce and Zangazur regions. There will be times; we will live in these lands." He went on praising Ramil Safarov saying "Azerbaijan has returned Ramil Safarov—its officer to homeland, given him freedom and restored the justice."
On 29 January 2015 Ilham Aliyev posted a tweet saying "Armenia is not even a colony, it is not even worthy of being a servant".

Stance on the Armenian Genocide

The Azerbaijani government officially denies the applicability of the word "genocide" to the 1915 Armenian Genocide.

Reaction

Armenia

In 2011, President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly said:
In May 2011, Shavarsh Kocharyan, the Armenian Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister, suggested a connection between the high level of anti-Armenian sentiment in Azerbaijan and the low level of democracy in that country, stating that: "Azerbaijan's leadership could find no factor to unite his people around the hereditary regime except the simple Armenophobia."
On 7 October 2008, the Armenian Foreign Affairs Ministry statement for the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights claimed that "anti-Armenian propaganda is becoming more and more the essential part of Azerbaijan's official policy." The statement blamed the Azerbaijani government for "developing and implementing large-scale propaganda campaign, disseminating racial hatred and prejudice against Armenians. Such behaviour of the Azerbaijani authorities creates a serious threat to regional peace and stability" and compared Azerbaijan with Nazi Germany stating "one cannot but draw parallels with the largely similar anti-Jewish hysteria in the Third Reich in the 1930s and early 1940s, where all the above-mentioned elements of explicit racial hatred were also evident."
The Armenian side also claimed that the Azerbaijani government "actively uses academic circles" for "distortion and re-writing of historic facts." It also accused Azerbaijan for "vandalism against Armenian cultural monuments and cemeteries in the lands historically inhabited by Armenians, as well as against Armenian Genocide memorials throughout the world" and called the destruction of the Armenian Cemetery in Julfa "the most horrific case."

Azerbaijan

On 28 November 2012, during the OSCE Review Conference, the Delegation of Azerbaijan stated that "Armenia should not overlook that the most telling refutation of its mendacious allegations of Azerbaijan in anti-Armenian propaganda and hate dissemination is undoubtedly the fact that, unlike Armenia, which has purged its territory of all Azerbaijanis and other non-Armenians and became a uniquely mono-ethnic State. Azerbaijan has worldwide recognized record of tolerance and peaceful coexistence of various ethnic and religious groups. This tradition is routed in the country's geographic location at the crossroads between East and West, which created opportunities for the Azerbaijani people to benefit from cultural and religious values of different cultures and religions."
On 22 June 2011, Ilham Aliyev and President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso gave joint press conference during which Radio Free Europe journalist asked: