Cultural Genocide against Christian sites in Nagorno-Karabakh

The Septemer 2023 invasion resulted in the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenian population.

• 500 Christian sites housing approximately 6,000 monuments in the wider Artsakh region are now under full Azerbaijani control.
• The invasion put at risk the Amaras, Gandzasar, and Dadivank monasteries, as well as the “We Are Our Mountains” statue.
• The expectation is that the systematic destruction of Christian sites in the autonomous Nakhichevan region of Azerbaijan, that took place between 1997 and 2011, will be repeated.
• Cornell University’s Caucasus Heritage Watch reported on  11 November that Azerbaijan had already  destroyed an Armenian church in Hadrut and removed crosses from the domes of the Armenian Holy Mother of God Cathedral in Stepanakert.

After the ethnic cleansing campaign of September 2023 removed 120,00 Armenians from their homes, Professor Christina Maranci wrote in Time Magazine: “We know well what happened in Julfa, in Nakhichevan: a spectacular landscape of 16th-century Armenian tombstones was erased from the face the earth by Azerbaijan over a period of years. We know what happened to the Church of the Mother of God in Jebrayil and the Armenian cemetery in the village of Mets Tagher  – both were completely scrubbed from the landscape using earthmoving equipment like bulldozers…The brazenness of these actions…“suggests a growing confidence that [Baku] can remake their newly retaken territories in whatever image they want.” The image Baku is creating is an Islamic image. They have set out to systematically destroy Christian heritage in the border lands between Christian and Muslim Eurasia. As Maranci makes clear these actions fit into a longer-term pattern of Cultural Genocide and there are clear precedents for Azerbaijan’s actions, which amount to a sustained policy of the destruction of Christian heritage and the Islamification of these contested lands:

• Caucasus Heritage Watch conducted a forensic investigation using high-resolution satellite imagery, revealing that between 1997 and 2011 Azerbaijan eradicated the entire inventory of Christian sites in the Nakhichevan autonomous region, including 89 churches, 5,840 khachkars (crosses), and over 22,000 tombstones.
• Simultaneously, the government of Azerbaijan systematically falsified documentary records to eradicate the existence of the sites from the archives.
• The destruction has extended to sites in Turkey including key Christian sites: St. Stephen Bulgarian Orthodox Church (Istanbul); Soumela Monastery (Trabzon); Cathedral of the Holy Cross (Van); Hacıbektaş Dervish Lodge and Shrine Museum (Nevşehir); Şeyh Mattar Mosque (Diyarbakır); and the Great Synagogue of Edirne (Edirne).
• After the 2020 war on Armenia, Azerbaijan continued the destruction of cemeteries and churches including the bombing and then dismantling of the Ghazanchetsots Cathedral in Shushi.
• Azerbaijani propaganda falsely claims Armenian Christian monuments in Nagorno-Karabakh as non-Armenian or forgeries.

A combination of disinformation, misinformation, limiting access to sites and falsifying records and the expense of remote-monitoring techniques constitutes an active attempt to hide the policy and deny it:

• Azerbaijan’s restriction on ground monitoring and the limitations of satellite imagery contribute to challenges in securing accurate documentation.
• Misinformation, often due to lack of information, can hinder preservation efforts.
• Disinformation or simple genocide denial, including multiple false narratives circulate on social media constituting a policy of genocide denial echoing Turkey’s long denial of the First Armenian Genocide.
• Azerbaijan’s goal appears to be the complete erasure of Christian heritage.
• Contrary to some reports, no Armenian church has been converted into a mosque in Azerbaijan, which would at least indicate some respect for its religious heritage. Sites are simply destroyed.