Western Azerbaijan: This Rhetoric Has Turned More into a Tool of Pressure

The topic of Western Azerbaijan has recently been frequently raised by officials from both Azerbaijan and Armenia.

On January 7, during an interview with local television, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev touched upon the issue of the return of Western Azerbaijanis.

“This issue will not be taken off the agenda until such time as Azerbaijanis are able to settle in Western Azerbaijan, including Western Zangezur, under secure conditions,” the President said.

He added that Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan should receive representatives of the Western Azerbaijan Community. Ilham Aliyev also stated that “the Zangezur corridor must be opened—and it will be opened.”

Subsequently, the Armenian Prime Minister posted on his social media account that Western Azerbaijan consists of the districts of Gazakh, Tovuz, Aghstafa, Gadabay, Dashkasan, Kalbajar, Lachin, Gubadli, and Zangilan. There is no Western Azerbaijan beyond these, and there cannot be any. Pashinyan also noted that discussing the issue of the rights of refugees from Armenia under the term “Western Azerbaijan” puts into question the territorial integrity of the Republic of Armenia, which is a subject of international law.

In the response statement by the Western Azerbaijan Community to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, it is noted that the Western Azerbaijan issue is not about territory but about human rights.
“We have repeatedly expressed that we respect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Armenia. With regard to the term ‘Western Azerbaijan’ let us emphasize that it is a concept based on historical facts and used within the framework of our right to self-identification.”

Regarding the subject, historian and Chairman of the National Council of Democratic Forces, Jamil Hasanli, spoke to ASTNA.

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Question: “Mr. Jamil, in the interview on January 7 given by President Ilham Aliyev to local television, he touched upon the issue of the return of Western Azerbaijanis. ‘This issue will not be taken off the agenda until such time as Azerbaijanis are able to settle in Western Azerbaijan, including Western Zangezur, under secure conditions,’ the President said, adding that Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan should receive representatives of the Western Azerbaijan Community. In your opinion, how realistic is the President’s proposal?”

Answer: After the victory in the 44-day war, this issue has been repeatedly discussed. The expressions and demands for a return to Western Azerbaijan and a settlement in Zangezur have been frequently voiced by the Azerbaijani leadership. However, as international pressure on this matter increased, Ilham Aliyev explained that he had in mind for the Western Azerbaijanis to travel to their homeland as tourists. In his most recent interview on January 7, he put the matter in even firmer terms and said that if Armenia creates the proper conditions, the Western Azerbaijanis will be able to return to their ancestral homelands. Simply put, a security guarantee must be provided. They should be given the right to live there, and, of course, conditions should be created that allow them to operate. “That is our demand, and I hope the day will come when the Western Azerbaijanis return to their native lands,” he declared. At the same time, Ilham Aliyev added, “This issue will not be taken off the agenda until such time as Azerbaijanis are able to settle in Western Azerbaijan, including Western Zangezur, under secure conditions.” The point is that when the Armenian leadership takes steps to extricate itself from the influence of Russia and seeks integration with the West, that is precisely when the demands for returning to Western Azerbaijan and settling in Zangezur intensify—and this intensity proceeds in parallel with Russia. If you notice, after the Armenian government approved a draft law on “initiating the process for the Republic of Armenia’s membership in the European Union” and submitted it to parliament for discussion, these demands by Azerbaijan began to regain their actuality. For example, the website “Caliber.az” wrote on January 11 that if Armenia were to join the European Union, Iran would occupy Armenia. The site further added that Azerbaijan pursues an independent foreign policy and does not intend to turn its territory into a training ground for Western states. First of all, which Western country would want to turn Azerbaijani territory into a training ground? Twenty percent of Azerbaijani territories were occupied with Russian weapons and with direct Russian involvement; for over 30 years, they have been a Russian “polygone”; and after the 44-day war, nearly four years of the presence of the Russian army on our territory have restricted our sovereignty. Or take the case of APA’s Moscow correspondent—rather than investigating the attitude of Russian officials toward the Azerbaijani plane that was shot down two weeks ago—he went door-to-door preparing news and interviews under the headline “In the European Union, Armenia can only expect death.” One of the factors that is reigniting the rhetoric around Zangezur is precisely that.

“To what extent are the ‘return’ demands of Azerbaijan realistic?” It seems that in this matter, the recently elected American President Donald Trump’s rhetoric of turning Canada into a state of the United States did not play much of a role. Of course, it should be borne in mind that the eastern regions of Armenia and Zangezur have been the ancestral homelands of Azerbaijanis and Turks for centuries. Particularly, after the announcement of the speech by Armenia’s first president Levon Ter-Petrosyan in July 1993, it was confirmed at the state level that in 3 districts of Armenia and in Zangezur, Azerbaijanis, who formed the majority, were forcibly expelled, and ethnic cleansing was carried out at the state level. However, it should be noted that the foundations for the return of Azerbaijanis, who were expelled by force, to their homeland were undermined by the fact that they were given Azerbaijani citizenship and Azerbaijani passports by the Aliyevs themselves. Undoubtedly, this was necessary for the Aliyevs for their own interests in power and elections. But if their intention was really to bring these people back to their homeland, their refugee status should not have been cancelled. On the other hand, if the issue of return were a realistic demand, Armenia could make a similar claim. Just as Azerbaijanis have lived on today’s Armenian territory, Armenians too have lived on Azerbaijani territory. In President Ilham Aliyev’s interview, this demand is raised, yet the possible consequences are not taken into account.

Question: “In his statement, the President later mentioned that on his social media account, Armenia’s Prime Minister wrote that Western Azerbaijan comprises the districts of Gazakh, Tovuz, Aghstafa, Gadabay, Dashkasan, Kalbajar, Lachin, Gubadli, and Zangilan. There is no and cannot be any Western Azerbaijan beyond these. To what extent is Pashinyan correct in this matter?”

Answer: Pashinyan is drawing on the current reality. Both sides are issuing statements that 90 percent of the provisions of the peace agreement have been agreed upon. The remaining 10 percent are not related to territorial issues. In this case, demarcation and delimitation between Azerbaijan and Armenia will most likely affect the districts of Gazakh, Tovuz, Gadabay, Dashkasan, Kalbajar, Lachin, Gubadli, and Zangilan. However, for a long time in public opinion, the expression “Western Azerbaijan” will remain in cases like Goyche, Vedi, Basarkechar, and Zangezur. It is likely that Armenians, too, will not forget the expression “Artsakh” for a while and will not quickly adapt to the realities of Karabakh. But it should be borne in mind that when the USSR collapsed, the internationally recognized borders and territories with which both republics were admitted to the United Nations and the Council of Europe were precisely those. By occupying Azerbaijani lands and keeping control over territories they occupied for 30 years, and by the presence of the Russian army for nearly 4 years after the 44-day war, Armenia has indeed violated these realities, disregarding international law, the UN Charter, and the universal principles of international relations.

Question: “Pashinyan also said that discussing the rights of Armenia’s refugees under the term ‘Western Azerbaijan’ puts into question the territorial integrity of the Republic of Armenia, a subject of international law. Is it really correct for a country to invoke history to refer to its territory as ‘Western Azerbaijan’?”

Answer: You know, this is a very sensitive issue. Many of those who were born in the lands considered homelands by both the Azerbaijani refugees from Armenia and the Armenian refugees from Azerbaijan are still alive. People have had to bury relatives from both sides. It is now very difficult to simply forget all of this quickly. However, turning the refugee issue into a territorial claim is also unpromising. Both after the First World War and the Second World War, there were many similar conflicts and disputes between France and Germany, for example, over Alsace-Lorraine—which for decades became a “conflict zone” between the two states. But once national borders became largely symbolic, time itself resolved the issue. Territorial claims based on historical reference are, in a sense, a kind of historical ailment. In 1919, many of the states at the Versailles Conference made expansive territorial claims. For example, the Iranian delegation demanded that all the territories that belonged to the Safavid State—the State of Aliyyeh from the Iron Gate Derbend in the Caucasus to the lands below the Sir Darya and Amu Darya in Central Asia—should be returned to Iran. The Armenian representatives claimed that the lands belonging to the ancient Armenian kingdom should be given to them. Then the Italians said that if, after the war, world territories were to be divided according to such criteria, then the lands that once belonged to the Ancient Roman Empire should also be given to Italy.

Question: “Ilham Aliyev also said that ‘the Zangezur corridor must be opened—and it will be opened.’ Doesn’t this, in fact, increase the possibility of renewed military conflict among peoples? Is it really possible that the Zangezur corridor will be opened by military means?”

Answer: There is no doubt that the Zangezur corridor must be opened—and it will be. However, this should not be seen as an ultimatum; rather, it is to be achieved within the framework of normalized relations. Ilham Aliyev is drawing the issue into the field of coercion, turning it into a tool of pressure against Armenia. In light of recent events, he is using it as a means to undermine Armenia’s integration with the West, and as mentioned above, he frames it in a way that suits Russian interests. For example, for a long time the Azerbaijani side demanded that the Zangezur corridor be protected by Russian military and border troops. Why? Was it not an attempt to keep Russia in the region? The territory belongs to Armenia; it is exclusively Armenia’s right to decide who guards the corridor. Why should Azerbaijan be interested in the corridor’s protection by Russia? There must be a rational explanation. This is one side of the issue. The other side is that after the initial rhetoric regarding the Zangezur corridor following the first war, Ilham Aliyev said that if Armenia did not want it, they would withdraw the corridor from Iranian territory—and things had even started. Now again, the rhetoric of opening the Zangezur corridor by military means is re-emerging. Yet, not long ago, Ilham Aliyev’s foreign policy aide, Hikmet Hajiyev, stated that the Zangezur corridor had lost its significance. In other words, there is no fixed, continuous approach to the issue; the approach changes according to circumstances.

Question: “In your opinion, do the Azerbaijanis who were expelled from Armenia really want to live in Armenia again, or is this merely political rhetoric?”

Answer: It is difficult for me to speak on behalf of those people. There is a moral dimension to this issue. However, it should be taken into account that more than four years have passed since the 44-day war, and only 2,649 families, totaling 10,381 individuals, have been able to return to their homeland from among the refugees within the country. In the coming years, Azerbaijan as a state must prioritize the resettlement of internally displaced persons to their native lands and their inclusion in the land reform that was carried out across the country in the 1990s. After all, if a villager does not have the land under his feet, he is more of a hired worker than a villager, because there is a fundamental difference between the sense of belonging of a tenant worker and that of a villager. The return is, of course, desirable and understandable for both sides—it is an expression of nostalgia for one’s homeland. However, its mechanism of realization is not so simple. At present, this rhetoric has mostly turned into a tool of pressure. Just as there was previously a rhetoric of “being the president of 40 million Azerbaijanis,” which served less to liberate the South and more as a means of putting pressure on Iran.

Question: “In your view, how can the issue of the Azerbaijanis expelled from Armenia be resolved?”

Answer: We need to move toward solid peace. As long as Russia remains in the region, it will muddy the waters and will not allow a durable peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia. For a long time, Armenia had played the role of a Russian outpost in the region. Now, unfortunately, that function is being carried out by Azerbaijan. Putin and Aliyev are aligned on this and related issues. Russia wants to achieve what it cannot do on its own through Azerbaijan. The goal is to prevent the South Caucasus from becoming a symbol of the West’s democracy. When Armenia begins active efforts to join the European Union, demands for the territorial integrity of Western Azerbaijan come up and assert themselves. This is something akin to a nightmare for Aliyev. Currently, the rising tensions in Zangezur are not so much about returning those disillusioned from their homelands to Armenia, but precisely related to that. The issue of the Azerbaijanis expelled from Armenia (as well as the Armenians expelled from Azerbaijan) has passed through heavy historical stages. There are the bloody tragedies of 1905-1906 and 1917-1918, the deportations of 1948-1953, and the ethnic cleansings of 1988-1990. Not only is there a political divide between the peoples, but the moral divide is also very deep. Time is needed for these wounds to heal. However, we must not allow the process to devolve into something resembling the case of Alsace-Lorraine. In 1871, Germany was strong and held that region; in the First World War the French were strong and regained Alsace; in 1940, the Germans reoccupied it. Approaching the issue from the standpoint of “who is stronger” only promises long-term instability. Azerbaijan pays its citizens a minimum pension of 202 dollars and a slightly higher minimum wage, yet for 2025 it has adopted a military budget of 5 billion dollars. These annual budget expenses account for 6.6 percent. Meanwhile, for the past three years Russia has been waging war against Ukraine—and essentially against the united West—with a military budget that is about 6.2 percent of its total budget. Every step taken must have a rational explanation.