Aghdam residents to return to another city

Baku/30.0523/Turan: Television showed rebuilt Lachin, the foundations of villages and towns being rebuilt in Karabakh. The new Lachin is ready and residents are returning to it. The town is lined with one or two-storey cottages on the banks of the Khakar River.  It is the old and new Azerbaijani Lachin at the same time.

Aghdam resident Ray Kerimoglu says it was also necessary to rebuild the city: "Restore private houses and administrative buildings where they were before the Armenian invasion. And high-rise buildings should be built nearby; there is enough space in Aghdam," he told Turan.

"Aghdam should have been built in its place, restoring the houses where they were, as was done in Lachin. Because the previous location of all the houses is known, the foundations have been preserved. Many even had walls. The city's public institutions, catering facilities, museums and libraries could also be restored. The old Aghdam, with a capacity of 45-50.000 residents, could be rebuilt as it was. A new city of 50,000 could be built on the vacant territory. It would be a 100.000 city. Costs would be lower, people would return to their places faster.  It is not too late to do so," says Kerimoglu.

Aghdam residents have spoken out in the press about their vision of reconstruction. In June 2021, Haci Ferman Mammadov, the Aghdam poet Haci Mammad Azanchi, circulated a status post on Facebook.

Haci Azanchi asked the President to preserve the old look of Aghdam if possible and if other houses will be built, to allow the residents of the razed neighborhoods to visit their homes and say goodbye to Aghdam.

The author suggested that the Aghdam residents should gather together and send a collective appeal to President Aliyev. But there was no mass expression of opinion. The authorities did not listen to individual speakers.  Now Aghdam Residence, a residential town of six-storey buildings, reminiscent of Baku's micro-districts, is being built there, next to a huge field of ruins of the former Aghdam

"We were so happy to liberate the city that we considered it irrelevant to raise claims to the state," Kerimoglu laments.

Agdam resident Asaf Guliyev told Turan that he wanted to return to his old town. "In the old Aghdam there was a famous school N1 with famous graduates. There was a bookstore in the centre, they called it Taghi Mazin. There cannot be Aghdam without these buildings, without the House of Tea, where there was a pear tree, under which buses were going to Shusha, and the residents called this place Armudun dibi. The old music school and mugham school should be built, which can be restored from the photos that have survived. We should bring back to life the place in the old Aghdam, where artisans worked," Guliyev added. 

Architect-restorer Adalat Mammadov stands for the restoration of the old Aghdam, preserving its historic appearance. In the eighties he restored the Aghdam mosque. Today he is against the new 'glass Aghdam'.  The architect proposes restoring the city and returning the iconic places, including the popularly known trees that had their names.

"Of course, it would be better to restore our old houses. And now what is the point of Karabakhis moving from one new building to another?" - Hikmet Mammadov asked on Facebook.-0-