Photo courtesy of Raimond Spekking via Peace News.
By Kiera McLaughlin ‘26
STAFF WRITER
Content warning: This article discusses mass death and state-sanctioned violence.
Over 100,000 Nagorno-Karabakh refugees had crossed the Armenia-Azerbaijan border into Armenia as of Sept. 24, 2023, Armenpress reported. Only 34,607 of those refugees had been accepted by the government for accommodation. As of Sept. 24, Armenia had space to accommodate only 40,000 people from the Nagorno-Karab region of Azerbaijan, according to Reuters.
The Nagorno-Karabakh region was home to a majority Christian ethnic Armenian population and was reclaimed by Azerbaijan in 2020 after a six-week conflict, Reuters reported.
Originally established by the Soviet Union in 1923 within the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic territory, the Nagorno-Karabakh region was 95% ethnically Armenian, as the Council on Foreign Relations explained on its website.
The Nagorno-Karabakh region is entirely surrounded by Azerbaijan territory. When Armenia and Azerbaijan became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991, the region also claimed independence from Azerbaijan, wherein it was geographically located . However, war broke out across the region between Armenia and Azerbaijan, with Armenia winning and gaining control in 1993.
A ceasefire was agreed upon in 1994, which led to Nagorno-Karabakh having its own self-proclaimed government and independence until the warring neighboring countries broke the arrangement almost 30 years later, the Council on Foreign Relations explained. In 2020, the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War broke out over the region and, in a deal reinforced by Russian peacekeepers, Azerbaijan reclaimed the majority of the region, carrying out a genocide of the Nagorno-Karabakh population.
According to Al Jazeera, in December 2020, the Azerbaijani government implemented a blockade between Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh region. This prevented food and fuel from reaching the area, then home to approximately 120,000 people. The blockade was instated as a response to claims from Azerbaijan that Armenia was using the connection for mineral extraction and weapons transportation to separatist movements.
Then, at the beginning of September 2023, Azerbaijan attacked the region — leading to more than 200 fatalities and around 400 injuries — until the Nagorno-Karabakh officials agreed to a ceasefire orchestrated by the Russian government, CNN reported. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said that they achieved sovereignty over the region “with an iron fist.”
In the past, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has warned of evidence that ethnic cleansing was underway in the territory, CNN reported. In an official transcript published by Reuters, he said, “If proper conditions are not created for the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh to live in their homes and there are no effective protection mechanisms against ethnic cleansing, the likelihood is rising that the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh will see exile from their homeland as the only way to save their lives and identity.”
On Sept. 22, in a statement given to Armenpress, 123 Turkish scholars delivered clear warnings of ethnic cleansing and genocide in Nargorno-Karabakh. The statement claimed that the goal of the Azerbaijan government is “to end through violence the existence of Armenians within borders drawn by force.”
They group alledged that the Azeris — the majority ethnic group in Azerbaijan — had already destroyed an Armenian cemetery in Julfa in an attempt to erase Armenian identity. The scholars called for genocide prevention from “all countries, led by the U.N., all international organizations and the international community, to assume an active stance.”
The United States Agency for International Development promised additional humanitarian support for the displaced Nagorno-Karabakh population on Sept. 26. “The people living in Nagorno-Karabakh deserve an end to violence, they deserve to live in safety, and they deserve to maintain their Armenian cultural connections and the ability to move back and forth as they choose,” Samantha Power, the administrator of USAID, stated.
The violence has not ceased. As some of the people fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh were getting fuel on Sept. 25, a gas station near Stepanakert exploded, and at least 20 people were killed and 290 were wounded, CNN reported. This was devastating for the refugees trying to escape, but David Babayan, one of the advisors to the president of the Nagorno-Karabakh, said that he didn’t think the explosion was a terrorist act.
On Sept. 26, according to Armenpress, the traffic to leave the region was “tens of kilometers” long, making it impossible for all residents to vacate by car. A reporter for Armenpress trying to make it to Armenia in the traffic said that her car was “able to drive only a hundred meters in four or five hours […] The authorities told us to wait, they assured [us] that all of us will be able to leave normally.”
The leaders of the Nagorno-Karabakh government informed Reuters that the whole region would be migrating to Armenia due to fear of the Azerbaijan government and the threat of ethnic cleansing. This is already underway, with almost 84% of the Nagorno-Karabakh population in Armenia as of Sept. 30. Babayan claimed that “99.9% [of the population] prefer to leave our historic lands” in an interview with Reuters.
Since then, the Nagorno-Karabakh government has decreed it will be disbanding in the coming year, The New York Times reported. The same article explains that the Azerbaijan government had also arrested some leaders of the region's government — including Ruben Vardanyan, who was the leader of the territory — on claims of financing terrorism.
Some refugees are deciding whether or not to keep moving beyond Armenia for fear that Azerbaijan will not stop with Nagorno-Karabakh territory. Armen Bagadasaryan, who is thinking of moving to Russia, told The New York Times that “if we had anything to defend ourselves with, we would. But we were sitting in a bottle. I still cannot believe that we have left our city.”