Massacres of Azerbaijanis in Armenia in 1917–1921

Azerbaijanis in Armenia were ethnically cleansed on a large scale throughout 1917–1921 following the October Revolution and ending with the Sovietization of Armenia. The deportations and massacres involved the destructions of hundreds of villages—initially by Russian soldiers and Armenian volunteers and later by Armenian soldiers and partisans under the Dashnak (ARF) government of Armenia.

In the Kars Oblast, now mostly part of the Kars Province of Turkey, 82 villages were destroyed and 10,000–36,000 were displaced; in the Erivan Governorate, mostly corresponding to central Armenia and the Iğdır Province of Turkey, 60–211 villages were destroyed, 4,000 Azerbaijanis were killed, and 80,000–150,000 Muslims were displaced; in Zangezur, mostly corresponding to the Syunik Province of Armenia, 24–115 villages were destroyed, 7,729–10,000 Muslims were killed, and 40,000–50,000 displaced.

Soviet historians estimate that hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis and Kurds were displaced from Armenia, causing many to die from starvation or exposure, or seek refuge in Azerbaijan or Iran. It wasn't until the Sovietization of Armenia, by which time barely 10,000 Azerbaijanis remained in the country, that exiled Azerbaijanis were allowed to repatriate.

Background

Following the Russian annexation of Iranian Armenia, tens of thousands of Armenians repatriated to Russian Armenia in 1828–1831, thereby regaining an ethnic majority in their homeland for the first time in "several hundred years". Despite this, the 1897 Russian Empire Census indicated there to be 240,323 Muslims on the territory of present-day Armenia, mostly ethnic Azerbaijanis as indicated by previous censuses (forming over 30 percent of the population). As a result of rising nationalism in the South Caucasus, ethnic clashes erupted between Armenians and Azerbaijanis in the Russian Empire between 1905 and 1907, resulting in massacres of thousands and the destruction of 128 and 158 Armenian and Tatar villages, respectively.

Tensions rose after both Armenia and Azerbaijan became briefly independent from the Russia in 1918 as both quarrelled over where their common borders lay. Warfare coupled with the influx of Ottoman Armenian refugees (who had fled the Armenian genocide) resulted in widespread massacres of Muslims in Armenia. Azerbaijanis in Armenia became the "collateral victims" of the Armenian genocide carried out by the Ottoman Empire years prior; though they were represented by three delegates in an eighty-seat Armenian parliament, they were universally targeted as "Turkish fifth columnists".

In the Erivan Governorate and Kars Oblast

Azerbaijanis in Erivan (present-day Yerevan)

German historian Jörg Baberowski writes that in August 1917, Cossacks and Armenian volunteers in an attempt to drive Muslims out of the region carried out "horrific atrocities" in Doğubayazıt and Şahtaxtı (part of the Ağrı Province of Turkey and the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, respectively). Until March 1918, 100,000 Muslims throughout the Erivan Governorate were killed or fled to territories controlled by the Ottoman army due to destruction of 199 of their villages—the pogroms continued in September 1918 and May 1919. Historian Jamil Hasanli supports this by writing that 211 villages had been destroyed in the Erivan Governorate and the populations either driven out or killed—the number of refugees "exceeded 80,000". He also mentions Vladimir Stankevich's 1921 book titled The Fate of the Peoples of Russia (Судьба народов России) whereby Stankevich writes that the "angry and defeated" Russian army was "robbing and pillaging the Muslim population" and that as a result, 200 Muslim villages had been destroyed. Hasanli also writes of a 1922 memoir by Boris Baykov who wrote that Muslim villages were exclusively targeted during these events. Mustafa Kemal, the leader of the Turkish National Movement, in justifying an invasion of Armenia, claimed that reportedly nearly 200 villages were burned by Armenians and most of their 135,000 inhabitants were "eliminated". In the southern part of the Erivan Governorate, "hundreds of Muslim villages were destroyed, and 150,000 Muslim refugees who had been ousted to Azerbaijan were left homeless and without food". The British Chief Commissioner of Transcaucasia, Oliver Wardrop, wrote in a report that "Armenians had destroyed sixty Muslim villages in New Bayazit, Alexandropol, and Erivan provinces". In a report dated 22 April 1919 to the Azerbaijani minister of foreign affairs, it was stated that "certain Tatar villages of such provinces as Erivan, Echmiadzin and Surmeli … have been exposed to robberies and executions and 'are being cleansed' of their Tatar population".

Historian Richard Hovannisian writes that nearly a third of the 350,000 Muslims of the Erivan Governorate were displaced from their villages in 1918–1919 and living in the outskirts of Yerevan or along the former Russo-Turkish border in emptied Armenian homes. In 1919, the Armenian government declared the right of return of all refugees, however, this was unimplemented in emptied Muslim settlements occupied by Armenian refugees. During his tenure as minister of war, Rouben Ter Minassian played a role in the destruction of Muslim settlements and in the planned ethnic homogenisation of regions with Armenian refugees, such regions included Erivan and Daralayaz (present-day Ararat and Vayots Dzor provinces, respectively). Ter Minassian, displeased with the fact that Azerbaijanis in Armenia lived on fertile lands, waged at least three campaigns aimed at cleansing Azerbaijanis from 20 villages outside Erivan, as well as in the south of the country. According to French historian (and Ter Minassian's daughter-in-law) Anahide Ter Minassian, to achieve his goals, he used intimidation and negotiations, but above all, "fire and steel" and "the most violent methods to 'encourage' Muslims in Armenia" to leave. In dealing with "troublesome" Muslim bands in Etchmiadzin, Armenian militias looted Muslim villages along the railway, forcing their inhabitants to flee across the Aras river—in an instance of this, the men of six Muslim villages were massacred and the women distributed to the "Armenian warriors". In Daralayaz, 300 Muslims were killed following a peace treaty concluded between Armenia and Azerbaijan in late-1919. In 1918–1919, Muslim villages in the Nor Bayazet district were "pillaged and ravaged", the district was eventually "cleared of Muslims" through the destruction of 100 villages, however, the ethnic-clashes were provoked by seditious envoys of Azerbaijan.

In 1919, Ottoman commander Halil Bey in a letter to Turkish revolutionary Kâzım Karabekir claimed that 24 villages in Surmalu had been razed. Hasanli writes that 82 Muslim villages were burned in the Kars Oblast, as described not only by Armenians, but also Greeks who had also fled Kars during the Ottoman advance. In October 1919, Muslim authorities in Kars appealed to Azerbaijan for means to transport 25,000 refugees to them. A French source from 1919 writes that Armenian forces put to fire 38 villages in Surmalu, affecting 3,500 people and leaving 40,000 homeless. The source also adds that 70 villages were destroyed in Kars, 50 in Kagizman, and that 20 "génie" [sic] villages were destroyed, causing the killed and wounded to number in the tens of thousands.150,000 Muslims were rendered homeless, causing many to die from typhus and other diseases, many taking refugee in Erzurum, Batumi, and Azerbaijan.

In Zangezur

Andranik and his partisans

Throughout 1918–1921, Armenian partisan commanders Andranik Ozanian and Garegin Nzhdeh brought about a "re-Armenianization" of Zangezur through the massacre of 7,729–10,000 Azerbaijani Muslims and expulsion of tens of thousands (40,000–50,000, most fleeing into the adjacent Jebrail and Jevanshir counties), particularly in the Barkushat–Geghvadzor valleys and southeast of Goris where nine villages and forty hamlets were "wiped out" in January 1920. In September 1918, Andranik's partisans destroyed 18 Muslim villages and killed 500 women—according to a report by local chief of police, the massacre was requested by local Armenians who sought the exiled and killed peoples' property. The number of Muslim settlements in Zangezur destroyed by Andranik and Nzhdeh range from 24, 49 (9 villages and 40 hamlets), 100, to 115. The destruction of these settlements and the restriction imposed by local Armenians on Muslim shepherds taking their flocks into Zangezur served as the casus belli for Azerbaijan's campaign against Zangezur in late-1919. On 23 November 1919, a peace agreement to end the fighting in Zangezur was signed by Armenia and Azerbaijan, the latter of whom honoured the agreement by withdrawing its forces, however, the Armenian army continued to destroy and plunder Muslim villages. During the 1921 anti-Soviet revolt known as the Republic of Mountainous Armenia, Nzhdeh in taking control of Zangezur drove "out the last of its Azerbaijani population".

Statistics

According to the 1897 Russian Empire Census, the territory of Armenian-controlled Zangezur was 68 percent (59,207) Armenian and 31 percent (27,031) Muslim with a total population of 87,252. According to the 1922 agricultural census, the first census after the brief independence of Armenia, it was revealed that Zangezur's population had declined to 75,994, 89 percent (67,587) of whom were Armenians and 11 percent (8,224) were Azerbaijanis. Thus, the Armenian population increased by 14 percent whilst the Azerbaijani Muslim population decreased by 70 percent.

Historical ethnic composition of Armenian Zangezur

Nationality	1897		1922
	Number	%	Number	%
Armenians	59,207	67.9	67,587	88.9
Azerbaijanis	27,031	31.0	8,224	10.8
Others	1,014	1.2	183	0.2
TOTAL	87,252	100.0	75,994	100.0

Aftermath

Khoren I of Armenia, the archbishop of Yerevan in 1910–1924

According to British reports, some 250 Muslim villages had been burnt in the eastern Caucasus as a result of a killing spree initiated by Armenian units led by Andranik. By time of the Sovietization of Armenia, little more than 10,000 Azerbaijanis remained within the borders of Armenia. By the time of 1922 agricultural census, some 60,000 Azerbaijani refugees had been repatriated, thereby bringing their total up to 72,596. Muslims numbered 240,323 (30.1 percent of the population on the territory of present-day Armenia) in 1897, by 1922, Azerbaijanis fell to 77,767 (9.9 percent of the population). Nakhchivan, which was allotted to the Azerbaijan SSR, was "literally depopulated and turned into a desert" and "almost a third of the Muslim population" fled to Iran.

In April 1920, the archbishop of Yerevan, Khoren I of Armenia, admitted that "a few Tatar villages under the Armenian Government have suffered" while also justifying it by stating that "they [Azerbaijanis] were the aggressors, either they actually attacked us, or they were being organised by the Azerbaijan agents and official representatives to rise against the Armenian Government." Turkish-German historian Taner Akçam posits that the massacres against the Muslim population of Armenia are exaggerated or even outright fabrications in order to "reinforce the image of the 'Armenian peril.'"

International reaction

On 8 April 1920, Lord Curzon at the Paris Peace Conference warned the Armenian delegation that the actions of the "three chiefs" (referring to the destruction of Tatar villages and massacres by Dro, Hamazasp and Gyulkhandanyan) was doing "great harm" to their cause—Curzon also referred to an "official Tartar communique" forwarded by Wardrop attesting to the destruction of 300 villages. The newspaper Le Temps also wrote that "several dozens of thousands Muslims had been killed in Armenia during the months of June and July 1920".

To assist the destitute 70,000–80,000 Muslim refugees living south of Yerevan (50,000 of whom were dependent on relief aid during the winter), the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic transferred large amounts of funds. It was reported in 1919–1920 that there were 13,000 Muslims in Yerevan and another 50,000 throughout Armenia. Muslims, in contrast with their coreligionists in the south of the country lived "acceptably" and with "generally cordial" interethnic relations in the north. The 40,000 Muslims who had fled from Armenia to Azerbaijan were resettled through a 69 million ruble allocation by the Azerbaijani government.

Soviet historiography

In his June 1919 report, Anastas Mikoyan stated that "the organised extermination of the Muslim population in Armenia threatened to result in Azerbaijan declaring a war [against Armenia] any minute". According to the Kavkazskiy etnograficheskiy sbornik (Кавказский этнографический сборник, 'Caucasian ethnographic collection'), "the settlements of Azerbaijani population in Armenia had become empty." Soviet ethnographer Nataliya Volkova writes that the ruling party of Armenia, the ARF, followed a policy of "cleansing the country from outsiders" which "targeted the Muslim population", especially those who had been driven out from Nor Bayazet, Erivan, Etchmiadzin, and Sharur-Daralayaz counties. A Soviet Armenian source writes that at least 200,000 Turks and Kurds were driven from Armenia in 1919 as a result of the ARF government. Another Soviet Armenian historian, Bagrat Boryan, charged that the ARF had not established state authority for the administrative needs of Armenia, but for the "extermination of the Muslim population and looting of their property".

Casualties

Distribution of Azerbaijanis in modern borders of Armenia (1886–1890)

Distribution of Azerbaijanis in the Armenian SSR (1926)

According to Lord Curzon, 4,000 Tatars, including women and children, near the Armenia–Turkey border had been massacred, and 36,000 expelled by cannon shots. Historian Aydin Balayev writes that of a commission that found that in the summer and autumn of 1918 alone, 7,729 Azerbaijanis in Zangezur were killed, including 3,257 men, 2,276 women, and 2,196 children. Mustafa Kemal claimed that the Armenians had reportedly burned nearly 200 Muslim villages "in the Erivan district alone" and "eliminated" most of their 135,000 inhabitants. The summary of casualties are as follow:

Region	Villages destroyed	Population massacred	Population displaced
Erivan Governorate	60–211	4,000	80,000–150,000
Surmalu uezd	24–38		40,000
Kars Oblast	82		10,000–36,000
Zangezur uezd	24–115	7,729–10,000	40,000–50,000
TOTAL	190–446	51,729–54,000	170,000–276,000

See also

• Deportation of Azerbaijanis from Armenia
• Western Azerbaijan
• Anti-Azerbaijani sentiment in Armenia
• Demographics of Armenia
• Armenians in Azerbaijan

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