Azerbaijan's Prospects in Nagorno-Karabakh

Abstract

1 Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Vol. XXXIV, No.4, Summer 2011 Azerbaijan’s Prospects in Nagorno-Karabakh Alec Rasizade* It is impossible to understand the historic hostilities and territorial claims in this part of the Caucasus (as well as the current stage of the conflict) without a view of history of the region and an understanding of the more recent developments. Let us begin with historical facts. Historical developments from: 4th century to 1988 The national identity of the region of Nagorno-Karabakh in the Caucasus is disputed between the Azeri and Armenian historians: it is populated by Caucasian Albanians or indigenous Armenians who lived there between the rivers Kura and Araxes. (The medieval Caucasian Albania should not be mistaken for the modern Balkan Albania). They name this province historically either Aran (Caucasian possession of the Persian Empire) or Artsakh (the tenth province of the ancient Kingdom of Armenia). Karabakh is a Turkic name given to the plain between the two rivers by the nomads who migrated here from Central Asia in the 11th century, literally it means the Black Garden, while Nagorno is a Russian word meaning Highland. Therefore, Nagorno-Karabakh means the Upper (mountainous) part of Karabakh (Haut-Karabakh in French), which had been inhabited by either Albanian or Armenian mountaineers, but not by the Turkic tribes who settled since their arrival in the grasslands of Lower Karabakh. This division has remained intact to the present day: Armenians live in the Upper Karabakh, while Azeris (the descendants of those Turkic tribes) populate the Lower Karabakh. *Alec Rasizade has earned his doctorate in modern history from Moscow State University and works at the Historical Research Center in Washington. In the intervening years he was a professor of history at Azerbaijan State University in Baku, then worked at the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow, the Harriman Institute of Columbia University in New York, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. He is the author of more than 60 scholarly publications, including two monographs: The Truman Doctrine (Baku: Academia, 1980) and Turkey in the System of NATO (Moscow: Nauka, 1990). Email:rasizade@juno.com 2 Christianity spread to Transcaucasia in the early 4th century, while Albania, the Christian kingdom that existed on the territory of modern Azerbaijan before the arrival of Turkic tribes, disappeared since then. After the partition of Armenia between Byzantium and Persia in 387, Artsakh became part of the Kingdom of Albania, but in 469 Albania itself became a Persian satrapy under the name of Aran. Albania is a Latin name for this country, its native name is unknown, for Albanians lacked a written language. We know them mainly through Armenian chronicles. As for Armenia (which is also a Latin name for the native Hayastan), after the creation of Armenian written language by Mesrop Mashtotz in the 5th century, a rise of Armenian culture began in Artsakh/Aran, which remained under the Persian rule until the Arab invasion of the 7th century, which broke Albania into several small principalities, some of them rapidly Armenized in the face of coercive conversion into Islam enforced by the Caliphate. In this period of Arab conquest, the political and cultural life in Aran/Artsakh did not cease and in the 8th century a distinctive local Christian culture was shaped, as opposed to Islamization of surrounding nations, including the Turkic ancestors of modern Azeris who arrived in the region three centuries later. Albanian monasteries, churches and towns of Aran acquired an Armenian significance marked by khachkars, the stone crosses, before the arrival of Azeris. Thus Christianity helped to preserve the native identity of Aran/Artsakh from an absorption by the powerful Muslim empires that dominated the Caucasus. Proceeding from these historical facts, Armenian ideologues insist that the Muslim Azerbaijan cannot be considered a successor to the Christian Albania culturally nor linguistically, and claim that only the Christian Armenia is a genuine heir to Albanian heritage including the area of Aran/Artsakh.2 This is the pivotal principle of Armenian historical claim to Nagorno-Karabakh. Azeri ideology claims the same area as the historic province of Albania, which existed on the territory of modern Azerbaijan. Armenians...