Karabakh. This is where majestic mountains and enchanting forests stand sentinel. Its picturesque landscape needs to be read, not merely observed, as behind the stunning views lies a tragic history. When this mountainous tableau is imagined through competing ethnic claims and different interpretations of history, it looks more like a time-capsule world, where time has stopped and the same moment is experienced endlessly.
Studying Karabakh serves as a reminder of the fundamental illness of nation-building: the conflicting dreams of past historical glory and the endless struggle to establish a sovereign nation-state. It has now been 35 years that Armenia and Azerbaijan have been entangled in one such struggle – in other words, in armed conflict over a territory larger than Lebanon. Two major wars have ensued, resulting in the forced displacement of over a million people and the tragic loss of thousands of lives. This is the human face of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over Karabakh, which began in 1988 when the Soviet Union began to crumble.
But this conflict has a pre-1988 history; back in the early 20th century, these two nations, located in imperial peripheries, engaged in mutual acts of extermination and forced expulsion with the goal of establishing two separate, territorially-defined nation-states – including what one might call Azerbaijan’s First Republic, covering not only Karabakh but also other contested areas, such as Zangezur and Nakhchivan.
As implausible as it may sound today, for the Second Republic – which spanned Azerbaijan’s Soviet history from 1921 to 1991 – Karabakh did not serve as an identity marker until the late 1980s. The making of the Azerbaijani nation, instead, leaned towards the south – Iranian Azerbaijan – where a brief Soviet experiment of independence in the 1940s sparked the imagination of “Greater Azerbaijan,” encompassing both sides of the Aras River. The secessionist movement in Karabakh was met with confusion in Azerbaijan. The reactionary nationalism – inherently chaotic, disorganized, and destructive – not only failed to build a national consensus on where Karabakh stood but also intensified and created new internal fault lines, pushing Azerbaijan further away from a unified concept.
The failure of local nationalists to achieve a national consensus was compensated – quite ironically – by Armenia’s military occupation of Azerbaijani territory. The humiliating defeat in 1994 prompted Azerbaijan to abandon any perceived bond it might have had with its ethnic kin in Iran and concentrate on constructing a territorially-homogeneous modern Azerbaijani nation. Armenia was envisioned as an existential threat, and Azerbaijan’s messianic objective became the "liberation of Karabakh from the Armenian occupation." As the story goes, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, post-war Azerbaijan – the Third Republic – was imagined and constructed solely for the purpose of reversing the outcomes of the First Karabakh War through national consolidation based on a combination of perpetual victimhood and desired military vengeance.
The nation-building playbook for Azerbaijan was no different than for any other country; after all, history remains the most important tool for nation-building, and history is crafted retrospectively. Past events are chosen and interpreted in a way that aligns with and justifies current politics. Two instances of modern Azerbaijani historical framing include: 1) the Caucasian Albanian concept,[1] which asserts that many Armenians, particularly in Karabakh, are essentially “Armenianized Albanians,” attributing their religious and cultural identity to the predecessors of Caucasian Albanians – modern Azerbaijanis; and 2) the concept of "Western Azerbaijan," which posits that contemporary Armenia is historically Azerbaijani territory because it was predominantly inhabited by Muslims/Azerbaijanis two centuries ago. By encompassing the entirety of modern-day Armenia, especially its capital Yerevan, this concept effectively delegitimizes Armenia's presence and agency in the South Caucasus and speaks to the “Greater Azerbaijan” project.
Partially in 2020 and fully in 2023, the long-anticipated modern Azerbaijani “dream” came true: Azerbaijan achieved the restoration of its territorial integrity. However, this restoration came at a significant human cost, as the entire Armenian population of Karabakh – comprising more than 100,000 individuals – was displaced from their homes. This means that modern Armenia and Azerbaijan, which began their national struggles to establish two separate nation-states back in the late 1980s, came to fruition through a violent population exchange – a euphemism for ethnic cleansing. With this having happened, Karabakh – the nucleus for the two national struggles – now appears to be off the table. It is fully under Azerbaijan's control, and Armenia, lacking both the capacity and the intention to fight back, does not seem poised to alter this reality. If Karabakh — a central identity marker — is indeed no longer a point of contention, the pivotal question becomes: what comes next?
To speak of entering a post-Karabakh era – in other words, the end of the Third Republic – may sound out of touch with the grievances that are left unaddressed. The human cost of the armed conflict over Karabakh is still fresh in the memory of Armenians and Azerbaijanis. However, nation-building has always shown a lack of empathy; it not only fails to wait for traumas to heal but can even build upon and even exacerbate them. The only “positive” reading of this situation might be through understanding it instead as momentum for public thinkers to start charting a framework for new identity markers, allowing Armenians and Azerbaijanis to transcend the bloodshed, hatred, misery, and suffering that have plagued both sides for generations.
Surely at this stage there are more questions than answers. One could imagine a scenario in which Azerbaijan reverts to its pre-Karabakh agenda, focusing more on the ethno-political status of Iranian Azerbaijanis. There also exists an institutional and ideological comfort zone for Azerbaijan to sustain an enduring rivalry with Armenia, particularly over the concept of “Western Azerbaijan.” Nevertheless, it is important to note that neither of these directions has been militarized thus far, and their most significant distinction from Karabakh is that neither of these directions is rooted in collective pain experienced by Azerbaijanis.
If this, then, is the beginning of the Fourth Republic, it marks a historic opportunity for both nations: first to de-construct prevailing national narratives rooted in mutual animosity and then to re-construct post-modern identities that would reconcile Armenians and Azerbaijanis. This is the moment to finally break with the colonial past, abandon primordial and expansionist nationalism, and look toward a common future.
This future must start with a critical examination of the role of colonialism in modern national identities. Starting from the First Republic period, Azerbaijanis – and Armenians – have been trapped in violent border-making largely because a wide spectrum of colonial management tools over the past two centuries, ranging from arbitrarily-imposed borders to demographic engineering policies, made ethno-territorial war-making and ethnic primordialism the “only available” options for the premier national projects to reach their national dreams of sovereignty and self-rule from the colonial metropole.
In the quest to break off from the colonial ruler, these two national projects channeled ethnic segregation and genetic incompatibility – that is, that “Armenianness (hayapahpanum)” and “Azerbaijaniness (azərbaycanlılıq)” are in the blood and genetically transferred from generation to generation. This core belief stimulated thinking such as “Armenians and Azerbaijanis are on separate sides of civilization,” “Armenians and Azerbaijanis cannot co-exist and should thus exterminate each other,” or “the Other [either Armenians or Azerbaijanis] does not have any history and thus their lands can be taken.” Expansionist and irredentist projects fed on this basic notion that we – two genetically, anthropologically, and culturally similar nations – are somehow “genetically incompatible.” This is why it is now time to delve into how the violence during de-colonization directed towards each other rather than the colonizer can be stopped and turned into an epistemic rupture with this violent past.
“Complete annihilation of a people requires the banishment of recollection and suffocation of remembrance,” said Richard G. Hovhannisian. Annihilation and extermination lead only to self-destruction. For this cycle to be reversed, what is needed is to critically examine and recognize past wrongdoings. But recognition should be pursued not to demonize one party further but to atone for wrongs that have been done. No words can compensate for the loss of loved ones. But what matters is to prevent sowing the seeds for future conflict, more animosity, or more suffering.
To put words into action, the Fourth Azerbaijani Republic should build its foundations on a non-violent decoupling from the colonial past along with an acknowledgement of past wrongdoings. This should further solidify the multiethnic mosaic of Azerbaijan and open room for reversing – at least, initially, to some degree – the violent demographic changes that this South Caucasian republic has undergone. The new republic, imagined in the form of returned Karabakh Armenians and Azerbaijanis living together, would truly mark the end of the dark period discussed in this article. Unfortunately, this darkness seems to now be spreading across much of the world, as might is becoming right for continued ethno-territorial wars and state-making across the globe, from the Middle East to Eastern Europe.
[1] This should not be understood as to imply that the Caucasian Albanian historiography is fake and has no connections with modern-day Azerbaijan. Here, it largely signifies the misusage and instrumentalization of this historical entity.
Shujaat Ahmadzada is an independent researcher focusing on conflict transformation and foreign and security policies of the South Caucasus countries. Shujaat has taken a graduate certificate course in Conflict Analysis and Mediation at the University of San Diego in 2023. He holds MA in Central and East European, Russian and Eurasian Studies from the University of Glasgow (UK) and BA in International Relations from the Academy of Public Administration (Azerbaijan). Moreover, Shujaat has years of experience in youth work, policy advisory, project management and peacebuilding.