The Nakhichevan protocol: A blueprint for the destruction of Artsakh 

After Azerbaijan, with massive help from Turkey, defeated Artsakh in the 44-day war of 2020, Baku imposed a blockade and then launched a final assault in September 2023, resulting in the total ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Artsakh. Since then, Baku has shifted its priority from depopulation to erasing every vestige of Armenian existence in this historic part of the ancient Armenian homeland. Not content with expelling the Armenians of Artsakh, Azerbaijan has undertaken the wholesale destruction of Armenian cultural and religious monuments and is rewriting the history of Artsakh as if Armenians never existed. The human tragedy of Artsakh is being compounded by an Azerbaijani cultural genocide of massive proportions. Whether through the destruction of ancient Armenian churches or the desecration of Armenian cemeteries, Baku’s goal is to convince the world, falsely, that Azerbaijanis are the Indigenous inhabitants of the land, not the Armenians. 

Artsakh’s ongoing physical destruction, unfortunately, is merely the continuation of Azerbaijan’s genocidal hatred of all things Armenian. Baku’s annihilation of Artsakh has a precedent in the complete erasure of all traces of Armenian life and culture in Nakhichevan, another historically Armenian region under Baku’s misrule. In the early 1920s, Lenin’s commissar for nationalities, Joseph Stalin, made Nakhichevan an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, or Nakhichevan ASSR, under the rule of Soviet Azerbaijan.¹Paul Goble, “Moscow and Ankara to Lose Status as Guarantors of Azerbaijan’s Nakhchevan,” Jamestown Foundation, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 5 February 2026. Thus began the process of turning Armenian Nakhichevan into what Azerbaijanis refer to as “Nakhchivan,” as if the removal of the letter “i” would somehow make the region less Armenian²Karimi, M. (2021). The Etymology and Origins of the Name Nakhichevan from the Historical Sources. History and Culture, 16(2), 137-147.. The erasure of Nakhichevan’s Armenian identity, which began in the 1920s, culminated in 2005 with Baku’s destruction of the medieval Julfa Armenian Cemetery. I consider Azerbaijan’s genocidal process in Nakhichevan the blueprint for the recent destruction of Artsakh, and I refer to it as the Nakhichevan Protocol. 

But how do we know that Nakhichevan is part of the historic Armenian homeland? If there is any doubt about the Armenian origin of Nakhichevan, one need look no further than the roots of the region’s name. According to folk etymology, the name Nakhichevan is derived from the Armenian words “nakh,” meaning “first,” and “ichevan,” meaning “landing place,” “lodging” or “resting place,” and refers to the resting place of Noah’s Ark.³ Ibid. Since antiquity, Armenian and non-Armenian historians have included Nakhichevan in their discussions of historic Armenian lands.⁴Movses Khorenatsi, History of the Armenians, translated and edited by Robert Thomson, (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1978).

Over the centuries, many nomadic invasions challenged and diluted Nakhichevan’s Armenian majority and character, as the region was often a battleground between warring empires. One of the most devastating developments occurred in the early 17th century during one of the many Ottoman-Persian wars, when Persian Shah Abbas deported hundreds of thousands of Armenians from Nakhichevan, including from the wealthy Armenian trade hub of Julfa.⁵ Vazken S. Ghougassian, The Emergence of the Armenian Diocese of New Julfa in the Seventeenth Century, (Scholars Press, Atlanta, GA, 1998). Despite this and many other tragedies, including massacres of Armenians during the Armeno-Tatar War of 1905 and atrocities during the 1918-20 First Republic of Armenia, the Armenian presence in Nakhichevan remained substantial well into the 20th century.⁶Արգամ Այվազյան, Նախիջեւանը 1905 թ. Եւ 1918-1919 թթ.Կրակե Շղթայի Գոյամարտերում (երեւան, 2005).

However, during the years of Soviet Azerbaijani rule, the Armenian population of Nakhichevan went from more than 40% to 0%.⁷ http://www.djulfa.com (DOA: 23 August 2026); https://julfaproject.wordpress.com/the-argam-ayvazyan-archive/ How did this massive demographic shift take place? According to Argam Ayvazyan, the leading scholar on Nakhichevan, during the Soviet period, from 1920 to 1991, the percentage of Armenians in Nakhichevan plummeted because of both pressure on Armenians to migrate to the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic and the simultaneous state policies of Soviet Azerbaijan to promote the resettlement of Azerbaijanis. These pressures manifested themselves in restrictions on opportunities for Armenians in Nakhichevan to maintain their identity, such as through the closing of Armenian schools, cultural centers and other sites of Armenian heritage. At the same time, Baku organized Azerbaijani migration into Nakhichevan, with the end result being only a couple of Armenian villages remaining in all of Nakhichevan.⁸Argam Ayvazyan, The Heritage of Armenian Historical Material and Spiritual Culture of Nakhichevan (Yerevan, 2026). Those living in Armenia in the final years of the Soviet Union will remember the arrival of these last survivors of Armenian Nakhichevan and the ominous feeling that the same would eventually happen to Artsakh if nothing were done to prevent it. 

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Armenians in Artsakh were particularly attuned to what had happened in Nakhichevan. One of their prime motivating factors for seeking reunification with Armenia was to prevent a repetition of the slow-motion genocide that had taken place in Nakhichevan.⁹ Author discussions with Karabakh Committee leaders, 1988-1991. As Artsakh Armenians saw their percentage of the population dip from roughly 90% to around 76% under Baku’s rule, and the Azerbaijani population increase through migration during this same period, they concluded that the Nakhichevan scenario was being applied to Artsakh.¹⁰ Haig Asenbauer, On the Right of Self-Determination of the Armenian People of Nagorno-Karabakh (New York, 1996).

After the 1994 ceasefire ended active combat operations, the Artsakh conflict settled into what outside powers euphemistically called a “frozen conflict.” Most observers were focused on the conflict zone, with few people paying much attention to Nakhichevan. In 2005, Baku, most likely calculating that international attention was elsewhere and that outside powers would not actively intervene, undertook the destruction of one of the last and most important Armenian cultural heritage sites in Nakhichevan: the Julfa Armenian Cemetery. The cemetery housed thousands of intricately carved stone crosses, known as khachkars, dating from the medieval period, with the oldest dating from the ninth and 10th centuries.¹¹ Simon Maghakyan, “Permanent Security or Regime Security? The Erasure of Nakhichevan’s Armenian Past,” Journal of Genocide Research, 1-12 (2025). Not content with removing Armenian people from Nakhichevan, Azerbaijan undertook the obliteration of the Julfa Cemetery to remove even the physical evidence of Armenian habitation. Using pickaxes, bulldozers and dynamite, Baku wanted to ensure that no one would ever claim that Nakhichevan had once been an Armenian region. This was eerily reminiscent of systematic Turkish attempts to destroy all vestiges of Armenian life in Western Armenia in the decades following the 1915 genocide. 

Despite the outcry from international cultural preservation groups and Armenians worldwide, there was no accountability, and Baku suffered no negative repercussions for the destruction of Armenian cultural patrimony. The indifference from Western governments was duly noted, and when the opportunity presented itself, Azerbaijan would apply its Nakhichevan Protocol to Artsakh, with the same predictable results: ancient Armenian lands stripped of their Armenian inhabitants and denied their cultural identity. Ultimately, however, no matter how intent Azerbaijan is on the destruction of everything Armenian, whether in Nakhichevan, Artsakh or potentially Syunik, it will fail. Azerbaijan will fail because it will never be able to overcome the historical record and historical truth, no matter how many lobbyists it hires or how much money it throws at denying and denigrating Armenia and Armenians.