Baku advances “Western Azerbaijan” on multiple fronts 

YEREVAN — A planned meeting between Armenian and Azerbaijani experts in Yerevan was postponed at Azerbaijan’s request on Sept. 23. The meeting was to take place under the “Peace Bridge” initiative, a civil society format that has already brought Armenian and Azerbaijani representatives together in both countries. Azerbaijan’s APA news agency confirmed that the Azerbaijani side requested the postponement, saying it did not consider holding the meeting appropriate “at the current stage.” Boris Navasardyan, honorary chairman of the Yerevan Press Club and one of the Armenian participants, said the Armenian side had taken the opposite position. According to Navasardyan, the tense atmosphere made dialogue more necessary, not less. 

The postponement followed an escalating dispute over the presentation of Armenian Christian monuments in Nagorno-Karabakh, including Gandzasar and Dadivank. It also came during a week in which Azerbaijani institutions expanded activities connected with the concept of “Western Azerbaijan,” President Ilham Aliyev continued using the term “Zangezur Corridor,” new questions emerged about Azerbaijani military positions near Armenia’s Aygebar village, and Armenians marked three years since Azerbaijan’s September 2023 offensive and the subsequent mass displacement of the Armenian population of Artsakh.

More than a year after Armenia and Azerbaijan initialed a peace agreement in Washington, the document remains unsigned and unratified. Diplomatic relations have still not been established. Meanwhile, disputes concerning territory, borders, cultural heritage, historical narratives and competing concepts of return remain active.

“Western Azerbaijan” expands from rhetoric into organized research

One day before the planned Yerevan meeting was postponed, Azerbaijan’s state news agency AZERTAC, reported that the Western Azerbaijan Community had established a working group to study what it calls the “Albanian Christian heritage” located across the territory of the Republic of Armenia. The Sept. 22 announcement identified areas described as “historical Zangezur” (Armenia’s Syunik province), “Daralayaz” (Armenia’s Vayots Dzor province) and the “Goycha Lake basin” (Lake Sevan).

According to the so-called “Western Azerbaijan Community,” the work will document churches, monasteries, chapels, inscriptions and other cultural monuments and will also contribute to establishing the historical and cultural foundations for the “safe and dignified return” of Azerbaijanis “displaced” from Armenia.

Advertisement

The announcement demonstrates how the “Western Azerbaijan” concept is increasingly being developed through institutions, research programs and cultural heritage projects rather than existing solely as political rhetoric. The initiative is particularly notable because Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan publicly described the “Western Azerbaijan” narrative only days earlier as a serious threat to Armenia’s security and regional stability. Azerbaijan maintains that the campaign concerns the right of Azerbaijanis formerly living in Armenia and their descendants to return and does not constitute a territorial claim.

Aliyev has nevertheless repeatedly framed present-day Armenian territory through Azerbaijani historical terminology. In January 2025, he spoke of about 300,000 people whom he described as “Western Azerbaijanis” returning to present-day Armenia. In May 2025, Aliyev again insisted that the campaign did not represent a territorial claim while declaring that the issue would remain on Azerbaijan’s agenda until the proposed return was achieved.  For Armenia, the issue is increasingly difficult to treat as a dispute over terminology alone.

A second Azerbaijani announcement published on Sept. 22 concerned Christian monuments in occupied Artsakh and surrounding territories. A project titled “Historical, archaeological and ethnological research in the Christian religious-administrative centers of Karabakh and Eastern Zangezur” received funding through the Azerbaijan Science Foundation’s 2026 grant program. The project covers Gandzasar, Dadivank, Amaras and other monastery complexes.

According to the Azerbaijani announcement, archaeological work at Dadivank began in August, with further research planned at other sites.  The project follows a September visit to Nagorno-Karabakh by about 150 foreign diplomats and representatives of international organizations accredited in Azerbaijan.

During that visit, Azerbaijani presidential adviser Hikmet Hajiyev accompanied diplomats to Gandzasar and Dadivank and presented the monasteries as part of the Christian heritage of Caucasian Albania. Armenian members of the Peace Bridge initiative later warned that the episode had damaged trust and strengthened perceptions that dialogue between the two societies was ineffective. 

Dadivank’s principal cathedral contains an Armenian foundation inscription recording its construction in 1214 by Princess Arzu Khatun. The monastery contains extensive Armenian inscriptions, khachkars and other elements of medieval Armenian ecclesiastical culture.

Amaras has similarly occupied an important place in Armenian religious history. Armenian historical tradition associates Mesrop Mashtots, creator of the Armenian alphabet, with establishing one of the earliest schools teaching the newly created Armenian script there in the fifth century. 

The issue therefore reaches beyond competing academic interpretations of Caucasian Albania. It concerns how monuments with documented Armenian inscriptions, patrons and ecclesiastical traditions are being reclassified within an Azerbaijani state-supported historical framework after the displacement of the Armenian population that had maintained a direct cultural connection to them.

Dadivank artifacts become part of an Interpol dispute

The dispute over Dadivank intensified further this week. Sabina Hajiyeva, head of Azerbaijan’s State Service for the Protection, Development and Restoration of Cultural Heritage, accused Armenians of removing crosses, bells, frescoes, khachkars and other objects from the monastery before the Kalbajar region passed to Azerbaijani control following the 2020 war. She said information concerning some of the frescoes and khachkars had been entered into Interpol’s Stolen Works of Art database in October 2025 and that Azerbaijan would seek their return if they were located abroad. 

The Armenian Church has presented a sharply different account.

The Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin announced in November 2020 that prominent khachkars from Dadivank had been removed for preservation before the transfer of the surrounding territory to Azerbaijani control. 

Interpol states that information in its stolen-art database is provided by national law enforcement authorities and authorized organizations and that responsibility for the submitted information remains with those sources. Interpol does not independently guarantee the validity or accuracy of each claim. The episode has therefore added an international law enforcement dimension to an already politically charged dispute

These developments unfolded during the week Armenians marked the third anniversary of Azerbaijan’s Sept. 19, 2023, military offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh. Gagik Baghunts, acting speaker of the National Assembly of the Republic of Artsakh described the September 2023 offensive as the culmination of a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing against the Armenian population of Artsakh. Baghunts stressed that three years of displacement had not erased the collective right of Artsakh Armenians to return under credible international security guarantees. 

Aliyev continues to invoke the “Zangezur Corridor”

Another unresolved issue concerns the planned transport connection between mainland Azerbaijan and Nakhichevan across Armenia’s Syunik province.

In an official address to security officials from the Organization of Turkic States, Aliyev said Azerbaijan’s victory in the 2020 war had “paved the way” for the realization of the Zangezur Corridor and described it as a historical gateway linking Turkic states economically, logistically and strategically. 

The Armenian government has largely chosen a policy of limited public confrontation with Baku. Its officials have repeatedly argued that immediate retaliatory statements may produce domestic political satisfaction while complicating negotiations. That is a strategic choice rather than a neutral position.

During a period in which Yerevan has sought to remove Armenian territorial claims from official doctrine, Azerbaijani officials and institutions have continued promoting the “Western Azerbaijan” concept.

Aliyev continues to use “Zangezur Corridor” despite Armenia’s insistence that all routes inside its territory must remain under Armenian sovereignty and jurisdiction. Questions remain about fortified Azerbaijani positions near Aygebar.

A civil-society dialogue meeting intended to reduce mistrust was postponed by Baku when tensions over precisely these issues intensified. Pashinyan himself now describes the Western Azerbaijan concept as a security threat. If the government recognizes the threat, what concrete diplomatic, legal, informational and security mechanisms are being used to contain it?

From historical revisionism to political strategy 

Azerbaijan expert Tatevik Hayrapetyan argues that the latest disputes over Armenian cultural heritage should not be treated primarily as a debate for historians. According to Hayrapetyan, Armenian scholars have been documenting the history of the region’s churches, monasteries, inscriptions and cultural heritage for decades, including during the Soviet period, when Armenian historians publicly challenged Azerbaijani attempts to reinterpret Armenian monuments through a Caucasian Albanian framework.

Hayrapetyan argues that the more important question is why Azerbaijani hostility toward Armenia and Armenians continues after Yerevan recognized Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan, after the displacement of its Armenian population and after the Armenian government moved to politically close the Karabakh issue in the name of peace.

“War is not only physical destruction,” Hayrapetyan said. “It is also a struggle against culture, history and identity.”

She rejects the argument that the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict was fundamentally limited to Nagorno-Karabakh, contending instead that the broader dispute concerns the Armenian historical presence in the region and that Nagorno-Karabakh represented only one component of that confrontation.

Hayrapetyan also criticizes the Armenian government’s restrained approach toward Azerbaijani narratives, arguing that hostility does not disappear simply because officials choose not to respond to it.

Hayrapetyan closes her argument by invoking Václav Havel’s “The Power of the Powerless,” citing his warning about political systems that become dependent on the narratives they create: “Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future.”