Aftershocks from Ganja: Armenia has received another surprise from international law

In Armenia, over the post?war years, the question has been raised time and again: why, during the occupation period, did the Armenian side fail to bring any foreign diplomats or officials onto the occupied Azerbaijani territories even once? And this is despite the fact that, de facto, the West, the Arab world, and many others tacitly recognized the territories as belonging to Armenia. On the occupied Azerbaijani lands, there were no presidents, no prime ministers, no speakers of parliaments, no ambassadors, no ministers. No international events were held there, and foreign guests were not brought there (except for well?fed lobbyists). It seemed that everyone supported the occupying country, but they couldn’t show it.

And today, despite the fact that Azerbaijan was left alone in its time of need, with the exception of a few fraternal countries and friends, just a few years after the war, foreign ambassadors and heads of state are visiting Khankendi! This fact particularly infuriates the Armenian revanchist crowd. In Armenia and the diaspora, they just don’t want to understand a simple truth. Or rather, two truths. First, de facto recognition does not replace de jure recognition. Secondly, no matter how much some people might want to believe that international law has ceased to exist, it still does, and everyone is forced to take it into account. The principle of territorial integrity has always been and will remain fundamental and dominant over self?determination. This is a constant. This principle is unshakable, as it underpins the integrity of the global structure and each individual country. The principle of self?determination was introduced during the period of the abolition of colonialism and the emergence of colonial countries from under dependence. Although Armenia once held firmly to it, it failed to overcome the realities.

All the liberated lands, not just the seven districts around the so-called n?k?a?o?, have always been recognized as Azerbaijani territory. No one has ever questioned this fact. The same Europe that supported the Armenians for all thirty years, the same Russia that assisted the Armenians in advancing their aggressive plans in the early 1990s.

Therefore, after the Second Karabakh War, foreign diplomats—initially just a few, and later more boldly—began to venture into the liberated lands. None of them violated any international resolution. The Armenian side hoped that at least in Shusha, and especially in Khankendi, no Western diplomat would ever set foot. But a foot did set foot — and not just one, but several dozen. Moreover, this happened on the eve of the next anniversary of the unique anti?terrorist operation of September 2023.

Let us recall that within 24 hours, the Azerbaijani army disarmed large illegal separatist formations and units of the Armenian Armed Forces. Azerbaijan put an end to the illegal armed presence on its lands. The operation was carried out in a highly professional manner, without causing damage to civilian infrastructure or the civilian population. Everything that the Armenian side came up with after it became clear that the process was irreversible is simply an outburst of despair. International law, according to which Karabakh is a sovereign territory of Azerbaijan, is functioning properly, and no one has been able to do anything about it. The mass voluntary departure of Armenians from Karabakh is also a desperate step in an attempt to bring down the wrath of heaven on Azerbaijan. No one expected that this mass would have to stay in Armenia forever. At first, the so?called “refugees” didn’t even move away from the border, waiting for the moment when they would be taken back under the cover of foreign missions, accompanied by music and under the protection of white?gloved hands.

All of this, of course, cannot happen so quickly. The Armenian community feels its powerlessness, which is why the visit provoked such a strong reaction. It just burst, as they say. Over the years of the conflict, the highest?ranking officials who visited occupied Karabakh were the co?chairs of the Minsk Group. And it is very distressing for the revanchists and separatists to see ambassadors from states that once danced to the tune of Armenian interests strolling through the streets of Shusha and Khankendi. And the most “terrible” thing is that they get to know the Albanian monastery of Ganjasar, which was saved after decades of Armenianization.

The Armenian opposition, represented by vocal deputies, believes that the Armenian Foreign Ministry should have sent a note of protest to Baku following the statements made during the diplomats’ trip by Hikmet Hajiyev, an assistant to the President of Azerbaijan. Lacking legal grounds (nationalist tantrums notwithstanding) to protest against the trip as such, the opposition found an outlet in the issue of the “Armenian heritage”.

By “Armenian heritage” they mean the Ganjasar Monastery, which the foreign diplomats had the opportunity to view. It goes without saying that the guests were presented with the real history of this monument of the spiritual culture of Caucasian Albania, rather than its Armenian interpretation.

Representatives of Kocharyan’s “Armenia” faction, Lilit Galstyan and Anna Grigoryan, expressed outrage at the silence of the Armenian authorities, while the European Parliament showed them the “way” by adopting a number of hysterical resolutions in support of the non?existent “Armenian heritage” on Azerbaijani territory, while this is a real “cultural genocide”.  

Parliamentary Speaker Ruben Rubinyan had to respond to these statements. He failed to properly shut up the revanchists, but he didn’t dwell on the topic and merely said that the statements from the Azerbaijani side “do not contribute to peace and are not useful” in the context of the peace process. Moreover, he added, “they are unfounded.” At the same time, however, he expressed joy that such disputes no longer manifest themselves in shootings along the border.

Of course, it’s a big plus that nationalists no longer carry out terrorist attacks and don’t shell peaceful border villages in Azerbaijan as soon as they don’t like something in the statements made by official Baku. This is a consequence of the policy pursued by the current Armenian authorities, and we acknowledge this. We also won’t comment on Ruben Rubinyan’s words, because he probably couldn’t have responded any other way.

Be that as it may, the Armenian side should prepare for more unpleasant surprises. She will have to prepare for the fact that, despite all the efforts of the lobby and the diaspora, despite the active support of some dubious Christian organizations, the legacy of Caucasian Albania will gradually be restored. For about two hundred years, the incoming Armenian population dominated the territory of Karabakh, and the Albanian heritage was subjected to appropriation and plunder. But now this orgy has come to an end. The appropriation of the Albanian Church’s heritage was needed as proof of the Armenians’ ownership of Karabakh and as justification for territorial claims against Azerbaijan.

The loss of all the achievements that were made during the Soviet period and the years of occupation is a serious failure. There is nothing to replace it with. Armenian deputies and experts claim that the most truthful account of Ganjaasar is contained in the documents stored in the Matenadaran. This is not a serious argument. Unfortunately, the Armenian community enjoyed, let’s say, a certain degree of freedom in, let’s call it, “creativity” when it came to historical matters. European, American, and Russian research centers turned a blind eye to blatant forgeries, distortions of facts, and falsifications by the Armenian side. All of this was initially carried out on the wave of traditional Turkophobia, which at one time prompted the West and Russia to use the Armenian factor. In subsequent times, Armenian falsifications have firmly established their position at the global level, and it is unlikely that anyone will bother to trace how a certain Professor Smith gave a positive review to a scholarly work by Professor Grigoryan, which was based on falsifications and distortions.

These are the interests of big politics. The Armenian people were needed by the powers, and besides, they were ready to pay for their fakes to be accepted as the truth. As for the most truthful truth in the Matenadaran’s collections...

Undoubtedly, these collections contain the truth about Yerevan as well. But there is no real truth there, and there never will be. Neighbors can’t possibly record shameful facts of falsifications in their annals. The Azerbaijani historian Rizvan Huseynov once mentioned one such fact in a conversation. According to him, in the 1960s, when the “antiquity” of what is now Yerevan was just being created, a demonstrative “jubilee” was staged. For this event, the ruins of structures from the time of the Urartian kingdom, which had been discovered earlier, were artificially enhanced. The scale of the falsifications was simply astonishing. Even the commission that arrived from Moscow, headed by Academician Mints, was unpleasantly surprised: where did all this come from if nothing had been there a year earlier? The Armenian side reassured everyone, assuring them that this was simply for tourists, that the extensions were temporary props. But more than 50 years have passed, and the “temporary props” are still standing and continue to play the role of “ancient Yerevan.”

It’s hard to believe, but all of this really happened.

Today, the Armenian side justifies the absence of any traces of a city that is supposedly older than Rome by citing a contrived earthquake that supposedly wiped historical Yerevan off the face of the earth. It seems that the Armenian fantasists themselves, when uttering this lie, don’t even think about whether anyone believes them. They’re used to the fact that Armenian fantasies are taken for truth by default. And they’re not wrong — the stories about the earthquake are already circulating in the media space and are being voiced by quite serious experts and researchers.

As for the Gyandjasar Monastery, we’ll discuss this topic separately. It’s a big topic, and our neighbors shouldn’t have stirred it up.