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Review of Armenian Studies

Publication Date: June 2023

Author: Nigar Jamalova

This article examines the activities of the Azerbaijani government against the territorial claims of the Republic of Armenia in 1918-1920. Armenia’s ongoing territorial claims and provocations on the front increase the relevance of the issue raised in the article. The documents in English newly included in the article are of scientific and practical importance in terms of supporting Azerbaijan’s position against territorial claims.

Due to the political considerations at the end of the First World War, the search for allies, the liberation of Baku and the protection of territorial integrity, the prevention of massacres, and social and political problems that could arise in the future, the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR) was forced to give approximately 10,000 km2 of the territory of the former Iravan Khanate to the Armenians. However, the Armenian state nevertheless began to make claims to the other territories of Azerbaijan (Zangezur, Karabakh, Nakhchivan, Kars, part of Gazakh district). Armenians nominated territorial claims on the basis that the Armenian population settled in the indicated areas. Nevertheless, the Armenian population was scattered in the territories they claimed and did not have an absolute majority.

The government of Azerbaijan struggled diplomatically against the territorial claims and military aggression of the Republic of Armenia in three directions: 1) Correspondence and meetings with representatives of foreign countries in the South Caucasus; 2) Bilateral correspondence and meetings with the Armenian state; 3) Struggle in the international arena – the Paris Peace Conference.

Despite the policy of ethnic cleansing committed by Armenian forces in order to occupy the territory, as well as the diplomatic struggle, none of the disputed territories of Azerbaijan were officially given to Armenia, except Erivan, which was compromised during the existence of the ADR. Additionally, none of the major powers of the time or the Paris Peace Conference officially recognized Armenia’s territorial claims. 

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