The Fall of an Enclave in Azerbaijan Stuns the Armenian Diaspora, Extinguishing a Dream

People hold a flag of Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as the Republic of Artsakh, as they take part in an anti-government rally in downtown Yerevan on September 25, 2023, following Azerbaijani military operations against Armenian separatist forces in Nagorno-Karabakh. (Photo by KAREN MINASYAN / AFP)
People hold a flag of Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as the Republic of Artsakh, as they take part in an anti-government rally in downtown Yerevan on September 25, 2023, following Azerbaijani military operations against Armenian separatist forces in Nagorno-Karabakh. (Photo by KAREN MINASYAN / AFP)
TT
20

The Fall of an Enclave in Azerbaijan Stuns the Armenian Diaspora, Extinguishing a Dream

People hold a flag of Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as the Republic of Artsakh, as they take part in an anti-government rally in downtown Yerevan on September 25, 2023, following Azerbaijani military operations against Armenian separatist forces in Nagorno-Karabakh. (Photo by KAREN MINASYAN / AFP)
People hold a flag of Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as the Republic of Artsakh, as they take part in an anti-government rally in downtown Yerevan on September 25, 2023, following Azerbaijani military operations against Armenian separatist forces in Nagorno-Karabakh. (Photo by KAREN MINASYAN / AFP)

The swift fall of the Armenian-majority enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijani troops and exodus of much of its population has stunned the large Armenian diaspora around the world. Traumatized by genocide a century ago, they now fear the erasure of what they consider a central and beloved part of their historic homeland.
The separatist ethnic Armenian government in Nagorno-Karabakh on Thursday announced that it was dissolving and that the unrecognized republic will cease to exist by year’s end – a seeming death knell for its 30-year de-facto independence, The Associated Press said.
Azerbaijan, which routed the region’s Armenian forces in a lightning offensive last week, has pledged to respect the rights of the territory’s Armenian community. But by Thursday morning, 74,400 people – over 60% of Nagorno-Karabakh’s population — had fled to Armenia, and the influx continues, according to Armenian officials.
Many in Armenia and the diaspora fear a centuries-long community in the territory they call Artsakh will disappear in what they call a new wave of ethnic cleansing. They accuse European countries, Russia and the United States – and the government of Armenia itself – of failing to protect ethnic Armenians during months of blockade of the territory by Azerbaijan’s military and in the lightning blitz earlier this month that defeated separatist forces.
Armenians say the loss is a historic blow. Outside the modern country of Armenia itself, the mountainous land was one of the only surviving parts of a heartland that centuries ago stretched across what is now eastern Türkiye, into the Caucasus region and western Iran.
Many in the diaspora had pinned dreams on it gaining independence or being joined to Armenia.
Nagorno-Karabakh was “a page of hope in Armenian history,” Narod Seroujian, a Lebanese-Armenian university instructor in Beirut, said Thursday.
“It showed us that there is hope to gain back a land that is rightfully ours ... For the diaspora, Nagorno-Karabakh was already part of Armenia.”
Hundreds of Lebanese Armenians on Thursday protested outside the Azerbajani Embassy in Beirut. They waved flags of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh and burned pictures of the Azerbaijani and Turkish presidents. Riot police lobbed tear gas when they threw firecrackers at the embassy.
Ethnic Armenians have communities around Europe and the Middle East and in the United States. Lebanon is home to one of the largest, with an estimated 120,000 of Armenian origin, 4% of the population.
Most are descendants of those who fled the 1915 campaign by Ottoman Turks in which some 1.5 million Armenians died in massacres, deportations and forced marches. The atrocities, which emptied many ethnic Armenian areas in eastern Türkiye, are widely viewed by historians as genocide. Türkiye rejects the description of genocide, saying the toll has been inflated and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest during World War I.
In Bourj Hammoud, the main Armenian district in the capital Beirut, memories are still raw, with anti-Türkiye graffiti common on the walls. The red-blue-and-orange Armenian flag flies from many buildings.
“This is the last migration for Armenians,” said Harout Bshidikian, 55, sitting in front of an Armenian flag in a Bourj Hamoud cafe. “There is no other place left for us to migrate from.”
Azerbaijan says it is reuniting its territory, pointing out that even Armenia’s prime minister recognized that Nagorno-Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan. Though its population has been predominantly ethnic Armenian Christians, Turkish Muslim Azeris also have communities and cultural ties to the territory as well, particularly the city of Shusha, famed as a cradle of Azeri poetry.
Nagorno-Karabakh came under control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by the Armenian military in separatist fighting that ended in 1994. Azerbaijan took parts of the area in a 2020 war. Now after this month’s defeat, separatist authorities surrendered their weapons and are holding talks with Azerbaijan on reintegration of the territory into Azerbaijan.
Thomas de Waal, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Europe think tank, said Nagorno-Karabakh had become “a kind of new cause” for an Armenian diaspora whose forebearers had suffered the genocide.
“It was a kind of new Armenian state, new Armenian land being born, which they projected lots of hopes on. Very unrealistic hopes, I would say,” he said, adding that it encouraged Karabakh Armenians to hold out against Azerbaijan despite the lack of international recognition for their separatist government.
Armenians see the territory as a cradle of their culture, with monasteries dating back more than a millennium.
“Artsakh or Nagorno-Karabakh has been a land for Armenians for hundreds of years,” said Lebanese legislator Hagop Pakradounian, head of Lebanon’s largest Armenian group, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. “The people of Artsakh are being subjected to a new genocide, the first genocide in the 21st Century.”
The fall of Nagorno-Karabakh is not just a reminder of the genocide, “it’s reliving it,” said Diran Guiliguian, an Armenian activist who is based in Madrid but holds Armenian, Lebanese and French citizenship.
He said his grandmother used to tell him stories of how she fled in 1915. The genocide “is actually not a thing of the past. It’s not a thing that is a century old. It’s actually still the case,” he said.
Seroujian, the instructor in Beirut, said her great-grandparents were genocide survivors, and that stories of the atrocities and dispersal were talked about at home, school and in the community as she grew up, as was the cause of Nagorno-Karabakh.
She visited the territory several times, most recently in 2017. “We’ve grown with these ideas, whether they were romantic or not, of the country. We’ve grown to love it even when we didn’t see it,” she said. “I never thought about it as something separate” from Armenia the country.
A diaspora group called Europeans for Artsakh plans a rally in Brussels next week in front of European Union buildings to denounce what they say are ethnic cleansing and human rights abuses by Azerbaijan and to call for EU sanctions on Azerbaijani officials. The rally is timed ahead of a summit of European leaders in Spain on Oct. 5, where the Armenian prime minister and Azerbaijani president are scheduled to hold talks mediated by the French president, German chancellor and European Council president.
In the United States, the Armenian community in the Los Angeles area – one of the world’s largest – has staged several protests trying to draw attention to the situation. On Sept. 19, they used a trailer truck to block a major freeway for several hours, causing major traffic jams.
Kim Kardashian, perhaps the most well known Armenian-American today, went on social media to urge President Joe Biden “to Stop Another Armenian Genocide.”
Several groups in the diaspora are collecting money for Karabakh Armenians fleeing their home. But Seroujian said many feel helpless.
“There are moments where personally, the family, or among friends we just feel hopeless,” she said. “And when we talk to each other we sort of lose our minds.



Facing a Government Crackdown on Dissent, Türkiye's Protesters Put Aside Their Differences

A protester holds a Turkish flag as riot police stand guard during a protest against the arrest of Istanbul's Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, outside Caglayan courthouse, in Istanbul, Türkiye, Sunday, March 23, 2025. (AP)
A protester holds a Turkish flag as riot police stand guard during a protest against the arrest of Istanbul's Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, outside Caglayan courthouse, in Istanbul, Türkiye, Sunday, March 23, 2025. (AP)
TT
20

Facing a Government Crackdown on Dissent, Türkiye's Protesters Put Aside Their Differences

A protester holds a Turkish flag as riot police stand guard during a protest against the arrest of Istanbul's Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, outside Caglayan courthouse, in Istanbul, Türkiye, Sunday, March 23, 2025. (AP)
A protester holds a Turkish flag as riot police stand guard during a protest against the arrest of Istanbul's Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, outside Caglayan courthouse, in Istanbul, Türkiye, Sunday, March 23, 2025. (AP)

The arrest of an opposition presidential candidate last month has triggered Türkiye's largest anti-government protests in more than a decade, uniting demonstrators from different walks of life and sometimes diametrically opposed political views.

It includes supporters of popular Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, and young people who see all politicians as ineffective. Protesters range from the socialist left to the ultra-nationalist right, and from university students to retirees.

They are united by a sense that the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has grown increasingly authoritarian, diminishing the secular and democratic values and laws that the country was built upon. They are fueled by outrage at Imamoglu's arrest and the government's attempts to quell the ensuing protests.

The protests began after the government arrested Imamoglu, the man seen as posing the most serious electoral challenge to Erdogan in years, on March 19. Prosecutors accuse him of corruption and aiding an outlawed Kurdish organization.

Critics say the charges are an excuse to get a key rival out of the way, but the government denies interfering with the legal process.

The largest protests have happened alongside rallies of Imamoglu's center-left pro-secularist Republican People’s Party, known as the CHP, but many young protesters said they don't support the party.

Ogulcan Akti, a 26-year-old university student working two part-time jobs to support his family, said both the opposition and the ruling party are "liars."

"The ones in power and the opposition that will come later, they’re all the same," he said. "We don’t trust anyone."

In the days after the mayor's arrest, thousands of students converged near Istanbul city hall. Some waved Turkish flags; others held images of left-wing figures from the 1970s and sang a Turkish version of the Italian protest song "Bella ciao."

In images on social media, some protesters made the ultranationalist "grey wolf" hand sign, standing next to others showing the leftists' raised fist. Some showed the peace sign favored by both leftists and pro-Kurdish groups, while others chanted slogans attacking the banned militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

Berk Esen, an associate professor of political science at Sabanci University, said most protesters he has seen are educated, urban young people aged 18 to 25, but they have little else in common: "This is a much more amorphous, eclectic group politically," he said.

One afternoon last week, dozens of students from Bogazici University gathered at a metro station in Istanbul, many wearing masks to avoid reprisals or arrest.

More than 2,000 people, including journalists, have been detained since the protests began. Around 300 were formally arrested on charges including "joining an illegal protest" and "resisting the police," with some accused of "terrorism links."

Lawyers for the arrested students say that the charge of "joining an illegal protest" does not justify extended detention, and that the number of arrests is "unusually high" compared to offenses such as terrorism or drugs.

At the metro station, 22-year-old management student Burak Turan and his girlfriend slipped into a mall, watching officers detain dozens of protesters.

"We are here because so many students are getting arrested for no reason," Turan said. "They act like it’s a war; they are exercising wartime laws." Turan refused to wear a mask, saying he had nothing to be ashamed of.

Other protesters include public employees, artists and retirees, many of whom support the CHP.

A man in his 60s watching a standoff at city hall said he was there to defend the rights of the younger generation. "We don’t matter, they do. They are our future." he said.

Others were there to speak out against as what they perceived as a slide away from Türkiye's secular and democratic values under Erdogan.

Mehtap Bozkurt, a 70-year-old pensioner and a CHP supporter, joined a protest outside Istanbul city hall.

"This country is secular and will remain secular," she said. "We will resist until the end. I am ready to give my life and blood for this issue."

That doesn't mean that people protesting aren't practicing Muslims, said Esen, the Sabanci academic. "There are Muslims, religious people and those who at least perform some religious duties amongst the protesters," he said. "But they also probably define themselves as secular."

Parents protest treatment of students

Outside the courts in Istanbul, parents and relatives, some holding flowers, maintained an anxious vigil. Some hoped for a loved one's immediate release, while others were overcome with frustration. One family member, who asked to remain anonymous fearing reprisals from officials, told local media that the detained students had "studied day and night to get into the best universities."

"Look at the treatment they are receiving now. There are no rights. There is no law. There is no justice," she said.

Another woman showed journalists a picture of her son with a black eye. "He told me, ‘Mom, they beat me up,’" she said tearfully. Another woman said she was a cancer patient left waiting since dawn. "What did these kids do? Did they murder someone? What did they even do?"

Around 300 protesters spent the Eid holiday in prison, separated from their families.

Lawyers for several protesters told The Associated Press that students are held in overcrowded cells and face physical and verbal mistreatment, as well as limited access to meals since prison commissaries are closed for Eid. Lawyers also fear that students could miss exams or be expelled as a "punishment" for taking part in the protests.

On Thursday the police issued a statement describing as "vile slander" claims that women had been sexually assaulted in custody.

The Interior Ministry said that at least 150 police officers were injured in clashes with demonstrators. Images from the protests showed riot police using tear gas and plastic pellets, while students threw plastic water bottles and flares.

A pivotal moment Esen says the protests may mark a pivotal moment for Türkiye.

"Will the police violence used by the government against them make them throw in the towel after a certain point or will it bring about a bigger showdown and make this a long-term affair? If the latter happens, I will be very optimistic about Türkiye becoming democratic again. If the former happens, all of this is heading toward a very bad place," he said.

A young female protester wearing a mask watched the standoff with police unfolding near city hall last week.

"I am here today because I do not accept autocracy," she said. "Ekrem Imamoglu’s arrest means that we accept that there will be no more elections in this country. I do not accept this."