Sumgait: An unendurable legacy

On a previous visit to Azerbaijan in 2014, I had travelled from Baku north-westwards to Sheki, and from there on to Tbilisi in Georgia (see entry of 24 March 2015). Along the way I visited towns and villages that illustrated the diversity of the country’s history and heritage, the remnants of peoples and civilisations that had been swept away by the moving sands of history, the migrations of peoples, by conquest or assimilation. A notable recent example had been the abrupt obliteration of the Armenian presence in Azerbaijan amid the collapse of the Soviet Union and the conflict between the nascent post-Soviet states of Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh. On this occasion, in February 2020, I travelled to Sumgait, a short distance up the coast from Baku. The town had become notorious for the “Sumgait pogrom” in February1988, when a rampaging Azeri mob had hunted down Armenian residents, murdered them and raped them, forcing the rest of the Armenian community to flee.

The Lonely Planet guide had a very brief entry for Sumgait, describing the city as a “dystopian nightmare”, referring to its Soviet-era chemical industry. Perhaps the most uncomplimentary entry in a guidebook I had ever seen. Sumgait is indeed rather a drab city, but its depiction by the Lonely Planet seems harsh. Long, broad avenues lined with apartment buildings, typical of many Soviet towns, do little to inspire. Perhaps it was even more grim in the Soviet period. But there is a park, and monuments have been erected to give the town a civic identity. There is a long sandy beach that could indeed have been much better framed by more imaginative town planners than the architects of Soviet Sumgait. We found nice places to eat. Notably a restaurant overlooking the beach, where we ate qutab, a speciality of Sumgait, delicious pastries served with a variety of fillings, including meat, herbs, cheese and pumpkin.

Peace Dove, Sumgait

The city’s most famous monument, dating from Soviet times, is the Peace Dove sculpture, a swirling abstract representation of a dove that is the symbol of the town. Given the 1988 events for which Sumgait is famous, the monument seems grimly ironic. In the late 1980s, Sumgait had a population of over 220,000, of whom around 17,000 were ethnic-Armenians. The backdrop of the tragedy of the Armenians of Sumgait was the escalating conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenians had long been aggrieved at the inclusion of the Armenian-majority province of Karabakh in Azerbaijan. As the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, loosened the Soviet regime, Armenians were emboldened to push for its transfer to Armenia. That February 1988, Armenians began demonstrating in Nagorno-Karabakh’s capital, Stepanakert, for their province to be joined with Armenia, and the province’s Supreme Soviet voted to that effect.

Disquiet among Azeris in Sumgait was aggravated by inflammatory statements by some Azerbaijani officials as well as stories told by Azeris from Armenia who claimed they had been beaten and forced out. As demonstrations erupted in Sumgait, some prominent local Azerbaijanis tried to calm the crowds, telling them that the rumours were false. But this message did not go down well. Others called for Armenians to be expelled or killed. Speeches ended with the cry “Death to Armenians.” Violence broke out on 27 February, as Azeri mobs entered apartment buildings seeking out Armenians. Unspeakable acts of savagery were carried out, including gang rapes. Some bodies were so mutilated as to be unrecognisable. Thousands of Armenians were given refuge by Azeri or Russian neighbours, but notably, the local police did nothing. Interior ministry troops tried to restore order on 28 February, but were attacked by the mobs. Some of their armoured personnel carriers were turned over or put out of action with Molotov cocktails. Finally, on the 29th, armed forces with tanks entered the city, imposed martial law and escorted surviving Armenian residents to safety. The official tally of victims released by the Soviet Prosecutor’s office counted 32 dead, of whom 26 were Armenians and six Azeris. Armenian sources claimed numbers in the hundreds.

Trials were held in Moscow. While some of the perpetrators received heavy sentences, many were treated lightly, being sentenced for mere hooliganism. While Armenians were dissatisfied that the main instigators had not been punished, many Azeris felt the punishments were too severe, and even campaigned for the release of the “heroes of Sumgait.” For Armenians the pogrom was quickly linked to the 1915 genocide, and a cross stone commemorating the violence was placed at the Genocide Memorial in Yerevan. But among Azeris a conspiracy theory gained currency that the pogrom had in fact been contrived by Armenians in order to discredit Azerbaijan. In Azerbaijan the pogrom is euphemistically referred to as the “Sumgait events.” There is something particularly distasteful about blaming the atrocities dealt upon the Armenian population of Sumgait on the victims themselves, and the failure of Azerbaijan to face up to this dark moment in its recent history is as shaming as the event itself. The massacre in Sumgait was followed by pogroms against the Armenians in other Azerbaijani cities, in Kirovabad (today known as Ganza), Azerbaijan’s second city, in November 1988, and in Baku in January 1990.

For most Azeris, the narrative is about the heroism and sacrifices of their own people, the hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis driven out of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding districts captured by the Armenians in the war of the early 1990s. Outside a school in Sumgait I saw a memorial to eight former pupils, young men who had been killed in the fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh, “our martyrs” my guide told me, a young woman who had not yet been born in 1988.

On a hill overlooking the city and the Caspian Sea in Baku, the Martyr’s Alley commemorates the Azeri dead of the fist Nagorno-Karabakh war in the 1990s, as well as the victims of the “Black January” crackdown by Soviet forces which followed the pogrom against the city’s Armenian population in January 1990 and mounting disorder in the city amid demonstrations against communist rule. More than 130 people were killed during the Soviet crackdown, which succeeded in largely uniting Azerbaijanis against communist rule and strengthening demands for independence. The Martyr’s Alley had first been established as a cemetery for Muslim victims of the so-called March Events of 1918, during the civil war that followed the Bolshevik revolution, when thousands were killed. Upon coming to power, the Bolsheviks destroyed the cemetery and replaced it with an amusement park, but after the end of the Soviet Union the site was reinstated as a burial site for national heroes. Lines of graves under the trees, many with fresh flowers, and pictures of the young men they contain, mostly casualties of the Karabakh war. At one end of the Alley, overlooking the sea, is the tall domed eternal flame memorial.

The Martyr’s Alley reminds us of the thousands of Azeri casualties of the conflicts with Armenia, not just the young soldiers killed in the war, but the hundreds of thousands of Azeris driven out of Nagorno-Karabakh and the territory surrounding it that was seized by the Armenians. Atrocities had also been carried out against Azeris, notably the massacre by Armenian troops of civilians fleeing the village on Khojaly during the first Karabakh war, in February 1992. Both sides focus on the sufferings and tragedies of their own people, and the crimes committed against them, often barely even recognising that people on the other side were also wronged. What hope that one day Azerbaijan might acknowledge the massacres of Armenians in Sumgait, Baku and Kirovabad, and that Armenia might acknowledge that there was no possible justification for the killing of civilians fleeing Khojaly? More than a hundred years after the Armenian genocide in 1915, such a prospect unfortunately looks far off, and the wounds of conflict look likely to remain open.

Larnaca, Cyprus

Larnaca has Cyprus’s biggest international airport. Arriving on an evening flight, my decision to spend my first days on the island there was based on convenience more than anything. Larnaca became one of Cyprus’s more significant centres during the period of Ottoman rule, following their conquest of the island in 1571, when the town became an important port. With its long promenade and beaches, today the town no doubt attracts tourists during the summer months, although less than resort towns such as Limassol, Pafos and Agia Napa. When I was there in January, it was quite sleepy. The seafront restaurants had few customers.

At one end of the promenade is the fortress, originally built in the 14th century, rebuilt by the Ottomans, and used as a prison by the British, who ruled the island from 1878 to 1960. It is much less substantial than the huge fortifications built by the Venetians at Famagusta, Kyrenia and Nicosia, as they prepared for the expected Ottoman onslaught. Larnaca warranted less attention. Close to the fortress is the Grand Mosque. Originally a Catholic Church, it has been much rebuilt since the Ottoman takeover. It was being renovated when I visited. A handful of people were praying inside, almost all, I think, south Asian immigrants, the town’s Turkish population having departed following the partition of the island in 1974, when Larnaca found itself in the southern, Greek part of the island.

Hala Sultan Tekke, Larnaca

A more impressive mosque is the early 19th century Hala Sultan Tekke, on the edge of the town, not far from the airport. Sitting on the edge of a salt lake, among palm and cypress trees, the water shimmered in the winter sunshine, reflecting the mosque. It was a fine sight as I approached on foot. Further out on the lake pink flamingos idled in the water. Apparently in the heat of summer the briny water evaporates away leaving hard white dry salt. The special importance of Hala Sultan Tekke is that it contains a tomb said to be that of Umm Haram, whose brothers and husband were companions of the prophet, and who is believed to have died during an Arab raid on Cyprus. Hala Sultan Tekke was for me the most beautiful mosque I saw on the island, not only because of its wonderful setting on the shore of the lake. Unlike so many mosques in Cyprus that were repurposed Christian churches, architecturally awkward, Hala Sultan Tekke was purposely built as a mosque in the classic Ottoman style, with its elegant domes and pointed minaret.

Round the corner from the Grand Mosque is the church of St Lazarus, who, according to the Bible, Jesus had raised from the dead. The story is that Lazarus, facing plots against his life, had fled to Cyprus, and been made the first bishop of Kition, as Larnaca was known in antiquity. In 890, after a period of Arab rule, a tomb was found with the inscription “Lazarus, four days dead, friend of Christ.” The remains were transferred to Constantinople (from where they were looted during the sacking of the city during the Fourth Crusade). The church was built at the spot where the tomb had been discovered. The building’s history reflected the story of the island, becoming a Catholic church under Frankish and Venetian rule in the 13th-16th centuries, then a mosque after the Ottoman takeover, and then, shortly afterwards, returned to the Orthodox Church, after which it was used for both Orthodox and Catholic services. The church’s complicated history is reflected in its mish-mash architecture. A Gothic portico was added during its Catholic period. The domes of the Orthodox basilica, as well as the original bell tower, were destroyed following the Ottoman takeover, and a new bell tower was constructed in the mid-19th century, when the Ottomans again allowed Christian churches on Cyprus to have bell towers.

At the far end of the promenade, next to Larnaca’s marina, stands a memorial to the 1915 Armenian genocide, on the spot where thousands of fleeing Armenian refugees first landed upon arrival in Cyprus. On the four sides of the plinth are inscriptions in Greek, Armenian, English and Turkish, explaining the memorial, and expressing the gratitude of the Armenian nation to the people of Cyprus for their assistance and generosity. In my travels around the eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea regions, I have so often come upon reminders of the tragedy of the Armenian people a century ago, sometimes in places where I was not expecting it, such as in Byblos, Lebanon, and now in Larnaca.

The Armenian genocide memorial, Yerevan

The trauma of the genocide against Armenians in Turkey during World War I weighs heavily on modern-day Armenia. It is a raw wound, kept open by the failure of the Turkish Republic even to acknowledge it, let alone apologise for the huge injustice heaped upon the Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire. During visits to Armenia, the topic inevitably comes up. The country’s border with Turkey is closed, its relations with its neighbour far from normal. The genocide is a tragic page in Armenia’s long history which it seems cannot be turned.

Genocide memorial, Yerevan

I visited the Genocide memorial and museum in Yerevan in September 2017. The memorial was completed in 1967, following a huge demonstration in Yerevan on 24 April 1965 to mark the 50th anniversary of the start of the genocide. Such outpourings of national sentiment were rarely tolerated in the Soviet Union, but this time the authorities bowed to the popular feeling. The memorial sits on a hill overlooking the city, and consists of three main elements. Along the approach to the monument is a 100-metre long wall, on which are the names of the towns and communities whose Armenians were deported and massacred. The centre of the memorial consists of 12 inward-leaning basalt slabs forming a circle, with an eternal flame in the centre, commemorating the victims of the genocide. The 12 slabs represent what Armenians consider to be their 12 lost provinces in present-day Turkey. Nearby, a 44-metre high spire symbolises the survival and rebirth of the Armenian nation, but a fissure represents the tragic disbursal of the Armenian people by the genocide.

It is a solemn and dignified memorial, a fitting monument to the tragedy of the victims. A visit to the memorial is now part of the itinerary for foreign delegations. Nearby are trees planted by foreign heads of state and dignitaries who have been there. While I was there, two groups of visitors, dressed in formal clothes, solemnly walked along the path to the memorial, before standing quietly, heads bowed, around the flame, and then leaving flowers. No words were spoken. None were needed. It is difficult adequately to express feelings about such events, not a tragedy, but the wilful destruction of a people in a land they had inhabited for millennia.

The museum was opened in 1995. A subterranean construction, it tells the story of the genocide in photographs and explanatory texts, as well as artefacts from the time. It begins with exhibits about the life of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire before the genocide, a thriving community with schools and commercial enterprises and a rich cultural life. Photographs of successful businessmen, of happy, optimistic school children. Exhibits evoke the life of those times. The label of a lemonade brand is in four languages, Turkish, Armenian, Greek and English. Postcards marking the Young Turks revolution in 1908 have inscriptions in Turkish, Armenian, Greek and French. At the time, many Armenians shared the optimism of their Turkish compatriots.

The story them moves on to earlier massacres of Armenians in the late-19th and early 20th centuries. Each year, the genocide is commemorated on 24 April, because that was the day in 1915 when Armenian intellectuals and other prominent members of the community were arrested, prior to being murdered. As such it marks the beginning of the genocide. But state-sponsored terror against the Armenian community did not begin in 1915. The images of the events in 1915 and the following years tell a harrowing story. Even for people who are already well-informed about the genocide, walking through the museum, looking at the photographs, reading the accompanying texts, is deeply affecting. The pictures of wasted people, starved, in rags, hardly able to stand. Of corpses left by the side of road. Of ranks of children, orphans, having survived the death marches across Anatolia, but having lost all that they knew and loved. It cries out for atonement. But from Turkey, denial.

Nagorno-Karabakh

I arrived in Yerevan in September 2017, in the warmth of late-summer. I had visited Armenia twice before, in 2006 and 2013. During those visits, the tragic past of the Armenian people had persistently loomed. The 1915 genocide in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire, and the deep wound left by the loss of territory in eastern Turkey that Armenians consider rightly to be theirs. And the more recent tragedies in the wars over Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian-inhabited enclave seized from neighbouring Azerbaijan as the Soviet Union crumbled. This time I wanted to visit Karabakh, to try to understand better the meaning of this remote, sparsely-inhabited mountainous region for Armenians.

From Azerbaijan’s perspective, visiting Karabakh was illegal. I would be unlawfully entering Azerbaijan’s territory. When I had visited Azerbaijan in 2014, there was a question on the visa application form as to whether I had ever visited Karabakh? The answer, at the time, was no. Azerbaijan has adopted a similar policy to Georgia and Ukraine with respect to their lost territories in Abkhazia, Crimea and the rebel-territories in Donbas. While entering those territories from within Georgia or Ukraine was permissible, crossing the border from Russia was an offence. Several foreign politicians and performing artists have been banned from visiting Ukraine after they illegally entered Crimea.

The Nagorno-Karabakh border

Since a referendum in February 2017, Karabakh had taken the name Artsakh, for which an ancient Armenian lineage was claimed. I joined a group of diaspora Armenians, led by an enthusiastic guide from Yerevan. Most of them had originally come from Iran or Syria, but now lived in the United States or Canada. We needed visas to enter Karabakh, but while these could be obtained at the Artsakh embassy in Yerevan, our guide picked them up for us at the foreign ministry in Stepanakert, the territory’s capital. Crossing into Karabakh, the border was marked by a sign welcoming us to the would-be state. A little further on there was a border post, with two flags flying, one of Armenia, the other of Artsakh. The Artsakh flag is the same red, blue and orange tricolour as that of Armenia, but with the addition of a jagged white line running from top to bottom. Our guide told me this symbolised that on both sides of the line, the border, were Armenian lands.

During the journey, our guide was most insistent on the name Artsakh. She fervently spoke of the determination of Armenians to hang on to what she saw as their ancestral territories. My diaspora Armenian companions responded with applause. It was not just the territory of Soviet-era Nagorno-Karabakh, or mountainous Karabakh, that she referred to, but to the whole territory that Armenian forces had occupied during the war of the early 1990s, including lands around the former autonomous province. The Soviet-era autonomous province did not even share a border with Armenia, and was completely surrounded by Azerbaijan. We crossed into Karabakh via the Lachin corridor, whose capture by Armenian forces during the war had established a vital territorial bridge between Armenia and Karabakh. But for our guide even all the captured territory was not enough. There was still territory that needed to be ‘liberated’ from Azerbaijani control, she asserted.

Ever since the war in the 1990s, there have been on-off talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan to look for a settlement of their longstanding dispute. They have never got very far. At different times, various concessions have been discussed. Levon Ter-Petrosyan, the first president of independent Armenia, advocated a phased solution, under which Armenia would hand back most of the captured territory around Karabakh, and agreement over Karabakh itself would be deferred. In return, Azerbaijani and Turkish blockades of Armenia would be lifted, aiding Armenia’s economic recovery. But Ter-Petrosyan did not manage to bring his countrymen with him, and he was ousted from power in 1998. Another idea was a mooted territorial swap, by which, in return for giving up Karabakh, Azerbaijan would receive territory in the south of Armenia, to give it a land bridge to its territory of Nakhichevan, sandwiched between Armenia and Turkey. But our guide had no such notions of compromise. Armenians were determined to hold on to all the territory.

Karabakh is a sparsely populated enclave. While the makeup of its population had fluctuated over the centuries, following its takeover by the Russian Empire from Persia early in the 19th century, its Armenian population was boosted by migrants from lands to the south that remained in Persia, while many Muslims left. By the end of the Soviet Union, the population of the enclave was around three-quarters Armenian. To this day there is much controversy over the decision in 1921 by Stalin, the Bolshevik Commissar for Nationalities, to grant Karabakh to Azerbaijan, albeit as an autonomous territory with an Armenian majority. Armenians note bitterly that the decision nearly went their way. But the Bolsheviks were swayed by their desire to establish sound relations with the new Turkish republic to hand the territory to Azerbaijan, according to the wish of Ataturk. To Armenians, this appears one more example of the Turkish determination to wipe all trace of them from their historic lands. After losing so much territory and so many people during and after the First World War, having now won the war over Karabakh in the early 1990s, they are determined to hold on to their gains.

National Assembly and Union of Artsakh Freedom Fighters

Stepanakert is a small town of a little over 50,000 inhabitants, down from 70,000 before the war with Azerbaijan. It suffered severe bombardment during the war, when rockets rained down from nearby Shusha (Shushi in Armenian), which overlooks the town. The population was forced to seek shelter in basements, and many left. But there is little sign of that now. With the help of diaspora money, Stepanakert has been rebuilt. And it has been rebuilt to be a capital of a state. Karabakh may be small, with a population of around 150,000, but the presidential palace in Stepanakert might grace the capital of a large country. Across the main square is the newly built parliament building, and the headquarters of the Union of Artsakh Freedom Fighters.

This impressive new town centre appears to be an expression of confidence in the future of Artsakh. On the outskirts of Stepanakert stands a monument that symbolises the enduring presence of Armenians in Karabakh. Built in 1967, the ‘We Are Our Mountains’ monument, otherwise known as ‘Grandma and Grandpa’, depicts an Armenian man and woman in traditional attire. Hewn from rock, it represents the steadfastness of the Armenian people of the highlands of Karabakh.

We Are Our Mountains

Stepanakert also holds reminders of the heavy price Karabakh’s Armenian population paid for their victory. The Artsakh State Museum contains artefacts going back to pre-history, as well as photographs and exhibits depicting traditional Armenian life and handicrafts. It also has displays about the recent war. Especially poignant is the Museum of Fallen Soldiers, in a modest little building tucked out of sight in a backyard close to the central square. As well as exhibits of weapons and other memorabilia, the walls of the museum are covered with photographs of the mostly young men, and a few women, who died in the fighting. But still, it is a celebration of victory. In one room there is an Azerbaijan flag on the floor, apparently captured in Shusha. It seems to invite people to trample on it.

We visited Shusha the following day. A short drive up into the mountains above Stepanakert, its strategic importance is clear. Perched on a clifftop, it had repeatedly defied would-be attackers. Shusha’s origins are disputed, but in the middle of the 18th century it became the capital of the Karabakh Khanate, under Persian suzerainty. Following the region’s incorporation into the Russian Empire in the early 19th century, many Armenians settled in the town, and by the time of the Russian revolution they made up slightly over half of the inhabitants. But the town retained its importance for Azeris, and was known as a cultural centre. In the struggle for territory at the end of the First World War, the Armenians of Shusha were among the victims. In March 1920, Azerbaijani forces sacked the Armenian quarter of the town, massacring several hundred and expelling the rest. Shusha’s much diminished population (thousands of Azeris left as well) was predominantly Azeri throughout the Soviet period, an Azeri centre in mainly Armenian Karabakh. In a daring assault in May 1992, Shusha was captured by Armenian forces. We stopped on the road from Stepanakert to Shusha to see one of two tanks that the Armenian attackers used in the attack, now standing as a monument to the victory.

Shusha ruins

The Armenian capture of Shusha relieved Stepanakert from bombardment. But it also brought a new tragedy, the expulsion of the Azeri population and the widespread destruction of the once fine town. Almost all the destruction was caused after the town’s capture. It ensured that Azeris would not be able to return to their homes. I took a walk around Shusha. While there has been a lot of rebuilding, much of the town remains in ruins. The population, which had reached over 15,000, mostly Azeris, at the onset of the conflict (it had been over 40,000 before the First World War), had recovered to getting on for 5,000 by 2015, all Armenians. At a high point in the town, Ghazanchetsots Cathedral has been restored.

Mosque under reconstruction, Shusha

One of the ruined mosques in Shusha was in the process of being restored when I visited. However, this was not necessarily a portent of reconciliation with Azerbaijan. Iranian experts were invited to carry out the restoration. In his book on the Caucasus, Thomas de Waal described how Armenians and Azeris have carried their war over territory into the realms of history, as each has sought to assert prior claims. Thus nationalist Armenian historians denied the historical presence of Azerbaijan. Shia Muslims speaking the Azeri dialect of Turkish had lived in Karabakh and in Armenia for centuries, and Muslim-ruled Khanates had held sway over much of the southern Caucasus. But as the name ‘Azerbaijan’ was not commonly used until the 20th century, Armenians denied there was any Azerbaijani history in the region. Thus Armenians claimed that mosques in Shusha and in Yerevan were Persian, not Azerbaijani. Our guide told me in Shusha that Azerbaijan objected to the restoration of the mosque by Iranians, as if it were a part of the Persian rather than the Azerbaijani heritage.

Blue Mosque, Yerevan

I visited the one remaining mosque in Yerevan before my trip to Karabakh. Yerevan had been a small, predominantly Muslim town before the incorporation of the southern Caucasus into the Russian Empire. Baku and Tbilisi had both been more important Armenian population centres. Yerevan’s Blue Mosque had been built in 1765, and, following the end of the Soviet period, in the 1990s, it too was restored by Iran. Yerevan’s Iranian information centre is at the same site. As well as a religious centre, it is also an Iranian cultural centre, and offers Persian language courses.

Another mosque that has been a subject of contention is in the ruined town of Agdam, north-east of Stepanakert. Agdam was an overwhelmingly Azeri town, situated outside of the territory of Soviet-era Nagorno-Karabakh. Early in the war, it had been used as a military base by the Azerbaijanis. In July 1993, Armenian forces captured it, sending the entire Azeri population fleeing eastwards. While the town was captured mostly intact, it was afterwards wrecked by people seeking booty. As in Shusha, the destruction meant that Azeris would have nothing to return to. We drove alongside the ruined town, now a ghostly place, almost no building left standing, gradually being reclaimed by nature. This was surely an uncomfortable sight for Armenians, testimony to the injustices suffered by Azeris, a challenge to the notions of Armenian triumph and righteousness. Our guide told us Agdam had been a notorious centre of criminal activity, a criminal town. Thomas de Waal described Agdam as a black-market centre. No doubt it was so. But it is a big step from that to declaring a whole town to be criminal, as if in some kind of justification for its inhabitants’ fate at the hands of Armenian conquering forces. Our guide’s characterisation of the tragedy of Agdam left a distinctly bad taste in the mouth. The mosque in Agdam is still standing. Our guide stressed that Armenians respected religious buildings, although visitors had previously reported that the building had become derelict, and that its floor had been strewn with cow dung. More recently it had been cleaned up, and Karabakh’s authorities announced it was being renovated.

Gandzasar Monastery

Christian churches have also been the subjects of fierce historical dispute between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. Azeri historians have sought to portray churches that had served the Armenian community in Azerbaijan as having been, in origin, Caucasian Albanian. The Caucasian Albanians had, before the arrival of Islam, ruled a territory that included much of present-day Azerbaijan. Little trace of them remains today. Probably many of them converted to Islam and were assimilated by the Turkic Azeris, while others who retained their Christian faith came under the sway of the Armenian Apostolic Church. But Azeris see them as part of their heritage. The Christian churches around Azerbaijan are for them Caucasian Albanian churches that had been usurped by Armenians. We visited Gandzasar monastery, north-west of Stepanakert. Monasteries are the of glories of Armenia. During this trip, I visited several in Armenia itself. Gandzasar, with the 13th century church of St John the Baptist, is a fine example, and important evidence for Armenians of their historical presence in Karabakh. In 2015, a manuscript centre was opened at Gandzasar, a museum and library containing old illuminated manuscripts and early printed books. Siting such an important cultural repository in Karabakh was another affirmation of the permanence of the Armenian presence in the region, in the past and the future.

Close to Agdam is the archaeological site of Tigranakert, which was discovered in 2005 and is in the process of being excavated. Armenians assert that this is one of four cities of that name honouring Tigran the Great, who ruled a vast Armenian empire in the 1st century BC. For Armenian nationalists, the boundaries of that empire, including swathes of today’s eastern Turkey, remain legitimate. The site of Tigranakert in the territory of Artsakh (but outside Soviet-era Nagorno-Karabakh) is an important affirmation for Armenians of their historical right to this land. Our guide thanked God that the site had been found while the territory was under Armenian control, as she was sure that if the Azeris had found it, they would have claimed an altogether different history for the town. Thus the history of archaeological sites, as that of mosques and churches, has become a tussle between competing nationalisms. Walking through the site’s museum, I could not see any concrete evidence for this being Tigranakert rather than some other town. I raised the point with one of the researchers who worked there. The answer was essentially that it made sense that this should be Tigranakert. Maybe it is. But when history is misused for modern political ends, truth is too often lost in the murk.

Karabakh, or Artsakh, remains precarious. De jure, the territory remains part of Azerbaijan. Even Armenia has not officially recognised its independence. What are the chances that a change of borders based on force and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people will be recognised? The viability of this remote land with its tiny population is open to question. Efforts have been made to boost the population. A native of Karabakh, Levon Hairapetyan, who had made a huge fortune as an energy sector tycoon in Russia, sponsored hundreds of mass-weddings in Karabakh, and became the godfather of hundreds of children in an effort to promote population growth. Hairapetyan died in a Russian prison in October 2017, shortly after my visit, where he faced charges of embezzlement. But in his native Karabakh, he was a hero. He had invested huge sums in his home village of Vank, close to Gandzasar. As we approached Karabakh, in the strategic Lachin corridor, I saw an attempt to draw Armenians to settle in the disputed territory. Newly-built houses built in rows, which our guide told me had been built for Armenian refugees from war-torn Syria. It looked a barren, lifeless place, just houses with no sign of how new settlers were supposed to make a living there.

Armenians are determined to hold on to this land, dependent on support from Yerevan and from the Armenian diaspora. After 25 years of economic blockade by Azerbaijan and Turkey, they appear willing to continue to pay the price for it. Even the most reasonable, most moderate Armenians and Azeris practically never agree on Karabakh. And by no means all of them are at all reasonable or moderate. Most Armenians see little reason to compromise over a land they see as rightfully theirs. For now, they think they have won. But a small, isolated country, in a hostile region, they cannot but feel uneasy.

Heritage and identity in Azerbaijan

While the large majority (over 90 per cent) of Azerbaijan’s population are Azeris, the country’s heritage is diverse and complex. Like so much of the Eurasian continent, the modern population of the country has been formed by waves of migration, layer upon layer each making its contribution and leaving its mark, often assimilating those that were already there, and in turn being assimilated themselves by the next wave. The Azerbaijani language is part of the Turkic family, and is close to Turkish; the two languages are mutually intelligible. Turkic speakers first migrated into the region during the 11th century. Before then, the territory that now comprises Azerbaijan had been inhabited by people speaking a variety of Caucasian and Indo-European languages, some of whose traces can still be found today. Religious and cultural influences included Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Islam; Persia and Byzantium.

Main street, Lahic

Travelling north-westwards from Baku, I left the main road at Ismailli, and boarded a rickety old marshrutka for the journey up to the mountain village of Lahic (or Lahij). This picturesque little village, nestling among the mountains, has become famous for its handicrafts, notably metalwork and leather, and also for its language, Lahiji, a dialect of Persian. Persian influence in the region goes back millennia. This little outpost of less than one thousand inhabitants in Lahic, plus a few hundred more in surrounding hamlets, has held on for centuries in the remote mountain fastness. But what chance do they have of surviving in the modern world of mass education, television and the internet? My genial host was optimistic. They all speak Azerbaijani (he also spoke Russian and English), and he seemed confident they would continue to speak their own language among themselves. Yet while I stayed there, his wife’s relatives were visiting. The children did not speak Lahiji, and conversation was in Azerbaijani. As people travel and marry outside the community, the already vanishingly small pool of people who speak their native tongue will surely shrink. As to their identity? My host was clear; they were Azeri. They just spoke a different language. I wandered along the stone-paved streets, looking into the workshops, with their pots and pans and leather goods. The houses are built with thin layers of wood in the stone walls, as a protection against earthquakes. The village has become a popular destination for Azeri weekend trippers, who have their photos taken in traditional mountain costumes. Lahic’s isolation is over, and the distinctiveness of its people and language seems unlikely to survive much longer.

Back in Ismailli, I continued my journey north-westwards. There was no bus from there to my next destination, Oguz. My host in Lahic had told me I might be able to flag down a bus coming from Baku, but that I could not count on it. But I was in luck. I asked a man for directions, and he told me that in ten minutes he would be driving to Gabala, a town on the way to Oguz, and he would give me a lift. From Gabala I could pick up a marshrutka for Oguz. So a short journey, trying to communicate in my broken Russian with the cheerful driver. Oguz was perhaps a strange place to choose to stop. There were two or three hotels there, the best of which was fully booked. My main reason for choosing to stay in Oguz was the presence of a well-preserved church, now a museum, which is described in guidebooks as having been Caucasian Albanian.

Among the peoples that make up Azerbaijan’s heritage, the Caucasian Albanians, no relation to the Albanians in the Balkans, are a cause of particular controversy even today. For centuries, prior to the arrival of Islam, they ruled an area encompassing much of present-day Azerbaijan and part of Dagestan, to the north (in the present-day Russian Federation). Gabala was their capital. In a region beset by national conflicts, the heritage of the Caucasian Albanians has been a matter of fierce dispute.

Nic

While staying in Oguz, I made the short trip to the village of Nic (Nij), halfway back along the road to Gabala. Nic is home to the Udi minority, whose language is believed to be a direct descendent of the principal language of the Caucasian Albanians. Just a few thousand strong now, they have retained their linguistic and cultural distinctiveness, as well as their adherence to the Christian religion. I visited a tumbledown church in the centre of the village, with trees sprouting out of the roof. The cavernous interior, with its dirt floor, was evidently little used, but there were some votive candles on the altar, indicating that some continued to pray there. Over the entrance was a plaque, giving the date of the church as 1890. The plaque was in Armenian, indicating the church’s adherence to the Armenian Apostolic Church. Most Caucasian Albanians who had remained Christian after the arrival of Islam gradually assimilated as Armenians. The Udi clung on to their language and heritage, but as the church in Nic bore witness, their religious needs had been met in the Armenian church. Perhaps there had not been an Armenian priest there for many years.

The absence of Armenians in today’s Azerbaijan, where they had until the break-up of the Soviet Union and the terrible war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, been a substantial minority, has left a raw wound, as had the expulsion of Azeris from Karabakh and surrounding areas of Azerbaijan occupied by Armenian forces. Signs of the historical presence of Armenians jar with the official version of Azerbaijan’s history promoted by the regime. Yet, as Thomas de Waal pointed out in his excellent book on The Caucasus, Baku had a stronger Armenian heritage than Yerevan before the population upheavals of Russian and Soviet rule. I had visited an Armenian church in central Baku, ringed by a stout fence, its entrance blocked off. There are almost no more Armenians left to use it anyway. Oguz was called Vartashen until 1991, when its name was changed in a bid to eradicate the heritage of the departed Armenian population. The museum church, now labelled as Caucasian Albanian, had surely served the town’s erstwhile Armenians. Oguz does, however, have a handsome, well maintained synagogue.

Kish

From Oguz, I continued north-westwards to Sheki. Close-by Sheki is the mountain village of Kish, which is known especially for its church, which is thought to date from around the 12th century. A beautiful little chapel, it was restored in 2000-03 by a Norwegian-funded project. Azerbaijan has particular links with Norway, notably owing to the rather eccentric claims by the adventurer Thor Heyerdahl, of Kon-Tiki fame, that the roots of the Norwegian people were in Azerbaijan, and that Norwegians and Azeris shared a common ancestry. He based his claims on the similarities between cave paintings in the two countries, as well as Norwegian mythology, which he believed pointed to a Caucasian origin. The church is now a museum, and among the displayed texts about the history of the church, and the links between Kish and Norway, is one expounding Heyerdahl’s theory.

This church also could not escape the controversies about the Caucasian Albanian heritage. I chatted with a lady who runs a café opposite the church and doubles as a tour guide for English speaking visitors. While Armenians had worshipped there in more recent times, she vehemently denied the Armenian heritage of the place. The Armenians had taken it over only in the 19th century, she said, and had trashed the documents demonstrating the Caucasian Albanian origins of this and other churches. This is part of ‘our heritage’ she hotly asserted, meaning Azerbaijan’s, her indignation at the perceived Armenian usurpation of her country’s past boiling over. Some have asserted that there were Udi speakers in Kish when the region was taken over by imperial Russia at the start of the 19th century. Perhaps they were subsequently assimilated as Armenians; perhaps there had been Armenians there already; perhaps other Armenians had migrated there from elsewhere. I did not have enough information to resolve these conundrums. Complicating matters further is the claim that the church had originally been Georgian. Surely the clearest conclusion to all this is that in the shifting sands of Caucasian history, no one people can lay an exclusive claim to the heritage of the Caucasian Albanians or the remains of their once great civilisation.

Sheki palace

Sheki itself also has a notable heritage, and it is in the process of being spruced up, its monuments renovated for the increasing numbers of visitors. Sheki’s origins go back to antiquity, and it had been one of the most important towns of Caucasian Albania. But it was moved to its present position only in the 1770s, following a devastating flood at the nearby earlier site. The town was the capital of the Sheki Khanate, in its day one of the most important of the Caucasian Khanates. Its glory is the Khan’s palace. Built as a summer palace, it was restored in the 1950s and 60s, and again in 2002-04. In size, it is relatively modest, and not particularly palatial. But its splendour is in its décor, placing it among the finest and most beautiful buildings I have visited. Stained-glass windows known as shebake are formed of a delicate lattice work made out of wood, put together without nails or glue, and fitted with coloured glass in geometric patterns. The craftsmanship is superb, and like nothing else I had seen before. The interior walls are decorated with intricate paintings of flowers, birds, hunting scenes and battles. In the palace it is an enchanted world of harmony and beauty, so appealing in the art and architecture of the Islamic world, whose vision of paradise, unlike the pomp and bombast of so much western architecture, is of quiet harmony and simplicity.

Ararat, Armenia and Turkey

Visiting the Ararat region of Armenia early in 2013, I was constantly being made aware of the country’s painful history, and the degree to which it continues to hang over and dominate the present. On my first morning, I woke up to a beautiful clear day, and there, from my motel terrace, looming over the landscape, was the towering, snow-covered bulk of Mount Ararat, symbol of Armenia. Noah’s Ark is said to have come to rest in the Ararat range. Armenian legend has it that Noah’s great-great-grandson, Hayk, was the founder of the Armenian nation. The Armenian word for their country, Hayastan, derives from his name. Yet Ararat is not part of modern Armenia, but of neighbouring Turkey. I was staying right up against the border, a border which is closed, cutting Armenia off from lands which its people still consider to be rightfully their own. The presence of Ararat today seems almost to mock the Armenians who, so close by, cannot go there, unless they undertake a long, round-about journey through a neighbouring country.

Khor Virap Monastery, with Mount Ararat in the background

A school teacher in a village close to the border asked me whether I had been to eastern Turkey? Was there any sign of the Armenian heritage there, he asked? He said he hoped that Kars, Erzerum, Van, would all one day again be part of Armenia. I visited a museum dedicated to the Armenian poet Paruyr Sevak, in the village of his birth, Zangakatun. Sevak had died in a car accident in 1971, and is widely revered in Armenia. As well as exhibits linked to the poet’s life, including his desk, and his couch, along one long wall of the museum was a huge mural. The mural showed Sevak pulling aside a curtain, revealing the suffering of the 1915 genocide, when over a million Armenians from eastern Turkey were sent on forced death marches away from their ancestral homeland. This was part of a policy of the wartime Turkish authorities to remove nations they considered to be fifth columnists aligned with their enemies. It was a murderous policy, accompanied by numerous massacres. The mural showed a cast of evil characters, including a Hitler-like figure, and pig-faced humans who the museum guide told us represented the Young Turks, who had seized power in the dying Ottoman Empire shortly before the First World War. The guide explained that Sevak pulled aside the curtain on the Armenian tragedy.

This sense of injustice permeates modern Armenian life and dominates the national consciousness. Many other countries perceive that they are the victims of historical injustice, that they have lost territory that rightfully should have been theirs. But it is hard to think of anywhere where history has left such an indelible mark, such a debilitating legacy that poisons the country’s relations with its neighbours and impedes its quest for a better future. Turkey has for years resisted international pressure to acknowledge the genocide. But for some Armenians such an acknowledgement does not seem adequate. One young woman told me she was not interested in an apology. For her, nothing less than the recovery of Armenia’s lost territory would suffice. And she wanted Turkey to pay Armenia compensation for the deaths of their long dead kin. I asked her whether she seriously imagined such aspirations were remotely realistic? What did she expect to happen to the people currently living in the regions of eastern Turkey she coveted, far more numerous than the entire population of present-day Armenia? Would they be expelled, in an echo of the treatment meted out on Armenians a century earlier? Who knows, she responded, what might be possible in future.

I visited the monastery of Khor Virap, or ‘Deep Well’, within sight of the border fence. The monastery was built over a deep pit where St. Gregory the Illuminator is said to have been imprisoned for 13 years by the pagan King Tiridates III. St. Gregory is credited with converting the Armenians to Christianity in 301 AD, making Armenia the first state officially to adopt Christianity. At the monastery’s centre is a little church with the conical tower typical of Armenian churches. It is surrounded by a defensive wall, with turrets. I peered down into the deep pit where St. Gregory is said to have been imprisoned, and thought better of descending.

Across the border too, in modern-day Turkey, the landscape is dotted with Armenian churches, most of them now in ruins. They attest to the formerly Armenian character of the region. Most notable is the medieval Armenian capital of Ani, now a field surrounded by a wall, and dotted with ruined churches. Right up against the border with Armenia, not far from where I was now staying, I had visited Ani in 2010. It is understandable that Armenians mourn their lost lands, and the ghosts of their massacred ancestors. Turkey should acknowledge the injustice, the suffering it heaped on other peoples, Armenians, Greeks and others, during the traumatic founding of their modern state on the ashes of the multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire. But while Armenians cannot be expected to forget their past, they do need to come to terms with it and deal with their neighbours in the present. An accommodation with Turkey needs to be found. As Serbs and Albanians grasp for a modus vivendi over Kosovo, only a little over a decade after their recent war, surely after a hundred years Armenians and Turks can find a way to look to the future.

Georgian and Armenian remains

The eastern Black Sea region has for centuries been marked by repeated invasions, shattering civilisations and populations, leaving behind ruins. Romans, Byzantines, Persians, Turks, Mongols and Russians vied for control, while the indigenous peoples clung precariously to their patches of land. Yet Georgians and Armenians, as well as the Black Sea Pontic Greeks, all had their periods of ascendency in the middle ages, before their kingdoms were swept away by the next wave of invaders. Those kingdoms and empires left scattered remains that attest to their past glory.

Medieval Georgian church at Barhal

Leaving the Hemshin valleys, I went back to the coast, and then skirted around to the southern side of the mountains, to the little village of Barhal, along a windy, crumbling road from Yusufeli. Barhal is developing as a base for rafting trips along the rapid rivers of these parts, which is the main pull for visitors to the area. The whole region is dotted with medieval Georgian churches, in a greater or lesser state of decay, dating from an era when what is now eastern Turkey was at the centre of Georgian political and cultural life. Many of the churches are in remote places, difficult to access without transport. In Barhal, the 10th century Georgian church is close to the village, and it has survived intact thanks to its longstanding use as a mosque. There is a modern mosque in the village now, so that the old church is used only for Friday prayers. Although still intact, with its roof in place, it is in a sorry state. The conversion for use as a mosque was half-hearted (a cross is still visible on the outside), and it has not been maintained. Along the side aisles, corrugated iron has been placed, presumably to catch falling masonry. Yet it still impresses. The dimensions show that it was once a significant place of worship. Standing at one end of the nave, I find my imagination taking flight, thinking of the civilisation that once thrived here, which has now gone, leaving this magnificent thousand-year old building as its lasting memorial.

From Barhal, I journeyed east to Kars, through a landscape that changed along the way, from lush green mountains and steep valleys, to rolling hills and broader, more open spaces. From Kars, itself an Armenian city as recently as 1920, I visited the medieval Armenian capital of Ani. At its height one of the world’s great cities, with a population of over 100,000, it is now a desolate plain, surrounded by ruined, and partly (crudely) renovated walls, and dotted with ruined churches that have survived the centuries of neglect. It is an eerie place, a ghost city. Some streets have been preserved, with the lower walls of what are thought to have been shops. As at Barhal, walking the streets, or standing inside the churches, I found myself dreaming of the people who were once here, trying to imagine them, listening for their echoes.

Church of the Redeemer, Ani

Apart from Armenians, Ani was at different times in the middle ages taken by Byzantines, Seljuk Turks, Kurds, Georgians, Mongols and Tamarlane, before finally falling to the Ottomans. Falling into decay, it was rediscovered and excavated when the region was incorporated into imperial Russia in the 1870s. In the 20th century, Ani, situated right up against the river that separates Turkey from modern-day Armenia, has become part of the enduring controversy between the two countries. In 1921, the Turkish authorities ordered the military commander to erase all trace of its monuments, an order that was thankfully not carried out.

Church of St Gregory, Ani

Armenia accuses Turkey of chauvinistically neglecting Ani. In fact, it is opening up to tourists now. Some effort is being made to preserve the monuments, and some renovation, notably of the walls and of a Seljuk palace, is taking place, unfortunately in such a way that looks too much like new-build. One of the striking things about visiting Ani is the absence of any reference, in the explanatory notices in Turkish and English, to the Armenian origins of the place. As one enters the site, a potted history refers to Ani as the capital of the Bagratid dynasty, but with no mention of the fact that the Bagratids were Armenian. Walking around the site there is a persistent, exaggerated and distorting emphasis on the, relatively minor, Seljuk Turk heritage of the site (the Seljuks sacked Ani, and slaughtered its population in 1064). A mosque, claimed as the earliest Seljuk mosque in Anatolia, is thought by some originally to have been a palace. The only reference to Armenians that I saw related to a ruined mosque, which, it was noted, had been dynamited by an Armenian priest. So that is the sum of Armenians’ contribution to Ani? Such vulgar nationalist abuse of an important archaeological site demeans Turkey.

By contrast, there appears to be no problem with acknowledging medieval Georgian monuments. Indeed, a ruined Georgian church (in fact just part of one wall) at Ani is acknowledged as such. But Turkey has a peculiar blind spot when it comes to anything Armenian. The earliest monument on the site is the remains of a 2,000 year-old Zoroastrian temple, a group of four columns. Its presence, among the later churches and mosques, further emphasises the layers of civilisations, one replacing another, in this most fought over of regions.