By: Rafi Gurbanov 

The Nagorno – Karabakh armed conflict is at the peak of armed clashes, since September 27th, when the Armenian Armed Forces launched a large-scale military attack against the positions of Azerbaijani army on the front line, using large-caliber weapons, mortars and heavy artillery. These provocations remind us of the ensuing war   

of Nagorno – Karabakh in 1988 – 1994, when almost one million Azerbaijani civilians were forcefully displaced and expelled from their homeland. Today it is paramount to address the dimensions of Armenian terrorism in the region while searching for facts about racist movements carried out recently by Armenian authorities.  According to the Geneva Declaration, terrorism in the context of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict such as the Armenian military aggression against territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, cultural terror acts against historical and religious monuments in the occupied territories are perceived as an act of terror. For the sake of objectivity and justice, the itinerary of Armenian movement in the southern Caucasus Mountains has been described here. Thus, Armenian settlements in this region started with the Kurekchay agreement signed in 1805 between Tsarist Russia and the Karabakh Khanate. As the Russians secured and acquired the lands in the southern Caucasus, they removed the Muslim population that came under their control. The Muslims were replaced with Christians whom the Russians deemed to be loyal to the Russian Christians. Christian Armenians were the focal point of this policy and were given the very same lands the Russians obtained without paying any compensation. In the Erivan Province, which is the heart of modernday Armenia, the majority of the population was Muslim before the latter were forcefully removed. This is how Armenia acquired what it calls today its "historic homeland”, therefore they are not the direct descendants of the biblical Noah, as many Armenian scholars claim, but their current location is thanks to the Russians between 1827 and 1878. The settlement of Armenians in the Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding regions was a plan of Tsarist regime. According to the well-known scholar N. Shavrov, "there were more than 1.3 million Armenians living in Transcaucasia in 1911 while one million of them were migrants there. Composition of population in Transcaucasia was as follows: 64,4% were Muslim-Turks and 34,8 were Armenians. From 1828 to 1920, more than two million Muslims were violently expelled from their motherland and uncertain number of them was brutally murdered in order to change the demographic map of the region for the favour of Armenians.”

Namely, ethnic Azerbaijanis, Kurds and Meskhetian Turks [red. they are called Ahiska Türkleri in Turkish] were exiled from their traditional places of residence. Nagorno-Karabakh, the battle scene of the first terrorist war in human history that began in 1988, was the epicentre of the destructive process carried out with the help of transnational Armenian terrorism. It should be highlighted that there have never been any terrorist organisations of Azerbaijanis defined by the international organisations. However, Armenian terrorist organizations, being part of international terrorism, have existed for more than 100 years. One of the radical Armenian organisations that aimed to establish "Greater Armenia” was the "Hunchak” party in charge of using political terrorist acts in a wider sphere in order to fulfil this plan. The "Hunchak” leaders ordered loyal Armenian followers to exterminate whom they thought were "the most dangerous” within the Armenian and Ottoman Turks communities who could create problems in local villages and cities. These terrorists never hesitated to commit cold-blooded murder of Muslim Turks. They also killed wealthy Armenians whom they could not black mail and who refused to give them money. In the meantime, Armenians were instigating violence between Christians and Muslims in places where Armenians were a very small minority. The Armenian terrorists killed several Muslims and stirred up those who remained alive. The purpose of such acts of violence was to provoke the Muslims into attacking the minority Christians and terrorists would then cry out as "fanatical Muslims were massacring Armenian Christians.” Armenians used violence as their primary weapon not only against Muslims but also on their fellow Armenians if they didn’t support or cooperate with them. 

Thanks to the history we unfold a real face of Armenians who established tens of terrorist groups within a single century. That is, the second prominent Armenian terrorist organization, the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA), is a Marxist group. It was formed in January 1975 in Beirut, advocating an armed struggle to achieve the liberation of Armenia, mainly with bombings and assassinations. This organisation committed terrorist acts mainly against citizens of Turkey. There are many groups to name such as "Geqaron” was founded by ASALA in February 2001, "Armenian Liberation Movement” founded in France in 1991, "Apostol” founded by the Armenian Defence Union on April 19, 2001 and others in Los Angeles, Buenos Aires and Europe. These are the Armenian organizations recognized as terrorist structures by the international organizations and communities. To avoid unnecessary popularization and glorification of Armenian separatism, I will limit myself to a list of international terrorists that not only set up and headed armed units, but also consulted and helped to organize Soviet Armenians,  some of them were born in Georgia and Russia, into the Yerkrapah volunteer units. Thus, Khevork Guzelian, Monte Melkonian, Kharo Kahkegian, and Jirayr Sefilian are the international terrorists. These stubborn facts show that vast majority of nations in the region and beyond have been subjected to the Armenian terror. Among those nations, Azerbaijani nation is not an exception either. Unfortunately, today Azerbaijan is a country which suffers from the terror acts of Armenian military forces against its historical lands, monuments and Azerbaijani innocent civilians.

*Mr. Rafi Gurbanov is a Political adviser to various institutions in the Government of Azerbaijan.