The Artsakh Issue: Roots and Causes

The Artsakh Issue: Roots and Causes

Any investigation into the subject of Azarbaijan the real and the fake will inevitably lead to the examination of the aim for creating an “Azerbaijan” in the Caucasus in 1918: the insatiable appetite of pan-Turkism for territory, most importantly to the exclusion of any chance of survival of an independent Armenian state, i.e. the main goal of the Armenian Genocide.

As seen earlier, barely three years old the infant monster craved more land from the internationally recognized Republic of Armenia (then sovietized) a desire that was gladly granted by the Bolshevik banditry which cut 60% of Armenia and gave it to the eastern and western parts of the Turkish state. Fake “Azerbaijan” received Nakhijevan and Artsakh. Under these circumstances, an account of the roots and causes of the Artsakh (Karabakh) conflict is in place.

Truly, the whole “Azeri” history fabrication, right from the early days of the counterfeiting of fake “Azerbaijan”, has sought to justify the usurpation of Armenian territory by the usual misrepresentation of facts as illogically and absurdly as possible. It is so that the western allies of the Turks are deaf and blind when it comes to Turkish genocidal policy, including the destruction of Armenian historic monuments, distortion of history and false accusations of the same projected onto the Armenians, all of which are the obvious continuation of the extermination of the Armenians, the chief purpose of pan-Turkism and the creation of bogus “Azerbaijan”.

Artsakh in History

The region situated to the east of Lake Sevan, west and south of the River Kur, limited to the west and south by the Arax River and the Mukhank plain (Mughan) and bordering the Utik province in the north and northeast was referred to as Ardakh, Urdekheh, Atakhuni in the times of the kingdom of Van falsely known as Urartu, since Urartu/Ararat is the name of Armenia the country, referred to by the Akkadians and in the Bible in the form of Ararat.

Emphasizing its high military capabilities, Strabo records the name of the province as Orkhistineh. The Armenian historians including the seventh century author of History of Aghvank Movses Kaghankatouatsi call it Artsakh. As attested by Pavstos Buzand, a major Armenian historian of the fifth century, after the division of Armenia in 387 between the Romans and Iranians, several Armenian provinces were reorganized into other administrative regions to weaken the Armenian unity and prevent further uprising. This explains the off and on appearance of Artsakh province as part of Aghvank (Aran) which has led the “Azeri” fakers, who are in no way remotely associated with the Christian Aghvans, to claim that Karabakh has been a historic part of “ancient” “Azerbaijani” territory, millennia before an “Azerbaijan” ever existed north of the Arax River.

The appearance of the Turkic element west of the Caspian dates back to the Oghuz invasions in the 11th century AD. Subsequent Mongol, Tatar and countless other variants of Turks that poured into the region in following centuries, gradually changed the demographic picture with catastrophic consequences for the highly civilized indigenous peoples. When the Turkic occupying rulers of Iran slowly but surely dissolved and the Iranian dynasties got the upper hand, the situation became slightly more tolerable for the people of the eastern part of Armenia which was under Iranian rule. The Melikdoms of Karabakh (Moluk Khamsa) enjoyed a certain amount of autonomy in the Safavid era and until the annexation of the so-called South Caucasus by the Russians in 1813 and 1828.

When Nader Shah acceded to the throne, he drove a troublesome, tent-dwelling, bandit Turkish tribe called Javanshir, wondering in the plains to the left bank of the River Kur, to the Sarakhs region in Khorasan northeast of Iran. A simple shepherd from this tribe named Panah got a job as an announcer of royal decrees but committed a crime and was sentenced to death. He fled to Artsakh and found refuge by the melik of Jraberd and entered his service as a tax collector. After Nader’s assassination, he left the melik and gradually gathered several Turkish tribes and became their leader and using the chaotic circumstances obtained the title of khan from A’adel, a nephew of Nader, who like several others had proclaimed himself king.

This cunning former shepherd who owed his life to the Armenian melik of Jraberd who risking his own position had refused to hand Panah over to the Iranian authorities, became the arch enemy of meliks of Karabakh and to cut the story short, he and his successors brought about the decline of the Melikdoms through war, treacherous machinations and manipulation of the meliks against one another.