Peace with Armenians has never been on Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s agenda.
zerbaijan launched a large-scale offensive in blockaded Nagorno-Karabakh on Sept. 19, 2023. What Azerbaijan framed as an “anti-terrorist operation” was its final attempt to establish full and unconditional control over the contested territory at the heart of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. The conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh or Artsakh, an Armenian-populated mountainous region placed within the jurisdiction of Soviet Azerbaijan in 1923 as an “autonomous oblast,” has resulted in three waves of wars and intense fighting over the last three decades. The ongoing conflict has resulted in tens of thousands of casualties, mass displacement, and ethnic hatred on a scale rarely seen in other flashpoints.
The conflict has been defined by a violent struggle between the right to self-determination of Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, who voted for independence in 1991 as the Soviet Union was collapsing, and the principle of territorial integrity according to which Azerbaijan claims full sovereignty and authority over the entire territory.
By Inkstick Media
