YEREVAN — Argam Ayvazyan’s trilingual book, The Historical Heritage of Nakhijevan’s Armenian Material and Spiritual Culture, was presented at the Tekeyan Center in Yerevan on June 2. It is an encyclopedia of Nakhijevan, encompassing virtually everything related to that portion of the Armenian homeland from petroglyphs to churches and villages.
Being a native of Nakhijevan, Ayvazyan had been carrying out a mission of documenting and collecting evidence in his birthplace since the middle of the last century. Nakhijevan was annexed to Azerbaijan under the 1921 Treaty of Moscow.
On March 16, 1921, Soviet Russia and Turkey signed a treaty in Moscow according to which Nakhijevan was placed under the protectorate of Soviet Azerbaijan. From the standpoint of international law, this was unequivocally an illegal agreement. Two countries transferred the territory of a third state, whose autonomy they themselves had recognized, to a fourth state — Azerbaijan.
It is worth noting that Kemal Atatürk imposed a condition whereby Turkey would transfer Nakhijevan to Azerbaijan only on the understanding that Azerbaijan would never, under any circumstances, transfer it to a third state.
History is repeating itself: in 1921 Nakhijevan was annexed to Azerbaijan, in 2023 Artsakh suffered the same fate, and now Syunik is next in line.
Following Nakhijevan’s annexation to Azerbaijan, all 219 Armenian churches and the medieval cemetery of Julfa’s khachkars (cross-stones) were eventually destroyed.
