YERVEN (Azatutyun) — Less than two weeks after the Armenian parliamentary elections, Azerbaijan’s leadership renewed on Thursday its demands for Armenia to allow a mass influx of Azerbaijanis who had lived there in Soviet times.
“Every Western Azerbaijani has the right to return to the land of their ancestors,” deputy parliament speaker Ziyafet Askerov said during a “festival-conference” on their “return to Western Azerbaijan” organized by Azerbaijan’s government in the Nakhichevan exclave.
“Return is the legal, historical and moral right of Western Azerbaijanis as these lands are our ancient territories,” he added, according to Azerbaijani media.
Azerbaijani Education Minister Emin Amrulayev also addressed the event held in Ordubad, a town close to the Armenian border. He said “the topic of Western Azerbaijan” is of strategic importance to Baku.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev continued to voice such demands even after he and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan initiated an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty in Washington last August. Pashinyan’s domestic critics say the demands make mockery of Pashinyan’s regular claims that peace has already been established between the two nations. They claim that Aliyev’s ultimate goal is to end Armenia’s existence as a viable state.
Throughout the election campaign, the two main Armenian opposition forces said that Pashinyan will allow as many as 300,000 Azerbaijanis to settle in Armenia if he wins reelection. The Armenian premier reacted angrily to those claims.
