BAKU (Azatutyun.am) — Azerbaijan’s top Shia Muslim cleric closely linked to the government on Monday added his voice to Baku’s demands for Armenia to allow a mass influx of Azerbaijanis who had lived there in Soviet times.
Sheikh-ul-Islam Allahshukur Pashazade referred to much of modern-day Armenia as “Western Azerbaijan” during a book presentation attended by pro-government Azerbaijani lawmakers and other officials.
In remarks cited by Azerbaijani media, Pashazade said his office supports Baku’s policy of seeking “the return of our compatriots expelled from Armenia to their historical places of residence.”
He said a book jointly published by the office and a government-linked group called the Community of Western Azerbaijan will serve the same purpose. The group’s leader, parliament deputy Aziz Alekberli, accused the Armenians of having seized and ethnically cleansed “Azerbaijan’s historical lands.”
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev continued to make such claims even after he and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan initialed an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty in Washington last year. Pashinyan’s domestic critics say the demands make mockery of his 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.
Campaigning for last June’s parliamentary elections, 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.
