Western Azerbaijan

Western Azerbaijan () is a term used in the Republic of Azerbaijan to refer the present-day area of Armenia. The term is mostly used by the Yeraz who were forced to leave their native lands in Armenia SSR since 1988-1991. Western Azerbaijan is a common term among the nationalist people who support the concepts of Turanism and the Whole Azerbaijan as well. In some cases, Azerbaijani people who are originally from the Armenia SSR are criticized when they reply as "I am from Armenia" rather than "I am from Western Azerbaijan".

The Azerbaijanis consider the modern Armenian territory as the historical Azerbaijani Turk lands. The main idea is that current Armenian territory was under the rule of various Turkic tribes, empires and khanates from the ancient periods to the Treaty of Turkmenchay which was a result of the Russo-Persian War, 1826-1828. As the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev said in one of his speech in Baku:
History

Prior to the Azerbaijani khanates, in XIV-XV centuries, there existed Oghuz Turkic tribal federations such as Kara Koyunlu and Ak Koyunlu. Afterward the area was under the control of the Safavid Empire whose founder was Ismail I - the grandson of the Sultan of the Ak Koyunlu dynasty, Uzun Hasan.
Finally, in XVII-XIX centuries, the area was ruled by the de-facto self-rule Azerbaijani Khanate of Erevan () whose all khans were Azerbaijani. Later on in 1828, the khanate was dissolved and became a part of the Russian Empire as an outcome of the Treaty of Turkmenchay.
One of the interesting facts is that the only wrong decision of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (1918-1920) is considered the yield of Yerevan to the newly formed Armenia SSR on 29 May 1918.
After the Bolshevik occupation of the Caucasus in 1920, Zangezur province of Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was split off from Azerbaijan and given to newly formed Armenia SSR. In the beginning of XX century, there were 149 Azerbaijani, 91 Kurdish and 81 Armenian villages in Zangezur. The main cities in Zangezur province were Gafan (Kapan), Gorus (Goris), Garakilse (Sisian) and Mughru (Meghri).
Deportations
There are three periods of the deportation:
* 1905-1907 - There were many ethnic massacres against Azerbaijani population in these years. Therefore, the native Muslim Azerbaijani population were forced to leave their homes and fled to other eastern cities. In these years the number of native Azerbaijani population significantly decreased.
* 1948-1953 - This period is known as a mass deportation of Azerbaijanis from the Armenia SSR. After the World War II Armenians asked Joseph Stalin to give them opportunity to settle the Eastern European and Middle East Armenians in the Armenia SSR. It is argued that Armenians were brought from France, USA, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Palestine. Consequently, more than 100 000 Azerbaijani population were forced to re-settle in the inner Azerbaijani cities along the Kura River. According to the statistical data, 2 357 families (11 046 people) in 1948, 2 368 families (10 595 people) in 1949, 14 361 Azerbaijanis in 1950 were re-settled in the inner cities as refugees. However, the statistical data demonstrates that merely 10 000 Armenians were brought from those aforementioned states in this period. Therefore, it again proves that the Armenians were not interested in resettling their people in the Armenia SSR, but their main goal was ethnic cleansing of the Armenia SSR from the non-Armenian nations. It is a result of the cleansing policy that present Armenia is a mono-ethnic country with 97.9 % Armenian population.
In the plenum of the Armenian Communist Party's Central Committee in January 1975, it was argued that more than 476 villages remained unused without any residents.
The Armenian nationalists in 1990 states clearly that the lands remained after the deportations were not given to the immigrant Armenians coming from the other countries.
This period of the deportation stopped in 1953 by the death of Joseph Stalin.

* 1988-1991 - This was the last deportation of Azerbaijanis from the Armenia SSR. The last Azerbaijanis were forced to leave the region in 1991 due to the rising tensions in Nagorno-Karabakh, majority Armenian populated Azerbaijani region.
There are still ten thousands of Western Azerbaijani refugees in Azerbaijan. They already integrated to the local communities and live their life as normal Azerbaijani citizens.
Demographics
According to the Armenian-American historian George Bournoutian:
After the incorporation of the Erivan khanate into the Russian Empire in 1828, many Muslims (Azeris, Kurds, Lezgis and various nomadic tribes) left the area and were replaced with tens of thousands of Armenian refugees from Persia. Such migrations, albeit on a lesser scale, continued until the end of the 19th century. By 1832 Muslims in what had been the Erivan khanate were already outnumbered by migrating Armenians. According to the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, by the beginning of the 20th century a significant population of Azeris still lived in Russian Armenia. They numbered about 300,000 persons or 37.5% in Russia's Erivan Governorate (roughly corresponding to most of present-day central Armenia, the of Turkey, and Azerbaijan's Nakhichevan exclave). Most lived in rural areas and were engaged in farming and carpet-weaving. They formed the majority in 4 of the governorate's 7 districts, including the city of Erivan (Yerevan) itself where they constituted 49% of the population (compared to 48% constituted by Armenians). At the time, Eastern Armenian cultural life was centered more around the holy city of Echmiadzin, seat of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Traveller Luigi Villari reported in 1905 that in Erivan the Azeris (to whom he referred as Tartars) were generally wealthier than the Armenians, and owned nearly all of the land.
Now there is no single Azerbaijani in Armenia.

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