One year has passed since the beginning of the war between Azerbaijan and the Armenian community of Nagorno-Karabakh, supported by Armenia. Already this description would cause dispute: Nagorno-Karabakh has never been accepted as a party to contend with in Azerbaijan. For many Armenians, there is only the Armenian community in Nagorno-Karabakh – while the suffering of Azerbaijanis from Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding areas, who were forced to leave their homes during the first war, has been largely ignored.
Despite discontent over interpretation, a very real war took place last autumn, taking thousands of young souls to their graves. The winning side, Azerbaijan, confidently claims that the conflict is over (resolved through war) and that there is no such thing as Nagorno-Karabakh. In doing so, the Azerbaijani government not only rejects the existence of a separate region, but also any further dialogue over granting Nagorno-Karabakh some kind of autonomous status. Indeed, the Azerbaijani president, Ilham Aliyev, recently claimed that 25,000 ethnic Armenians live in Nagorno-Karabakh, while Armenia estimates that 120,000 Armenians currently live there. In either case, the Armenians living there do not see their future in Azerbaijan: there is nothing commonly shared for that to happen.
The contours of national identity in Azerbaijan have changed since the war: while the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding regions during the First Karabakh War in the 1990s was perceived as a national trauma, now there is a national narrative of victory. In June, a monument of an ‘iron fist’ – commemorating Azerbaijan’s military operation to retake Karabakh – was erected in the town of Hadrut, previously inhabited by Armenians. In April, a military trophy park opened in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, complete with the helmets of Armenian soldiers and dehumanising wax figures depicting them.
