Satellite imagery compiled through Caucasus Heritage Watch shows how the fourteenth-century St. Karapet Monastery in Nakhchivan (top left) was first destroyed (top center) and then replaced by a new mosque (top right).
In September 2020, violence broke out between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed region that has been the subject of confrontation between the two geographical regions since 1988. The hostilities lasted six weeks and culminated in a victory for Azerbaijan. On November 9, 2020, a ceasefire agreement was signed, in which Armenia ceded the territory surrounding the Nagorno-Karabakh region to Azerbaijan.
But the fighting continues to wreak havoc on the lives of those living in Nagorno-Karabakh. The confrontation has become sporadically but persistently violent, with more than three hundred deaths in September 2022 in the disputed region.
In June 2021, The Art Newspaper first published a portion of declassified spy images taken during the US Cold War in the 1970s. A research report by Simon Maghakyan, executive director of Save Armenian Monuments, tested photographs provided through Caucasus Heritage Watch (CHW), a study assignment and follow-up at US-based Cornell University. In the U. S. , sites that had existed for centuries at Agulis had been “completely erased. “Maghakyan also expressed his fear about the continued destruction of Armenian heritage in the region and in Azerbaijan as a whole. a monumental euphemism,” he wrote.
The cultural erasure of Maghakyan continues unabated. In September, Caucasus Heritage Watch published the latest in a series of reports comparing and contrasting recent satellite imagery of the region with photographs from the 1970s and 1980s. The report represents an extension of Maghakyan’s research in Agulis so far. cover the whole of Nakhchivan.
Based on Maghakyan’s pioneering work, the report mainly notes the state-sponsored destruction of almost all (98%) of the Armenian heritage sites of Nakhichevan. The report’s authors fear that Armenian heritage sites in Nagorny Karabakh, an equally contested domain of approximately 4,000 km2, will ultimately suffer the same fate as those in Nakhichevan.
Adam T. Smith, archaeologist and professor of anthropology at Cornell University and co-founder of CHW, began running in the Caucasus in 1992. “CHW is documenting how cultural heritage sites have been subject to this conflict,” he said. “As archaeologists, we speak for monuments that can’t speak for themselves. “
CHW reports combine the effects of satellite imagery, in which technologies such as geographic data systems (GIS) and spatial knowledge analysis were analyzed. “We are not the first archaeologists to use satellite imagery to document this kind of destruction,” says Lori Khatchadourian. , professor of Near Eastern studies at Cornell and co-founder of CHW. “Technologies such as satellite imagery and GIS allow us to read about cultural heritage in inaccessible conflict zones or where hard forces seek to silence the truth. “
CHW’s report on Nakhchivan shows the “complete destruction” of 108 medieval and fashionable Armenian monasteries, churches and cemeteries between 1997 and 2011. The report reveals that only two Armenian sites remain in Nakhchivan, whose perpetrators leave in particular obscurity. they of harm. Among the sites destroyed, Smith and Khachatadourian mention several that testify to the planned methods of destruction.
The St. Hovhannes church in Chahuk (built in the twelfth or thirteenth century and renovated in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries) destroyed between 1997 and 2009, as documented in a new report through Caucasus Heritage Watch. Credit: Caucasus Heritage Watch
Mijin Ankuzik’s church in Nakhchivan, for example, had been in ruins for decades before being demolished sometime before 2009 (when satellite photographs show its erasure). “The total village is this post-apocalyptic landscape in ruins,” Khachadouryan says. however, the rest of the village remains intact; The church is the route that has been razed.
The report highlights how the state of Azerbaijan in particular attacked Armenian cemeteries, an obvious attempt to end the way of life of Armenian families who lived, died and were buried in the region. “Even the ghosts of the afterlife have been eradicated,” Smith says. . One of the cemeteries, the New Armenian Cemetery in Nakhchivan, was razed some time before 2005. “Satellite photographs show that a huge monument to the flag of Azerbaijan was built precisely on the imprint of the position where the cemetery was located,” Khachatourian said. “This non-accidental reappropriation is an active, symbolic violence.
Azerbaijan is largely a Muslim country, and the land on which other Armenian heritage sites once stood is now home to mosques and state-run public buildings. A new mosque now stands on what was once the site of St. Tovma in Agulis, described by CHW as “one of the most vital devout centers of medieval Armenia”.
“These medieval monuments have significance in global and local archaeological history, and between 1997 and 2011, each and every Armenian monument was erased from the archaeological record,” Smith says. “The destruction of Armenian monuments in Nakhchivan constitutes a cultural erasuring. “
He adds: “This silent state policy is unlike anything seen before. It can wipe out entire communities and lose entire cultural landscapes. This is a remarkable tragedy for communities that have lived back and forth for centuries but have been torn apart in the area. 30 years old.
Smith and Khachaturian note that Islamic and Azerbaijani cultural sites are also making their way among Armenians in disputed territories; this will be the subject of an upcoming CHW report. But Khachathurian says it appears to be more of a “failure of administration” than a government. Sponsored program of cultural and ancient erasure.
As for Nagorno-Karabakh, CHW follows more than two hundred Armenian monasteries, churches, cemeteries and cultural sites. The Azerbaijani government denies the systematic destruction of Armenian heritage sites. “We are placing genuine facts and empirical knowledge into a propaganda conflict. “Smith says, “We can’t resolve the conflict, but at least we can provide the facts. “