Western Azerbaijan Community

We condemn the unfounded and slanderous statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia dated January 15, 2025, which claims that lawlessness was allegedly committed against Armenians in the Azerbaijan SSR. The tone of the statement is reminiscent of the previous rhetoric of Armenia before the Second Karabakh War.

First of all, we emphasize that the state that carried out ethnic cleansing is Armenia. The well-known speech of Levon Ter-Petrosyan, whose years of rule coincided with the period of occupation of Azerbaijani lands and the implementation of a significant part of the policy of ethnic cleansing against Azerbaijanis, made by him as president in 1993, once again confirms that ethnic cleansing against Azerbaijanis was the state policy of Armenia.

In addition, it would be appropriate to recall that L. Ter-Petrosyan stated in this speech that the resettlement of Armenians from the Azerbaijan SSR was organized by Armenia itself. Below is the relevant excerpt from L. Ter-Petrosyan's speech:

"If the movement had not started on time, today there would be 500 thousand Armenians left in Azerbaijan. Even if they had not been physically destroyed, it would have become a powerful lever that would have brought Armenia to its knees. A significant part of them, more than 300 thousand people, found refuge in Armenia. This was a national problem, a problem of a large scale, which was solved thanks to our movement."

All this proves that Armenia, by organizing the resettlement of Armenians from those regions of Azerbaijan, the occupation of which it considered impossible, pursued the goal of eliminating the practice of peaceful coexistence of representatives of the two peoples and creating a mono-ethnic state in Armenia.

Instead of making slanderous and hateful statements, the Armenian government should put an end to its racist and mono-ethnic policy, create conditions for the return of Western Azerbaijanis and restore a multi-ethnic environment there.