ARMENIA'S CULTURAL FAILURE

The centuries-long practice of Armenianisation of the Albanian cultural and religious heritage, which is an integral part of Azerbaijan's rich culture, has ended. This was inevitable after Azerbaijan liberated its territories. But Armenia launched a propaganda campaign to discredit Baku's restoration of the monuments of Albanian culture to their original appearance. However, Armenia's misinformation efforts are doomed to failure, as are all its efforts to prevent the upcoming examination by the UNESCO mission of the consequences of destruction of Azerbaijani cultural heritage during the thirty-year Armenian occupation of Garabagh.

Armenianisation of Albanian monuments is over

Baku has ensured that not only Christian but also Muslim monuments in liberated Garabagh be included in the examination programme of the upcoming UNESCO mission to the region. It is also expected that the mission monitors the condition of Azerbaijani Muslim cultural monuments in the Republic of Armenia. It is not surprising that the Armenian side is seriously concerned, although it understands very well that Azerbaijan will make every effort to expose the Armenian “cultural” policy, which has long been focused on the destruction of the cultural heritage of the Azerbaijani people, including falsifications in relation to Albanian-Christian monuments. To confirm this, a working group of specialists on Albanian culture has been established under the Azerbaijani Ministry of Culture to remove false inscriptions on Albanian temples by Armenian ‘craftsmen’.

As usual, the Armenian propaganda is crying out loud that Baku is allegedly carrying out “cultural genocide”, and therefore the international community “must condemn Azerbaijan”. However, Yerevan is powerless to oppose to Azerbaijan's just position. After all, it is the vandal policy of Armenian authorities that deserves condemnation by the world community. For there are real facts, not speculation that can confirm this statement.

Having been established on the native lands of Azerbaijan, the Republic of Armenia has destroyed all the cultural monuments of Azerbaijanis on its territory, including numerous mosques, fortresses, caravanserais, mausoleums, the khan's palace, etc. During the three decades of occupation of Garabagh by Armenia, entire Azerbaijani districts, towns and villages have been turned into ruins. All Muslim historical and cultural legacy, including mosques, sanctuaries, palaces, museums, libraries, theatres and concert halls have been looted or ruined. Armenian invaders did not spare even Christian cultural monuments in Garabagh, the vast majority of which had been created by Albanians—one of the ancestors of Azerbaijanis. In particular, the temple of Albanian origin Aghoghlan in Lachin, the Khudaveng (Dadivank) and Gandzasar monastery complexes in Kalbajar, the Amasar monastery in Khojavand and over a hundred other temples presented by Armenian propagandists and pseudoscientists as Armenian temples. In their attempt to present Albanian temples as Armenian ones, they have falsified Albanian inscriptions on these monuments and destroyed convincing evidence of the Albanian identity of Garabagh's cultural and religious heritage.

There is historical evidence showing that Garabagh’s ecclesiastical history has nothing to do with Armenians. For example, the construction of the Khudaveng monastery is associated with Prince Vakhtang of Albania. His wife Arzu-khatun, descended from a Turkic Kipchak family and built the main church of the complex in 1214. Albanian church culture and architecture blossomed during the 12-13th centuries mainly thanks to Albanian principality of Khachen established by Hasan Jalal.

First Armenians were recorded in the mountainous part of Garabagh after the signing of the 1828 Turkmenchai Treaty, which legalised the final conquest of Northern Azerbaijan by the Russian Empire. Subsequent mass resettlement of Armenians to Northern Azerbaijan, as well as the abolition of the Albanian Apostolic Church by Russian Emperor Nicholas I in 1836 with the transfer of its property to the Armenian Gregorian Church have suspended the development of Albanian Christianity. This was the beginning of the Armenianisation of the Albanian heritage to prove the indigenousness of Armenians in the Caucasus, hence to justify their claims to significant territories of the region, including one of the key centres of Albanian Christianity—the mountainous part of Garabagh. Through this paradigm, Armenian forgers blessed by the Catholicosate of the Armenian Gregorian Church for the ‘holy cause’ of appropriating foreign, Albanian culture, have humiliated Albania's ecclesiastical heritage. They have erased Albanian inscriptions, distorted their form and content, altered the appearance of Albanian crosses bringing them in line with Armenian religious practices, destroyed tombstones of Albanian kings, changed the construction of Albanian temple buildings. In other words, they have done their best to wipe out any evidence of Albanian culture.

But now this criminal tradition is stopped. The Albanian identity of the church culture in Garabagh will be restored. This will be done by the Azerbaijanis—the heirs of the culture of ancient and medieval Albania. Albanian Christian cultural monuments are part of Azerbaijan’s culture, its treasures. The Udins, an indigenous people living in Azerbaijan, are direct successors of spiritual and religious traditions of Albania. They will continue to play an instrumental role in this truly sacred endeavour. Remarkably, the Udins are fighting to restore the status of the Albanian Apostolic Church. If successful, this will undoubtedly be another triumph of justice to ensure the rights of the direct descendants of the Albanians, as well as the entire Azerbaijani people, to preserve and develop their original centuries-old culture trampled by Armenian expansionists and the Armenian Gregorian Church.

UNESCO mission and the ruins of liberated Garabagh

The forthcoming visit of a UNESCO mission as part of a programme that includes the terms put forward by Azerbaijan is to be yet another confirmation of Armenia's cultural failure. Meanwhile, it would be interesting to know to what extent UNESCO be objective in its conclusions. Will it be determined to fully reflect in its final report the scale of crimes committed by Armenian vandals and falsifiers against the cultural monuments of the Azerbaijani people, both in the liberated lands of Azerbaijan and in the Republic of Armenia?

These kind of concerns should not be surprising. For many years, during the occupation of Garabagh and other Azerbaijani territories, Baku had called for UNESCO to dispatch a mission to assess the state of cultural monuments. However, UNESCO has not responded to these appeals, although a visit to Azerbaijani territories occupied by Armenian military would be fully in line with the tasks and responsibilities of this international organisation. In 2017, UNESCO even ignored Baku's call to suppress the violation of the norms and principles of international law, violation of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, which took place during the invaders' archaeological excavations in the Azykh Cave.

It was clear that UNESCO had become a policy tool for certain powers that applied double standards to different nations, in this case to Azerbaijan and Armenia, to serve their own interests. This reality was once again confirmed after the 44-day war, which ended with the victory of Azerbaijan and the expulsion of Armenian military. UNESCO had effectively joined the disinformation campaign launched by the international Armenian community accusing Azerbaijan of allegedly ‘destroying Armenian heritage’ in the liberated territories. There is no other name for UNESCO’s intention to visit liberated Garabagh exclusively for the purpose of assessing the condition of Christian monuments, without even thinking about the consequences of this move on the reputation of UNESCO. After all, it seemed as if the organisation followed a racist approach, imposing the superiority of the Christian cultural heritage over the Muslim one, Armenian over Azerbaijani one. Not to mention the purely scientific invalidity of such an approach, which fails to take into account the obvious truth that the ancient and medieval cultural monuments of Garabagh have nothing to do with Armenians. They are the cultural heritage of Albania—Turkic-Caucasian in terms of its ethnicity, and thus an inseparable part of the cultural heritage of the Azerbaijani people.

There has been some positive development as a result of Azerbaijan's categorical position, which insisted that the UNESCO mission monitor not only Christian but also Muslim cultural monuments. At the same time, Azerbaijan makes it clear that it will take all necessary measures to eliminate the Armenianisation of the Albanian cultural heritage. Baku has thus achieved another major diplomatic victory: a UNESCO mission will visit not only Azerbaijan, but also Armenia. So it will have to assess not only Christian but also Muslim monuments in the region. But most importantly, it will get to know the irrefutable evidence of Armenian falsification and Armenian vandalism, which has committed unprecedented criminal acts in many districts of Azerbaijan for three decades, until their liberation in 2020.