Armenia In the early 20th century, the
Transcaucasian Armenians began to equate Azerbaijanis (then called Caucasian Tatars) with the perpetrators of anti-Armenian policies such as the
Armenian genocide in the
Ottoman Empire, due to the
Armenian–Tatar massacres of 1905–1906. On March 30, 1918, during a
Bolshevik takeover orchestrated by
Stepan Shahumyan, an estimate of 3,000 to 10,000
Azerbaijanis were killed by Bolshevik troops and ethnic Armenian militias, while up to 2,500 Armenians were killed by ethnic Azerbaijani militias. Azerbaijani sources say that 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed.
Nagorno-Karabakh After the
First Nagorno-Karabakh War, anti-Azerbaijani sentiment grew in Armenia, leading to harassment of Azerbaijanis there. In the beginning of 1988 the first refugee waves from Armenia reached
Baku. In 1988, Azerbaijanis and
Kurds (around 167,000 people) were expelled from the
Armenian SSR. Following the
Karabakh movement, initial violence erupted in the form of the murder of both Armenians and Azerbaijanis and border skirmishes. As a result of these skirmishes, 214 Azerbaijanis were killed. On June 7, 1988, Azerbaijanis were evicted from the town of
Masis near the Armenian–Turkish border, and on June 20, five villages that were mostly populated by Azerbaijanis were emptied in the
Ararat Province. Henrik Pogosian was ultimately forced to retire, blamed for letting nationalism develop freely.
Post-war On January 16, 2003
Robert Kocharian said that Azerbaijanis and Armenians were "ethnically incompatible" and it was impossible for the Armenian population of Karabakh to live within an Azerbaijani state. Speaking on 30 January in
Strasbourg,
Council of Europe Secretary-General
Walter Schwimmer said Kocharian's comment was tantamount to warmongering. Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe President
Peter Schieder said he hopes Kocharian's remark was incorrectly translated, adding that "since its creation, the Council of Europe has never heard the phrase "ethnic incompatibility". On September 2, 2015, the Minister of Justice
Arpine Hovhannisyan shared an article link on her personal
Facebook page featuring her interview with the Armenian news website
Tert.am where she condemned the sentencing of an Azerbaijani journalist and called the human rights situation in Azerbaijan "appalling". Subsequently, the minister came under criticism for liking a racist comment on the aforementioned Facebook post by Hovhannes Galajyan, editor-in-chief of local Armenian newspaper Iravunk; On the post, Galajyan had commented in Armenian: "What human rights when even purely biologically a Turk cannot be considered a human".
Mosques in Armenia The
Blue Mosque is the only functioning Persian mosque and one of the two remaining mosques in present-day Yerevan. In the opinion of the journalist
Thomas de Waal, writing out Azerbaijanis of Armenia from history was made easier by a linguistic sleight of hand, as the name "Azeri" or "Azerbaijani" was not in common usage before the twentieth century, and these people were referred to as "Tartars", "Turks" or simply "Muslims". De Waal adds that "Yet they were neither Persians nor Turks; they were Turkic-speaking Shiite subjects of the Safavid Dynasty of the Iranian Empire". According to De Waal, when the Blue Mosque is referred to as Persian it "obscures the fact that most of the worshippers there, when it was built in the 1760s, would have been, in effect, Azerbaijanis". ,
Yerevan The other remaining mosque in Yerevan, the Tapabashy Mosque, was likely built in 1687 during the
Safavid dynasty in the historic
Kond district. Today, only the 1.5 meter-thick walls and sections of its outer perimeter roof still stand. The main dome collapsed in the 1960s (1980's according to residents and neighbors), though a smaller dome still stands. The mosque was used as by Armenian refugees following the
Armenian genocide, and their descendants still live inside the mosque today. According to residents, the Azerbaijanis of Yerevan held prayer services until they left for
Baku in 1988 due to the tensions surrounding the war. The remnants of the mosque are protected by the Armenian state as a historical monument. In 2021, Armenia issued a tender to restore and reconstruct the historic Kond district including the mosque. In the
Syunik Province of Armenia, the remaining mosques in the towns of
Kapan,
Sisian, and
Meghri are maintained by the state under the
Non-Armenian historical and cultural Monuments in Syunik designation.
Polling According to a 2012 opinion poll, 63% of Armenians perceive
Azerbaijan as "the biggest enemy of Armenia" while 94% of Azerbaijanis consider Armenia to be "the biggest enemy of Azerbaijan". The root of the hostility against Azerbaijanis can be traced from the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Georgia During
Georgia's movement toward independence from the
Soviet Union, the Azeri population expressed fear for its fate in an independent Georgia. In the late 1980s, most ethnic Azeris occupying local government positions in the Azeri-populated areas were removed from their positions. In 1989, there were changes in the ethnic composition of the local authorities and the resettlement of thousands of migrants who had suffered from landslides in the mountainous region of
Svaneti. The local Azeri population, accepting the migrants at first, demanded only to resolve the problem of Azeri representation on the municipal level. The demands were ignored; later the migrants, culturally different from the local population and facing social hardships, were accused of attacks and robbery against the Azeris, which in turn led to demonstrations, ethnic clashes between
Svans and Azeris, demands for Azeri autonomy in Borchali, and for the expulsion of Svan immigrants from Kvemo-Kartli. The antagonism reached its peak during the presidency of
Zviad Gamsakhurdia (1991–1992), when hundreds of Azeri families were forcibly evicted from their homes in Dmanisi and Bolnisi by
nationalist paramilitaries. Thousands of Azeris emigrated to Azerbaijan in fear of nationalist policies. The Georgian nationalist press expressed concern with regard to the fast natural growth of the Azeri population. Although ethnic oppression in the 1990s did not take place on a wide scale, minorities in Georgia, especially Azeris,
Abkhazians, and
Ossetians, encountered the problem of dealing with nationalist organisations established in some parts of the country. Previously not prone to migrating, Azeris became the second-largest emigrating ethnic community in Georgia in the early 1990s, with three-quarters of these mainly rural emigrants leaving for Azerbaijan and the rest for Russia. Unlike other minority groups, many remaining Azeris cited attachment to their home communities and unwillingness to leave behind well-developed farms as their reason to stay.
Iran Anti-Azerbaijani sentiment in Iran is rooted in the hostility of the 1990s, during which Iran was blamed by Azerbaijan for supporting Armenia in the
First Nagorno-Karabakh War, despite the Iranian government claiming to have helped Azerbaijan. A sense of hostility against Azerbaijan developed in Iran as a result, fostering an alliance between Iran and Armenia. In 2006, a
cartoon controversy with regard to Azerbaijani people had led to unrest, as the cartoon had compared the Azerbaijanis to cockroaches. During 2012, fans of
Tractor Sazi, an Azerbaijani-dominated football club, chanted anti-Iranian racist rhetorics, raising their voice against oppression of ethnic Azerbaijanis by the Iranian government and their neglect after the
East Azerbaijan earthquakes; the Iranian police force responded violently, arresting dozens. Azerbaijani activists have also increasingly faced harassment by the Iranian government for their effort to protect the Azerbaijani minority in Iran. ==See also==