The Historical Roots of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War (1988–94)

Part One of My “History of the Caucasus” Series

The Caucasus (or Transcaucasia) is a region in southwestern Asia that bridges the Black and Caspian Seas, and encompasses present-day Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia and the North Caucasus of Russian Dagestan and Chechnya. It is home to a diversity of landscapes, climates, flora/fauna, natural resources and ethno-linguistic communities, including Armenians, Avars, Azerbaijanis, Chechens, Dagestanis, Georgians, Germans, Jews, Kurds, Lezgians, Russians, Talysh, and Tatars. Transcaucasia sits at the historic juncture between the Persian, Ottoman and Russian empires. Its history since early modern times has been wrapped up in its status as an imperial borderland, first between the Sunni Ottoman and Shia Safavid empires in the sixteenth-century, and then the Orthodox Russian Empire in the nineteenth. In all, the people of Transcaucasia practice a variety of Abrahamic religions, including Shia and Sunni Islam, Georgian, Armenian and Russian Orthodox Christianity, and Judaism.

Transcaucasia in the Twentieth Century

Russian colonization of Transcaucasia, formalized by the 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay, was interrupted in the aftermath of the First World War (1914–18). The collapse of Tsarist Russia under the conditions of total war opened the road for the October 1917 Revolution in the imperial capital of St. Petersburg. Staged by the Bolshevik Party, this seizure of power led to the Russian Civil War (1918–1922) between the communist “Red” armies and Tsarist “White” forces. In the midst of civil conflict, the Bolsheviks proclaimed the right of self-determination for all non-Russian nationalities. Acting upon this declaration, the mostly-Menshevik Transcaucasian Sejm (parliament) seceded from Russia, and proclaimed the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic in Tiflis (Tbilisi) in April 1918. This union was short-lived. Just one month later, the Sejm’s Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijani member states chose to go their own ways. The central problem of nationalism in Transcaucasia, however, was that the establishment of boundaries accompanied the destruction of the region’s cultural diversity through pogroms and ethnic cleansing.

As the Transcaucasian Sejm was disbanded, its Azerbaijani deputies proclaimed the Azerbaijani People’s Republic (Azərbaycan Xalq Cümhuriyyeti, in the old script: آذربایجان خالق جومهوریتی) in May 1918 from Tiflis. Chaired by Məmməd Əmin Rəsulzadə, an ethnic Azeri, the newly-established Azerbaijani Parliament moved to Baku to set up the world’s first Muslim-majority republic. Rəsulzadə’s government, however, was beset by internal intrigue and external instability from the onset. Domestically, Rəsulzadə’s Musavat (Equality) party competed for legitimacy against the “26 Baku Commissars,” led by the local Armenian Bolshevik Stepan Shaumian. The Baku Soviet under Shaumian sought to merge with Soviet Russia and extend communist control into Transcaucasia. Externally, independent Azerbaijan was threatened by British, German and Ottoman imperial competition over Baku’s oil fields.

For example, as his empire followed the Tsar’s in collapse, the head of the Ottoman military, Enver Pasha, moved to establish a new “Turanian” empire linking Turkish Anatolia to Russian Turkestan. In doing so, Enver empahsized the pan-Turkic and pan-Islamic identities shared by Turks and Azerbaijanis. His dream of empire came not long after the Ottoman state’s ethnic cleansing of its Armenian population during the war. With 1915 a not-so-distant memory, Enver’s imperial designs again denied the Armenians a place in the Caucasus.

In 1918, Enver organized the “Army of Islam” (İslam Ordusu) under the command of his half-brother, Nuri Pasha. This army quickly conquered Caucasian territory and reached the outskirts of Baku. Though Baku’s Muslim population greeted Nuri’s forces warmly, the Army of Islam soon ran afoul of Rəsulzadə’s government, which complained that it played too heavy-handed a role in Azerbaijani affairs. As a result, Nuri Pasha stressed that the Azerbaijani Democratic Republic lacked popular support, and threatened to dissolve it in favor of an Ottoman-backed government.

A second threat to Rəsulzadə’s legitimacy came from the rival Baku Soviet under the 26 Commissars. Though they too lacked popular legitimacy, Shaumian’s commissars fomented class warfare among the Azerbaijani Muslim population by attacking landlords and redistributing their lands to Muslim peasants. The Baku Commissars also nationalized the oil sector and organized military resistance to Enver’s Army of Islam. Outside interference from the Germans, who sought control over Georgia, and the British, wanting Baku oil, undermined the strength of Shaumian’s Soviet. The Army of Islam therefore linked up with Azerbaijani irregulars in Baku to overthrow and execute Shaumain and his comrades.

Only the fall of the first Azerbaijani republic in April 1920 to the Bolshevik Red Army brought an end to the internal chaos and foreign meddling in Transcaucasia. What followed was a period of Sovietization that merged independent Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan into another political union called the Transcaucasian Federative Soviet Socialist Republic (1920–1936). The Transcaucasian FSSR in turn became a founding member of the Soviet Union and lasted until its dissolution under Stalin in 1936. Once under their control, the Bolsheviks transformed Baku into a linchpin for spreading communist revolution in Asia by hosting the Congress of the People’s of the East (1920) and Turkological Conference (1926). The central figure in the Sovietization of Azerbaijan was Nariman Narimanov (1870–1925), an Azeri Bolshevik whose popularity and dedication earned him the nickname the “Lenin of the East.” In 1936, the Transcaucasian FSSR was again reorganized under the Stalinist government into separate territorial republics.

The First Nagorno-Karabakh War (1988–1994)

The reconfiguration of Soviet Transcaucasia into independent national republics under Stalin paved the way for war over Nagorno-Karabakh once the Soviet system collapsed. The Nagorno-Karabakh region was designated as an autonomous oblast (province) in 1923. When the Transcaucasian FSSR was divided into national republics in 1936, Nagorno-Karabakh became part of Soviet Azerbaijan, despite being home to an Armenian majority. Such dubious division of territory was in keeping with Moscow’s policy of “divide and rule,” to break up large concentrations of non-Russian minorities and disperse them throughout the Soviet Union. At the height of Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika, territorial claims and ethnic tensions between Azerbaijanis and Armenians, once mediated under Moscow, boiled over when the parliament of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast voted in 1988 for secession from Azerbaijan and unification with Armenia.

Recognizing the 1988 vote as a threat to its sovereignty, the Azerbaijani Soviet vetoed Nagorno-Karabakh’s resolution. A wave of anti-Armenian pogroms throughout Azerbaijan followed initiating the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. This conflict resulted in the displacement of one million Azerbaijani refugees and significant destruction to the country’s infrastructure, urban centers and landscape. At the start of the war, the Supreme Council of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, in an act of defiance against Moscow, expunged the words “Soviet Socialist” from its official name and adopted the flag of Rəsulzadə’s Azerbaijani Democratic Republic. Following the 1991 Soviet coup attempt against Gorbachev, all fifteen member republics declared their independence and dissolved the USSR.

Soviet collapse only excellerated the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis. To the dismay of the Azerbaijani national government, Armenia was not only able to hold onto Nagorno-Karabakh, but also occupied the surrounding regions. In February 1992, Armenian forces captured the city of Khojaly and massacred 161 Azerbaijanis. As a result, the Conference of Security and Cooperation in Europe organized the Minsk Group to resolve the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Among the countries involved in the Minsk Group were the United States, Russia, France and Turkey. Turkey had previously sponsored a United Nations resolution number 822 that declared Nagorno-Karabakh part of sovereign Azerbaijani territory and, therefore, called for the withdrawal of Armenian troops from the terrirtory. As member of the Minsk Group, Turkey used its insider status to lobby the other members to recognize UN resolutions favoring Azerbaijani claims over Nagorno-Karabakh.

Ultimately, both the United Nations and the Minsk Group proved ineffective at stopping war. In May 1992, Armenian troops captured the city of Shusha. It was in the aftermath of the city’s capture that Turkish President Süleyman Demirel sent military advisors and aid to assist the fledgling Azerbaijani government. In April 1993, Turkey closed its borders with Armenia and placed a trade embargo on all Armenian goods in an act of solidarity with Azerbaijan. Turkey also stepped up financial support to Baku.

The dissolution of Soviet identity meant that Azerbaijan pivoted to its Turkic identity during the war. Pan-Turkic sentiments reached their apex during the 1992 elections that brought Abülfaz Elçibey’s Popular Front to power. During the elections, Elçibey crushed the former communist government, headed by Yakub Memmedov, in a victory met with widespread enthusiasm. Part of Elçibey’s legitimacy lay in his impeccable credentials as a Soviet dissident who “even his critics conceded, had great personal honesty and moral authority” (De Waal, Black Garden, 86). The election of Elçibey’s Popular Front gave Azerbaijan momentum to continue the war with Armenia and, it hoped, regain territory.

The flourishing of pan-Turkism in Baku led to the opening of an Azerbaijani chapter of the Grey Wolves, whose name was taken from the founding myth of the Turkic peoples. The Grey Wolves provided Azerbaijan with a cultural-linguistic link to their “Turkish brothers,” and declared its support for Elçibey. Formed by Turkish Colonel Alparslan Türkeş in the late 1960s, the Grey Wolves began as the paramilitary youth wing of Türkeş’s Nationalist Movement Party (NMP). Back in Turkey, both the Grey Wolves and the NMP were violently anticommunist and promoted Turkic ultranationalism. During the 1970s, the Grey Wolves battled with leftwing paramilitary groups and carried out assassinations of leftwing academics and intellectuals. Shut down by Kenan Evren’s coup in 1980, Türkeş’s Grey Wolves and NMP remained illegal organizations until 1992.

Re-legalized during the Nagorno-Karabakh War, the Grey Wolves seized upon the opportunity to spread their brand of Turkic nationalism into Azerbaijan. New to post-Soviet Azerbaijan, the Grey Wolves nevertheless revived the same assumptions as the Ottoman Army of Islam had done seventy years earlier. Just as Nuri Pasha was, the Grey Wolves proved willing to intervene directly in Baku politics. With increasingly paralysis between rival factions in the Azerbaijani parliament, the Turkish Grey Wolves lent their support to the most politically expedient side, and helped it carry out a coup d’état against its opponents. With Elçibey’s election in 1992, the Grey Wolves used their influence to install their local leader, Iskender Hamidov, as Azerbaijan’s Minister of Internal Affairs. Türkeş himself traveled to Baku after Elçibey’s victory to personally congratulate the new Azerbaijani president and pledge stronger Turkish support. Enver Pasha’s “Turanic” dream seemed finally within grasp in the post-Soviet world.

However by June 1993, less than a year into his presidency, Elçibey faced growing internal dissent within his government. Azerbaijan’s continued defeat against Armenia and the burgeoning internal refugee crisis weakened the public’s support. Elçibey was thus forced to pivot away from the Grey Wolves and summon the old General Secretary of the Communist Party of Soviet Azerbaijan (1969–82), Heydar Aliyev. Elçibey invited Aliyev to Baku in order to mediate the internal disputes between himself and other parliamentary factions.

Heydar Aliyev

Rising to become Soviet First Deputy Premier in the 1980s, Aliyev returned to his native Nachivan after the Union’s collapse in 1991. Once Elçibey summoned him to Baku, however, it became clear that Aliyev was interested in more than mediating the president’s political disputes. Securing military backing, Aliyev ousted Elchibey and, in October 1993, became president of Azerbaijan and Chairman of the National Assembly. To those elements of Azerbaijani society weary of Elçibey’s Turkification measures, including Armenians and other non-Turkic minorities, Aliyev’s coup was met with great enthusiasm (De Waal, 104). The old communist was back.

Aliyev’s new government attempted a military advance into Nagorno-Karabakh, but Azerbaijani forces were once again repelled. Amidst mounting political and human cost, Aliyev approached Russia and Armenia for a ceasefire that would shore up the time he needed to secure his political dominance over Azerbaijan. The 1993 ceasefire did not mean, however, that Azerbaijan admitted defeat at the hands of Armenia. It was merely a respite and both countries remained locked in small, intermittent skirmishes up until the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War (2020).

On the Azerbaijani home front, the ceasefire received vehement backlash, especially from the Grey Wolves, who argued that Aliyev sold them out. The new president responded to their growing criticism by cracking down on pan-Turkist associations yet maintaining close relations with Turkey. In Ankara, the reception to Aliyev’s ceasefire was mixed. Turkish President Demirel maintained close ties with Aliyev although many in his cabinet supported reinstating Elçibey’s Popular Front and continuing the war, including Prime Minister Tansu Çiller and members of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı).

Back in Azerbaijan, Colonel Rovshan Cavadov, finding himself increasingly at odds with Aliyev, led a putsch attempt in 1995. Cavadov sought to overthrow Aliyev and renew the war with Armenia, which he believed Azerbaijan and Turkey could win together. However, when Demirel caught word of the coup plot against Aliyev, he personally warned the Azerbaijani president. Acting on Demirel’s advice, Aliyev’s loyalists went on the offensive against all suspected conspirators. Forces loyal to the Azerbaijani president surrounded Rovshan Cavadov’s barracks and, after a short conflict, defeated the coup plotters.

Cavadov himself was seriously wounded, but taking no chances, Aliyev barred him from receiving lifesaving medical treatment. His rival eliminated, Aliyev labeled the Grey Wolves a terrorist organization and banned them. In the aftermath of the failed coup attempt, Aliyev’s regime would focus on building an internal sense of national solidarity around his cult of personality, just as in the Soviet days. In this endeavor, Aliyev straddled the line between the pan-Turkism of Popular Front and local Azerbaijani nationalism that emphasized the country’s unique identity and destiny.

The First Nagorno-Karabakh War was catastrophic for Azerbaijan and shaped its internal and international standing for next fifteen years. By the time the dust settled in 1994, Armenia emerged as the decisive victor, capturing the Azerbaijani territories of Lachin, Kelbajar, Fuzuli, Jabrayil, Qubadli and Zangilan in addition to securing de-facto separation of Karabakh from Azerbaijan as the Republic of Artsakh. As a result, Azerbaijanis distrusted the Minsk Group or international mediatiors to this conflict.

For Part Two of my “History of the Caucasus” series, I will examine Azerbaijan under the rule of Heydar Aliyev (1993–2003), focusing on his efforts to reform the country, sign the “Contract of the Century” (1994), bring Azerbaijan into the 21st-century world, and build his cult of personality. Thank you for reading.

Further Reading

1. Lucian Kim, “Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict Threatens to Spiral Into Full-Blown War,” (https://www.npr.org/2020/09/28/917829216/fighting-between-armenia-and-azerbaijan-threatens-to-spiral-into-full-blown-war).
2. Tadeusz Swietochowski, Russian Azerbaijan: The Shapping of National Identity in a Muslim Community (Cambridge University Press, 1985).
3. Thomas de Waal, Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War (NYU Press, 2003, 2013).
4. Fazil Gezenferoğlu, Ebülfez Elçibey: Tarihten Geleceğe (İstanbul: Prestij Matbaacılık, 1995).
5. “Ebulfez Elçibey ölümünün 19. yıl dönümünde anılıyor! Ebulfez Elçibey kimdir?” https://www.haberturk.com/ebulfez-elcibey-olumunun-19-yil-donumunde-aniliyor-ebulfez-elcibey-kimdir-2515438.