“GEGHARD”
SCIENTIFIC ANALYTICAL
FOUNDATION
2025
2025
In Azerbaijan, especially after the 44-day war in 2020, the so-called "Western Azerbaijan" narrative has been widely promoted. This discourse has a clear content, which Azerbaijan does not even try to conceal. The term "Western Azerbaijan" refers to the sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia, and Baku uses false and fabricated names for the administrative regions, without any basis in historical reality. Any information or analysis published in Azerbaijani mass media reproduces this narrative authored by the authoritarian regime in Azerbaijan.
In recent years, Azerbaijan has been spreading its false narratives with long-term goals. Primarily, these narratives concern the so-called “Western Azerbaijan” and the return of Azerbaijanis who left Armenia. According to Aliyev, “the territory of Armenia is Azerbaijani, and the right of Azerbaijanis to return to their so-called "historic homeland" must be ensured.”
Azerbaijan attempts to spread these false narratives within the international community as well, by organizing “exhibitions” and “events” about “Western Azerbaijan”.
Azerbaijan spends significant financial resources to implement these fabricated ideas. In addition, “the Initiative Group for the Return to Western Azerbaijan” was recently established in the Azerbaijani parliament.
On May 1, 2024, a television channel named “Western Azerbaijan” was launched in Baku, with the primary goal of carrying out extensive propaganda. During the inauguration ceremony of the channel, Aziz Alekberli, the president of the “Western Azerbaijan Community,” said that
“Western Azerbaijan Television closely supports the actions aimed at the peaceful, safe, and dignified return of Azerbaijanis displaced from their historic lands over the past 200 years, as well as conveying the truth about the heritage of the Azerbaijani people.”
In October 2023, the "Western Azerbaijan" Research Center was established at Baku State University, founded on the ideas and concepts expressed by Ilham Aliyev regarding the return to “Western Azerbaijan.” The center’s activities include hosting international conferences, academic seminars, debates, publishing books, and maintaining intensive connections with the “Western Azerbaijan” community, according to the university’s statement.
On December 24, 2022, during his visit to the “Western Azerbaijan Community” building, Azerbaijani president stated: “Those displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh are already returning to their lands. I am confident that the day will come when our compatriots from Western Azerbaijan, along with their relatives, children, and grandchildren, will return to our historical land—Western Azerbaijan.”
The concept of Azerbaijanis returning to Armenia has also become a subject of discussion among Azerbaijani high-ranking officials in the international community. Official Baku carries out these actions to silence the issue of forcibly displaced Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh returning to their homeland.
However, the international community understands that it is illogical to link these two issues. For instance, months ago, Toivo Klaar, the former EU Special Representative for the South Caucasus and the crisis in Georgia, when discussing both the return of forcibly displaced Armenians to Nagorno-Karabakh and the forced displacement of thousands of Armenians from various Azerbaijani cities in the 1990s, remarked: “Sometimes other issues are brought up in this context, such as the question of so-called “Western Azerbaijan”. For me, these are completely distinct questions that cannot be mixed. The first is the facilitation of the return of the Karabakh Armenians to their ancestral homes, which is an obligation that Azerbaijan has. The second is the question of Armenians who used to live in other parts of Azerbaijan, including in Baku, or of Azerbaijanis who used to live in Armenia. Naturally they should also be able to visit the places where they or their families have lived, or even to return there, if they so wish, and this should likewise be a consequence of normalisation, but that is a wholly different issue from the specific question of the Karabakh Armenians”.
The fact is that for Azerbaijan, which considers the territory of the Republic of Armenia its “historic homeland,” even its current territory cannot be regarded as a historic homeland. Baku’s baseless and fabricated propaganda must face counter-propaganda grounded in a rich historical base, and remain only as Ilham Aliyev’s dreams and illusions.
It is noteworthy that Baku carries out all of this in parallel to the negotiation process on resolving relations with Yerevan and establishing peace.