Tell story behind Azerbaijan’s attacks

The Associated Press, in reporting on the new and continued Azerbaijani aggressions on Nagorno-Karabagh, illiterate of historic background of that region, and not having done due journalistic research, has presented a shameful, totally incorrect coverage.

Armenian King Tigran’s (95-55 BC) empire that covered the area from Black Sea to Caspian to Mediterranean, has been the land of Armenians. The excavations of the ancient city of Tigranagerd (now Karabagh), filigreed khatchkars (cross tombstones) and other innumerable landmarks are a testament and footprints of the Armenian presence and its deep-rooted civilization.

According to pre-Soviet Muslim historians, the Azerbaijani state did not exist before the 20th century, and the 1921 census documented a 94 percent Armenian population. In the 1920s, as rapprochement with Turkey, Bolsheviks created Mountainous Karabagh Autonomous Region and gifted it to Azerbaijan. With Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost policy in 1988, Armenians requested return of confiscated land. That triggered the 1988-1991 pogroms and ethnic cleansing of Armenians by the Azeris.

Azerbaijan received, as a gift, the Soviet illegally appropriated Nagorno-Karabagh as a political move to appease Azeri’s blood brother Turkey. Azerbaijan does not have a legitimate deed to the house it calls its own.

This story was originally published April 8, 2016 at 6:18 AM with the headline "Tell story behind Azerbaijan’s attacks."