Azerbaijan destroys Armenian cultural heritage in Artsakh and gets away with it – Sergey Shahverdyan

Azerbaijan has been appropriating and destroying the Armenian cultural heritage in Nagorno-Karabakh and Nakhichevan since Soviet times, but it has not received any strong response, Sergey Shahverdyan, Chair of the State Council for the Protection of Cultural Heritage in the Occupied Territories of Artsakh, told Alpha News.

“Azerbaijan openly shows its aspirations towards the territorial and historical rights of Armenia. We should not be surprised that today Azerbaijan started promoting its so-called rights of return under the name of Western Azerbaijan. But why shouldn’t it if it has been appropriating and destroying Armenian cultural heritage in Nagorno-Karabakh and Nakhichevan since Soviet times and getting away with it? This applies especially to the latest period, when not only did it get away with the attempts to appropriate Artsakh’s cultural heritage but also with the forced displacement of the entire population. This policy started a long time ago,” he said.

Speaking about the emergence and spread of the term Western Azerbaijan, he mentioned:

“That term appeared two years ago, but without receiving an appropriate response from the Armenian authorities, it spread so much that the intangible cultural heritage became a target as well. Under these circumstances, when the Armenian authorities are actually doing nothing to protect Armenian interests, including the interests of Artsakh, Azerbaijan’s steps are not surprising. In fact, we left about 30 museums and galleries and about 6,000 historical and cultural monuments in Artsakh, most of which are churches and monasteries, and there was no worthy response to protect all this.

There was not and will not be a response to the festival of intangible cultural heritage of Western Azerbaijan, where Azerbaijan calls Armenian villages and territories by Azeri toponyms and calls traditional Armenian food Azeri. And the reason is that today’s state policy does not assume protection of Armenian interests.”