No one in Azerbaijan’s history has called Syunik “Eastern Zangezur”: Azerbaijani scholar

No one in Azerbaijan’s history has called Armenian Syunik “Eastern Zangezur.” This term was introduced by Ilham Aliyev, President of Azerbaijan, right after the 2020 war, Altay Goyusov, researcher at the Baku Research Institute, wrote on social media.

“That alone showed just how hollow his rhetoric about peace was: if an ‘Eastern Zangezur’ exists, then logically a ‘Western Zangezur’ should exist too, and we all understand perfectly well what territory is meant by that.

Azerbaijani history textbooks also claim that all of Zangezur (that is, Armenian Syunik — ed.) is sacred Azerbaijani land. European diplomats are not so uninformed as to be unaware of this context. And yet they continue to encourage and reproduce this rhetoric.

So how, after that, can one believe that this kind of Europe genuinely wants peace in our region?

In this regard, I see little difference between the Russian and European approaches to the region: the same principle of divide and rule, the same cultivation of enmity, and the same imperial logic.

This doesn’t mean that by supporting Aliyev’s rhetoric today, Europeans are necessarily ‘taking Azerbaijan’s side.’ Today they may support Aliyev’s irredentist* rhetoric, and tomorrow, with the same enthusiasm, take the exact opposite position.

But in any case, it’s the local population that will suffer. And at times it seems as though their suffering is viewed as an acceptable price for the interests, development, and prosperity of those who call themselves the civilized world.”

*Irredentism is the policy or movement of a state, party, or nation aimed at unifying a people and annexing territories where that ethnic or linguistic group lives, but which belong to another state,” he wrote.