Nagorno-Karabakh's abandoned capital transforms under Azerbaijani rule
It was once the seat of a de facto government. Now it's a ghost town that plays host to projections of its conquerors' power.
It's a ghost town that looms large in the minds of both Armenians, who know it as Stepanakert, and Azerbaijanis, who know it as Khankendi.
It served for three decades as the de facto capital of the self-proclaimed, now-defunct Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR).
It was home to the majority of the republic's 100,000-some population, nearly all of them Armenians, who fled to Armenia after Azerbaijan's lightning offensive to seize the whole of the NKR on September 19-20. As they fled they endured a gas explosion that killed over 200, a days-long traffic jam during which 64 people reportedly died, and faced an uncertain status once they reached their destination.
Azerbaijan never accepted the existence of the NKR, nor even the term "Nagorno-Karabakh," let alone the idea that it had a capital. But the town of Khankendi is of enormous symbolic importance for it, too, as its seizure represents the total nature of Baku's victory in Karabakh.
It was Khankendi where President Ilham Aliyev delivered his most triumphant victory speech, raised the Azerbaijani flag and mocked the detained former NKR leaders.
And it was Khankendi where the victory in the 2020 war against Armenia over Karabakh was celebrated with a military parade attended by Aliyev and his family in November.
“During these 20 years [of my presidency], I never doubted that this day would come and a military parade under the Azerbaijani flag would be held in the city of Khankendi,” he told the parade. “I once said [during the 2020 war] that without Shusha, our work would be incomplete. However, even then, I knew that without Khankendi and Khojaly, our work would be incomplete.”
Footage posted on social media from Khankendi by a handful of Azerbaijanis with access to the town shows virtually no signs of life. According to the Armenian government, more than 100,000 people had left Nagorno-Karabakh for Armenia within the 10 days following the NKR's surrender after Azerbaijan's lightning offensive.
In December, Azerbaijani media reported, citing the country's commission for Internally Displaced Persons affairs, that 50 Azerbaijani families, originally from Khankendi, would soon be resettled in the town. While the town served as the seat of the government of Soviet Azerbaijan's Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (1923-91), its population was overwhelmingly Armenian with an Azerbaijani minority. Its population was 11 percent Azerbaijani according to the latest Soviet census conducted there in 1979.
The Azerbaijani government created a "reintegration portal" for Armenians deciding to remain in their homes and accept Baku's rule. It claimed in October to have received 98 applications, but the International Committee of the Red Cross estimates that only about 20 have stayed behind.
While Armenia says that the local Armenians' flight in the face of Azerbaijani military advance amounted to ethnic cleansing, Azerbaijani officials insist that they left by their own will, as Aliyev reiterated in an interview with Euronews in December.
“Our public communications with Karabakh Armenians, and what we did after, demonstrated that we wanted them to stay. We openly announced that and I, during my appeal to the Azerbaijani people after the end of the anti-terror operation [the September offensive], said that they could stay,” he said. “We opened the electronic portal of registration. All of those who want to come back have this right. Their property is duly protected. All the historical and religious sites are duly protected.”
In the reports of meetings of Azerbaijani officials with Armenian residents in Karabakh for the purpose of registration, we see mainly elderly people who were likely too weak to join the exodus.
Azerbaijan disclosed its reintegration plan for Karabakh Armenians publicly only in October, after the vast majority of the population had fled the region. Vague as it is overall, it makes one thing clear: as expected, there will be no special treatment for Armenians; they are to have the exact same legal status as Azerbaijanis or other ethnic minorities.
“The word reintegration, which I use many times, unfortunately, was met with a kind of irony, both from the Armenian government and also from the separatists. The same separatists who now wait for the verdict in the detention center,” Aliyev said in a forum in early December.
“We even delivered the message to them that we will have a municipal election at the end of 2024, so they will participate. They will select their representatives, who will be the leaders of the municipalities. So, what else should we have provided or offered? It was the maximum and it was totally transparent.”
He also spoke to the forum about how Azerbaijani social workers were taking care of the Armenians who stayed behind. “[Y]ou have to eat, you have to have heating, you have to have other means of living. Not many of them, I would say, remained. But those who remain, they have been taken care of and those who want to come back, they can use this mechanism,” he said.
A few Karabakhis have mused on social media about possibly going back to their homes given the difficulties they face in settling in Armenia.
But it's not clear how widespread or serious the intention is, especially given the social pressures against accepting Azerbaijani rule.
When it comes to the physical landscape, as soon as it restored its sovereignty, the Azerbaijani government rid Khankendi of all flags and other attributes of the former NKR. A presidential decree established "Karabakh University" in place of what had been known as "Artsakh University" under Armenian rule. And the seats at the local stadium had been arranged in such colors as to form the NKR flag but are now arranged to spell out "Karabakh is Azerbaijan."
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