4,400 km2 Population (1989): 190. 000

The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict: A Legal Analysis By Heiko Krüger

• “Most of the region could meanwhile be regarded as being settled by Azerbaijani tribes, such as the Otuziki, Javanshir and Kebirli.
• Although a proportion of Karabakh’s population was Christian-Albanian and Armenian, most of its population at this time was Muslim.
• Research in recent decades has shown that 80% of the population in the southern Caucasus region was Muslim and 20% Armenian. The Armenian population in Karabakh was still only 8.4% of the total in 1823.”

The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict: A Legal Analysis By Heiko Krüger

Then how it comes that the population of Nagorno-Karabakh

in 1989 was mostly 77% Armenians??....

Russia

1850s
Iran
Ottoman
After Turkmanchay Treaty 1828

• 560,000 Armenians were settled in Azerbaijan between 1828 and 1920 by Russian Empire from Ottoman Empire (Turkey) and Persian Impire (Iran)

“The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict” by Jacob Dougherty, University of Wisconsin

Russia

1850s
Iran
Ottoman
1917- Russian revolution
Transcaucasia
Soviet union

• …..it was ultimately decided that Nagorno-Karabakh should remain in the Azerbaijan Soviet Republic and be granted autonomous status (1923).
• This was the final and binding ruling which was repeatedly affirmed by the Soviet leadership over the following years.
• Until 1991 Soviet Union collapsed it was relatively peacefully, except in 1960s when the workers and peasants of Nagorno-Karabakh and the Armenian SSR presented various petitions to change the territorial affiliation of Karabakh, but this was rejected by official Moscow.

Russia

1948
1988
400.000 Azerbaijani were forced out from Armenia
Iran
Turkey
100.000 Armenians left Baku and other cities in 1988

• 1988 beginning – tensions and nationalistic anti-Azerbaijani mood increased in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.
• 24 Febrauary, 1988 - Then two young Azerbaijanis had been killed in an administrative district bordering Nagorno-Karabakh (Asgaran during demostration against the annexation of Nagorno- Karabakh Oblast into Armenia SSR).