An Article on Artsakh via TV Tropes

            I’ve been on the website TV Tropes since 2009. The site mainly exists to catalog tropes used in works of fiction, but it has a section of the site called “Useful Notes” in which a number of informational topics are covered, in a style reminiscent of “Wikipedia-lite”; not even requiring the citations that would be required on a Wikipedia page. They have a page on each country as well. I’ve contributed to their page on Armenia, of course only to have many parts of it deleted over the years due to the website’s ever-changing rules on what’s acceptable. I was particularly sad to see my list of tropes related to Armenia go when they decided to no longer allow tropes on Useful Notes pages, but that’s just an example of what often happens on the site. You never know what their rules are going to be month-to-month and year-to-year. But, the website also has Useful Notes pages on unrecognized countries. I wrote one for The Republic of Artsakh some years ago; no one else has really edited it besides me, other than to make minor adjustments. The article is a brief synopsis of the history of the country and the conflict that surrounds it.

            I think the article has flown under the radar thus far. Given the fickle nature of TV Tropes, and their tendency to bend under the slightest pressure whenever the threat of a “flame war” (aka an internet argument) presents itself, I’ve long feared the day a nationalist Azerbaijani discovers the page and takes issue with it, causing it to be either heavily edited or deleted altogether. I won’t be able to do much when/if this happens. You have to sacrifice control of your writing when you put it on any kind of wiki. But, I would like to at least preserve the article on my blog in case worse comes to worse. I did my best to present the facts in a non-biased manner, although when covering such a divisive topic, remaining completely unbiased is a tall order. It ultimately isn’t even the best thing to do when you’re talking about a conflict that has a clear aggressor. I’m not going to say my little article here is very scholarly. I could dig up sources to cite if pressed, but as previously mentioned, it’s not really a Wikipedia article, nor is it an essay for school. So just keep in mind I’m coming at it from a certain perspective (as an Armenian who’s been to Artsakh and spoken to people who live there) and I’m not really striving to be scholarly.

Here is the article, as it appeared as of May 2020:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/RepublicOfArtsakh

The Republic of Artsakh (Armenian: Արցախի Հանրապետություն Arts'akhi Hanrapetut'yun), also known as simply Artsakh and formerly the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, is a breakaway de-facto republic in the South Caucasus recognized only by three other non-UN states^note Those states are fellow de-facto republics Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria. It is also recognized by one Australian state, the Basque province in Spain, and nine US states. Still recognized internationally as part of Azerbaijan, the predominantly Armenian-populated region voted to break away from Azerbaijan with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, leading to a bloody ethnic conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia between 1991 and 1994, which ended in an uneasy ceasefire, with the region controlled by Armenian troops and local militia, and the border periodically patrolled by Russian peacekeepers. Peace talks, mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group, have stalled over the years, unfortunately. Ceasefire violations are an everyday occurrence, more often coming from the Azeri side, and every now and then there are still casualties. In order to not disturb the peace process, no member of the United Nations has recognized the state yet, including Armenia. Despite this the country went ahead and declared independence anyway during the war, forming its own democratic republic and constitution. After using the names Nagorno-Karabakh and Artsakh interchangeably, it elected to change its name to the Republic of Artsakh (a name with Armenian roots and an old medieval name for the region) after a referendum in 2017. Freedom House ranks its government above both Armenia and Azerbaijan in terms of political and civil rights. The Artsakh situation is a textbook example of two conflicting concepts in international law; territorial integrity, and the right to self-determination. It is a contradiction that doesn't look like it will solve itself any time soon.

There was of course a long history of dispute over the land before it culminated into a war; Armenia and Azerbaijan, both rarely independent in their respective histories, had previously fought over it when both countries became independent from the Russian Empire in 1918. When Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia declared independence, their declared boundaries contradicted one another, leaving contested lands like Nagorno-Karabakh, Javakh, South Ossetia and Nakhichevan in a sort of gray area and leading to wars between all three countries. After the Soviet Union annexed the South Caucasus, the Bolsheviks mulled over what to do with the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Armenia's Zangezur (modern Syunik) province was experiencing a rebellion from 1920 to 1921, and the original idea was to give the Armenian SSR control of Karabakh in order to quell it. They were all set to change the boundaries, but by June of 1921 the rebellion fizzled out, and the Bolsheviks, among them a young Josef Stalin (who usually gets blamed for this decision), decided to do an about-face, and instead created the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) within the Azerbaijani SSR in an attempt to please everyone, despite protests from Nagorno-Karabakh's citizens who would rather it have been part of the Armenian SSR. This occurred, not-so-coincidentally, when the Soviet Union was trying to lure Azerbaijan's ally Turkey toward communism. There were also economic reasons it was not made part of the Armenian SSR, since access to the area is much easier from the Azerbaijan side (although if this same logic had been applied to Nakhichevan, Azerbaijan's exclave to the south-west of Armenia, they would have given it to Armenia), and part of it could have been to weaken Armenian nationalist movements that would aspire for a unified Armenia, but the short story is it seemed like a good solution at the time; the Soviet Union expected to be around for a very long while, no one knew what would happen seventy years later. The fact still stands though that Artsakh was never under Azerbaijan's direct control, though an Azeri minority did exist there up until the war.

Things were relatively peaceful until the 1980's when the Soviet Union began to collapse, and Artsakh's citizens saw their chance to bring the issue of either joining Armenia or becoming independent to the Soviet Union's attention again. In February 1988 the Karabakh Council of People's Deputies passed a resolution requesting secession from Azerbaijan and an annexation to Armenia, with a 110-17 voting margin. Moscow, however, rejected their request. The Azerbaijani SSR loudly protested the secession movement, and anti-Armenian pogroms erupted across Azerbaijan, only spurring their push for independence. The Soviet Union, bogged down by other troubles, quickly lost control of the situation after failing to stop Artsakh’s independence movement with military crackdowns such as Operation Ring. Then of course, the Soviet Union collapsed, its republics declared independence, and with no one to stop them, war broke out. Russia played both sides of the conflict for its own profit at first (and still sells weapons to both parties), but eventually more or less sided with Armenia, while Turkey passively sent weapons and support to Azerbaijan. With the war becoming increasingly ugly, and fears of a much larger conflict erupting between Russia and Turkey, eventually a ceasefire was brokered; this being after Armenia had largely gained the upper hand in the war. As stated earlier it was never much of a ceasefire, as the truce was violated on a regular basis.

Turkey closed its border with Armenia over the conflict to show solidarity with its ally, despite its many parallels with the North Cyprus conflict. It is one of the main hurdles (besides the obvious genocide issue) in Turkish-Armenian relations, as Turkey demands Armenia at least cede the buffer zones around Artsakh ^note (out of necessity the Armenian army also occupies some territory not a part of Artsakh's Soviet boundaries for defensive purposes, otherwise Azerbaijan would surround it, and even this territory was part of Artsakh before Stalin separated it in 1923), if not all of it, before the borders can be reopened. It is presumed by most observers that Turkey was pressured into adding these conditions by Azerbaijan. Armenians both inside and outside of Artsakh fear a major humanitarian disaster should Azerbaijan ever succeed in annexing Artsakh, and this is not helped by warlike and racist statements regularly issued by Azerbaijan's president (who on more than one occasion has laid Azeri claim to all of Armenia, even the internationally recognized bit), not to mention lingering memories of the anti-Armenian pogroms such as those in Sumgait and Baku. In April 2016, amidst controversy surrounding the Azerbaijani president's off-shore hidden wealth revealed by the Panama Papers, Azerbaijan launched the first major offensive against Artsakh since 1994, briefly capturing some villages and positions and committing atrocities against civilians before being driven back and a ceasefire being reinstated by the Azeri side; this provided everyone involved with a sobering taste of what an all-out war would look like. Since then, attempts have been made to return the two countries to the negotiating table; however, the OSCE's proposal for Artsakh to sacrifice some surrounding territories to Azerbaijan in exchange for peace has been rejected by the Armenian side because of how vulnerable that would leave Armenia and Artsakh if Azerbaijan decided to unleash an offensive once claiming these territories. As of yet, the conflict is at a standstill.

It's because of this conflict that Armenia (and by association, Artsakh itself) has to rely on its borders with Iran and Georgia to survive. Luckily the US and its allies have usually looked the other way with regards to Iran's international trade sanctions in this case (although the US has tried to put pressure on Armenia to stop doing business with Iran). On the other side, despite that the land itself doesn't have much monetary worth and most of their money comes from Caspian oil deposits anyway, Azerbaijan's government has used the Karabakh issue to instill a national unity by demonizing the Armenians as a common enemy, thus helping the Aliyev dynasty stay in power. It is feared by the Azeri government that if Artsakh were to become recognized by the UN, many of Azerbaijan's other disenfranchised minorities would want independence as well.

The name of Republic of Artsakh refers to the ancient Armenian province that existed in the area from around the 1st century B.C. into medieval times, and is used interchangeably with Nagorno-Karabakh (a name which only came about in the 1600-1700's). The population is predominantly Christian, with most Christians being affiliated with the Armenian Apostolic Church. Several historical monasteries are popular with tourists, mostly from the Armenian diaspora, as most travel can only take place through its border with Armenia. Also popular is the recently excavated ancient city of Tigranakert, one of four cities given that name during the reign of Tigran the Great in the 1st century B.C. It provides a powerful counter to the Azeri claim that Armenians are new to the region. Functionally, Artsakh operates almost like an extra province of Armenia, even using the same currency, the dram, although it has a separate government. Traveling to Artsakh is relatively safe as long as one stays away from the ceasefire lines, and doesn't mind being banned from traveling to Azerbaijan afterward and added to their black list (Azerbaijan sees it as unauthorized trespassing into their borders; though if you're an ethnic Armenian you're automatically banned from entering the country anyway). This happened to Anthony Bourdain in 2017, although he likely expected it. An airport has been built in the capital city of Stepanakert to make the country more accessible, though it remains out of use due to threats from Azerbaijan, which prompted the countries in the OSCE Minsk Group to convince Armenia to hold off on it. The war destroyed a lot of the country's infrastructure, and there are still land mines here and there, but in all the citizens have done their best to carry on since the ceasefire. Efforts to de-mine the country and rebuild toppled buildings are still on-going, but have come a long way in the last two decades.