What does the “Great Return” concept mean for Azerbaijan amid peace talks with Armenia? Seeking long-awaited justice

On January 26, the Azerbaijani government approved a new document titled "Concept of Return to West Azerbaijan”, proposed by the Community of West Azerbaijan, a local NGO dedicated to protecting the rights of Azerbaijanis exiled from the Armenian territories. According to the Azerbaijani authorities, the concept is a peaceful way of return of ethnic Azerbaijani refugees and their descendants to their former homes in Armenia.

The first time, president Ilham Aliyev publicly discussed the fates of ethnic Azerbaijanis exiled from Armenia was when he paid a visit to the newly inaugurated headquarters of the NGO on December 24, 2022. “I am sure that there will come a time when our compatriots from Western Azerbaijan, their relatives, children and grandchildren will return to our historical land, to Western Azerbaijan,” he said. In this context, Azerbaijan urges Armenia to start a constructive dialogue with the community within the international control and monitoring mechanism to ensure Azerbaijanis' individual and collective rights.

Moreover, the community of Western Azerbaijanis would soon officially appeal to the government of Armenia to restore their property rights, such as houses and lands, as legal owners. The appeal is attributed to the general idea of the community that it does not accept the injustices perpetrated against Western Azerbaijanis over the past two centuries and rejects the consequences of these injustices. Hence, the return process should restore the configuration of Western Azerbaijanis' settlement before their expulsion.

Azerbaijan intensified its rhetoric regarding the fate of the ethnic Azerbaijani community of Armenia in the post-war period as a countermeasure to Armenia's claims to the sovereign territories of Azerbaijan. The main narrative of Azerbaijan is built on historical facts that the ethnic cleansing committed against ethnic Azerbaijanis through violence, massacres, and other crimes against humanity, as well as gross violations of human rights. This process was especially severe and ruthless in 1905-06, 1918-21, 1948-53, and 1987-91.

The issue became the topic of broad discussion amid a new standoff between Azerbaijan and Armenia on the Lachin road. Official Yerevan was quick to dub the civilian protests as an attempt of Baku to block the main road linking Karabakh to Armenia, though Baku regularly ensures the free passage of humanitarian convoys via the road. The blockade topic appeared to be the most viable tool for the Armenian lobbyist organizations based in the West to promote the anti-Azerbaijani narrative and recently adopted resolution documents in France and the European Parliament.

As a result, Azerbaijan launched a campaign to raise awareness of the international community regarding what it calls an unforeseen state-sponsored cultural genocide against the Azerbaijani heritage in Yerevan. According to an earlier investigation conducted by Caliber.az, at the beginning of the 20th century, there were 310 mosques registered on the territory of the Yerevan province. However, today only one mosque can be seen in the city - the Goy Masjid (Blue Mosque), referred to as "Persian."

The Western Azerbaijan Community concept has been in progress since August 2022 as a rebranded version of the Refugee Society led by Aziz Alekberli, a member of the Azerbaijani Parliament. Shortly after his appointment Alekberli in one of his interviews, underlined the fact that "the process deportation of ethnic Azerbaijanis, which started in February 1988, came to an end on December 5, 1988, resulted in the creation of a mono-ethnic Armenian state on the historical territory of Azerbaijan.”

When the ethnic tensions between Azerbaijanis and Armenians mounted dramatically in the early 1990s over the Karabakh region, both ethnic communities fled their homes: the Azerbaijani government says that 200,000 Azerbaijanis left Armenia, and the Armenian government says 360,000 Armenians fled Azerbaijan. For many years, both states frequently clashed over the deportation issue through diplomatic channels trying to exert more force on each other. The situation aggravated significantly after the second Karabakh war in 2020, which resulted in the liberation of Azerbaijani territories.

While the peace process between Baku and Yerevan stalled amid Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan’s bellicose remarks toward Azerbaijan during his most recent Brussels trip, official Baku will likely push the Western Azerbaijani community as another tool of pressure to thwart Armenia’s territorial claims and bring it closer to the peace. However, the current realities suggest that the peace negotiations in 2023 will be challenging.