Azerbaijan’s first couple pays tribute to January 20 martyrs
On January 20, 2026, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev shared a message on his social media accounts to mark the 36th anniversary of the January 20 tragedy.
According to Caliber.Az, the post stated: “May Allah rest the souls of all our martyrs.”
First Vice-President of Azerbaijan, Mehriban Aliyeva, also published a message on her social media platforms on the occasion of the anniversary.
Her post read: “I respectfully honour the bright memory of the innocent victims of the January 20 tragedy. May Allah rest the souls of all our martyrs.”
The January 20 tragedy refers to the events of the night of January 19–20, 1990, when, on the orders of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, military units of the USSR Ministry of Defense, the State Security Committee, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs were deployed to Baku and several regions of Azerbaijan. The operation resulted in a violent crackdown on civilians, leaving hundreds of people killed, wounded, or missing.
Before the population was informed of the imposition of a state of emergency, military personnel killed 82 people and fatally wounded 20 others. In the days following the declaration of the state of emergency, 21 additional people were killed in Baku. A further eight people were killed in areas where no state of emergency had been declared—on January 25 in Neftchala and on January 26 in Lankaran.
In total, the illegal deployment of troops in Baku and the regions resulted in the deaths of 147 people, while 744 others were injured.
On January 21, 1990, the day after the events, national leader Heydar Aliyev arrived at Azerbaijan’s permanent representation in Moscow and issued a statement strongly condemning the Soviet leadership as well as the incompetent authorities of Azerbaijan at the time.
Despite the scale of the tragedy, it was not promptly or thoroughly investigated and did not receive an adequate assessment for several years. Only later, on the initiative of national leader Heydar Aliyev, was the January 20 tragedy given a political and legal assessment at the state level.
Following the historic Victory achieved in the 2020 Patriotic War under the leadership of President and Supreme Commander-in-Chief Ilham Aliyev, and the full restoration of Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and sovereignty as a result of local anti-terrorist measures carried out by the Azerbaijani Army in Karabakh on September 19–20, 2023, the souls of the martyrs of January 20 are considered to have found peace.
By Tamilla Hasanova
editor@caliber.az
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