Qafqazinfo news portal published the MP's article "The issue of West Azerbaijan is our national issue"

Only in the XX century, Armenians with the help of their supporters carried out ethnic cleansing against Azerbaijanis in the territory of modern Armenia in 1905-1906 and in 1918-1920, mass repressions in 1930s, deportations in 1948-1953 and finally managed to complete ethnic cleansing in 1988-1989. They suffocated our compatriots by deportation from their native lands. And over the past 220 years, the number of Western Azerbaijanis, their descendants who were expelled from western Azerbaijan (present-day Armenia) for their ethnicity and dispersed to various countries around the world, including settling in Azerbaijan, has exceeded 5 million. Only in 1948-1953 some 150 thousand people were deported from this territory, in 1988-1991 some 300 thousand. The largest deportations took place during the genocide of 1918-1920. In fact, the expulsion of Azerbaijanis from western Azerbaijan continued for all of 220 years.

It has been 34 years since the last deportation of Azerbaijanis from their ancient ancestral lands located on the territory of Armenia. So, during this deportation about 300 thousand of our compatriots from more than 50 thousand families were violently evicted from almost 300 settlements, more than 200 compatriots were brutally killed, more than 400 people were wounded, houses and property of many of them were burnt, and the ones which were not burnt, were gratuitously usurped by Armenians, more than 300 mosques, hearths, shrines were destroyed, more than 500 cemeteries were razed to the ground. The total material damage caused to the refugees expelled from Armenia in 1988 is more than 20 billion U.S. dollars, which according to international standards of assessment after 34 years is now 1 trillion U.S. dollars. And the moral damage inflicted on our compatriots is incomparable.

The protest of the Azerbaijani people against this event, including the attempt to annex Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia, led to the introduction of Soviet troops against it in January 1990, massacres in Baku and other cities and regions of Azerbaijan. After the completion of the deportation of Azerbaijanis from the territory of Armenia, the Armenian nationalists began the next phase of ethnic cleansing, genocide of Azerbaijanis in Nagorno-Karabakh, and 20% of the lands of the Republic of Azerbaijan were occupied by the Armenian armed forces.

In the territory of Western Azerbaijan - today's Armenia - our people has a very rich cultural and historical heritage. This is not by accident, because our ancestors lived in this area for thousands of years. And today our cultural and historical heritage is being destroyed by Armenians, wiped off the face of the earth. This injustice must be stopped, and each of us must do our part in this direction, and do our best to bring the realities of Western Azerbaijan to the international community. President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has repeatedly said in his speeches that the modern Armenia emerged on historical Azerbaijani lands: "Unfortunately, in 1918 the young Azerbaijan Democratic Republic gave Yerevan to Armenia. We have all the documents. One of the first decisions of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was to transfer Yerevan to Armenia as the capital. Although at that time the majority of the population in Yerevan were Azerbaijanis. It was a big mistake. This did not protect then the young Azerbaijani state from Armenian provocations. Maybe they hoped for this. We can say that we lost Yerevan at that time. But we see that the claims of Armenians are not diminishing. They periodically shout different senseless slogans at the highest level, opinions that they still have claims on the lands of neighboring countries."

The Head of the State mentioned that Azerbaijanis must not forget their historical land: "This must also be a direction for our future activities, as we are working in this direction even today. Our historical lands are the Iravan khanate, Zangezur, Goycha. Both the young generation and the world should know about it. I am glad that works are done, films are shot and exhibitions are organized. In the coming years we'll have to be more active in this direction and hold exhibitions and presentations all over the world. Because Yerevan is our historical land and we, Azerbaijanis, must return to this historical place. This is our political and strategic goal and we must gradually get closer to it.

So the issue of West Azerbaijan is our national issue, and each of us must do our best in this direction.

Anar Mammadov.

Member of the Milli Majlis