31 March 1918 genocide in the land of Azerbaijan

The struggle that emerged following the collapse of the Safavi Empire between Iran and Russia for control over the land of Azerbaijan came to a halt with the treaties of 1813 Gulustan and 1828 Turkmenchay. In accordance with these treaties, the handover of Sothern Caucasia to the Tsardom of Russia resulted in the occupation of the territory with families of Armenian origin, formerly accommodated in Persian and Ottoman land. Since the dawn of the 20th century, with the support of Russia and Western states, the Armenian set out to establish a Christian-Armenian state across Southern Caucasia and Eastern Anatolia. It was in 1905 that Armenian secret societies such as Dashnaktsutyun and Henchak first carried out armed assaults against the native Turks of Azerbaijan. As many as 10,000 Turks succumbed to death as a result of the assaults in Southern Caucasia that took place between 1905 and 1907. In the second phase of the incidents, hundreds of thousands of Turks were subject to ethnic cleansing due to Armenian atrocities in Eastern Anatolia. These atrocities, brought to a halt by the military intervention of the Ottoman State, gave rise to ethnic cleansing campaigns against Turks in Azerbaijan from March 1918 on. Within a few months until the intervention of the Islamic Army of the Caucasus, ethnic cleansing campaigns were carried out by Christian-Armenian forces throughout Azerbaijan. This study encompasses the inhumane massacre and genocidal acts, fundamentally considered as a violation of human rights, that took place throughout Azerbaijan between 1915 and 1918. The aformentioned genocidal acts have been analyzed in a chrological manner considering the downfall of the cultural and demographic structure, taking each region into account independently, relying on the statements of victims and modern archive records as well as available literature and it is intended that the material loss and moral damage of Azerbaijanis be disclosed.