Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev visited, on Sunday October 15, for the first time to Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, a region recaptured from Armenian separatists in September 2023 following a lightning military offensive by Baku.
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“ Ilham Aliyev raised the national flag of Azerbaijan in the city of Khankendi [le nom azerbaïdjanais de Stepanakert, ndlr] and gave a speech », Indicated the country’s presidency in a brief press release. His exact comments were not immediately reported by the presidency.
This is the first time that Ilham Aliev, 61, has visited Nagorno-Karabakh since he came to power in 2003, when he succeeded his father Heydar Aliev. Dressed in khaki military fatigues and a black T-shirt according to images published by his services, the leader also hoisted the national flag with three horizontal bands – sky blue, red, green – in other localities in the Upper -Karabakh, on the occasion of this unprecedented and surprise trip.
Last September, Baku won a military victory in 24 hours against the Armenian separatists of Nagorno-Karabakh, which has since been emptied of a huge part of its population. Before that, Azerbaijan and Armenia had opposed each other in two wars for control of the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, one in the 1990s following the breakup of the USSR, the other during the fall 2020, won by Baku.
Pope Francis’ call for the preservation of religious heritage
Pope Francis launched, on Sunday October 15, an appeal to preserve the religious heritage of Nagorno-Karabakh, in particular its monasteries, after the offensive by Azerbaijani forces in September which led to the flight of almost the entire population Armenian. “ Beyond the humanitarian situation of displaced people, which is serious, I would like to appeal for the protection of monasteries and places of worship in the region. », declared Francis after his traditional Angelus prayer in Saint Peter’s Square.
Several hundred churches, monasteries and tombstones dating from the 11th to the 19th centuries dot Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous enclave that has been an integral part of Azerbaijan since the end of the Russian Empire but which unilaterally proclaimed its independence in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
With the recent exodus and the departure in particular of the priests from the Dadivank monastery, supposedly founded in the early days of Christianity by Saint Dadi, uncertainty weighs on this heritage. According to the Caucasus Heritage Watch, a project that relies on satellite images to document local Armenian heritage, 108 medieval and modern Armenian monasteries, churches and cemeteries were completely destroyed between 1997 and 2011 in the Nakhichevan region, near the border with Iran.
(With AFP)