Armenian–Azerbaijani war (1918–1920)

1918–20 conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan
other conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan

The Armenian Azerbaijani war (1918–1920) was a conflict that took place in the South Caucasus in regions with a mixed Armenian Azerbaijani population, broadly encompassing what are now modern day Azerbaijan and Armenia. It began during the final months of World War I and ended with the establishment of Soviet rule. The conflict took place against the backdrop of the Russian Civil War and the partition of the Ottoman Empire. Mutual territorial claims, made by the newly formed Azerbaijan Democratic Republic and Republic of Armenia, led to their respective support for Azerbaijani and Armenian militias in the disputed territories. Armenia fought against Azerbaijani militias in the Erivan Governorate of the former Russian Empire, while Azerbaijan fought Armenian claims to the Karabakh region. The war was characterized by outbreaks of massacres and ethnic cleansing (such as the March Days, the September Days, the Shusha massacre, and more broadly, the Massacres of Azerbaijanis in Armenia), which changed the demographics of the region. Hostilities broadly came to an end when the Soviet's 11th Army invaded and occupied both Azerbaijan and Armenia.

On 30 March 1918, the Soviets, based on the unfounded report that the Muslim crew of the ship Evelina was armed and ready to revolt against the Soviets, disarmed the crew, which tried to resist. This led to three days fighting, resulting in the death of up to 12,000 Azerbaijanis.

At the same time the Baku Commune was involved in heavy fighting with the advancing Caucasian Ottoman Army in and around Ganja. The Ottoman Empire's Enver Pasha began to move forward with the newly established Army of Islam. Major battles occurred in Yevlakh and Agdash. British General Lionel Dunsterville ordered the evacuation of the city on 14 September, after six weeks of occupation, and withdrew to Iran; most of the Armenian population escaped with British forces. The Ottoman Army of Islam and its Azerbaijani allies, led by Nuri Pasha, entered Baku on 15 September and killed between 10,000–20,000 Armenians in retaliation for the March massacre of Muslims. The capital of the Azerbaijan was finally moved from Ganja to Baku. However, after the Armistice of Mudros between the United Kingdom and the Ottoman Empire on 30 October, Turkish troops were substituted by the Triple Entente. Headed by British Gen. W. Thomson, who had declared himself the military governor of Baku, 1,000 Commonwealth soldiers arrived in Baku on 17 November 1918. By Gen. Thomson's order, martial law was implemented in Baku. The Armenian government tried several times to seize Shusha militarily. In 1918, the Karabakh Council was declared in the region. However, throughout the summer of 1918 Armenians in the mountainous Karabag region, under the leadership of Andranik Ozanian, resisted the Ottoman 3rd Army. After the Armistice the Ottoman Empire began to withdraw its forces and Armenian forces under Andranik seized Nagorno Karabakh. Armistice of Mudros brought Gen. Andranik the chance to create a base for further expansion eastward and form a strategic corridor extending into Nakhichevan. Sultanov ordered attacks on Armenian villages the next day, increased the sizes of Azerbaijani garrisons in Shusha and Khankendi and drew up plans to destroy several Armenian villages to sever the link between Armenians in Karabakh and the region of Zangezur.

The largest escalation of the Armenian Azerbaijani conflict occurred in mid March 1920 during the botched Karabakh uprising culminating in the massacre and expulsion of Shushi's majority Armenian population. Through 1918 1919, the area of Mountainous Karabakh was under the de facto administration of the local Armenian Karabakh Council, which was supported by the region's overwhelmingly Armenian population. During this period, Azerbaijan several times attempted to assert its authority over the region, backed by the British governor of Baku, Lieutenant General Thomson, who appointed Dr. Khosrov bey Sultanov as governor general of Karabakh and Zangezur with the intention of annexing the Karabakh Council into Azerbaijan. In 1919, under threat of extermination (demonstrated by the Khaibalikend Massacre), the Karabakh Council was forced to sign an agreement to provisionally recognize and submit to Azerbaijani jurisdiction until its status was decided at the Paris Peace Conference. Ending early 1920, the Paris Peace Conference was inconclusive in the resolution of the Transcaucasian territorial disputes, therefore, the Armenia, by this time in a much stronger position to assert itself, took it upon themselves to emancipate the Armenians of Karabakh from their callous Azerbaijani governor. Subversive preparations began for a staged uprising in the region of the Karabakh Council, timed to coincide with Azerbaijani Novruz celebrations. The uprising due to its poor coordination was unsuccessful in ousting the Azerbaijani garrisons from Shushi and neighboring Khankend, resulting in a pogrom in Shusha, in which Azerbaijani soldiers and residents burned and looted half of the city, murdering, raping and expelling its erstwhile majority Armenian inhabitants. After the occurrence of the uprising, the forces of Garegin Nzhdeh and Dro Kanayan were ordered by the Armenian government to assist the Karabakh rebels, at the same time, Azerbaijan moved most of its army westward to crush the Armenian resistance and cut off any reinforcements, despite the threat of the approaching 11th Red Army of Bolshevik Russia from the north. By Azerbaijan's Sovietization barely a month after the uprising began, Azerbaijani forces were able to maintain control over the central cities of Karabakh, Shusha and Khankend, whilst its immediate surroundings were in the control of local partisans supplemented by Armenian army reinforcements. Since Dro had been explicitly ordered by the Armenian Government not to engage the Red Army, he was unable to execute the attack to capture Shusha, whose Azerbaijani defenders had been supplanted by the Red Army. The situation persisted until the overwhelming Bolshevik army drove out the Armenian army detachments from the region, after which the fears of the Armenians of Karabakh were alleviated by virtue of returning to the stability of Russian control.

On 5 April 1920, skirmishes began along the Armenian–Azerbaijani border as the governor and commander of Kazakh (Qazax) increased security forces in the region, expecting that the Armenian army would create a diversion to relieve pressure on Karabakh. Azerbaijani forces occupied the heights above the villages of Tatlu (Tatlı) and Paravakar, prompting Armenian residents to dislodge the Azerbaijanis and sparking the 2 week border battles that saw Azerbaijan capture Kalacha (Berdavan) and Kotkend (Koti) while attacking Tasalu, Dvegh (Dovegh), Koshkotan (Voskevan), and Barana (Noyemberyan) on 7 April. While a cease fire was negotiated on 9 April, the Azerbaijani army subsequently invaded Tatlu and Lalakend, burning the Armenian villages of Badakend (Ələsgərli) and Chardakhlu (Çardaqlı) on the Azerbaijani side of the border. Azerbaijani Prime Minister Fatali Khan Khoyski accused Armenia of violating the truce by attacking the Azerbaijani settlements of Upper Askipara and Lower Askipara, Salakhli, and 6 other Azerbaijani settlements on April 12. Tensions along the border were ultimately relieved on 18 April when officials from Dilijan and Kazakh agreed on an 11 point ceasefire agreement that included the repatriation of all displaced residents and the restoration of the former boundary.

In early April 1920, Republic of Azerbaijan was in a very troubled condition. In the west the Armenians still controlled large parts of territory claimed by Azerbaijan; in the east, local Azerbaijani communists were rebelling against the government; and to the north the Russian Red Army was steadily moving southward, having defeated Denikin's White Russian forces. On 27 April 1920, the government of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic received notice that the Soviet Army was about to cross the northern border and invade Azerbaijan. Faced with such a difficult situation, the government officially surrendered to the Soviets, but many generals and local Azerbaijani militias kept resisting the advance of Soviet forces and it took a while for the Soviets to stabilize the newly proclaimed Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, headed by leading Azerbaijani Bolshevik Nariman Narimanov. While the Azerbaijani government and army were in chaos, the Armenian army and local Armenian militias used the opportunity to assert their control over parts of Azerbaijani territory, invading Shusha, Khankendi, and other important cities. By the end of April, Armenian forces were controlling most of western Azerbaijan, including all of Karabakh and surrounding areas. Other occupied areas included all of Nakhichevan and much of the Kazakh Shamshadin district. In the meantime, Armenian communists attempted a coup in Armenia, but ultimately failed.

In 1920–21, the only solution to this dispute could come either by military victory—as basically happened in Anatolia, Zangezur and Nakhichevan—or by the imposition from above of a new structure by an imperial power. After the British failed to impose a settlement, the imperial arbiters turned out to be the Bolsheviks, whose 11th Army conquered Karabakh in May 1920. On 5 July 1921, the Bolsheviks' Caucasian Committee, the Kavbiuro, under the chairmanship of Joseph Stalin decided that the mountainous part of Karabakh would remain under the jurisdiction and sovereignty of Azerbaijan. In July 1923, the Nagorny (or Mountainous) Karabakh Autonomous Region (NKAO) was established within Azerbaijan, with borders that gave it an overwhelming Armenian majority of 94% of the total inhabitants.

In late November there was yet another Soviet backed communist uprising in Armenia. On 28 November, blaming Armenia for the invasions of Şərur on 20 November 1920 and Karabakh the following day, the 11th Red Army under the command of Gen. Anatoliy Gekker, crossed the demarcation line between First Republic of Armenia and Soviet Azerbaijan. The second Soviet Armenian war lasted only a week.

On 4 December 1920, when the Red Army entered Yerevan, the government of the First Republic of Armenia effectively surrendered. On 5 December, the Armenian Revolutionary Committee (Revkom), made up of mostly Armenians from Azerbaijan, also entered the city. Finally, on 6 December, Felix Dzerzhinsky's dreaded secret police, the Cheka, entered Yerevan, thus effectively ending all existence of the First Republic of Armenia. The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic was then proclaimed, under the leadership of Gevork Atarbekyan. On 18 February 1921, a national revolt against Bolsheviks started. Gen. Garegin Nzhdeh, commander Garo Sasouni and the last Prime Minister of independent Armenia Simon Vratsyan took the lead of the anti Bolshevik rebellion and forced out the Bolsheviks from Yerevan and other places. By April, the Red Army reconquered most part of Armenia. However, Atarbekyan was dismissed and Aleksandr Miasnikyan, an Armenian high ranking Red Army commander, replaced him. Garegin Nzhdeh left the Zangezur mountains after the Sovietization of Armenia was finalized in July 1921, leaving Azerbaijani populated villages cleansed of their population. Persuaded by Soviet leadership, Zangezur had already been ceded by Azerbaijan to Armenia in November 1920 as a "symbol of friendship".

The violence in Transcaucasia was finally settled in a friendship treaty between Turkey and the Soviet Union. The peace Treaty of Kars was signed in Kars by representatives of the Russian SFSR, Azerbaijan SSR, Armenian SSR, Georgian SSR and Turkey. Turkey had another agreement, the "Treaty on Friendship and Brotherhood", also called the Treaty of Moscow, signed on 16 March 1921 with Soviet Russia. By this treaty, Nakhichevan was granted the status of an autonomous region under Azerbaijan's protectorate, on the condition that the rights for protectorate would never be transferred to a third state. Turkey and Russia became guarantors of Nakhichevan's status. Turkey agreed to return Alexandropol to Armenia and Batumi to Georgia.