Azerbaijanis in Armenia () numbered 29 people according to the 2001 census of Armenia. Although they have previously been the biggest minority in the country according to 1831–1989 censuses, they are virtually non-existent since 1988–1991 when most fled or were forced out of the country as a result of the tensions of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War to neighboring Azerbaijan. The UNHCR estimates that the current population of Azerbaijanis in Armenia to be somewhere between 30 and a few hundred people,Second Report Submitted by Armenia Pursuant to Article 25, Paragraph 1 of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities . Received on 24 November 2004 with most of them living in rural areas as members of mixed couples (mostly mixed marriages), as well as elderly or sick. Most of them are reported to have changed their names to maintain a low profile to avoid discrimination.International Protection Considerations Regarding Armenian Asylum-Seekers and Refugees . United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Geneva: September 2003Country Reports on Human Rights Practices – 2003: Armenia U.S. Department of State. Released 25 February 2004
Historical statistics Tatars (later known as Azerbaijanis) constituted the largest minority in Armenia since 1831 at least, the year of the first available census in the territory of Armenia (shortly after Russia's annexation by virtue of the Treaty of Turkmenchay. In 1831, Muslims were 50,274 or 31.1%; in 1873, Tatars were 132,125 or 26.7%; in 1886, Tatars were 160,963 or 25.3%; in 1897, Muslims were 240,323 or 30.1%; in 1922, Turkish-Tatars were 77,767 or 9.9%; in 1926, Turks were 77,655 or 8.8%; in 1931, Turks were 105,838 or 10.1%; in 1939, Azerbaijanis were 130,896 or 10.2%; in 1959, Azerbaijanis were 107,748 or 6.1%; in 1970, Azerbaijanis were 148,189 or 5.9%;All-Soviet Population Census of 1970 – Ethnic Composition in the Republics of the USSR: Armenian SSR . Demoscope.ru in 1979, Azerbaijanis were 160,841 or 5.3%; in 1989, Azerbaijanis were 84,860 or 2.6%;All-Soviet Population Census of 1989 – Ethnic Composition in the Republics of the USSR: Armenian SSR . Demoscope.ru in 2001, Azerbaijanis were 29 or 0.001% of the population on the territory of modern-day Armenia. Journalist Thomas de Waal estimates that there were approximately 200,000 Azerbaijanis in Armenia in the mid-1980s.
History
Pre-Russian rule
Upon Seljuk conquests in the eleventh century, the mass of the Oghuz Turkic tribes crossed the Amu Darya towards the west left the Iranian plateau, which remained Persian, and established themselves further west, in Armenia, the Caucasus, and Anatolia. Here they divided into the Ottomans, who were Sunni and created settlements, and the Turcomans, who were nomads and in part Shiite (or, rather, Alevi), gradually becoming sedentary and assimilating with the local population.
Until the mid-fourteenth century, Armenians had constituted a majority in Eastern Armenia. At the close of the fourteenth century, after Timur's campaigns of the extermination of the local population, Islam had become the dominant faith, and Armenians became a minority in Eastern Armenia. After centuries of constant warfare on the Armenian Plateau, many Armenians chose to emigrate and settle elsewhere. Following Shah Abbas I's massive relocation of Armenians and Muslims in 1604–05,Arakel of Tabriz. The Books of Histories; chapter 4. Quote: "[The Shah] deep inside understood that he would be unable to resist Sinan Pasha, i.e. the Sardar of Jalaloghlu, in a[n open] battle. Therefore he ordered to relocate the whole population of Armenia – Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike, to Persia, so that the Ottomans find the country depopulated." their numbers dwindled even further.
Some 80% of the population of Iranian Armenia were Muslims (Persians, Turkics, and Kurds) whereas Christian Armenians constituted a minority of about 20%. As a result of the Treaty of Gulistan (1813) and the Treaty of Turkmenchay (1828), Iran was forced to cede Iranian Armenia (which also constituted the present-day Armenia), to the Russians.
Russian rule
After the Russian administration took hold of Iranian Armenia, the ethnic make-up shifted, and thus for the first time in more than four centuries, ethnic Armenians started to form a majority once again in one part of historic Armenia. The new Russian administration encouraged the settling of ethnic Armenians from Iran proper and Ottoman Turkey. As a result, by 1832, the number of ethnic Armenians had matched that of the Muslims. Anyhow, it would be only after the Crimean War and the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, which brought another influx of Turkish Armenians, that ethnic Armenians once again established a solid majority in Eastern Armenia. Nevertheless, the city of Erivan (present-day Yerevan) remained having a Muslim majority up to the twentieth century.
The term "Tatars", employed by the Russians, referred to Turkish-speaking Muslims (Shia and Sunni) of Transcaucasia. Unlike Armenians and Georgians, the Tatars did not have their own alphabet and used the Perso-Arabic script. After 1918 with the establishment of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, and "especially during the Soviet era", the Tatar group identified itself as "Azerbaijani". Prior to 1918 the word "Azerbaijan" exclusively referred to the Iranian province of Azarbayjan.
According to the traveler H. F. B. Lynch, the city of Erivan was about 50% Armenian and 50% Muslim (Tatars i.e. Azerbaijanis and Persians) in the early 1890s. H. F. B. Lynch thought that some among the Muslims were Persians when he visited the city within the same decade, and modern historians George Bournoutian and Robert H. Hewsen thought many were Persian. According to the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, by the beginning of the twentieth century a significant population of Aderbeijanskie Tatars (i.e. Azerbaijanis) still lived in Russian Armenia. They numbered about 300,000 persons or 37.5% in Russia's Erivan Governorate, roughly corresponding to most of present-day central Armenia.
Most lived in rural areas and were engaged in farming and carpet-weaving. They formed the majority in four of the governorate's seven districts, including the city of Erivan itself, where they constituted 49% of the population (compared to 48% constituted by Armenians). Azerbaijanis also constituted a substantial minority in what later became the regions of Sisian, Kafan and Meghri in the Armenian SSR (present-day Syunik Province, Armenia, at the time part of the Elisabethpol Governorate).Eddie Arnavoudian. Why we should read... . Armenian News Network / Groong. June 12, 2006. Retrieved August 16, 2013. Traditionally, Azerbaijanis in Armenia were almost entirely Shia Muslim, with the exception of the Talin region, as well as small pockets in Shorayal and around Vedi where they mainly adhered to Sunni Islam.A. Tsutsiyev (2004) (АТЛАС ЭТНОПОЛИТИЧЕСКОЙ ИСТОРИИ КАВКАЗА, Цуциев А.А, Москва: Издательство «Европа», 2007) Traveller Luigi Villari reported in 1905 that in Erivan the Tatars (later known as Azerbaijanis) were generally wealthier than the Armenians, and owned nearly all of the land.Fire and Sword in the Caucasus by Luigi Villari. London, T. F. Unwin, 1906: p. 267
For Azerbaijanis of Armenia, the twentieth century was the period of marginalization, discrimination, mass and often forcible migrationsBlack Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War by Thomas de Waal resulting in significant changes in the country's ethnic composition, even though they had managed to stay its largest ethnic minority until the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. In 1905–1907, the Erivan Governorate became an arena of clashes between Armenians and Azerbaijanis believed to have been instigated by the Russian government in order to draw public attention away from the Russian Revolution of 1905. Memories of the Revolution in Transcaucasia by Boris Baykov
First Republic of Armenia
Tensions rose again after both Armenia and Azerbaijan became briefly independent from the Russian Empire in 1918. Both quarrelled over where their common borders lay.de Waal. Black Garden. p. 127-8. Warfare coupled with the influx of Armenian refugees resulted in widespread massacres of Muslims in Armenia Ethnic Conflicts in the USSR: 1917–1991 . State Archives of the Russian Federation, fund 1318, list 1, folder 413, document 21 Garegin Njdeh and the KGB: Report of Interrogation of Ohannes Hakopovich Devedjian August 28, 1947. Retrieved May 31, 2007 causing virtually all of them to flee to Azerbaijan. German historian Jörg Baberowski writes that until March 1918, 100,000 Muslims throughout Armenia, mainly Daralayaz (modern-day Vayots Dzor) and Nor Bayazet (modern-day Gegharkunik), escaped to Ottoman-controlled territory or were killed, and 199 of their villages were destroyed by withdrawing Cossacks and Armenian volunteers. Nearly a third of the 350,000 Muslims of the Erivan Governorate were displaced from their villages in 1918–1919 and living in the outskirts of Yerevan or along the former Russo-Turkish border in emptied Armenian homes. In 1919, the Armenian government declared the right of return of all refugees, however, this was not implemented in emptied Muslim settlements occupied by Western Armenian refugees.
Andranik Ozanian and Rouben Ter Minassian were particularly prominent in the destruction of Muslim settlements and in the planned ethnic homogenisation of regions with once mixed population through populating them with Armenian refugees from Turkey, such regions included Erivan and Daralayaz. Ter Minassian, displeased with the fact that Azerbaijanis in Armenia lived on fertile lands, waged at least three campaigns aimed at cleansing Azerbaijanis from 20 villages outside Erivan, as well as in the south of the country. According to French historian (and Ter Minassian's daughter-in-law) Anahide Ter Minassian, to achieve his goals, he used intimidation and negotiations, but above all, "fire and steel" and "the most violent methods to 'encourage' Muslims in Armenia" to leave.Thomas de Waal. Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide . Oxford University Press, 2014; p. 122 The destruction of Muslim settlements in Zangezur and the restriction on Muslim shepherds taking their flock into Zangezur served as the casus belli for Azerbaijan's unsuccessful assault on Zangezur in November 1919. During the existence of the 1921 anti-Soviet revolt known as the Republic of Mountainous Armenia, Nzhdeh expelled the remainder of the Azerbaijani population from Zangezur thus achieving a "re-Armenianization" of the region.