From August 25 to 29, 2025, the city of Berdzor hosted the "CIS Youth Camp," with guests from Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan (https://culture.gov.az/az/news/news-detail/lacinda-mdb-olkelerinin-gencler-dusergesinin-baglanis-merasimi-olub/2750). The closing ceremony of the event became yet another manifestation of Azerbaijan's cultural and ideological policy. Although presented as a youth, educational, and cultural initiative, its content pursued a political objective, as the city was declared the "Cultural Capital of the CIS." This very fact illustrates the mechanism adopted by Azerbaijan: by bestowing various titles, it seeks—on international platforms—to confer recognition upon territories that for many years lay outside Azerbaijan's control. Speaking at the event, Masim Mammadov, the Special Representative of the President of Azerbaijan in the Lachin region, noted that the project had contributed to the international recognition of the city of Berdzor, which is the "Cultural Capital of the CIS." He drew attention to the fact that, as in the other lands "liberated from occupation," large-scale infrastructural projects are being implemented in the Lachin region. It was stated that the city of Berdzor has created the conditions necessary for the development of young people's talents and skills and the effective organization of their free time—a film studio, a creative center, galleries, etc.—which, according to Mammadov, are of great significance for the "restoration of the cultural environment" of the locality (https://azertag.az/xeber/qarabag_universiteti_7_ci_turkoloji_yay_mektebine_ev_sahibliyi_edir__yenilenib__video-3695679?fbclid=IwY2xjawMJTaBleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFjSTdzaGg2QW9LOTNzMEE3AR7qiBJwzCu3y1Nm1BYqq3wXn6CARIvxqxeGCyHRyIke05ELaLpXmQ-nyR_iIw_aem_jIvwuD4B1puk_TbZl6kcwA).

Farukh Jumaev, Head of the Department of International Cooperation at Azerbaijan's Ministry of Culture, stated that the youth camp promotes cultural integration among CIS countries. Videos dedicated to proclaiming Berdzor as the "Cultural Capital of the CIS" and to the youth camp were shown to participants.

The proclamation of Berdzor as a cultural capital is, in reality, a political act aimed at conferring cultural justification and legitimacy upon administrative and political authority (https://karabakh.edu.az/page/64/578).

In recent years, Azerbaijan's cultural policy has consistently developed along the same lines: to present formerly Armenian-inhabited settlements as Azerbaijani and as cultural and scholarly centers of the Turkic world, endowed with various symbolic titles. One example of this exact process is the Turkology summer school held in Stepanakert, organized at the initiative of the so-called "Karabakh University," with the participation of the National Academies of Sciences of Turkey and Azerbaijan. Although formally presented as a scholarly initiative, in reality it served the same purpose: to transform Stepanakert into a "Turkic scholarly center," that is, to place it on the Turkic civilizational map as a node of "shared heritage." We see the same policy in the case of Shushi, which has been proclaimed a Cultural Capital of the Islamic World. This decision likewise has a political subtext: it aims to portray Shushi as a symbol of Islamic civilization, thereby rewriting the city's historical identity.

The mechanism employed by Azerbaijan can be characterized as a process of transforming territorial control into international recognition and rewriting history. By conferring titles, Azerbaijan's policy seeks to integrate the cities of Artsakh into its state narrative, presenting them as new "cultural capitals" and thus justifying its victory.