On April 16, 2024, an extensive reporting on the cultural heritage of "Karabakh and Eastern Zangezur" was featured on the news of the Azerbaijani İCTİMAİ TV channel. You can watch the reporting at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8Ax7-1P02U.
In the reporting, the Azerbaijani side presented the monitoring of cultural heritage in the territories "liberated from Armenian occupation," with a focus on mosques and Christian monuments.
If the repeated assertions over the past four years about the Islamic cultural heritage of occupied Artsakh received attention, then the mention of Christian heritage was indeed new.
Fariz Husaynli, the press secretary of the State Service for the Protection, Development, and Restoration of Cultural Heritage of the Republic of Azerbaijan, stated that their monitoring revealed that "during the Armenian occupation", two temples were used as military positions, twenty temples were destroyed, some were inscribed with Armenian words and phrases, and others had Russian letters added, while some monuments were Armenianized.
Such generalized and unsubstantiated statements by an official give the impression of an empty and propagandistic narrative. Groundless announcements are made without specifying the names of the monuments, their locations, or dates, and without presenting photos or videos. There are no factual grounds or scientific reasoning provided about the monuments.
It would also be beneficial if the Azerbaijani side clarified, at least for its understanding, the specific types of monuments being referred to. In some cases, we're discussing cathedrals, Christian monuments, Albanian Christian monuments, and churches. What exactly was destroyed and documented by them?
In the video, another statement is made asserting that the construction of new mosques in Shushi, Hadrut, Karintak, and Mataghis serves as an indicator of the national and religious identity of these lands. However, in settlements that have had an Armenian population for centuries and were depopulated as a result of the 2020 war, where all traces of Armenian heritage are being intentionally erased over the past four years, such a statement only reinforces the perception that the Azerbaijani side is systematically eradicating all traces of Armenian identity in occupied Artsakh, while simultaneously creating a "new" history and reality.
And, of course, there's not a single mention of the ongoing policy of systematically destroying Armenian Christian monuments and those from the period of Artsakh's independence.
