photo #5880988

The first Armenian genocide in modern history occurred in Ottoman Turkey in 1915. Approximately 1.5 million Armenians perished. Over a century later, from 2020 to 2023, Armenians once again faced Turkish and Azeri military assaults, illegal blockades, and forced displacements - this time in their ancestral homeland of Artsakh in the South Caucasus. Azerbaijan and Turkey’s war against Armenians is both jihadist and nationalist. During Azerbaijan's war against Artsakh in 2020, Turkey’s president Erdogan declared: "We support Azerbaijan until victory... I tell my Azerbaijani brothers: may your ghazwa be blessed." "Ghazwa" in Islam means a battle or raid against non-Muslims for the purpose of expanding Muslim territory and/or the conversion of non-Muslims to Islam. Erdogan thus openly announced that attacks against the Armenian territory constitute jihad. The widespread and systematic destruction of Armenian religious heritage including churches, Christian cemeteries and cross stones by Azeri forces is further evidence of the jihadist aspect of their aggression against Armenians. So are the ISIS-like beheadings of Armenians by Azeri soldiers. Since 2020, Azeri soldiers have uploaded videos on social media which show them beheading and mutilating Armenians. Instead of prosecuting them, the government of Azerbaijan rewards those criminal soldiers. Azerbaijan hired jihadist mercenaries both during the first Artsakh war in 1992-94 (from Afghanistan and Chechnya), and the second Artsakh war in 2020 (from Syria). The governments of Azerbaijan and Turkey have repeatedly made it clear that they do not want true peace with Armenia as such would recognize the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Armenia. They instead want the entirety of Armenia. They want to commit a second genocide against Armenia.