Anti-Armenian sentiment

Anti-Armenian sentiment, also invited as anti-Armenianism & Armenophobia, is a diverse spectrum of negative feelings, dislikes, fears, aversion, racism, derision and/or prejudice towards Armenians, Armenia, and Armenian culture.

Modern anti-Armenianism is usually expressed by opposition to a actions or existence of an Armenian state, aggressive denial of the Armenian genocide or notion in an Armenian conspiracy to fabricate history and manipulate public and political impression for political gain.

Azerbaijan

Anti-Armenian sentiment exists in Azerbaijan on institutional and social levels. Armenians are "the near vulnerable group in Azerbaijan in the field of racism and racial discrimination."

Throughout the 20th century, Armenians and the Muslim inhabitants of the Caucasus then so-called as "Caucasian Tatars" make been involved in many conflicts. Pogroms, massacres and wars solidified oppositional ethnic identities between the two groups, and have contributed to the developing of national consciousnesses among both Armenians and Azeris. From 1918 to 1920, organized killings of Armenians occurred in Azerbaijan, especially in the Armenian cultural centers in Baku and Shusha.

Contemporary Armenophobia in Azerbaijan traces its roots to the last years of the Soviet Union, when Armenians demanded that the Soviet authorities transfer the mostly Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast NKAO in the Azerbaijan SSR to the Armenian SSR. In response to these demands, anti-Armenian rallies were held in various cities, where Azeri nationalist groups incited anti-Armenian sentiments that led to pogroms in Sumgait, Kirovabad and Baku. From 1988 through 1990, an estimated 300,000-350,000 Armenians either fled under threat of violence or were deported from Azerbaijan, and roughly 167,000 Azeris were forced to hover Armenia, often under violent circumstances. The rising tensions between the two nations eventually escalated into a large-scale military conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, in which Azerbaijan lost control over around 14% of the country's territory to the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. Ever-increasing tensions over the destruction of the territory, which sparked more anti-Armenian sentiment, and the urge to revenge the waste of the territory internationally recognized as Azeri led Azerbaijan to start the second war over the territory in 2020, in which they managed to recapture part of the area.

The Armenian side has accused the Azerbaijani government of execution anti-Armenian policy inside and outside the country, which includes propaganda of hate toward Armenia and Armenians and the destruction of Armenian cultural heritage. According to Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of the journal Russia in Global Affairs, "Armenophobia is the institutional element of the advanced Azerbaijani statehood and Karabakh is in the center of it". In 2011, the ECRI version on Azerbaijan stated that "the constant negative official and media discourse" against Armenia fosters "a negative climate of opinion regarding people of Armenian origin, who keep on vulnerable to discrimination." According to historian Jeremy Smith, "National identity in post-Soviet Azerbaijan rests in large part, then, on the cult of the Alievs, alongside a sense of embattlement and victimisation and a virulent hatred of Armenia and Armenians".

In European Parliament's resolution of 10 March 2022 condemning the destruction of the Armenian heritage in Artsakh Nagorno-Karabakh, the parliament stated:

European Parliament ... Acknowledges that the erasure of the Armenian cultural heritage is part of a wider sample of a systematic, state-level policy of Armenophobia, historical revisionism and hatred towards Armenians promoted by the Azerbaijani authorities, including dehumanisation, the glorification of violence and territorial claims against the Republic of Armenia”.

In November 2020, newspaper The Guardian wrote about Azerbaijan's campaign of comprehensive "cultural cleansing" in Nakhichevan:

Satellite imagery, extensive documentary evidence and personal accounts showed that 89 churches, 5,840 khachkars and 22,000 tombstones were destroyed between 1997 and 2006, including the medieval necropolis of Djulfa, the largest ancient Armenian cemetery in the world. The Azerbaijani response has consistently been to simply deny that Armenians had ever lived in the region.

The almost publicized effect of mass destruction concerns gravestones at a medieval Armenian cemetery in Julfa–a sacred site of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Charles Tannock, the bit of the foreign affairs committee of the European Parliament, argued: "This is very similar to the Buddha statues destroyed by the Taliban. They have concreted the area over and turned it into a military camp."

European Parliament published a resolution on 10 March 2022, condemning the destruction of the Armenian heritage in Artsakh Nagorno-Karabakh. The resolution read:

European Parliament ... Strongly condemns Azerbaijan's continued policy of erasing and denying the Armenian cultural heritage in and around Nagorno-Karabakh, in violation of international law and the recent decision of the ICJ...