Leaked documents reviewed by OC Media reveal how Azerbaijan’s Presidential Administration has coordinated and funded the international rollout of the ‘Western Azerbaijan’ narrative — a campaign that, while framed as humanitarian, lays the groundwork for potential irredentist claims on Armenian territory.
For several years now, Azerbaijan has been campaigning around the concept of ‘Western Azerbaijan’, a term that does not refer to its own territory, but to part or all of the Republic of Armenia.
This campaign is presented as a humanitarian initiative aimed at supporting the ‘safe and dignified return’ of Azerbaijanis displaced from Armenia during the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, at the start of the first Nagorno-Karabakh war, hundreds of thousands of Armenians and Azerbaijanis were displaced when ethnic tensions and violence erupted in both countries.
Over time, the discourse on ‘Western Azerbaijan’ has evolved into a state-led communication strategy. This initiative is now sometimes used as a rhetorical tool in the ongoing conflict between Baku and Yerevan.
Although the campaign is publicly presented as cultural or humanitarian, independent experts have detected clear irredentist undertones. Thomas de Waal, a UK-based regional analyst, described the initiative as ‘purely irredentist’ in a 2023 article for Carnegie Europe.
‘The Azerbaijani government seeks to keep nationalist fervour constantly alive,’ Altay Goyushov, a visiting scholar at the Paris Institute of Political Studies and expert on the Azerbaijani civic space, told OC Media.
‘It serves as a tool to mobilise public opinion and distract people from social issues and their deprived rights. Moreover, it acts as a kind of Damocles’ sword to intimidate Armenia’.
Messaging Through Foreign Legitimacy
The documents show that the Presidential Administration directly financed and supervised the campaign — organising conferences, hiring communications consultants, and producing messaging materials. The names, dates, and contracts in the files align with publicly available records.
At the heart of this initiative was a high-level international conference held in Baku on 5–6 December 2023, entitled “Ensuring the safe and dignified return of Azerbaijanis expelled from Armenia: global context and just solution”. Azerbaijani public funds – more than ₼109,000 (Azerbaijani manat), or $65,000 – covered the costs of hotel accommodation, audiovisual production, branding and the creation of a digital platform to disseminate content promoting return.
At least 34 foreign participants from across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East were hosted. Guests included academics from Italian and Greek universities, analysts from Russian institutions, and a representative and former advisor of Russian President Vladimir Putin from Donetsk, a Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine. Some participants were already based in Baku, including foreign scholars from the state-governed ADA University.
A few days before the conference, the Strategic Communication Centre, a government-funded public union, was tasked with uploading narrative content to the state-backed Virtual Western Azerbaijan portal. Its role: to ensure that the conference discussions and conclusions were relayed by the international media.
Despite these efforts, a post-event review by OC Media showed little follow-up. Few participants publicly referenced the conference or its themes after returning home, and international coverage was sparse. On-site in Baku, however, most participants were quoted in state media endorsing the message.
Nevertheless, the organisers considered the event a success and organised a similar one the following year. Many participants returned, joined by new participants from Western universities and media outlets. During the event, a ceremony was held to symbolically present them with ‘memberships of gratitude’ for their role in promoting the ‘Western Azerbaijan Community’.
‘A fascist state’
Although the ‘Western Azerbaijan Community’ was initially registered as a refugee initiative in the late 1980s, it remained largely inactive until 2022, when the Azerbaijani government reactivated it. In August of that year, the organisation was officially renamed, with updated statutes and a new name. In October of the same year, the Azerbaijani parliament established a working group responsible for return policy in ‘Western Azerbaijan’.
‘[The discourse] was reinforced during the brief military clashes in 2022’, Goyushov explained. ‘The Azerbaijani government has long employed irredentist rhetoric toward Armenia, declaring Yerevan and Zangezur as historically Azerbaijani territories’.
Just weeks after the Lachin Corridor blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh began in late 2022, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev invoked such a narrative during a nationally televised address. He referred to Armenia as ‘historical Azerbaijani land’, and linked the September 2022 Armenia–Azerbaijan clashes, when Azerbaijan took control over strategic positions on Armenian territory, with the newfound visibility of ‘historically Azerbaijani cities’.
By January 2025, as peace treaty talks intensified, Aliyev doubled down. In a lengthy interview with Azerbaijani state media, he described Armenia as a ‘fascist state’ due to its failure to accept the return of Azerbaijani refugees.
‘We live as neighbours to such a fascist state, and the threat of fascism persists. Therefore, fascism must be eradicated. Either the Armenian leadership will destroy it, or we will. We have no other choice’, Aliyev said at the time.
The interviewer subsequently noted that Aliyev had added a third strategic goal to his previous two: (1) the liberation of Nagorno-Karabakh and (2) its reconstruction. The new addition: ensuring the return of the Western Azerbaijan Community to Armenia.
Still, after a US-brokered summit in Washington on 8 August 2025, where Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders initialled, but did not sign, a draught peace treaty, the “Western Azerbaijan” rhetoric softened. The treaty includes a clause prohibiting territorial claims by either side, and another on the withdrawal of legal claims against each other in international courts — including the issue of the right of return for Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh.
‘The Azerbaijani government uses the discourse as a bargaining chip vis-à-vis the more than 100,000 Armenians who left Karabakh after the war’, Goyushov concluded.
Vafa Naghiyeva, a doctoral researcher at the University of Leipzig, who studies post-imperial and militarist narratives in post-war Azerbaijan, shared Goyushov’s view.
‘Beyond its geopolitical function, the discourse of “Western Azerbaijan” serves as a symbolic extension of the post-war state narrative’, she told OC Media. ‘It transforms the memory of displacement into a form of moral legitimacy and collective identity, allowing the government to preserve a sense of permanent post-war normality’.
She added that the discourse could be used for multiple purposes.
‘This strategy keeps society emotionally mobilised around the idea of unfinished justice and strengthens the state’s communicative control both at home and abroad’.
State-sponsored events continue
But the discourse didn’t disappear entirely. When an unverified news story appeared in Azerbaijani opposition media in August claiming that the parliamentary group would be dissolved, the WAC issued a denial — accusing Armenia, without presenting evidence, of planting the story.
In early October, ADA University funded the publication of a book on ‘Western Azerbaijan’, and during an OSCE conference in Warsaw, Azerbaijan organised a side event focused on the theme. An Armenian NGO, the Union of Informed Citizens, and part of the Armenian delegation accused the panel of promoting renewed irredentist claims.
Later the same month, the WAC organised an event together with state-linked diaspora groups in Germany on the topic. The aim of the event was to raise awareness regarding Western Azerbaijan. A similar event was organised in Brussels the following day — Azerbaijani state-media claimed that there were more than 120 participants.
Aziz Alakbarli, chairman of the ‘Western Azerbaijan Community’ and member of parliament for the ruling party, stated on 26 October that Armenia had ‘no choice but to reckon with Azerbaijan and its president’, otherwise it would risk ‘jeopardising the existence of the Armenian state’.
He concluded by saying that to avoid this, Armenia must accept all of Azerbaijan’s conditions, including guaranteeing the return of the Western Azerbaijan community.
Neither the ‘Western Azerbaijan Community’ nor the Azerbaijani presidential administration responded to OC Media’s requests for comment.
Irredentism is a movement to reclaim territories that emerged in the 1870s, with which reunified Italy demanded the annexation of a number of territories whose populations were Italian-speaking.
Main source: oc-media.org