THE FIRST ARMENIAN REPUBLIC AND ITS TERRITORIAL CONFLICTS WITH AZERBAIJAN by KAMALA IMRANLI-LOWE A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy CENTRE FOR RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN STUDIES THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM UNITED KINGDOM SEPTEMBER 2012 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Abstract The thesis, which is based on extensive archival materials, explores the origins of the on- going conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan by focusing on the emergence of the first Armenian Republic in 1918 and its territorial issues with Azerbaijan, in order to understand the factors which led to this conflict. It examines the background to the creation of the first Armenian Republic by researching the location of the ‘historical Armenian homeland’, the construction and reconstruction of the notion of the ‘Armenian homeland’, the aspects facilitating the way in which the ideology and strategy of the Armenian national movement developed, and the factors instrumental in the construction of the Armenian identity. The work provides a historical background to the Armenian claims to Garabagh and Nakhchyvan and analyses the ethnic, historical, economic, geographical and security arguments used by the first Armenian Republic to substantiate its vision of the territorial delimitation between Armenia and Azerbaijan with regard to these regions at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. The thesis also considers the positions of the external powers involved in the South Caucasus vis-à-vis the Garabagh and Nakhchyvan issues and assesses the impact of their stance on the settlement of these conflicts. Acknowledgments I express my special and deep gratitude to Dr Edward Arfon Rees, as my leading supervisor, for his dedicated academic guidance throughout my writing of this thesis, including his valuable comments which helped to develop my ideas and their presentation. I am also very grateful to my second supervisor, Dr Galina Yemelianova, for her serious consideration of the thesis and critical comments which helped improve its quality. I would like to express special thanks also to my external examiner, Prof Vera Tolz from Manchester University, and internal examiner, Dr Rhoads Murphey from the University of Birmingham, for their careful consideration of the thesis and their useful comments and suggestions which allowed me to make my arguments stronger and eliminate the existing gaps. Special thanks to my friend, Dr Eldar Bayramov, who, despite being very busy, found time to read the thesis and make valuable comments. My sincere appreciation and thanks to Natig Bakhyshov for helping me with the preparation of seven maps with great professionalism in spite of being extremely busy, as well as for his, Naila Murtuzova, Eldar Bayramov and Onder Cakir’s support in finding different publications. I am also very grateful to the staff members of the UK, Azerbaijani and Georgian Archives where I worked during my study of the subject. Many thanks to Khalid Bayramov for the translation of two books on the history of Caucasian Albania and the Albanians from Armenian into Azerbaijani, as well as to Sarlan Hasanov for the translation of a historical document from Armenian into Azerbaijani. My gratitude to Dr Philippe Lassou for the translation of the memorandum submitted by the Republic of Armenia to the Paris Peace Conference on 17 May 1919 from French into English. Also thanks to Hannah Wälzholz for the translation of the sections related to Siunia, Artsakh, Uti and Nakhchyvan from German scholar Joseph Hübschmann’s work Die Altarmenischen Ortsnamen, published in Strasbourg in 1904, from German into English. Thanks to Liz Broomfield for proofreading the thesis. I would like to thank the ‘State Programme on the Education of the Azerbaijani Youth Abroad in 2007-2015’ sponsored by the Azerbaijani Government, without whose scholarship I would not be able to do my PhD at the University of Birmingham. Finally, I would like to express my special gratitude to my family in Azerbaijan and my husband Nigel and his family in the UK, as well as friends Khatira, Naila and Natig in Azerbaijan and Daniela, Nino, Victoria and Katharina in the UK for their moral support during my stay in a foreign country. Table of Contents List of Tables ............................................................................................................................... i List of Maps ................................................................................................................................ ii Transliteration ............................................................................................................................ iv Abbreviations and Key Terms ................................................................................................... vi Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 1 Part 1 ........................................................................................................................................... 7 Chapter 1: Overview of the Historiography ............................................................................... 7 1.1 The Armenian ‘ethnic homeland’ ..................................................................................... 7 1.2 The Armenian national movement ................................................................................. 14 1.3 Emergence of the Armenian Republic............................................................................ 18 1.4 Conflicts of the first Armenian Republic with Azerbaijan over Garabagh and Nakhchyvan .......................................................................................................................... 22 Chapter 2: Theoretical Perspectives ......................................................................................... 27 2.1 Nations and Nationalism ................................................................................................ 28 2.2 Formation of state and territorial issues ......................................................................... 36 2.3 The Armenian case ......................................................................................................... 45 Part 2 ......................................................................................................................................... 48 Chapter 3: Construction of an ‘Armenian Homeland’ in the Ottoman Empire before the First World War ................................................................................................................................ 48 3.1 Construction of the notion of an ‘Armenian homeland’................................................. 48 3.2 Armenian diaspora nationalism ...................................................................................... 55 3.3 Armenian political aspirations in the projected homeland ............................................. 59 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 84 Chapter 4: Construction of the Ethnic Armenian Identity ........................................................ 87 4.1 Reconstruction of the notion of the ‘Armenian homeland’ ............................................ 87 4.2 Identity construction: The Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian cases ....................... 111 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 117 Chapter 5: The First World War and the Armenian Homeland Project ................................. 119 5.1 The First World War and relocation of Armenians ...................................................... 119 5.2 Statistics on the deaths resulting from the Armenian relocations ................................ 126 5.3 Legal implications of the relocation ............................................................................. 129 5.4 Failure of the ‘Armenian homeland’ project in 1914-1916 .......................................... 138 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 141 Chapter 6: The ‘Armenian Homeland’ Project: From the February Revolution to the Ottoman- Transcaucasian War ................................................................................................................ 144 6.1 The February Revolution and the ‘Armenian homeland’ project ................................. 144 6.2 The October Revolution and the ‘Armenian homeland’ project .................................. 151 6.3 The de facto Transcaucasian government and peace negotiations with the Ottoman Empire in Trabzon .............................................................................................................. 156 6.4 Discussions in the Transcaucasian