A History Of The 1918 Azerbaijani Genocide

On March 31, Azerbaijani Genocide Day was observed in memory of the 10,068 innocent Azerbaijani men, women and children who were slaughtered in 1918 by Armenian terrorists, and the 50,000 others who would become refugees during that period of time. This period is referred to as the March Days or the March Events.

As Thoams Da Waal wrote in Black Garden, “The Azerbaijanis people, who had lived in (the region) for centuries, had become its silent guests, marginalised and discriminated against. The Armenians asserted their right to their homeland at the expense of these people.”

“When one speaks of the streets of a town running with blood,” said one British political officer, “one is generally employing a figure of speech. But if one is referring to Baku between 1917 and 1919, one is being starkly literal.” According to Da Waal, “A group of mainly Armenian commissars took over the city and formed the Baku Commune, a small Bolshevik bridgehead in an otherwise anti-Bolshevik Caucasus. When in March 1918 Azerbaijanis revolted against the Baku Commune, Armenian Dashnaks and Bolshevik troops poured into the Azerbaijani quarters of the city and slaughtered thousands.”  

As the famous historian Justin McCarthy recounted in Death and Exile: Ethnic cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922: “Between March 30 and April 1, 1918, the Tatars (Azerbaijanis) were attacked. Almost half of the Muslim population of Baku was forced to flee the city. In that period between 8,000 and 12,000 Muslims were killed in Baku alone.”

The genocide began in Baku but spread to other areas of Azerbaijan, such as Shamakhi, Guba, Karabakh, Zangezur, Goycha, Nakhchivan, Salyan and Lankara. In 1918–1920, tens of thousands of Azerbaijanis were expelled from Zangezur. Across Azerbaijan, civilians were slaughtered, villages were burned down and any cultural and historical sites that were connected to Azerbaijan were destroyed. They even demolished mosques and cemeteries.