The map is by Robert Navoyan, please check out his other works here: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100088482505815&mibextid=LQQJ4d
Azerbaijanis will often claim that Zangezur had an Azerbaijani/Muslim majority prior to the 20th century, and will use this to claim Zangezur is part of “Western Azerbaijan”, or draw false equivalences claiming that since Karabakh Armenians want autonomy within Azerbaijan then Armenia should give Azeris in Zangezur autonomy too.
The data shows the absurdity of their point. Even if we take into account the whole area, Armenians were still the largest single demographic. And Azerbaijanis often forget that the old Zangezur did not just include the modern day Syunik province, but parts of modern day Azerbaijan as well. Taking into account just the part which passed into Armenia there is no question, Armenians were the absolute majority who were native to the region and living there since time immemorial.
https://i.redd.it/o0ecw7ejo5wc1.jpeg
Posted by TheJaymort
2 Comments
The thing I often like to point out is that even before Russia got ahold of the region back in 1813, Syunik and especially the parts that are in the modern republic still had an Armenian majority. Also, it wouldn’t surprise me if Azerbaijan tries to include Kurds into their statistics to make it seem like Azerbaijanis made up the majority at the time. Just as a side note but I never really realized just how built up Kapan was during Soviet times. Part of me wishes that Goris was made the capital of Syunik province again as Goris isn’t as close to the border.
The thing about using these kinds of maps at all to decide who should get one is that they are inherently unfair to Armenians, because across the entire massive region (Caucasus, the Armenian Highlands, Cilicia, Anatolia, northern Persia and Mesopotamia) we tended to be minorities. Sure we had some areas where we were the majority, but moreso we were minorities spread more thinly and widely than the Azeris, Georgians, etc. So if you simply split the Caucasus based on where we were a majority, we’d get almost nothing. Look at this map of the ethnic groups of the Caucasus in 1887 for example: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Komaroff._Carte_ethnologique_du_Caucase%2C_dress%C3%A9e._1887.jpg
We’re spread into pockets ALL OVER. In the Caucasus mountains of Eastern Azerbaijan, in Abkhazia, in wine country of Georgia, around Tbilisi, in a pocket south of Batumi, and even well up the coast and inland parts of Russia, there are pockets of Armenians.
So when finally you start to slice up regions “by ethnic group”, we get fucked, which we did, again and again. Punishment for not all bunching up in one area, as if that is a crime. Then Azeris will post maps trying to show that they are the ones who got screwed by focusing on smaller parts of Armenia, but totally leaving out the context and the big picture. I don’t even think most of them are trying to spin what happened, I think they’re just ignorant and it’s easy not to understand what was happening beyond the national borders people are used to today.