Azerbaijan to “restore” Armenian church as “Caucasian Albanian"

PanARMENIAN.Net - Azerbaijan will “restore” the St. Harutyun (Resurrection) Armenian church of the town of Hadrut in Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) as a “Caucasian Albanian" church, the Artsakh State Public Council for Protection of Cultural Heritage reveals.

The Council cited the newly-developed master plan of Hadrut as the source of information.

According to the master plan, the church will be restored in the near future, after archaeological excavations are carried out in the area.

The church came under the control of Azerbaijan in the aftermath of the 2020 war launched by Azerbaijan against Nagorno-Karabakh. Following the full occupation of Karabakh by Azerbaijan in September 2023, hundreds of Armenian churches, monasteries, cultural and historic sites have gobe under Baku’s control.

Concerns about the preservation of cultural sites in Nagorno-Karabakh are made all the more urgent by the Azerbaijani government’s history of systemically destroying indigenous Armenian heritage—acts of both warfare and historical revisionism. The Azerbaijani government has secretly destroyed a striking number of cultural and religious artifacts in the late 20th century. Within Nakhichevan alone, a historically Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan, Azerbaijani forces destroyed at least 89 medieval churches, 5,840 khachkars (Armenian cross stones) and 22,000 historical tombstones between 1997 and 2006.