Nakhijevan

Nakhijevan is an Azerbaijani exclave separated from Azerbaijan proper by Armenian territory and bordered by Turkey to the northwest, Iran to the south, and Armenia to the north and east. For centuries it was home to a significant Armenian population and contains some of the oldest Armenian cultural and religious monuments in the world, including the ancient Khachkar cemetery of Agulis and the medieval monastery of Tsghna. Over the course of the Soviet period and especially following the collapse of the USSR, the Armenian population of Nakhijevan was progressively displaced — from roughly 40,000 in the late Soviet era to virtually zero by the early 1990s. The medieval Armenian cemetery of Jugha (Djulfa), which contained thousands of ornate khachkars, was systematically destroyed by Azerbaijani authorities between 1998 and 2005.

The exclave’s disconnection from Azerbaijan proper is the primary driver of Azerbaijan’s and Turkey’s demand for a transit corridor through Armenia’s Syunik province — the so-called Zangezur Corridor — which would provide a land link between Baku and Nakhijevan without crossing Armenian-controlled territory. A direct overland corridor would connect Turkey and Azerbaijan in a continuous route, fulfilling a key pan-Turkic connectivity objective. For Iran, such a corridor would sever its direct land border with Armenia, raising significant concerns in Tehran about encirclement and regional access.

Groong covers Nakhijevan in the context of the corridor dispute, the erasure of its Armenian heritage, and the strategic geometry of the South Caucasus. Episodes in this category address how Nakhijevan’s history and geographic isolation shape Azerbaijani and Turkish foreign policy objectives and what resolution of the transit dispute would mean for the region.