Ethnographische Karte des Kreises Sangesur im Jahr 1886. Später beschloss die Sowjetunion, über 30 aserbaidschanische Dörfer an Armenien zu geben, während sie dieser Karte zufolge nur zwei armenische Dörfer an Aserbaidschan abtrat.

From mid-1918, Andranik was prominent in the destruction of Muslim settlements during the purging of the Armenian–Azeri border region of Zangezur. Hovannisian describes his actions as the beginning of the process of ‘transforming Zangezur into a solidly Armenian land’.28

Alexandre Khatisian, one-time Prime Minister of Armenia, used similar language, averring that ‘it was not the will of the diplomats which was to bring about homogeneous populations in this or that region, but through the course of elemental behaviour’. 29

Andranik was stopped from expanding this policy into Karabakh by the local British commander, who had his own distinct political agenda.30

One of the fedayees accurately described this as ethnic cleansing, and the parallels to the settlement of muhajirs at Armenian expense in the late Ottoman empire are obvious. 31

Writing in April 1920, Archbishop Khoren of Erivan put a gloss on such actions that was remarkably reminiscent of CUP rationalizations of the 1915 genocide. ‘I must admit’, he wrote, ‘that a few Tatar villages under the Armenian Government have suffered, . . . but, every time . . . they were the aggressors, either they actually attacked us, or they were being organised by the Azerbaijan agents and official representatives to rise against the Armenian Government’. 32

In May, immediately after the Archbishop penned his account, Ter Minassian was appointed Armenian Minister of War and of the Interior in the ARF-dominated government, whereupon he expanded his homogenization campaign to include some of the areas of Kars and Nakhichevan into which the Armenian state had expanded since the end of 1918.33

He and the ARF government have been praised by some Armenian historians for ‘Armenianizing’ Armenia and thus securing its future.34

However, Armenian attacks on Muslims provided the Turkish nationalist forces with a pretext for the 1920 invasion in which Kars and Ardahan were seized.35