Azerbaijan misrepresenting Islamic heritage in Armenia, watchdog warns

The Monument Watch has accused Azerbaijan of intensifying efforts to “forcibly rebrand” Islamic cultural sites in Armenia as Turkic-Azerbaijani.

In a report responding to a December 5 conference in Baku, where President Ilham Aliyev alleged that Armenia had systematically destroyed Azerbaijani cultural and religious sites, the group said Baku’s claims lacked evidence and relied on “distorted historical narratives”.

The Monument Watch noted that Azerbaijan is seeking international legal recognition for its assertions and framing them within its “Western Azerbaijan” narrative.

The group said Azerbaijan’s attempts date back to the Soviet era, pointing to earlier research on Islamic gravestones in southern Armenia that Armenian scholars later contested for “deliberate mistranslations”.

Armenia has documented and publicly listed all Islamic monuments on its territory, including former Tatar and Azerbaijani cemeteries, mosques and shrines, the report said. It added that several Muslim pilgrimage sites in Syunik Province remain intact and that many Azerbaijani graves and WWII memorials in mixed-population villages are still preserved.

While acknowledging that some sites have suffered damage, the watchdog said these cases are recorded in official Armenian surveys and do not support Azerbaijan’s claims of systematic destruction. It said Armenian academic research has long examined Islamic heritage in the region and historic Armenian-Islamic cultural interactions dating back to the 7th century.