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The Politicization of the Environmental Issue in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh's Nationalist Movement in the South Caucasus 1985–1991

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Ohannes Geukjian
Ohannes Geukjian*
Affiliation:
American University of Beirut (AUB) and Lebanese American University (LAU), Lebanon. Email: ogeukj@hotmail.com
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Extract

This research examines and analyzes how the politicization of the environmental issue in Armenia led to the emergence of the Nagorno-Karabakh (N-K) nationalist movement in Azerbaijan as the USSR went into terminal decline in 1991. It is important to stress that the Karabakh movement that emerged in Armenia in February 1988 with a clear agenda on serious ecological problems escalated quickly in the subsequent weeks and months to demand the preservation of the cultural identity of Karabakh Armenians in Azerbaijan. Air pollution of Yerevan, Ashdarag, Yegheknatsor, and later Sdepanavan and Ghapan was a significant threat to the existence of the Armenian people. For the Armenians, air pollution was ecological genocide, and cultural discrimination against Karabakh Armenians was cultural genocide. The Armenians associated ecological and cultural genocides with the 1915 genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenian nation. This study shows that initially the Karabakh movement did not have political goals. However, as it intensified with an enormous consciousness it transformed to a nationalist movement with a political and ecological agenda. This study also analyzes ethnic mobilization by activists in Armenia and the emergence of the N-K nationalist movement from 1985 to 1991 in light of Soviet nationalities policy and the window of opportunity caused by the political transformation at the center (Moscow). The activists of the environmental and nationalist movements were the same.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , May 2007 , pp. 233 - 265
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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