Family, Faith and Flag After the Soviets

Fourteen years ago, Narine Gevorkyan and her husband, Ishkhan Arsatkyan, started building their farmhouse on the outskirts of the quiet Armenian hillside town of Jermyk, famous for its hot springs and clean air. Around their brick and corrugated iron ranch buildings, they put up a ramshackle scrap metal fence to keep in a growing flock of farmyard animals, cats, dogs, and children.

“This is where the first bomb fell,” says Narine, pointing to a patch of scorched earth next to the now-shattered perimeter wall. “We wanted to pack up our things and run,” adds Ishkhan, smoking a cigarette against his fixed-up Soviet-era Lada car, “but this is where we’re from. Where would we even go?”

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On the night of September 12, towns and villages throughout Armenia came under a heavy artillery barrage from across the border with Azerbaijan. Military chiefs in the neighboring country insist their troops came under fire first and moved in to take a number of strategic heights. Although civilian casualties have remained low, at least 105 Armenian soldiers and 71 Azerbaijani personnel have died, and there are fears that a tentative ceasefire signed two days later could collapse at any moment.

The clashes are the most serious escalation between the two former Soviet Republics since they fought a brief but bloody war in 2020 over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which lies inside Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized borders but was held by Armenian separatists since the 1990s. A Moscow-backed peace agreement put an end to the fighting, handing swathes of territory back to the Azerbaijani government and saw Russian peacekeepers deployed to the region. With the Kremlin distracted by its war in Ukraine, it appears it is no longer willing or able to hold the status quo.

Buoyed by its colossal oil and gas exports and supported militarily by close ally Turkey, Azerbaijan insists Armenia must formally recognize its sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh and end its support for the breakaway region. The Karabakh Armenians, however, fear that without protection they will be forced out of their homes, or worse. Now, with the conflict playing out on Armenian soil, there is more and more pressure to make a deal after three decades of standoffishness.

In the days of the Soviet Union, the border that is now being fought over hardly even existed. Both Armenians and Azerbaijanis lived side by side on the same land. As the communist empire collapsed, communities split down ethnic and religious lines. In a spate of purges and pogroms, more than a million Turkic Muslim Azerbaijanis were expelled from Nagorno-Karabakh and villages inside Armenia. As many as 500,000 Christian Armenians were also pushed out of their homes, having at one point been the majority in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku.

“I don’t know what the Azerbaijanis want,” says Narek, working behind the counter of his store in the center of Jermyk. He used to sell sweets and sunscreen to tourists, but with the town closed off by the army, he gives

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