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United Armenia (), also known as Greater Armenia or Great Armenia, is an Armenian ethno-nationalist Irredentism concept referring to areas within the traditional Armenian homeland—the Armenian Highlands—which are currently or have historically been mostly populated by Armenians. The idea of what Armenians see as unification of their historical lands was prevalent throughout the 20th century and has been advocated by individuals, various organizations and institutions, including the nationalist parties Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF or Dashnaktsutyun) and Heritage, the ASALA and others. The Republic of Armenia comprises 10%-15% of the Armenian homeland.
The ARF idea of "United Armenia" incorporates claims to Western Armenia (eastern Turkey), Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh), the landlocked exclave Nakhchivan (Nakhichevan) of Azerbaijan and the Javakheti (Javakhk) region of Georgia. Javakheti is overwhelmingly inhabited by Armenians. Western Armenia and Nakhchivan had significant Armenian populations until the early 20th century, and Nagorno-Karabakh until 2023, but no longer do. The Armenian population of Western Armenia was almost completely exterminated during the 1915 Armenian genocide, when the millennia-long Armenian presence in this region largely ended and Armenian cultural heritage was mainly destroyed by the Ottoman government.
In 1919, the ARF-dominated government of the First Republic of Armenia declared the formal unification of Armenian lands.The ARF bases its claims to Western Armenia, now controlled by Turkey, on the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, which was effectively negated by subsequent historical events. These territorial claims are often seen as the ultimate goal of the recognition of the Armenian Genocide and as part of Armenian genocide reparations.
The most recent Armenian irredentist movement, the Karabakh movement which began in 1988, sought to unify Nagorno-Karabakh with then-Soviet Armenia. As a result of the subsequent war with Azerbaijan, Armenian forces established effective control over most of Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts, thus succeeding in the de facto unification of Armenia and Karabakh.
Some Armenian nationalists consider Nagorno-Karabakh "the first stage of a United Armenia."
The idea of an independent and united Armenia was the main goal of the Armenian national liberation movement during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
By the 1890s, a low-intensity armed conflict developed between the three major Armenian parties—the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnak), Hnchak and Armenakan Party— and the Ottoman government. Calls from the great powers for reforms in the Armenian provinces and Armenian aspirations to independence resulted in the Hamidian massacres between 1894 and 1896, during which up to 300,000 Armenian civilians were slaughtered by the order of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, after whom the massacres were named. After the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, some Armenians felt that the situation would improve; however, a year later the Adana massacre took place and Turkish-Armenian relations deteriorated further. After the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, the Ottoman government was pressured to accept the Armenian reform package concerning the Armenian provinces in early 1914.
By 1916, most of Western Armenia was occupied by the Russian Empire as part of the Caucasian Campaign of World War I. In parts of the occupied areas, especially around Van, an Armenian autonomy was briefly set up. The Russian army left the region due to the Revolution of 1917. The Ottoman Empire quickly regained the territories from the small number of irregular Armenian units. In the Caucasus, the Special Transcaucasian Committee was set up after the February Revolution.
The Bolsheviks took power in Russia through the October Revolution and soon signed the Armistice of Erzincan to stop the combat in Turkish Armenia. Russian forces abandoned their positions and left the area under weak Armenian control. The Bolsheviks set up the Transcaucasian Commissariat in the Caucasus. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed on 3 March 1918 and the Ottoman army started to regain the lost territories, taking over Kars by 25 April.
A 1918 book by American scholars Lothrop Stoddard and Glenn Frank, titled Stakes of the War listed 8 solutions to the Armenian Question as proposed by different parties. The second proposal, titled "United Armenia", is described as follows:
On 28 May 1919, on the first anniversary of the Republic of Armenia, the government of the newly founded country symbolically declared the union of Eastern and Western Armenia, the latter of which was still under the full control of the Turks.
Alexander Khatisian, the Armenian Prime Minister, read the declaration:
A territory of , formerly part of the Ottoman Empire, was given to Armenia. Based on the calculations the committee made, the ethnic structure of the 3,570,000 population would have been: 49% Muslims (Turks, Kurds, Tartar Azerbaijanis, and others), 40% Armenians, 5% Laz, 4% Greeks, and 1% others. It was expected that in the case Armenian refugees' return, they would make up to 50% of the population. Two months after the committee submitted the report to the State Department, President Woodrow Wilson received it on 12 November 1920. Ten days later, Wilson signed the report entitled "Decision of the President of the United States of America respecting the Frontier between Turkey and Armenia, Access for Armenia to the Sea, and the Demilitarization of Turkish Territory adjacent to the Armenian Frontier." The report was sent to the US ambassador in Paris Hugh Campbell Wallace on 24 November 1920. On 6 December 1920, Wallace delivered the documents to the secretary-general of the peace conference for submission to the Allied Supreme Council.
Treaty of Sèvres was later annulled following the successful Turkish War of Independence against Allied Powers and affiliated forces, which led to the abolition of the empire and founding of the modern Turkey with the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.
Just after the Soviet invasion of Armenia in November 1920, the Soviet Azerbaijani leader Nariman Narimanov declared that "the old borders between Armenia and Azerbaijan are declared null and void. Mountainous Karabagh, Zangezur, and Nakhichevan are recognized as integral parts of the Socialist Republic of Armenia." Despite these assurances, both Nakhichevan and Karabakh were kept under Azerbaijani control for another eight months. On 16 March 1921, Soviet Russia and the Government of the Grand National Assembly signed the Treaty of Moscow. By this treaty, Kars and Ardahan were ceded to Turkey, and Nakhichevan was put under "protectorate" of Azerbaijan. The Treaty of Kars was signed between the Grand National Assembly Government on one side and Armenian SSR, Georgian SSR and Azerbaijan SSR on the other, reaffirming the Treaty of Moscow.
To repopulate the claimed areas with Armenians, the Soviet government organized a repatriation of Armenians living abroad, mostly survivors of the Armenian Genocide.
Between 1946 and 1948, 90,000 to 100,000 Armenians from Lebanon, Syria, Greece, Iran, Romania, France, and elsewhere moved to Soviet Armenia.An Office of Strategic Services (predecessor of the CIA) document dated 31 July 1944 reported that the Armenian Revolutionary Federation changed its extreme anti-Soviet sentiment due to the rise of the Soviet power at the end of the war. In a memorandum sent to the Moscow Conference, Head of the Armenian Church Gevorg VI expressed hope that "justice will finally be rendered" to the Armenians by the "liberation of Turkish Armenia and its annexation to Soviet Armenia." Armenia's Communist leader Grigor Harutunian defended the claims, describing Kars and Ardahan "of vital importance for the Armenian people as a whole." The Soviet Armenian élite suggested that the Armenians have earned the right to Kars and Ardahan by their contribution in the Soviet struggle against fascism. Armenian diaspora organizations also supported the idea.
As the relations between the West and the Soviet Union deteriorated with the US and the UK backing Turkey,
Soviet claims were out of the agenda by 1947. However, it was not until 1953, after Stalin's death, that they officially abandoned their claims, thus ending the dispute.
The 1960s and 1970s saw a rise in underground political and armed struggle against the Soviet Union and the Turkish state in and outside of Armenia. In 1966, an underground nationalist party called the National United Party was founded by Haykaz Khachatryan in Yerevan. It secretly operated in Soviet Armenia from 1966 to the late 1980s and, after the imprisonment of its founding members in 1968, it was led by Paruyr Hayrikyan. It advocated for the creation of United Armenia through self-determination.
Most of its members were arrested and the party was banned. Though the NUP was blamed for the 1977 Moscow bombings, according to historian Jay Bergman it the mastermind of the bombing has "never been determined conclusively."Meeting the demands of reason; by prof. Jay Bergman, Cornell University Press, , 2009, p. 256According to Gerard Libaridian, "by the 1970s, the recognition of the Armenian genocide became a very important objective of the Armenian cause and diaspora political parties linked the recognition of the genocide and the dream of a greater Armenia because Turkey's recognition of the genocide would constitute the legal basis for the Armenian claims on Western Armenia."
From the mid-1970s to the late 1980s, several Armenian militant (often considered terrorist) groups operated in the Middle East and Western Europe. Most notably the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) carried out armed attacks on Turkish diplomatic missions around the world. Two ARF-affiliated groups—the Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide (JCAG) and the Armenian Revolutionary Army (ARA)—also carried out similar attacks, mainly in Western Europe. David C. Rapoport argues that these organizations were inspired by Gourgen Yanikian, a 77-year-old Armenian genocide survivor, who assassinated two Turkish consular officials in California in 1973 as an act of revenge against Turkey.The ASALA was the largest of the three and was mostly composed of Lebanese Armenian young adults, who claimed revenge for the Armenian genocide, which the Turkish state denies. The concept of United Armenia was one of the ultimate goals of ASALA.
William Dalrymple and Olivier Roy claim that Armenian Genocide became internationalized as a result of the activities of the Armenian militant groups in the Western European countries.
On 20 February 1988, the Nagorno-Karabakh Supreme Council (the regional legislature) issued a request to transfer the region from Soviet Azerbaijan to Soviet Armenia. The Moscow government declined the claims, while hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated in Yerevan in support of the idea. Few days later, on 26 February, an Sumgait pogrom broke out in the Azerbaijani seaside industrial city Sumgait, forcing thousands of Armenians to leave Azerbaijan en masse.
On 15 June 1988, the Supreme Council of Soviet Armenia voted to accept Nagorno-Karabakh into Armenia. On 17 June 1988, the Azerbaijan Supreme Soviet refused to transfer the area to Armenia, saying that it was part of Azerbaijan. The leading members of the Karabakh Committee, a group of intellectuals leading the demonstrations, were arrested in December 1988, but were freed in May 1989. On 1 December 1989, the Soviet Armenian Supreme Council and NKAO Supreme Council declared the unification of the two entities (օրենք «Հայկական ԽՍՀ-ի և Լեռնային Ղարաբաղի վերամիավորման մասին»). In January 1990, another pogrom took place against Armenians, this time in Baku. In the meantime, most Azerbaijanis of Armenia and Armenians of Azerbaijan left their homes and moved to their respective countries.
Pro-independence members were elected in the majority to the Armenian parliament in the 1990 election. On 23 August 1990, the Armenian parliament passed a resolution on sovereignty. The tensions grew even larger after the Soviet and Azeri forces deported thousands of Armenian from Shahumyan during Operation Ring in April and May 1991. After the unsuccessful August Putsch, more Soviet republics declared independence. On 2 September 1991, the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic proclaimed independence.
On 21 September 1991, the Armenian independence referendum was held with the overwhelming majority voting for the independence of Armenia from the Soviet Union. On 26 November 1991, the Azerbaijani parliament abolished the autonomy of Nagorno-Karabakh. On 10 December 1991, an independence referendum was held in Nagorno-Karabakh, boycotted by the Azeri minority, and gained a vote of 99% in favor of independence.The conflict escalated into a full-scale war with the captured Shusha by Armenian forces on 9 May 1992. By 1993, the Armenian forces took control over not only the originally disputed Nagorno-Karabakh, but also several districts surrounding the region. A ceasefire agreement was eventually signed on 5 May 1994 in Bishkek Protocol, Kyrgyzstan. According to Thomas de Waal, three factors contributed to the victory of the Armenian side: "Azerbaijan's political and military chaos, greater Russian support for the Armenians, and the Armenians' superior fighting skills." Since the 1994 ceasefire until 2020, the Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (later Artsakh) had de facto control of the territories taken over in the war.
In the wake of Armenia's defeat in 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, Armenian forces lost control of the occupied territories around Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as Shusha and Hadrut in Nagorno-Karabakh. In accordance with Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement, Russian peacekeepers were deployed in the Lachin corridor connecting Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh.
Following the 2023 Azerbaijani offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh from 19 to 20 September, which ended in the total defeat and collapse of Artsakh, Azerbaijan secured full control over the region. Unable to provide further resistance, the government of Artsakh announced its surrender and formal dissolution on 1 January 2024. Nearly all Armenians in the region fled into Armenia after Azerbaijan's victory.
In an April 2015 conference on the Armenian Genocide centenary Postanjyan stated that Armenia should "restore its territorial integrity" by claiming the "territory of its historic homeland." When asked about how realistic Armenian claims to its historic lands are, Heritage leader Hovannisian responded: "Today's romantic will become tomorrow's realist." In an opinion piece published in The Jerusalem Post on 11 April 2015 Hovannisian wrote that Turkey occupies Western Armenia and called for "the creation of an Armenian national hearth in historic Western Armenia." He added, "negotiations between the republics of Turkey and Armenia triggering the first-ever sovereign reciprocal demarcation of the official frontier, including but not limited to provisions for an Armenian easement to the Black Sea."
| Nagorno-Karabakh ( Artsakh) | Azerbaijan | 11,458 | 7.000 | 0 |
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| Javakheti ( Javakhk) | (Akhalkalaki and Ninotsminda districts) | 2,588 | 69,561 | 65,132 | 93.6 | 2014 census | |
| Nakhchivan ( Nakhichevan) | (Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic) | 5,363 | 398,323 | 6 | ~0 | 2009 census |
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| Eastern Turkey ( Western Armenia) | 132,967 | 6,461,400 | 60,000 | 0.09 | 2009 estimate |
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The Nagorno-Karabakh Republic or the Republic of Artsakh remained internationally unrecognized. Until 2023, the Republic of Armenia and Artsakh were de facto functioning as one entity,Central Asia and The Caucasus, Information and Analytical Center, 2009, Issues 55–60, Page 74, "Nagorno-Karabakh became de facto part of Armenia (its quasi-statehood can dupe no one) as a result of aggression."Deutsche Gesellschaft für auswärtige Politik, Internationale Politik, Volume 8, 2007 "... and Nagorno-Karabakh, the disputed territory that is now de facto part of Armenia ..." although the Nagorno-Karabakh region was internationally recognized as de jure part of Azerbaijan. Nagorno-Karabakh was more Monoethnicity than the Republic of Armenia, with 99.7% of its population being Armenian. The Azerbaijani minority was forced to leave during the war. The areas outside the original NKAO borders taken over by the Armenian forces during the war are mostly uninhabited or very sparsely inhabited, with the city of Lachin being an exception. Between 2000 and 2011, 25,000 to 30,000 people settled in NKR.
The 2023 Azerbaijani offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh ended with the defeat and collapse of Artsakh, which formally dissolved on 1 January 2024. It also resulted in the mass flight of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians into Armenia. These developments appear to have effectively ended the "United Armenia" aspirations with regards to Nagorno-Karabakh.
United Javakhk Democratic Alliance, a local civil organization, is the main organization advocating for an Armenian autonomy in the region. It was founded in 1988, during the disintegration of the Soviet Union. It campaigns for a referendum in Javakheti on autonomy.
It is believed that the organization has close links with the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. Although the ARF claims Javakheti as part of United Armenia, the ARF World Congresses "have agreed with the demands raised by the Armenians of Javakheti that a Javakheti with a high degree of self-government within a federal Georgia would be able to sustain itself and would become a strong link in Georgian-Armenian relations." ARF Bureau Chairman Hrant Markarian declared in the 2004 party congress: "We want a strong, stable and autonomous Javakheti that is part of Georgia and enjoys state care." The leader of the United Javakhk Democratic Alliance, Vahagn Chakhalian, was arrested in 2008 and freed in 2013. A 2014 article suggested that the alliance has little influence today.During Zviad Gamsakhurdia's presidency (1991), Javakheti remained de facto semi-independent and only in November 1991 was the Tbilisi-appointed governor able to take power. The issue of Javakheti was in the 1990s "clearly been perceived as the most dangerous potential ethnic conflict in Georgia", however, no actual armed conflict ever occurred. Taking into account the importance of the bilateral relations, the governments of Armenia and Georgia have pursued a careful and calming policy to avoid tension. The Armenian government has not made territorial claims to Georgia, nor has called for an autonomy in Javakheti. Armenia–Georgia relations have traditionally been friendly, however, from time to time tensions arise between the two countries. In recent years, the status of Armenian churches in Georgia and the status of the Armenian language in Georgian public schools had been a matter of dispute. Svante Cornell argues that "Armenia seems to have had a calming influence on Javakhk" as it is highly dependent on Georgia for imports. This viewpoint is shared by Georgian analysts.
Armenian nationalist activist Alexander Yenikomshian has suggested that there are three long-term solutions to the Javakheti issue: 1) the region remains part of a Georgia, where the rights of the Armenian population are protected 2) "Artsakhization", i.e. de facto unification with the Republic of Armenia 3) "Nakhichevanization", i.e. Javakheti loses its Armenian population.
Western Armenia refers to an undefined area, now in eastern Turkey, that had significant Armenian population prior to the Armenian genocide of 1915.
As a result of the genocide, officially no Armenians live in the area today.Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Near East/South Asia Report, Issue 84004, p. 16 "These organizations demand the secession of former Armenian territories in eastern Turkey. Since officially no Armenians live on those lands today ..." However, at least two distinct groups of Armenian origin reside in the area. Hemshin peoples, an Islamisized group with Armenian ethnic origin, live in the Black Sea coast, particularity in the Rize Province province.Peter Alford Andrews, Ethnic Groups in the Republic of Turkey. Wiesbaden, Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1989, pp. 476–477, 483-485, 491 Another group, "Hidden Armenians", live throughout Turkey, especially the eastern parts of the country. Many of them have been assimilated by Kurds. It is impossible to determine how many there are due to the fact that they keep their identity hidden, but estimates range from below 100,000 to millions. Since the Armenian Genocide, the area has been mostly settled by Kurds and Turkish people, with smaller numbers of Azerbaijanis (near the Turkish-Armenian border) and Georgians and Laz people in the northeastern provinces of Turkey.Generally, the Armenian nationalist groups claim the area east of the boundary drawn by US President Woodrow Wilson for the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920. The Armenian Revolutionary Federation and groups supporting the concept of United Armenia claim that the Treaty of Sèvres, signed on 10 August 1920 between the Ottoman Empire and the Allies, including Armenia is the only legal document determining the border between Armenia and Turkey. Armenia's Former Deputy Foreign Minister Ara Papian claims that "Wilsonian Armenia," the territory granted to the Republic of Armenia in 1920 by Wilson in the scope of the Treaty of Sèvres, is still de jure part of Armenia today. According to him the Treaty of Kars, which determined the current Turkish-Armenian border, has no legal value because it was signed between two internationally unrecognized subjects: Bolshevik Russia and Kemalist Turkey. Papian has suggested that the Armenian government can file a suit at the International Court of Justice to dispute the border between Armenia and Turkey.
22 November is celebrated by some Armenians as the anniversary of the Arbitral Award. In 2010 and 2011, posters with maps of the Treaty of Sèvres were hung throughout Yerevan.
On 10 August 2020 the three traditional Armenian parties—the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF, Dashnaks), Social Democrat Hunchakian Party (Hunchaks) and the Armenian Democratic Liberal Party (Ramgavars)—issued a joint statement on the centenary of the Sèvres Treaty, stating that the treaty is the only international document defining the border between Armenia and Turkey. "The Treaty of Sevres is a valid international treaty, although it has not been ratified by all signatories, but it has not been legally replaced by any other international instrument. At least from the point of view of the rights of the Armenian Cause, the Republic of Armenia and the Armenian nation, it remains a promissory note based on international law."
In 2010, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan addressed the Conference Dedicated to the 90th Anniversary of Woodrow Wilson's Arbitral Award:
On 23 July 2011, during a meeting of Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan with students in Tsaghkadzor resort city, a student asked Sargsyan if Turkey "will return Western Armenia" in the future. Sargsyan responded:
Sargsyan's statements "were considered by Turkish officials an encouragement for young students to fulfill the task of their generation and occupy eastern Turkey." During his visit to Baku a few days later, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan denounced Sargsyan's statements and described them as "provocation" and claimed that Sargsyan this "told young Armenians to be ready for a future war with Turkey." Erdoğan demanded apology from Sargsyan calling his statements a "blunder". In response, Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharyan stated that Sargsyan's words were "interpreted out of context."
On 5 July 2013, during a forum of Armenian lawyers in Yerevan on the 100th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide organized by the Ministry of Diaspora, Armenia's Prosecutor General Aghvan Hovsepyan made a "sensational statement". Hovsepyan particularly stated:
According to ArmeniaNow news agency "this was seen as the first territorial claim of Armenia to Turkey made on an official level. The prosecutor general is the carrier of the highest legal authority in the country, and his statement is equivalent to an official statement." In response, the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement on 12 July 2013 denouncing Hovsepyan's statements. According to the Turkish side his statements reflect the "prevailing problematic mentality in Armenia as to the territorial integrity of its neighbor Turkey." The statement said that "one should be well aware that no one can presume to claim land from Turkey."
On 10 August 2020 Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, President Armen Sarkissian and parliament speaker Ararat Mirzoyan issued statements on the centenary of the Sèvres Treaty. Pashinyan noted that although it was never implemented, "it continues to be a historical fact, which reflects our long journey to restore our independent statehood. We are bound by duty to remember it, realize its importance and follow its message." Sarkissian stated that the treaty "even today remains an essential document for the right of the Armenian people to achieve a fair resolution of the Armenian issue." Mirzoyan called the treaty an expression of "dreamy naivety."
By the 16th century, control of Nakhichevan passed to the Safavid dynasty of Persian Empire. Because of its geographic position, it frequently suffered during the earlier wars between Persia and the Ottoman Empire in the 14th to 18th centuries. In 1604–1605, Shah Abbas I, concerned that the lands of Nakhichevan and the surrounding areas could potentially pass into Ottoman hands, decided to institute a scorched earth policy. In what is called the Great Surgun, he forced 300,000 Armenians,
including those from Nakhichevan to leave their homes and move to the Persian provinces south of the Aras River. After the last 1826-1828 Russo-Persian War, Nakhichevan became part of Russia per the Treaty of Turkmenchay after Persia's forced ceding. Alexandr Griboyedov, the Russian envoy to Persia, reported that 1,228 Armenian families from Persia migrated to Nakhichevan, while prior to their migration there were 2,024 Muslim and 404 Armenian families living in the province.According to the 1897 Russian Empire census, the Nakhichevan uyezd of the Erivan Governorate had a population of 100,771, of which 34,672 were Armenian (34.4%), while Caucasian Tatars (Azerbaijanis) numbered 64,151 or 63.7% of the total population. The proportion of Armenian was around 40% prior to World War I.
Nakhichevan was disputed between Armenia and Azerbaijan from 1918 to 1920 during the countries' brief independence. Due to the Ottoman invasion in 1918, 100,000 Armenians fled from Nakhichevan. By June 1919, after the British troops left the area, Armenia succeeded in establishing control over Nakhichevan. Some of the Nakhichevan Armenians returned to their homes in summer 1919. Again, more violence erupted in 1919 leaving some 10,000 Armenians dead and some 45 Armenian villages destroyed.After the Soviet takeover of the Caucasus region in 1920 and 1921, the Treaty of Moscow, also known as the Treaty of Brotherhood, was signed between the Government of the Grand National Assembly and Soviet Russia on 16 March 1921. According to this treaty Nakhichevan became "an autonomous territory under the auspices of Azerbaijan, under the condition that Azerbaijan will not relinquish the protectorate to any third party." The Treaty of Kars was signed between the Grand National Assembly and Armenian SSR, Azerbaijan SSR, Georgian SSR on 13 October 1921. The treaty reaffirmed that the "Turkish Government and the Soviet Governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan are agreed that the region of Nakhichevan ... constitutes an autonomous territory under the protection of Azerbaijan." By the mid-1920s, the number of Armenians in Nakhichevan dwindled significantly and according to the 1926 Soviet census the 11,276 Armenians made up only 10.7% of the autonomous republic. During the Soviet period, the Armenians of Nakhichevan felt "pressured to leave" According to the Soviet census of 1979, only 3,406 Armenians resided in Nakhichevan or 1.4% of the total population. The last few thousand Armenians left Nakhichevan in 1988 amid the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
In August 1987, the Armenian National Academy of Sciences started a petition to transfer Nakhichevan and Nagorno-Karabakh under jurisdiction of Armenia. In the nationalist movement to unite Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia, Armenians "used the example of the slow "de-Armenianization" of Nakhichevan in the course of the twentieth century as an example of what they feared would happen to them." During the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, clashes occurred between Armenian and Azeri forces in the Nakhichevan-Armenia border, however, the war did not spill over into Nakhichevan. Turkey, Azerbaijan's close ally, threatened to intervene if Armenia invaded Nakhichevan. Nakhichevan was in center of attention during the destruction of the Armenian cemetery in Julfa in the 2000s. According to the Research on Armenian Architecture, most of the Armenian churches, monasteries and cemeteries were destroyed by Azerbaijan in the 1990s.
The Armenian government has never made any claims to Nakhichevan, although there have been calls by nationalist circles (including Hayazn, Heritage youth wing and prominent First Nagorno-Karabakh War veteran Jirair Sefilian) (archived) to forcibly annex Nakhichevan in case Azerbaijan attacks Nagorno-Karabakh. Rəfael Hüseynov, the director of the Nizami Museum of Azerbaijani Literature, in his written question to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in 2007 claimed that the "seizure Nakhichevan is one of the main military goals of Armenia." Writing in the Harvard International Review in 2011 US-based Azerbaijani historian Alec Rasizade suggested that "Armenian ideologues have lately started to talk about the return of Nakhichevan."
The phrase "Kura-Arax Republic" was coined in 2016 by Levon Shirinyan, a political science professor and a former member of the ARF, to advocate Armenian military advancement into the territory of Azerbaijan west of the Kura river (including Nakhichevan) to achieve complete surrender of Azerbaijan. Following the April 2016 war in Karabakh with Azerbaijan, he stated that Armenia should "transfer the military operations" into Yevlakh and the confluence of the rivers Kura and Arax (Aras or Araxes). The explained the importance of the two as follows: Yevlakh is a major hub of the Baku-Tbilisi railway and the oil and gas pipelines, while the second would give Armenia an opportunity to assist the Talysh people in reviving an independent state in the south of Azerbaijan.
The idea was adopted by the hard-line nationalist group led by Jirair Sefilian that took over a police base in Yerevan in July 2016. Varuzhan Avetisyan, leader of the armed group, explicitly supported the idea from prison in 2017. Sefilian did so in April 2018. Following their release from prison after the 2018 Armenian Velvet Revolution, members of the armed group formed the Sasna Tsrer Pan-Armenian Party, which officially adopted "Kura-Arax Republic" as one of its objectives. Their party program stated Nakhichevan and the areas of Azerbaijan west of the Kura should become part of Armenia and, thus, establish the Kura-Araxian Republic. Sefilian stated:
A 2014 survey in Armenia asked what kind of demands should Armenia make to Turkey. Some 80% agreed that Armenia should make territorial claims (30% said only territorial claims, while another 50% said territorial, moral, financial, and proprietary). Only 5.5% said no demands should be made. According to a 2012 survey, 36% of Armenians asked agree or somewhat agree that Turkish recognition of the Armenian Genocide will result in territorial compensation, while 45% believe it will not. The online publication Barometer.am wrote: "It appears that our pragmatic population believes that all possible demands should be forwarded to Turkey ... but a relative majority consider the practival realization of territorial claims to Turkey is unrealistic."
According to a 2013 Caucasus Barometer survey, when asked about having Nagorno-Karabakh as a formal part of Armenia, 77% of respondents "definitely favor" such a status, 13% would be "accepting under certain circumstances", and 7% oppose it.
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From 2005 to 2008, four short were released by the Armenfilm called Road home (Ճանապարհ դեպի տուն) produced by Armenian animator Robert Sahakyants. It tells a story of a group of school children from Erzurum (Erzurum) in 2050 taking a trip throughout the "liberated from enemy" territories: Tigranakert, Bitlis (Bitlis), Mush and Akdamar Island. The country they live in is called Hayk' (Հայք) after the historical name of Armenia. The series was aired by the Public Television of Armenia. In one of his last interviews, Sahakyants stated: "If today I'm shooting a film about how we are going to return Western Armenia, then I'm convinced that it will definitely take place."
Armenia's first president Levon Ter-Petrosyan (1991–98), in a widely publicized 1997 essay on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict titled "War or Peace? Time to Get Serious", argued that if Armenia was to officially demand "the return of Armenian lands" from Turkey and cancellation of the Treaty of Kars, it would only play into the hands of Turkey. He argued that it would "provide Turkey with more evidence of Armenia's expansionist ambitions" and direct more negative international opinion towards Armenia. Petrosyan has called the idea of "Kura-Arax republic" a "fairy tale."
Gerard Libaridian, a former adviser to President Ter-Petrosyan, criticized August 2020 statements by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and President Armen Sarkissian on the 100th anniversary of the Sèvres Treaty as being "equivalent to a declaration of at least diplomatic war against Turkey." According to Libaridian, "Adopting the Treaty of Sevres as an instrument of foreign policy Armenia placed the demand of territories from Turkey on its agenda."
In 2012, President of Azerbaijan and son of Heydar Aliyev, Ilham Aliyev, who has made several statements toward Armenia and Armenians in past such as "our main enemies are Armenians of the world", stated that "Over the past two centuries, Armenian bigots, in an effort to materialize their 'Great Armenia' obsession at the expense of historically Azerbaijani lands, have repeatedly committed crimes against humanity such as terrorism, mass extermination, deportation and ethnic cleansing of our people."
In Turkey, "many believe that Armenia's territorial claims are the main reason why the Armenian administration and lobbyists are pushing for global recognition" of the Armenian Genocide. The Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism credits the idea of "Great Armenia" to Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrosyan. According to Prof. İdris Bal "Turkey considers Armenian policy (and the activities of its powerful diaspora groups) since 1989 to be against its national security interests and territorial integrity. Armenia's failure to recognize the Kars Agreement, along with the frequent public references to eastern Turkey as 'Western Armenia,' provides a serious irritant to Turkey. The Turkish Mount Ararat is pictured in the official Armenian state emblem, which Turkey interprets as a sign that the 'greater Armenia' vision is still very much alive."
According to Hürriyet Daily News some "foreign policy experts draw attention to the fact that Armenia has territorial claims over Turkey, citing certain phrases in the Armenian Constitution and Declaration of Independence." The Armenia Declaration of Independence was passed on 23 August 1990 officially declaring "the beginning of the process of establishing of independent statehood positioning the question of the creation of a democratic society." It was signed by Levon Ter-Petrosyan, the President of the Supreme Council, who became the first President of Armenia in 1991. Article 11 of the declaration read:
Turkish historian and political scientist Umut Uzer characterized Armenian territorials claims to eastern Turkey as "a racist and irredentist demand with regard to a territory which has never in history had an Armenian majority population. And these demands are buttressed with genocide claims which in fact deny the very existence of Turkey in its current borders."
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