AZE.US
Azerbaijan on March 31 marks 108 years since the mass killings of Azerbaijanis in 1918, events that are officially recognized in the country as the genocide of Azerbaijanis.
According to the Azerbaijani official account, the violence was carried out by Armenian Dashnak forces in alliance with the Bolsheviks during the upheaval that followed the February and October 1917 revolutions in Russia. From March 30 to April 3, 1918, the Baku Commune, under the pretext of fighting counter-revolutionary elements, launched attacks against Azerbaijanis in Baku and across other parts of the region.
The bloodshed extended beyond Baku to Shamakhi, Guba, Khachmaz, Lankaran, Hajigabul, Salyan, Zangazur, Karabakh, Nakhchivan and other areas. Azerbaijani sources say nearly 12,000 Azerbaijanis were killed, while tens of thousands more went missing.
The attacks also caused major destruction to religious, historical and architectural sites. Among the buildings damaged were the Ismailiyya building in Baku, as well as the Juma and Taza Pir mosques, whose minarets were heavily hit during the violence.
Baku says the events of 1918 were part of a broader campaign that continued in later decades through the forced displacement of Azerbaijanis from territories that are now part of Armenia. Azerbaijani officials link those events to the 1948–1953 deportations carried out under a Soviet decree and to the expulsion of about 300,000 Azerbaijanis from Armenia beginning in 1988.
March 31 was first observed as a national day of mourning by the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic in 1919 and 1920. After independence, Azerbaijan restored the commemoration, and in 1998 then-President Heydar Aliyev signed a decree giving an official political and legal assessment of the 1918 events as genocide.
In recent years, Azerbaijani officials have also pointed to discoveries made in Guba, where mass graves were uncovered and a memorial complex was later established. Baku says the site stands as material evidence of the killings and a symbol of remembrance for the victims.
The issue remains central to Azerbaijan’s historical memory and state policy. Azerbaijani officials maintain that the 1918 killings have still not received legal recognition at the international level.