Politicians in Azerbaijan compare 1918 March events with Karabakh conflict

The Genocide Day in connection with the events of March 1918 is marked on March 31 in Azerbaijan. On the eve of the tragic date, exhibitions and conferences were held across the country, and TV channels and radio stations cancelled entertainment programmes. According to politicians, the events of early 20th century have something in common with the Karabakh conflict.

According to the Azerbaijani version of the events, in March 1918, armed groups of the Armenian nationalist "Dashnaktsutyun" Party committed, with the support of the Bolshevik leadership of the Baku Soviet, massacres and pogroms of Azerbaijanis. In 2018, the Azerbaijani Parliament called on the world community to give assessment to the massacres.

The Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) recalled that more than 20,000 innocent people were killed in Baku alone.

The historian, Panakh Gusein, has compared the events of 1918 with the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh.

March 31 is a commemoration day of all the victims of the tragic events in the history of the Azerbaijani nation that happened over the past 200 years, said Bakhtiyar Gadjiev, a political scientist.

Besides, in his opinion, March 31 reminds of the Karabakh conflict, because of which "hundreds of thousands of people can not return to their homes."