The Center for Armenian Research and Analysis (CARA) gathers and analyzes critical information on activities occurring in occupied Artsakh by state and non-state actors, and produces a weekly brief, with actionable data, to public and private stakeholders. Keeping Artsakh alive and in the public consciousness is part and parcel of CARA’s mission of providing clear and unfettered research and analysis pertaining to indigenous Armenian rights and cultural survival.

TOP ARTSAKH HEADLINES, OCTOBER 5-11, 2026

An Armenian Mother Fights Off an Azeri Gunman, and Pashinyan Says She Should Have Waited

On October 1, Ani Avetisyan, 39, rushed from the town of Sisian to her home in Shaki, a village in Armenia’s Syunik province, after learning that an armed stranger was holding her two children at gunpoint inside. The gunman was Azeri serviceman Nasimi Musayev, and he pointed an assault rifle at her family. In the struggle with Avetisyan, the Azeri soldier fired three shots. The first missed. The second severed Avetisyan’s thumb and badly injured her fingers as she grabbed the barrel aimed at her son. The third bullet struck her leg after she pushed the weapon away from her chest. She fought back with a knife, told her daughter to open the gate and escape, and held the Azeri aggressor off until he ran out of ammunition and fled, roughly five minutes before law enforcement arrived. Speaking from her hospital bed in Yerevan, where she awaitsthree more surgeries, she said that neither she nor her children would be alive had she not intervened.

Avetisyan faulted Armenian security officials for failing to warn residents. Azerbaijani authorities had notified Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS) on September 29, two days before the attack, that a serviceman had, by Baku’s account, “deserted his unit and might have crossed the border.” Armenia’s Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinyan, then had the audacity to call the shooting and assault an “ordinary criminal incident” and preposterously claimed that Avetisyan “should have waited for law enforcement,” a remark that drew sharp criticism from the Armenian opposition and the public at large. Armenian Defense Minister Suren Papikyan later acknowledged “official failures” in the response. Musayev was caught in Shaki and remains in pretrial detention, charged with illegal border crossing, weapons smuggling, violating the inviolability of a home, and causing serious bodily harm with a firearm. Avetisyan and her two children are formally designated victims in the investigation.

A mother had to defend her children with a knife because the Pashinyan regime gave a border village no warning for two days while an Azeri soldier penetrated 15 to 20 kilometers into sovereign Armenian territory. Then, she was told by her own government that she should have waited. In the regime’s sordid telling, an armed Azeri soldier inside an Armenian home is “ordinary.” (Source: Armenian Report Article)

Yerevan Dismisses New Syunik Sightings and Refuses to Trade Musayev for Armenian Hostages

The Armenian NSS dismissed online claims that three Azerbaijanis in civilian clothes had infiltrated the village of Kuris, in Syunik, calling the reports “misinformation.” Local media had reported that residents witnessed three unidentified individuals who fled when approached, and that Armenian and Russian border guards searched the area with drones. Kuris village head Davit Ohanjanyan confirmed that a night incident took place, but said he had not personally seen any Azerbaijanis. A local resident confirmed seeing three unknown individuals, without identifying their nationality.

Pashinyan has also ruled out exchanging Musayev for Armenian hostages. Armenian authorities claim that Musayev entered the house in “heavy fog, possibly after becoming lost.” In an interview with Infocom, Pashinyan claimed that Armenia and Azerbaijan “share an understanding” that soldiers who cross the border are handled separately from other “detainee” negotiations, and that linking the two would set a “risky precedent” should an Armenian serviceman ever stray into Azerbaijan. He called speculation about a planned Azeri sabotage operation “absurd,” and said Musayev will serve any sentence in Armenia. The NSS and Papikyan likewise rejected claims that Musayev crossed on Baku’s order, and Pashinyan said Azerbaijan has not requested his extradition. The decision closes off any use of Musayev to secure the release of the 19 Armenian hostages still held in Azerbaijan.

Baku warned Yerevan that its soldier was missing, and Yerevan warned no one. Now, the Pashinyan regime vouches that Baku did not send him. The one Azeri soldier in Armenian custody will not bring home a single Armenian hostage, for the sake of a “precedent” the regime guards more carefully than the hostages themselves. (Sources: OC Media Article, Armenian Report Article)

Pashinyan Declares Peace With Azerbaijan a “Reality” While Baku Holds Artsakh’s Leaders

At a Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) summit in Turkmenistan on October 9, increasingly authoritarian Armenian prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan  “claimed that “peace with Azerbaijan has become a reality” after more than three decades of conflict. He hailed the U.S.-brokered agreement initialed at the White House on August 8, 2025, at a summit hosted by President Donald Trump, as a “pivotal turning point.” Under the text, both states would recognize each other’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and existing borders and renounce territorial claims against each other. The document still awaits signing and ratification. Pashinyan nonetheless credited Azeri dictator Ilham Aliyev, whose forces starved, shelled, and drove out an entire indigenous people, along with “international partners,” for what he called a “previously unimaginable diplomatic breakthrough.”

He conceded that Armenian hostages, including former political and military leaders of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), remain in Baku’s custody after the September 2023 Azeri ethnic cleansing offensive that forced 150,000 indigenous Armenians of Artsakh from their millennial homeland. He named the search for missing persons and mine clearance as further outstanding issues. He traced the process to the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration, reaffirmed in Prague in October 2022, and to the ceasefire brokered by Russian President Vladimir Putin in November 2020. He then portrayed the situation as one of ”no reported deaths or injuries” from cross-border fire for over two years, a delimited 12-kilometer (7.5-mile) border section, bilateral trade, and Azerbaijan’s railway open to Armenian cargo for nearly a year, even as Artsakh stands emptied of its people, its leaders sit in Baku’s prisons, and Azeri forces remain on sovereign Armenian territory. He also outlined plans for the so-called Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP).

A “peace” that leaves Artsakh’s leaders in Baku’s prisons is a Baku-centric settlement that serves Pan-Turkic, Western, and Israeli interests. TRIPP is the route across Syunik that Azerbaijan, Turkey, Israel, and Western powers have demanded, renamed for an American president. (Source: Armenian Report Article)

Armenian Hostages Held in “Absolute Isolation,” Denied Bibles and Medical Care

19 Armenian hostages, including eight former leaders of Artsakh, are serving illegal sentences of 20 years to life in Azerbaijan, imposed after Baku’s September 2023 genocidal offensive. Human rights lawyer Siranush Sahakyan, who represents them before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), says they are held in “absolute isolation,” with no physical access to their families, consular officials, independent lawyers, independent medical personnel, or the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Their only link to the outside world is monitored telephone calls, which Azerbaijani authorities can cut off at any point. They receive basic medication only for acute symptoms and are denied ongoing or preventive treatment for existing conditions. Sahakyan says their Christian faith is targeted. Bibles are denied, prisoners are forced to read the Quran, and in one case a cross-shaped tattoo was reportedly burned off a prisoner’s skin, an act characterized as torture. Azerbaijani officials dismiss these realities  as “unfounded,” while Baku’s refusal of unmonitored international oversight makes independent verification impossible.

These sham trials have raised profound fair-trial concerns among international human rights organizations. Ruben Vardanyan, former State Minister of Artsakh and a philanthropist, was sentenced in February 2026 by an Azerbaijani military court to 20 years on completely falsified terrorism-related charges and purported war crimes, after closed hearings in which evidence was presented in a language he did not understand, without any adequate translation. The hostages are illegally and violently held by the Azeri state that ethnically cleansed 150,000 indigenous Armenians of Artsakh in 2023. Human rights groups call transparent monitoring, impartial investigation of abuse, and protection of the hostages’ religious and legal rights essential to any lasting peace.

Withholding treatment from men whose survival is the precondition for an international case is a choice. This is medical terrorism. Burning a cross from a prisoner’s skin, as reported, is violent persecution of Armenians for being Christian, by a state that sells itself abroad as a model of “tolerance.” (Source: Article)

European Parliament Demands Armenian Hostages’ Release, and Baku’s Parliament Calls It “Biased”

The European Parliament adopted a nonbinding resolution in Strasbourg calling on Azerbaijan to immediately release its illegally held and abused Armenian hostages, including prisoners of war, former leaders of Artsakh, and others classified as political prisoners. Lawmakers condemned Baku’s growing repression of the opposition, independent media, and civil society through politically motivated prosecutions. The resolution named Ali Karimli, chairman of the Azerbaijan Popular Front Party, detained since last November, and human rights defender Anar Mammadli, sentenced to 13 years. It also faulted the EU’s own silence. Neither European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, in July, nor EU Special Representative Magdalena Grono, in September, publicly raised political detentions or demanded releases during visits to Azerbaijan, a silence the Parliament warned undermines the credibility of EU human rights policy. Any deepening of EU-Azerbaijan relations, it said, must be conditional on the release of political detainees and an end to the targeting of civil society and independent journalism.

On October 8, Azerbaijan’s parliament rejected the resolution as a “biased political action.” Azeri lawmakers claimed that the European body has grown “increasingly confrontational” since what Baku calls the “Second Karabakh War,” and accused it of trying to “dictate” to Azerbaijan’s state bodies, “instruct” its judicial and law enforcement institutions, and “impose political preconditions.” They alleged “double standards,” claiming “corruption and illicit lobbying” inside the European Parliament and to police violence and assembly restrictions in Europe. In a classic case of the perpetrator accusing the victim, they faulted Strasbourg for silence on Azerbaijani “refugees and internally displaced persons” who they claim endured “ethnic cleansing” during what they shamelessly call “Armenia’s occupation.” They further claimed that the resolution creates “misguided obstacles” to a purported peace agenda now advancing.

The state that ethnically cleansed Artsakh now borrows the term for itself. Its lecture on “illicit lobbying” comes from the government behind the “caviar diplomacy” scandal at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. (Sources: Massis Post Article, Asbarez Article, Armenian Report Article, Opposition to European Parliament Resolution)

ARF’s Lilit Galstyan Asks the OSCE Assembly to Visit the Hostages in Baku

At the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s Autumn Meeting in Andorra, Lilit Galstyan, an Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) Bureau member, Armenian lawmaker, and Chair of the Standing Committee on Human Rights Protection and Public Affairs, made an urgent appeal on behalf of the Armenian hostages and prisoners of war illegally held and abused in Azerbaijan. Speaking for the Armenian Delegation, she formally asked the OSCE PA to facilitate a humanitarian visit to Baku to assess their condition, a matter, she stressed, of human dignity rather than political negotiation. She raised it directly with the Assembly’s President, Secretary General, and Special Representative for the South Caucasus. She reported that closed-door trials have run for nearly three years, and that the ICRC has been denied access for nearly a year, leaving no neutral body to inspect the hostages’ physical and psychological condition, a concern backed by information from the European Court of Human Rights. She cited paragraphs 208 and 209 of the Porto Declaration, which call for observing incarcerated persons and the humane treatment of prisoners of war. Galstyan said she is prepared to travel to Baku alone if necessary, invited fellow parliamentarians to join her, and asked the Assembly to secure guarantees of safe access, security, and return. She urged colleagues to turn their human rights commitments into concrete action, calling the visit a possible confidence-building measure toward a genuine peace process.

An opposition lawmaker offers to go to Baku alone. The Pashinyan regime, which holds the state’s diplomatic channels, initialed a peace text that does not require the hostages’ release, and continues colluding with states actively engaged in the erasure of Armenians. (Source: Asbarez Article)

“On the Ground” in Occupied Artsakh

Agribusiness on Emptied Land: Baku Stages a Festival and Plans a 300-Hectare Greenhouse in Occupied Akna

On October 5, the so-called “100th Anniversary Agribusiness Festival” opened in occupied Akna (Azeri “Aghdam”), with an address by Azeri Minister of Agriculture Majnun Mammadov. Azeri state media tie this so-called “milestone edition” to the district’s “reconstruction” and “emerging agricultural development opportunities:” Baku code-speak for destruction of Armenian sacred sites, colonial re-settlement, military-industrial infrastructure development, and erasure of Armenian indigeneity. Baku says land in the villages of Kangarli, Sarijali, and Khidirli is being put into crop production and further claims its goal is a “technology-driven, efficient, and competitive” agriculture built on precision agriculture, satellite data, sensors, drones, smart irrigation, and artificial intelligence–and, of course ethnic cleansing of all Armenian traces which it conveniently fails to ever mention. . According to Azeri state media, credit fairs, panels, startup zones, and seed exhibitions offered access to state support mechanisms, financing, and seeds.

The same day, a regional panel organized by the Ministry’s Agricultural Innovation Center, supposedly the 25th in a series, brought together settler offensive and military-industrial complex “masterminds” Mammadov, Emin Huseynov, special representative of Azeri dictator Ilham Aliyev, Agro Dairy LLC CEO Niyazi Amirbayov, and AzerShakar CEO Nasib Islamzade. They discussed targets under the State Program for the Development of Production and Processing of Agricultural, Fishery and Aquaculture Products in Azerbaijan for 2026-2030, approved by presidential decree on May 25, 2026, along with Baku’s illegal “Great Return” settler program, incentives to attract entrepreneurs to the occupied territories, and subsidy mechanisms adopted on September 7 by the Agricultural Subsidies Council. The continued total appropriation and exploitation of Artsakh’s vast resources proceeds at break neck speed according to reports.

Also on October 5, Baku announced a 300-hectare greenhouse project in occupied Akna, billed as Azerbaijan’s first centralized greenhouse complex in a single industrial zone. Baku says private investment is paired with state-funded gas, power, and communication lines, water infrastructure, and irrigation. Its placement along the so-called “Zangezur Corridor” is said to serve the processing industry and export logistics. The Ministry and the Center for Agricultural Innovation claim to be expanding the use of drones and AI, with training for drone operators pointing to some of the surveillance and security agendas being pursued in occupied Artsakh in tandem with para-military infrastructure and foundational mechanisms for its sustainability. Baku claims its regional festivals have drawn over 85,000 farmers and AZN 16 million (USD 9.41 million) in sales across 99 events. New credit mechanisms are to subsidize loan interest through private banks, the Azerbaijan Business Development Fund, and the Agricultural Credit and Development Agency (ACDA).

A greenhouse complex placed on the “Zangezur Corridor” route is corridor infrastructure, and settlement infrastructure is military infrastructure. This buildout supports Turkish-Azeri military, logistics, and intelligence aims in the region, and is the economic base of the “Settlers Offensive,” as well as other regional expansion “projects.” (Sources: Agribusiness Festival in Occupied Akna, Panel Discussion in Occupied Akna, Greenhouse Project in Occupied Akna)

“Albanian” Revisionism Reaches Tsitsernavank

On October 6, members of Azerbaijan’s contrived “Albanian-Udi” religious community made an organized visit to Tsitsernavank Monastery (Azeri “Aghoghlan”) in occupied Berdzor (Azeri “Lachin”), where they held ceremonies, lit candles, and prayed for “martyrs.” Deputy chairman Rafig Danakari  “claimed that “tolerance” and “multiculturalism” are “core values of Azerbaijan,” in ethnically cleansed Artsakh. He recalled the community’s first visit in February 2021, after the area fell under Azeri occupation, and claimed that protecting “monasteries, churches, and mosques” safeguards “the nation’s historical and cultural heritage.” The blatant lies and hypocrisy of all Azeri officials, whether direct state representatives or so-called “religious minority” shills, are bone-chillingly stark as all traces of Armenian indigenous Artsakh are erased literally as these war criminals speak.

After Gandzasar and Dadivank, Baku’s “Albanian” claim now reaches Tsitsernavank, an Armenian basilica in a district handed over to Azerbaijan by Armenia’s collusionist regime in December 2020. The state that preaches “tolerance” at Tsitsernavank denies Bibles to Armenian hostages in Baku. Occupied Nakhichevan, where the Djulfa khachkars and all traces of Armenian life were erased, shows where this ends. (Sources: Visit to Tsitsernavank in Occupied Berdzor, Danakari Comments)

Baku Runs an “Ultramarathon” Into Occupied Stepanakert

On October 11, the final stage of the so-called “3rd International Khankendi Ultramarathon” set off from occupied Akna. Organized by Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Youth and Sports, the Azerbaijan Athletics Federation, and the Baku City Circuit Operations Company, it drew 97 athletes from six countries over 192 kilometers in four legs: Gabala to Agdash (52.5 km), Agdash to Barda (63.5 km), Barda to Akna (46.8 km), and a final 29.2 kilometers from Akna to occupied Stepanakert (Azeri “Khankendi”). Organizers say it promotes “healthy living” while “showcasing Azerbaijan’s regions.” Heading into the last leg, Georgia’s David Kharazishvili led the men and Ukraine’s Olena Shevchenko the women as they trod upon ethnically cleansed Armenian lands with no conscience or accountability.

The route ends in the capital of Artsakh, under its occupation name, three years after its Armenian population was driven out. Foreign athletes running into Stepanakert lend their names to Baku’s normalization of ethnic cleansing.

It is also important to note that the Ultramarathon idea was the brainchild, years ago, of a few Diasporan and Artsakh Armenians and was slated to be organized and sponsored originally by the Republic of Artsakh. Azeris stole this as well. (Source: Ultramarathon in Occupied Artsakh)

Foreign Interests and Actions in Occupied Artsakh

Baku’s “Missing Persons” Conference Takes Foreign Officials to Occupied Ivanyan and Shushi

From October 7 to 9, Azerbaijan’s State Commission on Prisoners of War, Hostages and Missing Persons hosted a 4th International Conference on Missing Persons, under the “Baku Dialogue on Missing Persons” and the theme “Strengthening Trust and Developing Effective Mechanisms to Resolve the Issue of Missing Persons.” It gathered former heads of state, representatives of international organizations, diplomats, and human rights specialists. Commission chairman Ali Naghiyev called resolving the fate of the missing a “moral obligation” and a “crucial condition for lasting peace.” The commission claims 4,010 registered missing persons: 4,004 from what it calls the “First Karabakh War” and six from what it calls the “44-day Patriotic War.” It claims 3,228 were military personnel and 782 civilians, including supposedly 71 children, 288 women, and 319 elderly individuals. It says it has cataloged DNA samples from 11,566 donor relatives and, as of October 1, 2026, recovered remains presumed to belong to 913 missing persons, including 253 exhumed from 32 purported mass graves which some experts say were, in fact, the handiwork of Azeri intelligence and special forces units.

Azeri Deputy Foreign Minister Fariz Rzayev called on “all conflict parties” to share records. Kathryne Bomberger, Director-General of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), said families, “particularly women,” are crucial partners in providing DNA and evidence, and that resolving disappearances upholds the right to “truth, justice, accountability, and compensation.” Gian Luca Beruto, Secretary-General of the International Institute of Humanitarian Law (IIHL), stressed mutual trust and continuous training in humanitarian law. A panel the same week on missing persons in peace processes called the issue “a critical matter of human dignity, justice, and law.”

On October 8, the conference adopted a final declaration citing the Geneva Conventions and UN resolutions. It urged states to share data on burial sites, named landmines as an obstacle to searches, and called on the UN to help establish a global mechanism for missing persons. On October 9, participants, among them former heads of state and government, ambassadors, and military attachés, were taken to the Azeri manufactured and so-called “Khojaly Genocide Memorial” in occupied Ivanyan (Azeri “Khojaly”) and to newly built housing and historical sites in occupied Shushi (Azeri “Shusha”).

By certain official reports, at least 80 Armenians were forcibly disappeared and more than 200 remain unaccounted for, and NGOs and researchers place the number far, far higher. Azerbaijan continues to ignore its obligation to investigate those cases, while absurdly inflating its own figures for missing Azeris and having the gall to speak of justice, honor, dignity, and human rights while erasing a whole people and culture. During the Artsakh Self-Defense War (First Nagorno-Karabakh War), Azeri special military and intelligence units were notorious for killing, torturing, and disappearing their own. A conference that asks the world to trust Baku on the missing ended with foreign officials touring settler housing in Shushi. (Sources: Naghiyev Comments, Panel Session, Baku Dialogue Declaration, International Conference on Missing Persons, Delegation Visits Occupied Ivanyan and Shushi)

Baku Takes Its “Mine War” Exhibitions to the UN in Geneva and to Brno

On October 6, a propaganda photo exhibition orchestrated by the Azeri state called “Armenia’s mine war” against Azerbaijan opened in Geneva, in front of the UN Office’s “Broken Chair” monument. It was organized by the “Gilavar” Photo Club Public Union, a grantee of Azerbaijan’s NGO Agency and the Karabakh Revival Fund. Club head Rashad Mehdiyev claimed erroneously  that Armenia laid over 1.5 million landmines across residential areas, cemeteries, and mass graves in Artsakh, and that Armenia’s “failure to provide accurate minefield maps” threatens civilians and delays the “return of displaced persons,” in other words, Azeri colonial settlers. The exhibition urges a “mine-free world” as the 18th UN Sustainable Development Goal, and the campaign is to continue across Europe.

On October 7, Gilavar opened a second propaganda campaign in Brno, Czech Republic, with the Land of Fire Azerbaijani diaspora organization. It was funded through a 2026 grant competition of the NGO Agency, the Karabakh Revival Fund, and the Azeri National Agency for Mine Action (ANAMA). It conveniently linked mines to missing persons, and further distorted reality by telling visitors that 32 mass graves had been uncovered in occupied Artsakh, where Baku claims forensic examinations show victims were “subjected to torture before being killed.” Organizers claimed that mines obstruct the “safe return of Azerbaijanis” to “their native lands.”

These are state-funded Azeri front groups, staging Baku’s narrative at the door of the United Nations. The “return” they demand is the “Settlers Offensive,” which experts say is built on Israeli models and algorithms, and which fills the homes of Artsakh’s expelled Armenians with often violent and criminal settlers. (Sources: Photo Exhibition in Geneva, Exhibition in the Czech Republic)

Polish State Television Co-Produces Baku’s Demining Film, Executive Produced by Arzu Aliyeva

On October 5, Azeri state media promoted “Steps in Silence,” a feature documentary directed by Fariz Ahmadov and produced by the Baku Media Center with Drygas Film Production and Polish Television (TVP). It follows female sappers demining occupied Artsakh, presented as “caring, elegant mothers” whose routines balance “willpower, elegance, and strength.” The film received a “Special Mention from the Jury” at the 18th NNW International Film Festival in Gdynia, Poland, after a “Best Visual Design” award at the 66th Kraków Film Festival, and is set to screen at the Astra Film Festival in Romania. It was executive produced by Arzu Aliyeva and supported by state film and cultural institutions in Azerbaijan and Poland.

Arzu Aliyeva is the daughter of Azeri dictator Ilham Aliyev. The film recasts the occupation of an ethnically cleansed Armenian homeland as a story of elegant mothers, with no Armenians in the frame. This is whitewashing, paid for in part by Polish public institutions. (Source: Documentary Film)

A Travel Club From 13 Countries Tours Occupied Artsakh as Baku’s Guests

On October 8, about 40 travelers from 13 countries, including the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Switzerland, and the UK, toured occupied Artsakh, led by Charles Veley, founder of the Most Traveled People (MTP) club. Baku counts it as the 17th group visit organized by major international travel clubs since 2021. They visited Azokh Cave (Azeri “Azykh”), a prehistoric site on UNESCO’s Tentative List, and were told of a so-called  “Azykhantrop” jawbone and the work of the Azykh International Paleolithic Archaeological Expedition. In occupied Shushi they were shown the bullet-scarred statues of Azeri cultural figures, the Lower Govhar Agha Mosque, Sadigjan’s House Museum, Khurshidbanu Natavan’s house, the fortress walls, Isa Spring (Isahaki Aghbyur), and Jdrduz (Azeri “Jidir Duzu”). In occupied Akna they visited the Juma Mosque and the Imarat Complex, with stops planned in occupied Karvachar (Azeri “Kalbajar”), occupied Martakert (Azeri “Aghdara”), and so-called “Albanian” temples. Baku says the aim was to show “destruction during the period of occupation” and the “large-scale reconstruction and restoration” since.

The “Albanian” temples on the route are Armenian monasteries, renamed so that visitors can photograph them without their builders, patrons, or native population. As Baku reports it, the itinerary said nothing of the 150,000 forcibly displaced, ethnically cleansed indigenous Armenians of Artsakh, forced out of their homeland since September 2020, or of their right of return. In fact, their erasure allows for this exploitation.(Sources: International Travel Club in Occupied Artsakh, Visit to Occupied Martakert)

Turkey Plants a Seedling Center in Occupied Jrakan, and AmCham Wants Its Next Forum in Occupied Artsakh

On October 9, at the so-called 3rd International Agro Business Forum in Baku, Turkish Ambassador Birol Akgün announced that a major seedling center in occupied Jrakan (Azeri “Jabrayil”) will open soon, built as a joint agricultural investment of Azerbaijan and Turkey. Baku says it will combine seedling production, agricultural technology, laboratory analysis, professional training, and storage. Akgün claimed it carries “symbolic significance” for the “restoration and reconstruction” of occupied Artsakh and could serve agriculture across the Caucasus and Central Asia. He tied it to the so-called “Zangezur Corridor” and the Middle Corridor.

At the same forum, Zaur Karimov, Executive Director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Azerbaijan (AmCham Azerbaijan), called for stronger public-private cooperation to unlock Azerbaijan’s agribusiness potential, citing Baku’s strategic agenda to 2028, and described AmCham’s new Food and Agriculture Committee. He then proposed holding the next Agribusiness Forum in occupied Artsakh, offering AmCham’s “full organizational support.”

Corridors such as the Middle Corridor act as fronts for Turkish-Azeri colonial aspirations and military expansion throughout the region. Investment on land cleared of its indigenous Armenian population through genocide is not neutral development; it is participation in genocide. An American business chamber that offers to stage a forum there puts a U.S. name on it. (Sources: Seedling Center in Jrakan, Karimov Comments)

Azeri MPs and Front Groups Lobby Congress to Repeal Section 907

On October 10, Azeri members of parliament and representatives of Azeri NGOs, including associations of purported mine victims, missing persons’ families, and “martyrs’” families, sent a letter to U.S. Senators and Members of the House of Representatives, copied to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in reply to a congressional letter dated October 5, 2026. They claimed that three decades of “occupation” of 20% of Azerbaijan’s territory (Armenian Artsakh) purportedly caused over 20,000 deaths, supposedly displaced more than one million citizens, and left 4,010 missing. They invoked what the Baku curated “Khojaly massacre” narrative that falsely posits the“massacre” of  613 civilians and the “destruction and desecration” of towns, villages, mosques, and  cemeteries by Armenians. The very same MPs, et al also claimed 1.5 million landmines were planted across nearly 13% of the country, with over 440 casualties since 2020, and urged Congress to fund demining and the search for burial sites.

The letter again falsely claimed that the Armenian hostages illegally held in tragic conditions in Baku  “were not political leaders” but figures of an “illegal separatist entity” prosecuted for purported  “war crimes” “under full defense guarantees.” These are the same men their lawyer reports are held in “absolute isolation,” with no independent lawyers. The signatories insisted that borders be settled by “direct bilateral” delimitation rather than “external unilateral assessments.” They hailed the Washington Peace Summit of August 8, 2025, hosted by President Donald Trump, where a laughable Joint Declaration was signed and an Agreement on Establishment of Peace and Inter-State Relations was initialed, and cited gestural Azeri petroleum exports to Armenia and the proposed lagging TRIPP route. They asked for a “bipartisan approach” and the full repeal of Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act.

Section 907 was enacted in 1992 because Azerbaijan blockaded Armenia and Artsakh. Baku now demands for its repeal after a ten-month blockade of Artsakh, war crimes by Baku and Turkey, as well as untold atrocities and the ethnic cleansing of 150,000 indigenous Armenians in 2023. Its parliament calls the hostages criminals in the same week their lawyer reports Bibles denied and a cross burned from a prisoner’s skin. (Source: Appeal to US Congress)

The Center for Armenian Research and Analysis (CARA) is a trans-national research institute that provides investigative, analytic, and informational resources to public and private entities across the Armenian experiential spectrum.