Talk:Karabakh

Merge/redirect to Southern Azerbaijan?

It looks like the areas of the former de facto Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) that were retaken by Azerbaijan in 2020 are now double-covered here and in the Southern Azerbaijan article. Information about the rest of the former de facto independent state has been merged here. Should all of it be merged to Southern Azerbaijan, with this term and Nagorno-Karabakh both being redirected to that article? If not, why not? Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:00, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

I suppose Nagorno-Karabakh is very different from the areas that never were contested. "As of October 2023, all cities of the region are heavily depopulated, although the Azerbaijani government plans to use them to re-settle [...]" does seem to confirm that. Until those plans have been realised, or can be trusted to proceed as planned, I don't think it is good to let this confusion spread to the stable areas. Southern Azerbaijan talks about "the former Armenian occupied part", in addition (?) to Nagorno-Karabakh; are there still issues outside the latter? –LPfi (talk) 04:45, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, there is duplication of content, and it also probably hasn't been updated since Azerbaijan retook the rest of the former de facto independent state of Artsakh. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:36, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

I meant issues on the ground. If part of the region is stable, part in uncertain development, with most services gone, I think one could wait with the merger until the region has become more uniform. We don't want too many "except in the former Nagorno-Karabakh". But if the main message is in a cautionbox of "most info on this page is obsolete: things changed radically in and after 2020 and 2023 and these changes have mostly not been accounted for" then, whatever. And if somebody can merge these articles so that they actually become usable, then just plunge forward! –LPfi (talk) 07:32, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

The other alternative is to delete the duplication of information in Southern Azerbaijan, but we need to do one or the other. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:44, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

As long as it can be copied over (i.e. merged) there, that wouldn't be a problem. It seems there is nothing that would be difficult to split out. It can be integrated back later if we decide Azerbaijan should have fewer regions. LPfi (talk) 08:49, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Do you mean merged there or moved here? Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:14, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Sorry: forgot at which page I was writing. I prefer keeping the regions separate for the time being, moving info that belongs here to here, merging it with what may be here from before on the site/city/issue. –LPfi (talk) 15:19, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Nagorno-Karabakh

Swept in from the pub

I think it's time to re-breadcrumb this under Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan has won the war, the Karabakh Armenians have surrendered, and Armenia decided to recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over it. Under the ceasefire brokered by the Russians, Azerbaijan is taking control. The dog2 (talk) 03:01, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I'd say let's wait until we see the deal to be struck after the talks commencing today. As far as I'm aware, Armenia interestingly never recognized the independence of NKR, so in theory they were recognizing Azerbaijani sovereignty over the region all the time. Vidimian (talk) 03:17, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Armenia had always been quiet about the issue. But Pashinyan recently explicitly said he recognized Azerbaijani sovereignty over it. And that's when Azerbaijan launched its big offensive. Based on my understanding, all the Russians managed to secure from Aliyev was safe passage for the ethnic Armenian civilians to Armenia if they choose to leave, and a promise to grant Azerbaijani citizenship and the right to practise Christianity to the ethnic Armenians who choose to stay. The dog2 (talk) 03:22, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Azerbaijan has controlled all in and out for a year now anyway and it seems like they will for the future, so since ttcf, I think it's now both de jure and de facto Azerbaijani. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:45, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I read this article, but I would wait until it has been under stable Azerbaijani control for a reasonable period of time – that can be subjective, but I would say we should wait around 18 months from when it's been under full Azerbaijani control until we change the breadcrumbs. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 04:12, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't think we need to wait 18 months. If it seems clear that effective Azerbaijani control is here to stay for the foreseeable future, we don't have to wait some arbitrary amount of time. One example is that we recognized de facto Russian control over Crimea quite quickly, and that control held pretty unchallenged until recently. And in this case, Artsakh was never official, so it'll look strange if we continue to recognize it when it has ceased to exist as a de facto independent entity. Even a week or two might be enough, if the outcome is quite clear. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:02, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I agree. The short-term effect on travellers is that budget accommodation in Armenia may be re-assigned to those evicted from the area. It will be a much slower process to re-settle it with Azeris and transition to a normal civilian province, and the Baku real-estate speculators will get there first. Grahamsands (talk) 14:23, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

We don't know for sure that the Karabakh Armenians will be re-settled in Armenia. There are some rumblings that Pashinyan is not willing to take them in. As of now, it looks like the Russians are the ones leading negotiations on their fate, so there is also a good chance they will be re-settled in Russia instead of Armenia. The dog2 (talk) 18:13, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

News reports confirm the predictable outcome. If you were advising the mayor and police chief in Yerevan, what would you be saying? "Many thousands have already arrived and many more are inevitable. Winter comes early to those mountains so the Azeris have the perfect excuse to deport ethnic Armenians quickly. We need a transit camp near Goris but must create capacity to move people on. Much budget accommodation starts to shut down for winter in the coming weeks, but if we act swiftly we can support them to stay open, and might get international funding towards doing so." Grahamsands (talk) 20:41, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Oh well, let's see if this results in a difficulty in getting hotel rooms. If this is anything to go by, Georgia housed many of the ethnic Georgian refugees from Abkhazia and South Ossetia in former Soviet sanatoriums to await the day the Georgian government reclaims those territories and they can return to their homes, but they're still stuck in limbo now and don't have proper homes. The dog2 (talk) 21:55, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

The Artsakh government has announced that it will dissolve itself now that Azerbaijan has re-taken control of the region. That seems like a sign that we should we should to return NK breadcrumbing to Azerbaijan. I think it's over. Ground Zero (talk) 13:15, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

And we should also merge Karabakh (Azerbaijan) into Nagorno-Karabakh (or vice versa). There is no need for two separate articles since Azerbaijan now controls the entire area. The dog2 (talk) 16:08, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

And probably move the merged article to Karabakh (now a redirect to Nagorno-Karabakh) without any qualifiers. w:Karabakh (disambiguation) doesn't list any significant non-Azerbaijani areas with this spelling. Vidimian (talk) 22:28, 28 September 2023 (UTC)