In pics | Aliyev raises Azerbaijan's flag in Karabakh says fulfilled Azerbaijani 'dream'

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on Sunday (Oct 15) raised the country's national flag in the capital of the former breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh weeks after Baku launched a military operation which brought the territory back under Azerbaijan's control.

A victorious President Ilham Aliyev said he had achieved a decades-long "Azerbaijani dream" by retaking Nagorno-Karabakh from ethnic Armenian separatists who had claimed part of Karabakh – which is internationally recognised as Azerbaijani territory – as their ancestral homeland. 

"President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has raised the national flag of the Republic of Azerbaijan in the city of Khankendi and delivered a speech," said the presidential office, referring to the capital for the former breakaway region Khankendi by Azerbaijan and was called Stepanakert by Armenians. 

This was the first time Aliyev had set foot in the city since it fell to ethnic Armenian separatists in the 1990s. "We achieved what we wanted. We fulfilled the dream the Azerbaijani people have lived with for decades," said Aliyev, as quoted by AFP. 

Image shows Stepanakert city, known as Khankendi by Azerbaijan, following an Azeri military operation and mass exodus of ethnic Armenians, on October 2, 2023.

Aliyev, dressed in military attire, the longtime leader flew the blue-red-green flag in what Azerbaijan calls Khankendi cementing Baku's win after last month's lightning offensive. The Azerbaijani president said his country has "waited 20 years" to see Azerbaijani rule in Karabakh, according to AFP. He added, "This victory will stay in our history forever."

Aliyev's trip came exactly two decades after he became president of Azerbaijan, succeeding his father Heydar Aliyev, who had longed to take control of Karabakh since acceding to power. 

"Twenty years ago, when I began to fulfil my official duties as president, I set myself a number-one task," said Aliyev, as quoted by AFP. "So that on all territories, on all lands, in all towns and villages that at the time were under occupation, the Azerbaijani flag would fly."  

The 120,000 ethnic Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh left the former breakaway region saying that they do not want to be a part of Azerbaijan and live in the constant fear of ethnic cleansing. 

This was after Azerbaijan, on September 19 launched a military operation against the separatist Armenians which reportedly led to the deaths of over 200 people and wounded 400 others, ended after the Armenians of Karabakh were forced to declare a ceasefire following a lightning 24-hour attack by the much larger Azerbaijani military.

Aliyev's visit came as Pope Francis after his traditional Angelus prayer in Saint Peter's Square in Rome, on Sunday called for the protection of Karabakh's ancient Christian Armenian monasteries and churches.

"Beyond the humanitarian situation of the displaced people, which is serious, I would like to appeal for the protection of the monasteries and places of worship in the region," said Francis. 

He added, "I express the wish that they may be respected, both by the authorities and by all its inhabitants, and protected as part of the local culture, in an expression of faith and a sign of a fraternity that allows us to live together in our differences."

The mass exodus of Armenians and the announced dissolution of the self-proclaimed Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, the cultural heritage of the former breakaway region considered ancestral by the largely Christian Armenians is at risk.

There are hundreds of churches, monasteries and tombstones dating from the 11th to the 19th century in the Karabakh region which has been an integral part of Muslim-majority Azerbaijan since the end of the Russian Empire. 

According to a "Caucasus Heritage Watch", a project that uses satellite images to document buildings of heritage as many as 108 medieval and modern Armenian monasteries, churches and cemeteries were completely destroyed between 1997 and 2011 in the Azeri region of Nakhijevan, reported AFP.