When we started this project in 2020, Nagorno-Karabakh was an independent state. It was not a UN-member, but it met the standard for a state that we’ve been using, the Montevideo Convention.
Ethnic Armenians formed most of the population of Nagorno-Karabakh since a war with Azerbaijan the 1990s. Those two groups held peace talks about the state for many years, but a war broke out in September of 2020.
On 10 November 2020, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Russia signed a trilateral ceasefire agreement was signed stipulating that all the occupied territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh were formally returned to Azerbaijani control. Known then as the Republic of Artsakh, Nagorno-Karabakh became an isolated rump state connected with Armenia only by a narrow Russian-controlled corridor.
On 19 September 2023, after a blockade lasting several months, Azerbaijan launched a fresh large-scale military offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh. The Artsakh forces collapsed rapidly, resulting in an Azerbaijani victory, the dissolution of the Republic of Artsakh, the exodus of almost the entire Armenian population from the region. You can read a pretty comprehensive account of the events of 2023 here from Radio Free Europe:
https://www.rferl.org/a/azerbaijan-armenia-karabakh-mine-explosions/32599318.html
We decided to honor the region’s independent history by still finding and cooking recipes when it came up in the alphabet.
For Nagorno-Karabakh night, we made:
Zhingyalov Hats stuffed flatbread
Dogva, yogurt soup
