Lachin Kurdish Republic
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| Lachin Kurdish Republic Komâra Laçîn Kurdî |
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| Capital | Lachin | |||
| Language(s) | Kurdish | |||
| Government | Military | |||
| President | Wekîl Mustafayev | |||
| Historical era | Post-Cold War | |||
| - Established | 20 May 1992 | |||
| - Dissolved | 1992 | |||
The Lachin Kurdish Republic was proclaimed on May 20, 1992, in Lachin, just two days after this area of Azerbaijan had been 'captured and burned'[1] by Armenian forces and largely emptied of its population as part of the ongoing Nagorno-Karabakh War. The idea, essentially a nominal re-institution of the 1920s entity of 'Red Kurdistan', was floated by the Armenians for whom the Lachin Corridor constituted a strategically vital link to Nagorno-Karabakh. However, the area's small Kurdish population had already fled along with the ethnic Azeris - most finding refuge in other regions of Azerbaijan. Thus the Kurdish youths and intellectuals (around seventy people in total) who set up the Republic were specially transported to Lachin from Armenia in buses provided by Yerevan's municipal government. The scene was described as looking more like a wedding celebration than the proclamation a state.[2]
Beyond the republic's declaration by these two busloads of visitors, no real state emerged and rather than populating the area with Kurds, Lachin was partly repopulated over time with Armenians.[citation needed]
[edit] Ministers
The republic's "Prime Minister", Wekil Mustafa (Wekîl Mustafayev) had, according to press releases, "worked as a senior KGB officer in Central Asia during the days of the Soviet Union. He had been born into a family that had been exiled to Uzbekistan. His wife was serving as an officer in the Soviet military." Sheref e Eshir was declared Deputy Prime Minister, while other cabinet positions included Karlan e Chachani as declared Minister of Culture and Emerike Serdar as Minister of Information. Five years later Serdar was quoted as saying "We all knew full well that the Armenians were never going to give us that land, and that we were never going to be able to convince the Kurds to come and settle in the land depopulated because of the war. But we went to Lachin to leave a marker for history."[2]
After the failure of the Republic, Mustafa[yev] moved to Krasnodar and later took refuge in Italy.[citation needed]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Thomas De Waal, Black Garden p 183 which also gives dates for the fall of Lachin
- ^ a b Mehmet Aktaş, "Lachin Kurdish Republic is declared" (translated from Turkish language, Özgür Politika), KurdishMedia, November 30, 2000.
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