Places of Memory of Western Azerbaijan: The History of the Village of Alagöz, Whose Residents Were Expelled by Armenians in the 1980s

A unique project has been presented to the public - the research work "Places of Memory of Western Azerbaijan".

For the first time, during field research on the territory of modern Armenia, data on nearly 600 villages where the ancestors of modern Azerbaijanis originally lived has been collected and systematized. In some of them, fragments of Turkic cultural and historical heritage have survived - cemeteries, shrines, mosques.

A separate video has been prepared for each village in three languages (English, Azerbaijani, Russian), containing photo and video footage of the specific village on the territory of modern Armenia, documented data on the number of Turks (ancestors of modern Azerbaijanis) in the 19th-20th centuries in the specific village, as well as the history of the village and the chronology of the gradual "disappearance" of the Turkic population as a result of expulsions and ethnic cleansings.

Western Azerbaijan is historically a geographical area where hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis lived. Despite attempts to erase the traces of our compatriots in these territories, remembering the ancient places of residence of Azerbaijanis in Western Azerbaijan and being aware of them is the duty of each of us.

BAKU.WS presents to readers the next part of the series, dedicated to the village of Alagöz (Yeghegis) in Armenia, whose residents were expelled by Armenians in the 1980s.

In documents of the Russian Empire and other written sources of the 19th - first third of the 20th century, the ancestors of modern Azerbaijanis were designated by various terms: "Tatars," "Caucasian Tatars," "Turks" or "Muslims." In some sources used in the preparation of the project, the designations "Turks," "Turko-Tatars," "Islams" or "Mohammedans" are also found. Hereinafter, for the period before 1920, the term "ancestors of Azerbaijanis" will be used conventionally, and for the subsequent period - "Azerbaijanis."

Names:

during the tsarist period - Alagez, Alagyaz

during the Soviet period - Alayaz

For several centuries, the village bore the name Alagöz. In April 1991, as part of the policy of Armenianization and destruction of Azerbaijani heritage in Armenia, the village was renamed Ye