Armenia in 1918-1920 – Short Resume

After the singing of the Bolshevik “decree on peace”, the front disintegrated, the soldiers left their positions, and hurried home to share the lands. The Armenians were left alone against their enemy. Turkey didn’t wait long to start an offense.

Despite the heroic resistance of the scattered Armenian detachments, the offensive of Turkey was successful. Under the pressure of Turkey, Transcaucasia got separated from Russia (Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic was formed) and broke up into separate national republics in May 1918.

Thanks to the efforts of Turkey, for the first time in world history, the state of Azerbaijan appeared.

Despite the presence of an Iranian province named Azerbaijan, which lies much to the south of the newly emerged republic, the territory including Caucasian Albania, Shirvan, Mugan, etc. was exactly named Azerbaijan.

The period of independence of the national Transcaucasian republics is connected with the Turkish and then British intervention, which changed the political image of Armenia and Azerbaijan in favor of the latter.

For no reason, the historical Armenian territories of Nakhichevan, Karabakh, and Zangezur have become “controversial”.

However, thanks to successful military operations against Azerbaijan and Turkey, Armenians managed to preserve their historical territories.

The situation in the South Caucasus region should be especially noted. Then, the Turkish troops decided to break the truce and attacked the Russian Empire through Armenia in May 1918.

In this situation, the Armenian people, deprived of all support and being approximately one against ten, managed to do the impossible. On May 22, 1918, thanks to timely cohesion and brilliant organization, Armenian troops and militiamen defeated the superior Turkish troops near Sardarapat.

The courage and heroism of the Armenian people threw the enemy back to the border. During the following days, Armenian troops defeated the Turks under Karakilisa and Bash-Aparan.

After these fateful battles, Turkish general Karabekir noted with admiration that the Armenians had proven that they could be better soldiers.

Since then, until the end of the twentieth century, Armenians have always united with each other in difficult periods of their history and have given a fitting response to their enemies.

This was clearly demonstrated on the fronts of the Karabakh war, where numerically superior Azerbaijani troops were defeated by Armenian units and volunteer heroes.

Approximately two years after the events described above (around 1920), the Turks again attacked Armenia in alliance with Bolshevik Russia.

Info regarding the above conflict can be found starting from the 40th minute of the video.

Yerevan (Capital more ancient than Rome)

Below is an ancient map of the area including historical Armenia.