History In Postage Stamps – Armenians, Georgians, But No Azerbaijanis

Postage stamps, like banknotes, are one of the attributes of statehood. Three Transcaucasian nations are represented on the stamp above. More specifically, these nations are Georgians, Armenians, and Turks.

The absence of Azerbaijanis on this stamp may seem odd only to people unfamiliar with history, as well as to residents of the Republic of Azerbaijan from whom the authorities are carefully hiding their own history.

The reason for the absence of the word “Azerbaijani” on the stamp is simple – in 1933, the nation called “Azerbaijanis” did not exist yet. Azerbaijanis, called the “Caucasian Tatars” or the “Transcaucasian Turks” before the revolution, received their artificial ethnonym only with the adoption of the USSR Constitution in 1937.

And the name of Azerbaijan itself – a state created in 1918 by the troops of Anatolian (Ottoman) Turks – was borrowed from the Azerbaijan Province in Northern Iran populated by Turkic-speaking Persians.

Arthur Davoyan