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1/ Along with painful massacres, pogroms and ethnic cleansings/forced displacements, Azerbaijanis and Armenians also share largely forgotten history of interethnic cooperation throughout Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, peacefully exchanging Qizil Shafag and Kerkenj villages.
2/ Qizil Shafag ("Red Dawn" in Azerbaijani; now called Dzyunashogh) was an Azerbaijani-majority village in Armenian SSR, located on the border with Georgian SSR. Similarly, Kerkenj ("harder than stone" in Armenian dialect) was an Armenian-majority village in Shamakhi, AzSSR.
3/ Following Sumgait pogroms, and the murder of an elderly Azerbaijani in Kalinino (now called Tashir) in 1988, the lives of these villagers have changed significantly. Azerbaijanis of Qizil Shafag and Armenians of Kerkenj were doing their best to escape inter-ethnic violence.
4/ Subsequent to the massacre of ethnic Armenians in Azerbaijan SSR, Kerkenj residents were told to leave the village. Similarly, following the deportations of Azerbaijanis from Armenian SSR, Qizil Shafag remained the only ethnic Azerbaijani village left in Armenia.
5/ An informal committee was established by Kerkenj residents to find replacement villages in Armenia. While Ararat Valley was the priority for the resettlement, due to its cultural significance and agricultural richness, displaced Armenians from Baku had already moved there.
6/ At this point, the chairman of the state-run collective farm ("sovkhoz") in Qizil Shafag, Bayram Allazov, through his son living in Baku, receives information about the existence of Armenian village in Shamakhi. He shares a proposal of exchanging homes with Kerkenj villagers.
7/ Many families of Kerkenj drove to Qizil Shafag in order to make direct talks with Azerbaijani villagers. Members of two communities concluded an agreement on exchange of villages and protection of important sites, above all, the cemeteries.
8/ The agreement was followed by joint meal of the representatives of Azerbaijani and Armenian communities in the vicinity of graves of their ancestors (known as "Ehsan Ceremony" or "funeral feast" in Azerbaijan). The treaty-making was an exclusive initiative of villagers.
9/ In 1989, villagers said farewell to their ancestors buried and handed over all collective belongings of state kolkhoz and sovkhoz property to each other. The migration begain in May 1989 and lasted three months. The villagers took up the new jobs in new locations.
10/ The migration procedure included a period of co-habitation of Azerbaijanis and Armenians in both villages, as well as working together in the same kolkhoz and sovkhoz. Some Azerbaijani villagers emphasized living jointly with Armenian families in Kerkenj for around 2 weeks.
11/ They got along very well. One Azerbaijani villager, in recent studies, also mentions slaughtering a sheep (tradition for Eid al-Adha) in the honour of Armenian families. They also pay an Armenian family certain amount of money to compensate not being able to finish the house.
12/ According to Rumyantsev and Huseynova (2018, p. 920), "supporting one another in the midst of common misfortune was the norm as far as the two sets of villagers were concerned".
13/ However, moving to a completely new village was not easy for any of the communities. Azerbaijanis from Qizil Shafag, for instance, "remember how they cried and kissed the walls of their houses" before leaving. They spent most of the time wandering on the streets of Kerkenj.
14/ Aside from emotional weight of leaving their native village, Armenians also faced the difficulty of relatively different climatic and agricultural conditions. Today Dzyunashogh contains many empty houses, as once inhabited ethnic Armenians of Baku left, not managing to adapt.
15/ Nonetheless, the good news is that, with the exceptions of minor unintentional damages, the cemeteries have been very well taken care of. The new generations learn about the story of exchange process, and are told to also look after the graveyards.
16/ The information and photos (except in the 2nd tweet) were collected from the sources below:
Aliyeva L. & Ibrahimova S. 2018, Kerkenj: Looking Back at Armenia, https://chai-khana.org/en/story/669/kerkenj-looking-back-at-armenia
Armenakyan N. 2018, Dzyunashogh: Broken Memories of Azerbaijan, https://chai-khana.org/en/story/670/dzyunashogh-broken-memories-of-azerbaijan
Aliyeva L. & Ibrahimova S. 2018, Kerkenj: Looking Back at Armenia, https://chai-khana.org/en/story/669/kerkenj-looking-back-at-armenia
Armenakyan N. 2018, Dzyunashogh: Broken Memories of Azerbaijan, https://chai-khana.org/en/story/670/dzyunashogh-broken-memories-of-azerbaijan
17/ Rumyantsev S. & Huseynova S., 2018, The Most and the Least International: The City and the Countryside in Azerbaijan and Armenia from the Early 1960s to January 1990, Europe-Asia Studies, 70:6, 904-923
18/ Most of these stories have been made publicly available thanks to the support of Heinrich Böll Stiftung South Caucasus Office, which also resulted in publication of a book about this extraordinary process. You can access it through the link below: https://ge.boell.org/en/2014/02/07/beyond-karabakh-conflict-story-village-exchange
19/ You can access the documentary about the village swap through the link below: https://twitter.com/RashadYusifov3/status/1327704078521151489
