The Karabakh Conflict in the Discourse of Post-Modernism: The Cultural Foundations of Preconceived Interpretations So much has been written about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict that it is difficult to imagine that there is anything new to be said, but as an investigator not of the conflict itself but rather of one of its interpretations as offered by a recent BBC program entitled “Karabakh: History is Written in Two Versions,” I believe we have still more to learn not only about the conflict itself but also about the cultural predispositions which underlie ostensibly neutral discussions of that event...

Psychological Dimensions of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict Once, when talking about the Karabakh conflict, a philosopher acquaintance of mine noticed that “periodically representatives of Azerbaijan and Armenia meet. That means, they can interact and there is something to talk about.” At the time, his assertion seemed logical and did not prompt any questions...

The Khojaly Tragedy as a Collective Trauma and Factor of Collective Memory The Khojaly tragedy has many aspects. Here I would like to consider three psychological and socio-cultural ones: that event as a collective trauma, the various ways in which Azerbaijanis could relate to the trauma, and how we may be able to overcome it...

Turkish-Armenian Rapprochement and the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict: The Role of Collective Memory and Identity The recent rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia and Turkey’s agreement to open the borders with Armenia has generated serious concerns in Azerbaijan. For many in Baku, these events have raised the question as to how the improvement in Turkish-Armenian relations will affect the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict...

Azerbaijan Reclaims Its National Past Various factors help shape the way any human community perceives its past and hence defines itself. In many cases involving nations, one can even speak of a certain “politics of memory,” driven by competing forces including often most importantly nationalism and helping to define what is included and what is left out of narratives about the past...

Azerbaijani Collective Memory and the Karabakh Conflict: Filling in the Blank Spots of History The end of the Soviet system has allowed Azerbaijanis ever more confidently to turn to their own history and collective memory, both of which were seriously distorted by the communist authorities, and thus to continue the process of the recovery of their own past that began during the period of glasnost and perestroika, a time of enormous growth in the interest of people to their own history, a rethinking of well-known events and new attention to almost unknown and largely forgotten events which one might call "the blank spots" of history...