Azerbaijan continues to commit cultural genocide in the occupied territories of Artsakh. This time the target was the church of Savoir in Talish village of the Martakert region of Artsakh.
On October 4, 2021, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev visited the occupied village of Talish, where he visited the Armenian church. During his visit to the church, Aliyev accused Armenians of “falsification” and declared that the church is “Albanian”. However, it is Aliyev’s visit to the church that proves that Azerbaijanis are engaged in falsifying history at the presidential level. The video shows that the traces of Armenian culture are being systematically erased from the church.
The same video shows that Azerbaijanis took out the door of the church with a cross, smashed it, and threw the windows of the church on the floor.
This is not the first case of open destruction of Armenian culture. Several months ago, during his visit to Hadrut, Ilham Aliyev instructed his accompanying people to erase the Armenian inscriptions from the church of the Holy Mother of God in the village of Tsakuri.
Ilham Aliyev’s statements about the “Albanization” of Armenian churches, instructions to remove church inscriptions, and the destruction of the doors and windows of the Talish church show that the Armenian Apostolic Church of Holy Savoir is under threat and the fate of other Armenian churches in the occupied territories can be comprehended.
The church of the Holy Savoir in Talish was built in the 19th century. The church is a basilica, built of roughly hewn brown stones. The dimensions of the monument are 21.75 m in length, 13.1 m in width, and 8.5–9 m in height. The only entrance opens from the north. Previously, the entrance was from the south, but now it is closed.