Nagorno-Karabakh Republic : Ask Biography

Home | Country | Nagorno-Karabakh Republic

The Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) ( Lernayin Gharabaghi Hanrapetut’yun), or Artsakh Republic ( Arts'akhi Hanrapetut’yun) is a de facto independent republic located in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of the South Caucasus. It controls most of the territory of the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast and several Azerbaijani districts adjacent to the borders of Azerbaijan with Armenia to the west and Iran to the south.

The predominantly Armenian-populated region of Nagorno-Karabakh became disputed between Armenia and Azerbaijan when both countries gained independence from the Russian Empire in 1918. After the Soviet Union established control over the area, in 1923 it formed the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) within the Azerbaijan SSR. In the final years of the Soviet Union, the region re-emerged as a source of dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan, culminating in a large ethnic conflict and, eventually, in the Nagorno-Karabakh War that was fought from 1991 to 1994.

On December 10, 1991, as the Soviet Union was dissolving, a referendum held in the NKAO and the neighboring Shahumian region resulted in a declaration of independence from Azerbaijan as the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. The country remains unrecognized by any UN-member state, including Armenia. Only Transnistria, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia, UN non-members, recognize the state.

Since the ceasefire in 1994, most of Nagorno-Karabakh and several regions of Azerbaijan around it remain under joint Armenian and Nagorno-Karabakh military control. Representatives of the governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan have since been holding peace talks mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group.