Martakert §

Northern Karabakh front

Martakert, known in Azerbaijani as Agdara, is a northern Nagorno-Karabakh town and district centre. Its importance comes from position: it sits near routes linking the mountain interior to the northern edge of Karabakh and to areas contested during both the First Karabakh War and the 2020 war. It was never just a rear town. It repeatedly became the hinge of northern offensives.

In summer 1992, Azerbaijani forces under Surat Huseynov launched the Goranboy offensive and retook Shahumian district and much of Martakert. The operation was Azerbaijan's most successful campaign of the early war and temporarily threatened the Armenian hold on northern Karabakh. Armenian counter-offensives later reversed much of that gain. Human Rights Watch's 1994 account treats the period as part of the wider pattern of village displacement, shelling and militia violence that defined the war HRW.

Martakert also appears in the 2023 endgame. By September 2023 the town was part of the residual Armenian-controlled territory protected nominally by Russian peacekeepers but weakened by the Lachin blockade. Azerbaijani attacks during the 24-hour operation struck multiple sectors, including the north. The town's Armenian population left in the subsequent exodus registered by UNHCR UNHCR.

The town's name politics matter. "Martakert" belongs to the Armenian administrative memory of NKAO and Artsakh; "Agdara" belongs to the Azerbaijani restoration of pre-war and post-2023 authority. Like many places in the atlas, the act of naming is itself a statement about which political order is legitimate. editorial