Exclave, treaty guarantee, demographic endpoint

Nakhichevan is the atlas's clearest case where law, geography and demography pull together. The Treaty of Turkmenchay transferred the region from Qajar Persia to Russia in 1828. The Treaty of Moscow and Treaty of Kars then fixed Nakhichevan as an autonomous territory under Azerbaijani protection in 1921, creating the exclave status that still structures Armenian-Azerbaijani border politics. Because Nakhichevan is separated from mainland Azerbaijan by Zangezur/Syunik, every later corridor debate begins from this geography.

The demographic trajectory is stark. The 1897 imperial census and early twentieth-century estimates show a substantial Armenian population in Nakhichevan, while Soviet census rows in this atlas record the Armenian share falling from about 15% in 1926 to 1.4% in 1979 and 0.6% in 1989 1926 census 1979 census 1989 census. Armenian interpretations connect that decline to administrative pressure, closure of Armenian schools, emigration, and the erasure of religious heritage, especially the later destruction of the Julfa khachkar cemetery. Azerbaijani official narratives usually frame the change as normal Soviet-era movement and reject a policy of removal. contested

Nakhichevan also matters after 2020. The proposed Zangezur corridor uses the exclave as its legal and strategic premise, while Armenia rejects any extraterritorial passage through Syunik. The region is therefore not a peripheral appendix. It is the place where the nineteenth-century border settlement, the Soviet treaty system and the post-2020 transport agenda meet. editorial