Andranik Ozanian - Zangezur

Zangezur

After the formation of the Republic of Armenia in May 1918 Andranik fought alongside volunteer units to combat the Ottoman army. By July interethnic warfare had started in Zangezur. Armenian couriers dispatched to Yerevan pleaded for officers and materiel. Turkish armies poised just a few miles from the capital, the Republic couldn't support irregular forces fighting in the south. At the critical moment General Andranik arrived in Zangezur with an irregular division estimated with about 3 to 5 thousand men and 40,000 refugees from Western Armenia and the occupied provinces of Russian Armenia. As the commander of Armenian forces in Nakhichevan, Andranik protected in the name of the Armenian Army against the peace treaty with Turkey, and has declared that his army is determined to continue the war against Turks. His activities were concentrated at the link between the Ottoman Empire and the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic at Karabakh, Nakhchivan and Zangezur.

According to Antranig Chalabian, Azerbaijan accused Andranik of massacring innocent Azerbaijani peasants in Zangezur and demanded to withdraw Armenian units from Zangezur, while, if his Special Striking Division not been in the area, "the Tartars and the Turks would undoubtedly have exterminated the sixty thousand Armenians of Zangezur as well. Andranik did not massacre peaceful Tatars." Donald Bloxham supports another view that Andranik initiated the process of transforming Zangezur into a solidly Armenian land by destroying Muslim villages and tried ethnically homogenize key areas of the Armenian state.

Andranik tried several times to seize Shusha, the most important city of Karabakh at the time. Just before the Armistice of Mudros was signed, Andranik was on the way from Zangezur to Shusha, to control the main city of Karabakh. In January 1919 Armenian troops advancing, the British general William M. Thomson ordered Andranik back to Zangezur, and gave him assurances that a favorable treaty would be reached at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.