Stealing Culture: Azeris Launch Campaign Claiming Armenian Carpets As Their Own

Azeris Portray Ancient Armenian Textile and Woven Arts Culture as Being an Azerbaijani Turkish Tradition

GLENDALE—The Armenian Rugs Society, a Los Angeles-based organization dedicated to promoting, preserving and advancing Armenia’s ancient rug culture, this week issued an announcement, in which it sounds the alarm on Azerbaijani efforts—campaign—to claim ancient Armenian textiles and woven carpets as their own. Below is the text of the announcement.

Official Azerbaijan, in collusion with members of the private sector close to the Azeri regime, has launched a campaign geared towards appropriating ancient Armenian carpet, rug, and textile weaving traditions and production as their own by generating articles in local and international news outlets, sponsoring exhibits, and publishing art books that portray Armenian woven arts and history, as their own.

Several Azeri news sources (Sputnik Azerbaijan, World Economics Magazine: Azerbaijan Journal of Economics, Finance and Business), supported and abetted by the Azeri government—a notorious human rights violator–have recently published articles erroneously claiming that what are clearly Armenian carpets and rugs of global renown, from a variety of historic Armenian regions, including the Republics of Armenia and Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh), respectively, are Azeri cultural artifacts and traditions.

In one such article, “Revival of Azerbaijani Carpet,â€