evidence: The deliberate destruction of Armenian monuments is key to Azerbaijan’s claims to historical ownership of the disputed territories of Nakhchivan and Nagorno-Karabakh. By bulldozing historic sites and virtually erasing Armenian history in these regions, Azerbaijan’s Aliev regime has weaponized cultural heritage. The regime believes that without historic evidence of the Armenian people in these regions, Armenians will have no claim to the land. [...] Silent Erasure is a detailed, 269 page study on the elimination of monuments in the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, a landlocked exclave of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Nakhchivan has a very lengthy history of multi-ethnic occupation by both Christian Armenians and Muslim Azeris. The enclave is located to the west of and physically separated from Azerbaijan proper, bordered by Armenia to the east and north, Iran to the southwest, and Turkey to the west. The researchers, with good reason, fear that the elimination of Armenian heritage in Nakhchivan/Nakhichevan will be repeated in Nagorno-Karabakh, once an independent Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan territory known as the Republic of Artsakh.