evidence: A yearlong investigation by a team of scholars affiliated with Cornell and Purdue universities has documented a pattern of deliberate obliteration of Armenian cultural heritage in Nakhichevan, a historically Armenian region that became part of Azerbaijan following the Sovietization of the republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan between 1920 and 1921. The new report by the Caucasus Heritage Watch (CHW) identified 108 medieval and early modern Armenian monasteries, churches, and cemeteries in Nakhichevan that were completely destroyed between 1997 and 2011 — an eradication described by the report’s authors as a "striking portrait of cultural erasure that, in its surgical precision, totality, and surreptitiousness, has few parallels." [...] Nakhichevan is now an exclave at the intersection of Armenia, Iran, and Turkey, separated from Azerbaijan by the southern Armenian region of Syunik. [...] The "meticulously collected data" explains "why so many of us are continuously alarmed about Azerbaijan’s genocidal plans concerning the fate of medieval Armenian monuments that came under its control in 2020," Maghakyan added. He noted, however, that the CHW report does not present convincing evidence that the destruction campaign in Nakhichevan lasted until 2011. "The administrative deadline, decreed by local autocrat VasifTalibov, for the official ‘passportization’ (cultural erasure) of the region’s monuments was December 31, 2006." Talibov has ruled the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic since 1993.