It is well known that architectural monuments on any territory are memories of the historical presence of any people and the best indicator of the historical belonging of that territory. This is well understood in Azerbaijan, where Armenian cultural and particularly architectural monuments have been steadily and deliberately destroyed. Such attitudes towards cultural heritage completely match the category of cultural genocide accepted by international groups.

When discussing the Armenian Genocide, one only remembers more than a million and a half innocent victims murdered, slaughtered, and driven away from their country to other places. The cultural loss and spiritual and material values and especially architectural monuments that were lost are given far less thought. Yet, for those who implemented cultural genocide, architectural monuments were the main target. Until recently, the architectural monuments of Artsakh, which was forcibly joined to Azerbaijan, were either destroyed or used for other purposes.

The isolation of Artsakh and its architecture in Azerbaijan had a far-reaching goal carried out by the Azerbaijani government which was to attribute Artsakh and its part of the Armenian people to Caucasian Albania – the seeming motherland of the Azerbaijanis. In order to substaniate the fabricated Caucasian Albanian theory, material and cultural monuments created by Armenians were attributed to Caucasian Albanians. To carry out this historiography of Azerbaijan, there is no obstacle to calling the cultural monuments of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh), Syunik, and Nakhichevan as Caucasian Albanian (to be understood as Azerbaijani-Turkish), referring to these churches as the“fire temples” of Azerbaijan. In a process that has lasted to the present time, politicians, historians, architects, archaeologists, ethnographers, and linguists use all available means to try to find Azerbaijani roots on the territory of Azerbaijan and to mark them off from Armenia and thus from the Armenian cultural heritage. To make the mediaeval culture of Artsakh seem like Caucasian Albanian, the destruction of Christian churches, monasteries, and other architectural buildings was encouraged at the highest state level.

The policy of changing Christian Armenian architecture led by the Azerbaijani government was carried out in several ways. Nothing was said about them in the official publications or guidebooks.The ethno-cultural and religious identity was changed or the monuments were deliberately destroyed. Different barbaric actions were carried out, such as explosions (monastery of Handaberd, Yeghnasar monastery of Ghetashen), bombing (Gandzasar, Amaras, Dadivank monasteries, and a church in the village of Togh), razing the structure (monastery of Getamege, khachkar field of Jugha, Yeretsmankan monastery, Hakobavank), using the stones of the monuments as building material (Tsar, Takjur), using the churches as stables or stores (church of Charektar, Meghretsots church of Shushi, Green Chapel, St. Sargis of Gandzak), setting them on fire (St. Saviour Ghazanchetsots), changing their names (Takjur-Istisu), turning Armenian Christian churches into Muslim buildings, covering the remains of buildings with a thick layer of soil, prohibiting visits or research, changing the structure, view, and identity with the excuse of reconstruction and restoration (church of Vankasar), and destroying inscriptions, icons, and crosses in almost all churches.