The Battle of Shusha[a] (Armenian: Շուշի, Shushi) was the first significant military victory by Armenian forces during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. The battle took place in the strategically important mountain town of Shusha on the evening of 8 May 1992, and fighting swiftly concluded the next day after Armenian forces captured it and drove out the defending Azerbaijanis. Armenian military commanders based in Nagorno-Karabakh's capital of Stepanakert had been contemplating capturing the town after Azerbaijani shelling of Stepanakert from Shusha for half a year had led to hundreds of Armenian civilian casualties and mass destruction in Stepanakert.
The capture of the town proved decisive. Shusha was the most important military stronghold that Azerbaijan held in Nagorno-Karabakh – its loss marked a turning point in the war, and led to a series of military victories by Armenian forces in the course of the conflict.[12]
Political fallout[edit]
Writer Markar Melkonian, brother of Nagorno Karabakh commander Monte Melkonian, would later write that "the capture of Shusha would go down in the annals of local lore as the most glorious victory" in the first half of the war.[30]
The capture of Shusha saw an influx of Armenians from Stepanakert and elsewhere in Karabakh moving to the town. Several days after the assault, Armenian forces launched an attack in the region of Lachin and opened up a 8-kilometer corridor connecting the enclave to Armenia proper. The assault prompted two attacks by Azerbaijan's military. One attempted to retake Shusha on 11 May and the other, farther south, in Martuni. Despite earlier claims made by Azerbaijan's defense ministry to having taken back Shusha, the counterattacks. On the Armenian defended front in Martuni, Armenian forces also turned back an Azerbaijani assault, inflicting heavy losses.[30]
On the day of the Armenian victory, Armenian president Levon Ter-Petrosyan and then acting Azerbaijani president Yagub Mamedov were present in Tehran, Iran to sign a cease-fire agreement. News of the Armenian offensive led Mamedov to accuse Armenia of failing to honor the cease-fire. Ter-Petrosyan, however, contested that he was unable to control what the Armenians in Karabakh were planning. The loss of Shusha later led to mass demonstrations in Azerbaijan's capital of Baku against newly reinstated president Ayaz Mütallibov. Charged for failing to defend the cities of Shusha on 9th and later Lachin on 18th, he was forced to step down. Many Azerbaijanis greeted the news of the town's capture with disbelief: the town had been the birthplace for Azerbaijani composers, poets and musicians and many were convinced it had been betrayed or sold for political purposes.[31] In a television interview in 2000, Basayev dismissed these theories and contended that the town's defenders had simply abandoned their positions.[32]
The city was for a time one of the central items involved in the negotiating process in peace talks held from 1994 to 2020.[33]
Turkey's involvement[edit]
The seizure of the town prompted loud complaints from neighboring Turkey. Turkish Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel said that he was under intense public pressure to send military help to Azerbaijan. Demirel, however, did not heed their calls amid heightening tension with Russia. In May 1992, the commander of the CIS forces in the Caucasus, Yevgeny Shaposhnikov, warned that any Turkish incursion would lead to "the verge of a third world war, and that cannot be allowed."[34] The Armenian victory in Shusha had many Turkish officials accusing Armenia of seeking to invade next the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan.
Because of international pressure, Turkey was ostensibly restricted to providing economic support to Azerbaijan. Nonetheless, the Turkish army and intelligence services launched undercover operations to supply Azerbaijan with arms and military personnel. According to Turkish sources, over 350 high-ranking officers and thousands of volunteers from Turkey participated in the warfare on the Azerbaijani side. Western authors reported several major shipments of weapons from Turkey, including bringing an arsenal of Soviet-made arms from the former East Germany.[35]
Simultaneously, Turkey was engaged in overt intimidation of Armenia. On the international stage it lobbied various organizations and promoted a pro-Azerbaijani bent of mediation and conflict resolution efforts. Turkish diplomats organized "Turkic Summits" for Turkic nations that included Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan to convince the leaders of the Central Asian countries to sever economic ties with Armenia and condemn its military involvement in Nagorno Karabakh.[35]