Demographics of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic

18th century

Concrete numbers about the demographic situation in Nagorno Karabakh appear since the 18th century. Archimandrite Minas Tigranian, after completing his secret mission to Persian Armenia ordered by the Russian Tsar Peter the Great stated in a report dated March 14, 1717 that the patriarch of the Gandzasar Monastery, in Nagorno Karabakh, had under his authority 900 Armenian villages.

In his letter of 1769 to Russia’s Count P. Panin, the Georgian king Erekle II, in his description of Nagorno Karabakh, suggests: "Seven families rule the region of Khamse. Its population is totally Armenian."

When discussing Karabakh and Shusha in the 18th century, the Russian diplomat and historian S. M. Bronevskiy (Russian: С. М. Броневский) indicated in his Historical Notes that Karabakh, which he said "is located in Greater Armenia" had as many as 30–40,000 armed Armenian men in 1796.

19th century

A survey prepared by the Russian imperial authorities in 1823, several years before the 1828 Armenian migration from Persia to the newly established Armenian Province, shows that all Armenians of Karabakh compactly resided in its highland portion, i.e. on the territory of the five traditional Armenian principalities in Nagorno Karabakh, and constituted an absolute demographic majority on those lands. The survey's more than 260 pages recorded that the district of Khachen had twelve Armenian villages and no Tatar (Muslim) villages; Jalapert (Jraberd) had eight Armenian villages and no Tatar villages; Dizak had fourteen Armenian villages and one Tatar village; Gulistan had twelve Armenian and five Tatar villages; and Varanda had twenty-three Armenian villages and one Tatar village.

20th century

During the Soviet times, the leaders of the Azerbaijan SSR tried to change demographic balance in the Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Region (NKAO) by increasing the number of Azeri residents through opening a university with Azeri, Russian and Armenian sectors and a shoe factory, sending Azerbaijanis from other parts of Azerbaijan SSR to the NKAO. "By doing this," Aliyev said in an interview in 2002 "I tried to increase the number of Azeris and to reduce the number of Armenians.”

Nearing the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast boasted a population of 145,593 Armenians (76.4%), 42,871 Azeris (22.4%), and several thousand Kurds, Russians, Greeks, and Assyrians. Most of the Azeri and Kurdish populations fled the region during the heaviest years of fighting in the war from 1992 to 1993. The main language spoken in Nagorno-Karabakh is Armenian; however, Karabakh Armenians speak a dialect of Armenian which is considerably different from that which is spoken in Armenia as it is layered with Russian, Turkish and Persian words.

2000s

In 2001, the NKR's reported population was 95% Armenian, with the remaining total including Assyrians, Greeks, and Kurds. In March 2007, the local government announced that its population had grown to 138,000. The annual birth rate was recorded at 2,200-2,300 per year, an increase from nearly 1,500 in 1999. Until 2000, the country's net migration was at a negative. For the first half of 2007, 1,010 births and 659 deaths were reported, with a net emigration of 27.

In 2011, officials from YAP submitted a letter to OSCE which included the statement, "The OSCE fact-finding mission report released last year also found that some 15,000 Armenians have been illegally settled on Azerbaijan's occupied territories." However, the OSCE report, released in March 2011, estimates the population of territories controlled by ethnic Armenians "adjacent to the breakaway Azerbaijani region of Nagorno-Karabakh" to be 14,000, and states "there has been no significant growth in the population since 2005."

Most of the Armenian population is Christian and belongs to the Armenian Apostolic Church. Certain Orthodox Christian and Evangelical Christian denominations also exist; other religions include Judaism.

With the turmoil caused by the Syrian Civil War, several hundred Syrian-Armenian citizens have moved from Syria to Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. Many of these refugees are being offered assistance by the government in the form of land, housing, extra educational assistance, and other such basics that will help them quickly assimilate and start their new lives.

Population of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic

Population by Age Group

Population by entity Map of Provinces

Urban population by regon

Rural Population by region

Ethnic groups

The population of the Nagorno-Karabach Republic is now almost exclusively Armenian. Almost all Azerbaijanis (41,000 at the territory of the Nagorno-Karabach AO in 1989) have left the area. The majority of the Russians and Ukrainians have also left.

The population of the 7 rayons of Azerbaijan not belonging to the Nagorno-Karabach AO (Kalbajar, Lachin, Gubadly, Zangilan, Jabrail, Fuzuli and Aghdam) but now for the most part under control of the Nagorno-Karabach Republic, was 371,441 in 1979, including 363,588 Azerbaijanis and only a small Armenian minority (1,405 or only 0.4%). As the number of Azerbaijanis in the territory under control of the Nagorno-Karabach Republic is now negligible, it can be estimated that as a result of the Nagorno-Karabakh War approximately 40,000 Azerbaijanis have left the area.