Offline, the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh may be outside of Baku’s control, but, online, Azerbaijan seems to have reclaimed the disputed land. Azerbaijani officials are boasting of allegedly having convinced Facebook to strip the separatist territory’s page of its verified status, which denotes that the page is authentic.
This reported victory, preceded by an avalanche of complaints from Azerbaijani users, is nothing to sneeze at in the South Caucasus, where Facebook is by far the most popular social network. It is also often the prime online venue for social activism and political debate.
And yet, Baku’s victory was not complete. Though the "Nagorno-Karabakh Republic" page is not accessible, pages using the region’s Armenian name (Artsakh) and calling for recognition of its independence remain intact.
Facebook, which has faced flak before over its page-decisions, has not yet commented officially on the downgrading of the breakaway region's page.
But Facebook is not the only part of the virtual world in which Azerbaijan has been asserting its internationally recognized right to Karabakh. In the past, the country engaged in toponymic arguments with Google for using “pro-Armenian” place-names in its maps, and with MSN for describing Karabakh as an independent entity in its weather listings.
Despite headwind from Armenian users, Azerbaijan so far has been successful in getting its point of view across with the major dot-coms. Its hydrocarbon-sourced funds for international PR appear to affect the odds.
Yet not on the ground. The separatists and Armenia’s army hold tight to Karabakh and to a buffer belt around it. The region’s native Azeri population remains uprooted, while international peace negotiators have had no progress to report for well over a decade now.
Though overshadowed by war in Ukraine, the conflict has been menacingly defrosting recently with an uptick in deadly incidents on the ceasefire line. Observers mark Karabakh as the likely place for the next post-Soviet war and call for international attention to diminish the risk.
Giorgi Lomsadze is a journalist based in Tbilisi, and author of Tamada Tales.
Sign up for Eurasianet's free weekly newsletter. Support Eurasianet: Help keep our journalism open to all, and influenced by none.