Azerbaijanis Spread Protests to Turkish Border, Smash Barriers

Azerbaijanis demanding free contacts with fellow Muslims across the border have spread their protests to the Soviet-Turkish frontier, destroying border fortifications, the government newspaper Izvestia reported Monday.

In Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, Communist Party officials met with Azerbaijani activists in an attempt to find solutions to the ethnic, nationalist and Muslim fundamentalist problems racking the republic.

Rafik Neshanev, chairman of the Council of Nationalities of the Supreme Soviet, was present at the discussions during which, Tass said, “many speeches sharply criticized the Communist Party of the country and the government’s Council of Ministers.”

Shiite Muslim Azerbaijanis from Nakichevan province, who have destroyed 120 miles of fortifications on the frontier with Iran, streamed toward a bridge over the Aras River at the frontier with Turkey on Sunday and gave guards an ultimatum to let them pass, Izvestia said.

“The situation became explosive, and the soldiers decided to let them pass to avoid the bloodshed,” it said. “A minute later, the fortifications along about one-eighth of a mile of the frontier with Turkey were destroyed.”

The protesters want freedom to travel across the border to visit fellow ethnic Azerbaijanis in the Iranian region of the same name. They also want the right to freely cultivate land along the border, which is in a fertile valley.

Although Sunday’s incident involved only a small portion of the southern border, it was the last remnant of Nakichevan’s southern frontier with Iran and Turkey that had not been battered down by the Muslim Azerbaijanis.

In ethnic strife elsewhere in Azerbaijan, presumed Azerbaijani nationalists blew up two main transport bridges at the edge of Nagorno-Karabakh, cutting supplies to the embattled Armenian-dominated enclave, the official Tass news agency said.

The incident appeared to be an attempt to reimpose a blockade by Azerbaijanis trying to compel Armenians to drop their claims to the enclave. More than 200 people have died in nearly two years of strife over the enclave.