Originally published 2020-10-20.
Early on Monday, 19 October 2020, a motorcade of about 80 cars carrying more than 300 Greeks and Armenians drove to the Kipoi (Kipi) customs crossing in Evros, the main road border between Greece and Turkey. Waving Greek and Armenian flags and chanting "Turkey out of Armenia", they protested against Turkey's support for Azerbaijan in the war over Nagorno-Karabakh, the region Armenians call Artsakh.
The demonstration was one of many held by the Armenian diaspora and its supporters during the 44-day war of autumn 2020. This article explains what happened at the border, why Greeks joined in, and how the conflict behind the protest unfolded and ended.
The protest at the Kipoi crossing
Participants gathered at around 6 a.m. and set off from across northern Greece. According to Greek City Times, which credited the local outlet Evros News, the group marched along the road leading towards Turkey without blocking traffic, while lorry drivers on the busy international route watched them pass. Armenpress, the Armenian state news agency, reported that protesters carried Armenian and Artsakh flags with placards reading "Artsakh is strong" and "Peace in Artsakh".
Afterwards the convoy returned along the Egnatia Highway and the participants marched through the centre of Alexandroupolis, the regional capital of Evros.
Why Greeks stood with Armenians
Greece is home to a long-established Armenian community, many of them descendants of survivors of the Armenian Genocide who found refuge in Greece after 1915 and 1922. Greeks and Armenians share Orthodox and Apostolic Christian traditions and a parallel history: both peoples suffered genocide in the late Ottoman Empire, together with the Assyrians. That shared memory made the 2020 war feel personal to many Greeks.
Relations between Greece and Turkey were also tense in 2020. Earlier that year there had been a crisis at the same Evros border over migrant crossings, and a summer standoff over Turkish gas exploration in waters claimed by Greece and Cyprus. For many protesters, Ankara's role in the Caucasus fitted a wider pattern of assertive foreign policy that touched Greece directly.
Similar rallies took place elsewhere in Greece and across the world, from Los Angeles, home to one of the largest Armenian diaspora communities, to European capitals where Armenians blocked highways to call for recognition of Artsakh.
The conflict behind the protest
Nagorno-Karabakh is a mountainous region inside Azerbaijan's internationally recognised borders whose population, until 2023, was overwhelmingly ethnic Armenian. In 1988, as the Soviet Union weakened, its regional council asked to join Soviet Armenia. Violence followed, and after the 1991 independence referendum, boycotted by local Azerbaijanis, full war broke out in 1992. The 1994 ceasefire left Armenian forces in control of the region and seven surrounding districts. Hundreds of thousands of people were displaced on both sides, including about 725,000 Azerbaijanis and 300,000 to 500,000 Armenians.
The self-declared Republic of Artsakh governed the area for almost three decades without international recognition. Armenians there argued that they could not live safely under Azerbaijani rule; Azerbaijan insisted on its territorial integrity and the return of displaced Azerbaijanis.
The 2020 war and Turkey's role
Azerbaijan launched a large offensive on 27 September 2020. Turkey gave Baku strong political backing and military support, including advisers and the drones that proved decisive on the battlefield. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights documented at least 541 Syrian fighters killed while fighting for Azerbaijan, and reports said Turkey had helped recruit and move them; Baku denied using foreign fighters. (We covered those reports here.)
At the time of the Evros protest, two humanitarian ceasefires brokered in October, on the 10th in Moscow and the 17th, had already collapsed within hours, and a third, US-brokered truce on 26 October would fail too. The war ended with a Russian-mediated agreement that took effect on 10 November 2020. Azerbaijan regained the districts around Nagorno-Karabakh and part of the region itself, including the historic town of Shusha, and about 2,000 Russian peacekeepers deployed along the Lachin corridor linking Armenia to the remaining Armenian-held area.
Official figures recorded more than 3,800 Armenian and 2,900 Azerbaijani soldiers killed, plus civilian deaths on both sides. Both sides were accused of understating their own losses.
Cultural heritage concerns
Armenian scholars and heritage groups had long accused Azerbaijan of erasing Armenian monuments. The best-documented case is the destruction of the medieval cemetery of Julfa in Nakhchivan, where thousands of carved cross-stones (khachkars) were levelled in the late 1990s and 2000s. Azerbaijan denies these accusations. We have written about the demolition of Armenian holy sites in Nakhchivan separately. After 2020, fears for churches and monasteries in areas handed to Azerbaijan were a major reason many diaspora protests continued.
How the story ended
From December 2022 Azerbaijan blockaded the Lachin corridor, cutting off supplies to the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh. On 19–20 September 2023 it launched a short offensive that ended Armenian control. Within two weeks, the Armenian government had registered 100,617 refugees, almost the entire Armenian population of the region. On 28 September 2023 the Artsakh leader Samvel Shahramanyan signed a decree to dissolve the republic's institutions by 1 January 2024, although he later questioned its validity.
For Greece, the episode also left a practical legacy. The Evros border remains one of the most sensitive frontiers in Europe, and the 2020 rallies showed how events in the distant Caucasus can quickly become part of local politics in a Greek border town, where national memory and present-day tension meet.
Seen from today, the cars at Kipoi in October 2020 were part of a global campaign that could not change the outcome on the battlefield, but it recorded the fears of a community that, three years later, saw those fears come true.
Sources: Greek City Times, 20 October 2020; Proto Thema, 19 October 2020; Armenpress, 19 October 2020; Wikipedia: Second Nagorno-Karabakh War; Wikipedia: 2023 Azerbaijani offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh.
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