Topkhana forest (Nagorno-Karabakh)

Topkhana forest (Azerbaijani: Topxana meşəsi) was a media-invented forest, claimed to have been located near Shusha in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of the South Caucasus and claimed to have been destroyed by Armenians in 1988. The claims of its existence and destruction was created for propaganda purposes by nationalist media in Baku, Azerbaijan. The background to its creation was growing tensions over the political future of Nagorno-Karabakh, and it precipitated and encouraged civil and inter-ethnic unrest that would eventually erupt into the Nagorno-Karabakh War.

In October 1988 Abdurrahman Vazirov, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan, announced in a speech that a bridge should be constructed across the Hunot gorge in order to expand the town of Shusha onto the opposite bank and link it to the surrounding countryside. Shusha was predominantly Azeri-populated but the opposite bank was inhabited exclusively by Armenians, who believed this proposal was an attempt to expand Azeri-inhabited territory in the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast at the expense of its Armenian population. The bridge project had also been announced without obtaining prior consent from the Oblast's authorities. The Karabakh Committee decided a symbolic Armenian-held structure should be erected on that opposite bank. In some sources the proposed structure is described as a workshop for household utensils, in most it is described as a recreational facility for workers at Yerevan's Kanaker aluminium factory.

On the 5th November 1988 the Karabakh Committee consulted with the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Armenia. The Central Committee, in return for an assurance that the upcoming October Revolution parade in Yerevan would not be disrupted by activists, agreed to send trucks loaded with building materials for the construction of the proposed structure. The trucks and materials arrived in Shusha on 7 November. This (in the Gregorian calendar) was the anniversary of the October 1917 revolution - but Shusha had been placed under curfew and the usual Communist parades and ceremonies had been cancelled.

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