This article examines the ways in which Armenians are represented in Azerbaijani poet Sabir Rustamkhanli’s poem “Return to Karabakh” “Qarabağa dönüş”, published on December 24, 2020. The study aims to systematize the linguistic, metaphorical, and narrative devices through which the representation of a military adversary is expanded into a dehumanized image of an entire ethnic group and religious community. The analysis employs close reading, critical discourse analysis, and reception analysis. Its theoretical framework draws on psychologist and professor Nick Haslam’s distinction between animalistic and mechanistic dehumanization; social psychologist Susan Opotow’s theory of moral exclusion; social psychologist Albert Bandura’s concept of moral disengagement; and linguist Teun A. van Dijk’s approach to ideological polarization through the “us/them” dichotomy.The analysis demonstrates that the poem predominantly employs animalization, demonization, the attribution of collective guilt, vocabulary that animalizes and massifies the human body, the erasure of the adversary’s voice and individuality, and the figurative schema of “contamination–cleansing” applied to the representation of territory. These mechanisms form a structural whole with the sacralized and heroic glorification of the Azerbaijani soldier. A further finding of the study is that the majority of post-war Azerbaijani literary-critical and academic responses to the poem not only fail to problematize or critically interrogate this language but also reproduce it through non-academic formulations such as “Armenian national disease,” “Armenian character,” and “creature distant from humanity.”

KeywordsSabir Rustamkhanli Nagorno-Karabakh conflict representation of Armenians dehumanization enemy image Azerbaijani literature critical discourse