In December 2020, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced that the country will celebrate Victory Day every year on November 8th. 

Aliyev had declared November 10th, the day when Armenia accepted defeat and ended six weeks of fighting in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, as Victory Day. 

However, taking into account that Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s death anniversary is commemorated in Turkey on November 10th, Aliyev decided to change the date of Victory Day to November 8th, when Shusha, known as the pearl of Nagorno-Karabakh, was liberated after nearly three decades of Armenian occupation. 

Shusha, referred to by Armenians as Shushi, is the second-largest city in Nagorno-Karabakh, South Caucasus. It is de jure part of the Shusha District of Azerbaijan, although it had been controlled by the unrecognised Republic of Artsakh since the end of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War in 1994, as part of its Shushi Province.