Since the beginning of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Azerbaijan has adopted Turkey's genocide denial and worked to promote it internationally. The Armenian genocide is also widely denied by Azerbaijani civil society. Many Armenians saw a connection between the genocide and later anti-Armenian violence like the 1988 Sumgait pogrom, though the connection between the Karabakh conflict and the Armenian genocide is mostly made by Azerbaijani elites. Azerbaijani nationalists accused Armenians of staging the Sumgait pogrom and other anti-Armenian pogroms, similar to the Turkish discourse on the Armenian genocide.