The meeting between the Armenian and Azerbaijani intellectuals, in this case heads of mass media, was held against the background of the act of sabotage committed by the Azerbaijani army. One shouldn’t be a big military expert to understand that this is not the case when the nerves of a soldier or a commander fail him on the contact line, although it happens. This is a well-considered and planned military operation. On Monday morning, when we learned that sad news, one of the Armenian journalists talked about the attack on our positions at the very first meeting and explained it quite accurately, in my opinion, as a “political demarche.” Certainly, that demarche was not against the dialogue between modest people like we are, the addressee of the message was the US Secretary of State, “look, Ms. Clinton, what an explosive situation there is in the region.” However, if we, Armenian and Azerbaijani journalists, had started to discuss the details of that incident, our meeting would have turned into negotiations between political or state figures, moreover, “figures” who are not entitled to represent their states. At least I am not granted such powers by anyone.
Mass media have already informed that Marina Grigoryan, the deputy editor-in-chief of Golos Armenii newspaper, Armen Minasyan, the editor-in-chief of www.panorama.am, Arman Saghatelyan, the editor-in-chief of ArmRadio, Samvel Martirosyan, the head of OpenArmenia internet forum, and I participated in the meeting from the Armenian side. Rahvan Hajiyev, the editor-in-chief of www.1news.az, Elnur Baimov, editor-in-chief of www.news.az, Tofig Abasov, the editor-in-chief of Baku Post newspaper, Ilgar Huseynov, the deputy director of Trend agency, and journalist Azer Hesret participated in the meeting from the Azerbaijani side. The “godfather” of these meetings is Mikhail Shvydkoy, the special representative of the President of the Russian Federation, and the organizers are former and current ambassadors Armen Smbatyan, Polad Bülbüloğlu and Oleg Yesayan.
I have always participated in that “format” with pleasure, not because it seems to me that we will bring about peace by this communication, I am not that naïve. I am just convinced that when an individual or a state spends time and energy on hatred, it weakens him. We cannot love, we cannot make friends with Azerbaijanis and Turks yet, but we must respect them and try to understand. And journalists and in a broader sense intellectuals can be that “channel,” through which those signals of understanding can be sent.
However, those people should be journalists, people who communicate news and information to their societies. And not propagandists the function of whom is to brainwash people. Unfortunately, in Armenia and Azerbaijan those two professions are mixed on both internal and external “fronts.” Journalists can agree on certain rules of the game. Propagandists hardly can.
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ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
