Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom and Scotland, David Cameron and Alex Salmond, signed an agreement yesterday, according to which Scotland will hold a referendum in
autumn 2014. Whether Scotland will be a part of Britain or not will be decided through that referendum. During the signing ceremony, Cameron said that he respected the will of Scots, since they had voted for the very party that had been struggling for a referendum, although he thinks it would be more beneficial for both peoples, if they were parts of the same state. Salmond assured that he believed that his country would become independent as a result of the referendum. However, both of them stated that they would respect any result of the referendum. Why don’t the leaders of those two countries attach much importance to this issue? Because even if Scotland becomes independent, those countries will remain members of the united European family, they will have transparent borders, the representatives of the two peoples will have no problems in the neighboring country and given all those conditions, being independent or not doesn’t make much difference, particularly given the fact that now Scotland is absolutely independent in solving its internal political and economic issues.
We, Caucasian peoples, cannot live like that yet. For us, Armenians, the independence of Artsakh is not a symbolic issue at all, because no one doubts that Azerbaijan’s goal is to eliminate and deport Armenians living in Artsakh and the neighboring country’s leadership doesn’t particularly try to conceal that goal. On the contrary, it stresses and shows it to the rest of the world with, for example, the Ramil Safarov case. Abkhazia and South Ossetia will be under the same threat, if they rejoin Georgia. Therefore, it is not the mentality of just one people, but at least a “regional” mentality. Where does it originate from? It seems to me that this is a pattern, according to which it is easier to rule, govern and subordinate a people or a human being using force, threats and blackmail than to cooperate with him. By the way, Britain gave up on that pattern more than half a century ago and Russia and the United States haven’t done it yet. But the problem is that the same mentality exists not only at the “regional,” but also at the national and lower levels, up to the family level. And many of us establish such empires at home that Alexander the Great, Napoleon or Stalin would have envied.
When we mutually acknowledge the personal freedom and independence of each other, a family of peoples based on European values will gradually be built of those small bricks.
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ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
