I am often asked what to do to somehow help soothe the situation.
Well, first off, one should learn the background. When the President of PACE or a Turkish official calls for the withdrawal of Armenian forces, they are essentially calling for another large-scale ethnic cleansing. In the case of Turkey, the words used were ‘immediate solution’. Does that ring a bell? Immediate, final… Anybody with the slightest interest in understanding what is going on and what has been going on in NK knows that the Armenian forces are there not because Armenia wants to conquer and own land which does not belong to it; but because, otherwise, the population of NK will disappear.
Next, as Mr. Aliyev has himself said several times, the turn of Armenia proper’s South will come, and then of its middle-part—lake Sevan; as early as around 1992, the Azerbaijanis created a thing they called the ‘Republic of Geokcha-Zangezur’ (‘Geokcha’ is the Azerbaijani name for ‘Sevan’). Yerevan, in many of their writings, is the ancient Azerbaijani Irevan and also awaits liberation from the Armenians.
This may be the delirious discourse of hard-liners, but one cannot avoid taking it into account if one is trying to build a country.
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So the defense of NK along with its inhabitants is a necessary part of Armenia’s survival strategy. And losing NK means putting under threat the Republic of Armenia—a small piece of land which gave refuge to the survivors of the genocide of 1915. Altogether, the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire was about 3 million; one can possibly imagine another 3 million in the rest of the world at that time. The 3 million in the Ottoman Empire were wiped out, a million or more exterminated, the rest spread all over the world, about half a million finding refuge in the small Armenian Republic, soon to be occupied by Soviet Russia. Two hundred thousand were in Karabakh. If it were not for the genocide, given the rate of population growth, there would be today perhaps about 30 million or more Armenians in the world. We have barely ten million, which includes also those who are half-assimilated. In Armenia proper by the end of Soviet rule we had 3 million, and today, 20-plus years later, we still have three million officially, but less, in reality. In Karabakh in 1988 there were 175,000 people of which 25,000 were Azeris; today we have roughly 150,000, i.e. the population of NK has stayed the same all these years; while in Armenia the population has gone down. Yes, we blame the government for not creating conditions for them to stay, and to multiply. But the very first reason for their departure was the war of 1990-1994 – the small republic, cut off from the Soviet infrastructure, which collapsed, was embargoed and blockaded by Azerbaijan and soon also Turkey, and had to fight to help NK to survive, because its own fate would hang in the balance next. People in the world forget about that. They say ‘forget the genocide’. With pleasure, but what did Azerbaijan do when the people of NK asked for independence? It responded with a slaughter. This is not a democratic space. They do not have parliamentary hearings on such issues around here. They start the nights of long daggers immediately. What did Turkey do? It closed the borders, to help suffocate the young republic, and refused to establish diplomatic relations, let alone recognize the genocide.
Today Azerbaijan wants to regain land. And the PACE Chairman agrees with its right to do so. At the expense of the 150,000 people who survive in NK, persevering, for 20 years, knowing that one day Azerbaijan is going to come again. Because it has refused everything else, all the other options. I shouldn’t say Azerbaijan. It is, of course, Mr. Aliyev-junior and his cronies, his nomenklatura. Because his father, though an autocrat as well, was a wise man and agreed the ceasefire to stop the fighting and to start making money from oil and gas. Mr. Ilham is different. During his reign, things have changed considerably. Not only is he crushing the opposition, independent NGOs and the media internally, he has also developed a very special kind of international lobbying strategy—caviar diplomacy. Corruptocracy is not a novelty in this part of the world. But is it bad, among other reasons, because it also makes one forget about the value of human life. So in order to keep his power, Mr Aliyev sends youth into the line of fire, over and over again, and makes Armenia do the same. Well, Armenia could have been smarter and become a democracy and built a very strong economy, despite the blockade, and united its diaspora around itself and built innovations; it has failed in that. But before all the good ideas in which it could also take part despite its leadership’s lack of very innovative vision, there was one impediment: Mr. Aliyev did not want any peace process to go forward. Why? He would have to sell it to his population, and since it would have a compromise attached, it would make it easy to challenge his authority. So alongside caviar diplomacy, the Eurovision Song Contest, European games, Formula One and making Mrs. Mehriban Aliyeva a candidate for UNESCO chairperson (this is to become the ultimate gem in the crown of caviar diplomacy)—he also prohibited any contacts, any second-track dialogue, discouraged citizen diplomacy and any other such initiatives which would advance peace. Because advancing peace for him means entrenching the status quo, i.e. the Armenian military victory, i.e. the survival of the NK folks, i.e. the stop Armenians were able to put—at an enormous cost—to a small and neat ethnic cleansing, the ultimate gem in the crown of the Turkey-Azerbaijan regional politics of the last 100 years.
You are saying: Russia. Well, conflicts are complex, and Russia—today’s Russia—is not going to do anything which will be for the benefit of the population down here. When Mr. Putin decided to get at odds with Mr. Erdogan—the falling out of lovers is the renewing of love—his cronies and best friends and a bunch of media figures and wannabe politicians started to scream that they should finally extract from Turkey what it owes their strategic allies—the little state of Armenia. Genocide recognition, land, etc. But Mr. Putin said no, not to that extent, we are now at odds but not to the extent of helping Armenia. And his cronies stopped. Today, when Mr. Aliyev decided to attack the little NK enclave, probably because Mr. Obama—or rather Mr. Biden—did not offer him what he wanted from them—their decisiveness to convince the Armenians to give him the NK land for free—today, during the four days of the fiercest fighting, those very same Russian actors were silent. Though Armenia is supposed to be their strategic ally. And as some of these actors—though not the ones that Putin listens to—said, it would be enough for Mr. Putin to pick up the phone on time—and there would be 300-400 people, if not thousands, who would continue to live on this earth, at the very least.
Long gone are the times when Armenians would get irritated by ‘equation diplomacy’—when the international community calls for both sides—the perpetrators and the victims—to cease fire. They are used to this equation, they understand that this is a way of expressing the simple idea that the geopolitics in the region require one not to allow the Armenians to achieve sustainable peace—since in that case the process of alliance-building would grow even more urgent than it is now, and Turkic-Muslim states would be pitched against Christians… Is this the reason? Or is it also that, as Armenians claim, Israel has not ever recognized the Armenian genocide? It does not even have an Ambassador in Armenia… So, is Armenia correct in believing in a global conspiracy against its plight? Is it correct noting that Islamic terrorism—the way it unfolds in today’s world—is what the West gets because of its incapacity to make fair decisions when it comes to its natural allies?
These are some questions… But if the West does not get its act together, the big difference between those who immediately go for the long daggers—or for a bomb which takes one to heaven—and those who try to preach abstract peace will result in slaughter and terror and the collapse of the democracy project and a Dark Age. I see it coming. Russia today often behaves along the lines similar to the Islamic State. They don’t chop off heads yet, but the relative value they assign to human life is approximately similar in both societies. Turkey and Azerbaijan are rapidly moving in the same direction. Human Rights are no longer the game in town—it is the Right of the Slaughterer. Beware, petty Western bourgeois holding on to your pension options and a little mansion—the Slaughterer is coming. It does not recognize nations or cultures, it may be born out of you, it may be your friend, neighbor or son. It can be born suddenly—but it can be also born because of the striking feature of ruthless conflicts: if I am to be slaughtered, I start slaughtering back a second earlier.
So you petty western bourgeois, do you want to know what to do? Beware of the wild beast inside you—it is coming. Do something about it. Sit down, think and do something; stop today’s slaughterer, don’t take bribes from him, don’t praise him, don’t trust him, isolate him, don’t support him, don’t sell arms to him, don’t arm him, don’t benefit from him, don’t be ignorant, don’t forget the past, don’t be dispassionate, don’t be aloof: we are talking about the fate of your civilization, the project for which your ancestors paid dearly. We are talking about the fate of your successors, your next generations, your history, your memories, your way of life, your beloved Human Rights. Don’t waste your fortune, your pedigree, your legacy. Act!
Armen Hovhannisyan
