“Turkey’s practices have not changed for centuries. That country established its “rights” in our region through blood and murder. Azerbaijan also adopted the same political direction from Turkey,” said historian Ashot Melkonyan, director of the NAS History Institute, referring to the publication of the “red flag” given to Azerbaijan by the Lemkin Genocide Prevention Institute.
It should be noted that with this publication, the Institute is raising the alarm for the second time about the genocidal policy under the auspices of Turkey and at the hands of Azerbaijan, which recently found another reflection during the September 13 attack: murders of Armenian soldiers, mutilations, and atrocities, the videos of all that were published on social networks with the aim of humiliating the dignity of Armenians, targeting the residents of RA and Artsakh. The institute reminded that the same genocidal acts were also manifested during the 2020 war. It is noteworthy that the institute emphasizes that such videos remind the actions of the “Islamic State” against the representatives of ethnic and religious minorities in Syria and Iraq, as well as the genocidal actions of the Turkish military against the Kurds living in Turkey at the institutional level and state terrorism.
The Lemkin Institute also emphasizes that such atrocities are not isolated cases and are related to anti-Armenian manifestations in Azerbaijan, Turkey and the “Grey Wolves” terrorist organization. We asked Ashot Melkonyan, from a historical and chronological point of view, are the atrocities that took place in Syria the earliest example? He mentioned, “With Turkish handwriting, their state was created in the sea of blood and murders in the Eastern Transcaucasia, the clearest evidence of which is 1920. In July, the former Mossavats, wearing Bolshevik hats, invaded Goris and appointed Asad Karaev as the chairman of the Goris Executive Committee. In the letter addressed to him, Nariman Narimanov, the Chairman of the Executive Committee of Azerbaijan, writes: suddenly your hand will not tremble when it comes to killing children, women and old people, because we have to create our Turkish country on the bones of Armenians… That handwriting continues even today.
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It is not a secret for anyone that wherever the Turk invades, he must act instinctively, just as they once came down from the Altai and invaded Middle and Asia Minor.”
According to Ashot Melkonyan, it is no coincidence that in 1974, when Turkey invaded the territory of Cyprus and occupied a large part of Cyprus, thousands of Greeks went missing. “They were slaughtered, cut into pieces, as was typical of the Turks in the Middle Ages. What is happening to other nations today is again the same handwriting. What happened by the Azerbaijani military to the Armenian female soldiers, including amputation, mutilation, is purely a Turkish handiwork, so I am not surprised that the wave of Turkish genocidal policy will gradually increase in the world. Our claims that Turkey and Azerbaijan are always behind the genocidal policy are completely true.”
Ashot Melkonyan called not to forget the following: After the 44-day war, Russian President Putin made an interesting “discovery” that what happened in Karabakh was the reaction to the genocide. In other words, the Russian Federation had to accept that the Armenians of Artsakh would be genocided, and due to this, the Russian peacekeepers entered and prevented it. Azerbaijan did not respond that Russia accuses it of genocide. This is not surprising for us. As a nation, we must be prepared that if we concede even an inch to the Turks, the gallows will hang over our heads again.”
It is significant that, according to the Lemkin Institute, Azerbaijan is carrying out a “slow genocide” against Armenians with the full support of NATO member Turkey, and in this situation, Western calls to Armenia to negotiate with Azerbaijan and Turkey regarding Artsakh are dangerous and short-sighted. On this occasion, Ashot Melkonyan mentioned: “Rafael Lemkin based the resolution on the Armenian Genocide. He recorded all the incidents that happened with Armenians in separate points. Now it is no coincidence that the Lemkin Institute is reacting, because they see that the phenomena of 1915 are being repeated literally, and here there is not only a problem of murder and genocide on the basis of ethnicity, but also of depatriation, because the Armenian genocide differs from other genocides in that the Armenian people were not only physically annihilated for their nationality, but also depatriated, lost a large part of their homeland. Exile is also a component of genocidal policy. They have done the same in a large part of Artsakh, and they are trying to do the same in Syunik, considering it to be Azerbaijani territory. This is in the case of the reality when a significant part of Azerbaijan was created on Armenian lands.”
Luiza Sukiasyan
P.S. The famous Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin authored the preliminary resolution of the Convention “On the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide” and presented it to a number of states. With the support of the USA, the resolution was put to the discussion of the UN General Assembly. In 1951, Lemkin only partially achieved his goal. The Convention enters into force after 20 countries ratify it. The Convention covers only the physical aspect of genocide, which is defined as acts aimed at destroying, in whole or in part, national, ethnic, racial or religious groups. According to Lemkin, the edge of genocide includes not only physical but also psychological effects. In 1944, when Raphael Lemkin coined the term “genocide,” he took the destruction of the Armenians in 1915 as a fundamental example. “I mean the atrocities committed by Turks against Armenians thirty years ago. However, some will say that they did not think so. This is the tragedy of our times. We forget too soon. Yesterday, the victims were “only” Armenians, today “only” Jews, but also Poles and other European peoples. And who will be there tomorrow…” he wrote.
