{"id":812,"date":"2014-09-18T10:52:58","date_gmt":"2014-09-18T10:52:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=812"},"modified":"2014-09-22T12:17:48","modified_gmt":"2014-09-22T12:17:48","slug":"the-ugliness-under-azerbaijans-alternate-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=812","title":{"rendered":"The ugliness under Azerbaijan\u2019s alternate reality"},"content":{"rendered":"

By PADRAIG REIDY
\nIndex on Censorship<\/em><\/p>\n

On 5 September, Azerbaijaini president Ilham Aliyev addressed the Nato summit at the Celtic Manor golf resort in Newport, Wales.<\/p>\n

It was an unspectacular speech from an unspectacular autocrat. As he often does, he talked about the amount of money Azerbaijan<\/a> was spending abroad, Azerbaijan\u2019s rapid economic development, Azerbaijan\u2019s role as a bridge between east and west, and Azerbaijan\u2019s continuing dispute with Armenia.<\/p>\n

\"Padraig<\/a>
Padraig Reidy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The dispute between the two countries over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, which has gone on pretty much since the break-up of the Soviet Union, flared as recently as this summer, when fourteen Azerbaijani troops were killed in clashes with their Armenian counterparts. It was easy to miss this, considering events in other parts of the former Soviet Union. As seems usual in international conflict now, neither side made any gain and both sides claimed victory.<\/p>\n

A few weeks after that skirmish, and just before his Nato address, Aliyev met recently-elected president (formerly prime minister) Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey<\/a>. Aliyev is keen to build an alliance with Turkey, and clearly sees common cause in a shared dislike of Armenia. After the meeting, the Azerbaijani leader tweeted that \u201cTurkey has always pursued an open policy on the issue of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, has always stood by Azerbaijan, stood by truth, justice and international law.\u201d He went on: “Turkey and Azerbaijan work in a coordinated manner to dispel the myth of the “Armenian genocide” in the world.” and “We will continue to make joint efforts with the countries close to us in order to expose the Armenian lies.”.<\/p>\n

This was interesting, in that Erdogan did not seem to mention any discussion of the Armenian genocide in his press briefing after the meeting. In fact, the Turkish president has been perceived as attempting to soften the Turkish state\u2019s hardline denial of the incidents of 1915, when one million Armenians suffered deportation and death at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, the predecessor of modern Turkey.<\/p>\n

In April, on the 99th anniversary of the beginning of the ethnic cleansing of Armenians, Erdogan released a statement saying: \u201cMillions of people of all religions and ethnicities lost their lives in the first world war. Having experienced events which had inhumane consequences \u2013 such as relocation \u2013 during the first world war should not prevent Turks and Armenians from establishing compassion and mutually humane attitudes towards one another.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Justice and Development (AK) party leader went on to express condolences to the descendants of people who had died \u201cin the context of the early 20th century\u201d.<\/p>\n

Now, this isn\u2019t quite an apology; it\u2019s barely even an apology at upset caused. It\u2019s closer to the \u201cmistakes were made\u201d formulation, which is designed not so much to pass the buck as fire the buck into the heart of the sun in the hope that no one will ever have to deal with it again, particularly not the person whose buck it is in the first place.<\/p>\n

But in the context of Turkey, where not long ago talking about the Armenian genocide could get you killed, it\u2019s as good as you\u2019re going to get for now.<\/p>\n

So why would Aliyev raise the genocide issue this month? Perhaps he is nervous that Turkey, a major ally in the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, is going soft on Armenia. This year\u2019s detente between Turkey and Armenia continued when Armenia\u2019s foreign minister Eduard Nalbandian attended Erdogan\u2019s presidential inauguration at the end of August.<\/p>\n

Nalbandian, in return, formally offered Erdogan an invitation to Armenia\u2019s genocide commemorations next year, repeating an invitation first extended a few months ago by the country\u2019s president Serzh Sargsyan. Any newfound good relations between Armenia and Turkey would severely weaken Azerbaijan\u2019s territorial argument, or more accurately, weaken its ability to make the argument forcefully in the international arena. Turkey\u2019s dispute with Armenia, after all, is mainly historic, and Erdogan, having seemingly consolidated his own power base outside of both the secular \u201cdeep state\u201d and the Islamic G\u00fclen movement to which many assumed he owed his success, now has a free hand on shaping foreign policy. Azerbaijan\u2019s dispute with Armenia is current and, Aliyev hopes, immediate.<\/p>\n

And so Azerbaijan has chosen to try to reignite the issue for its own ends. Meanwhile, in his own country, human rights abuses continue, with reports last week that Leyla Yunus, Director of the Institute for Peace and Democracy, was in ill health after prison beatings.<\/p>\n

In spite of all this, Azerbaijan will continue to attempt to buy respectability. Next June, Baku will hold the first \u201cEuropean Games\u201d, backed by the European Olympic Committee, featuring such irrelevancies as three-a-side basketball and beach soccer. It is not exactly the real thing, but then, post-Soviet Azerbaijan is a country built of facades; facades of modernity and wealth and progress and \u201cdemocracy\u201d. Facades<\/a> that hide an underlying ugliness.<\/p>\n

Padraig Reidy is a columnist for Index on Censorship. He has also written for The Observer, The Guardian, and The Irish Times.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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