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107 years ago, the Armenian people went through one of the darkest fragments of their contemporary history. The Armenian genocide consisted of a systematic plan implemented by the authorities of the Ottoman Empire, which began with Sultan Hamid, continued with the Young Turks, and culminated with Kemal Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey.
April 24, 1915 is the symbolic date of the beginning of the genocidal process, when hundreds of Armenian intellectuals and politicians were arrested and beheaded in Constantinople. The turmoil of World War I covered up the pan-Turkist plan to create a homogeneous state made up of Muslim Turks. The Armenians and other minorities, such as Assyrians and Greeks, did not fit into the plans of the Ottoman ideologues.
In this way, the green light prevailed for the extermination of the Armenian people, which dragged the lives of a million and a half civilians. The procedure included the recruitment of the male force into the Turkish Army, where the men were exploited for forced labor and then annihilated. Women, children and the elderly were subjected to brutal torture methods and deported via “death caravans” to the deserts of Syria and Mesopotamia. In this extreme scenario, deaths from malnutrition, diseases and executions abounded.
Years later, the Ottoman Empire collapsed and left its legacy in the new Republic of Turkey. Thus, the road to denial of the Armenian genocide proceeded, through a firm effort to distort history by successive Turkish governments. In the present, the Turkey led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan strives to cover up its past through a globally expanded lobby, which replaces the term “genocide” with “war”.
Towards the normalization of relations between Armenia and Turkey
On the basis of the denial of the genocide and the unheeded claims of the Armenian people, at the beginning of this year the governments of Armenia and Turkey began a dialogue to reestablish their relationship. To carry out this process, each country assigned special representatives and, on the sidelines, air transport was reactivated with flights between Istanbul and Yerevan, suspended two years ago.
According to the leaders, the resumption of bilateral ties is focused on consolidating communications and economic cooperation in the region. In this regard, the relaunch of the Armenian-Turkish railway and highways constitutes one of the main projects. According to the Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, “peace, stability and cooperation are desirable goals and easy to announce, but their implementation requires reasonable, carefully thought-out pragmatic efforts. And the Republic of Armenia is ready to make such efforts.”
The relationship between the neighboring countries was historically strained and crossed by territorial tensions. This harshness blocked all its land connections from the first Nagorno-Karabakh war in 1993. The last edition of this warlike confrontation in 2020 was the reason to further fade diplomatic rapprochement between Armenia and Turkey, when the Turkish authorities supported the aggression of Azerbaijan over the disputed territory.
The Continuity of Turkish-Azeri Armenophobia
In this process of normalizing relations with Armenia, Turkey did not ignore its ally Azerbaijan; on the contrary, the Foreign Minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, assured that any step in this regard would be consulted with the Azerbaijani authorities.
Turkey’s support for Azerbaijan in the latest Nagorno-Karabakh war as of September 27, 2020 was overwhelming. The provision of weapons – Bayraktar TB2 drones -, as well as the sending of special forces units of the Turkish Army and Syrian mercenaries, who came to the battlefield from Turkey to confront the Armenian Defense Army, were proof of this.
The Turkish-Azerbaijani military alliance is not unknown. In this context, on June 15, 2021, the leaders Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Ihlam Aliev signed the Shushi Declaration, which represents the expansion of their relations and joint efforts to resolve regional and global security issues. The document implies mutual assistance in case of threats or attacks to its independence or territorial integrity by a third state.
In this way, the Turkish support, repeatedly denied by the Azerbaijani president during the Nagorno-Karabakh war, found in this declaration a legal framework for any future event. It is also not a mystery that the armies of both states organize joint military exercises in recently occupied territories, which is considered a provocative act by the Armenian side.
As a consequence of the war, Azerbaijan achieved the occupation of more than 70% of the surface of Nagorno-Karabakh and evicted more than 40,000 inhabitants who became refugees. The historical images of the exile caravans of 1915 returned to the collective memory of Armenian society.
In turn, he raised the risk of destruction of cultural heritage located in territory currently controlled by Azeri troops. The cultural demolition plan has taken hold in the state strata of Azerbaijan. His most recent evidence is the creation of a task force to destroy the Armenian cultural heritage of the occupied regions of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding territories under the initiative of the Azerbaijani Ministry of Culture.
In February, Minister Anar Karimov stated that the plan is intended to “eliminate the fictitious traces left by the Armenians”, concealing its objective of reinforcing the questioning of the historical existence of Armenians in those lands.
Azerbaijan’s hostilities over the line of contact with Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, including attacks on population settlements, have renewed Turkey’s Armenian genocide denial policy. The pan-Turkist ideal has been reactivated in the region fueled by Armenophobia that has not perished in 1915, but on the contrary, continues to be the engine of the actions of its governments.
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