BY ARA KHACHATOURIAN
For 44 days last fall, we Armenians and the entire world witnessed Turkey’s brazen and overt military and financial involvement in Azerbaijan’s aggressive attack on Artsakh. It was widely reported and confirmed by world leaders that in addition to sending weapons to Azerbaijan, Turkey had also contracted thousands of ISIS jihadists to fight alongside Azerbaijani forces, dealing a crushing blow to Artsakh and Armenia.
What followed were declarations by various Turkish leaders, chief among them the country’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who during what was dubbed as a “victory parade” in Baku, essentially praised Azerbaijan’s barbaric actions, dedicated the “win” to his Turkish predecessors who had an active role in perpetrating the Armenian Genocide, as well as systematic Azerbaijani attacks on Armenians during the early part of the last century.
Then came the announcements and groundbreaking of a school in occupied Shushi sponsored by the Turkey’s ultra-right fascist group the Grey Wolves, whose hand signals Erdogan has used during elections and other rallies.
The news of Erdogan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev visiting occupied Shushi, where they signed a military and strategic “Alliance Accord,” at the center of which were overt threats to Armenia’s sovereignty and national security, crystalized the reality that Armenia’s enemies were consolidating their efforts to inflict more harm on Armenia.
Hence, it was shocking to see that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan hinted at the possibility of talks with Ankara without any preconditions in his five-year government plan, which was approved on Thursday only by his Civil Contract party members in parliament.
It also calls into question Yerevan’s complete ignorance of existential threats from its neighbors, when Pashinyan on Friday assessed generic remarks made by Erdogan as “positive signals,” to which Armenia plans to respond “with positive signals.”
Earlier this week, Erdogan said during a meeting with foreign ambassadors accredited to Turkey that if Armenia takes positive steps to establish peace in the region, Turkey will respond adequately.
“After the recent Karabakh war, new opportunities have been created for progress in that direction,” Erdogan said. “We have already stated that if Armenia responds positively to these opportunities, we will take the necessary steps.”
Those “new opportunities” Erdogan was referencing were the over support it received from the Kremlin during the 44-Day War, as well as advances made by the Azerbaijani military forces into Armenia’s sovereign territory, when they breached Armenia’s borders more than three months ago and have set up camp in Armenia. Since then soldiers have been killed, civilians have been threatened and most recently, a major road between Goris and Kapan was blockaded. Armenia’s border provinces of Syunik, Gegharkunik and Ararat have been under siege.
“There have been certain public positive signals from Turkey. We will evaluate those signals and respond to those signals with a positive signal,” Pashinyan said at the start of his cabinet meeting on Friday, signaling his administration’s appetite for playing footsie with the country that was equally responsible for the deaths of thousands of Armenian soldiers and civilians last fall.
Since the defeatist November 9 agreement, which saw the surrender of territories in Artsakh and Armenia to Azerbaijan, Pashinyan has also been waving the banner for opening transportation and communications links in the region—aka opening Azerbaijan’s border with Armenia. While Pashinyan doesn’t interpret that aspect of the November 9 agreement to mean the opening of the border, Aliyev has been vocally touting the prospects of creating the so-called “Zangezur Corridor,” which envisions a direct link—through Meghri—to Nakhichevan.
When Erdogan was feeling at home in occupied Shushi mere weeks after Azerbaijani forces breached Armenia’s sovereign border, Pashinyan was on the campaign trail, brandishing hammers and threatening to force his opponents to “lie on asphalt” and “bang [their heads] against the wall.”
At the same time, Armenia’s foreign minister and leading diplomats were jumping ship, with no one manning the fort until last week when Pashinyan appointed his loyalist Ararat Mirzoyan, who has no foreign policy and diplomatic experience, as Armenia’s new foreign minister. (We can discuss Pashinyan’s equally imprudent choice for ambassador to the U.S. at another time).
While a few weeks ago Aliyev told CNN Turk that he was ready to teach another lesson to Armenia, effectively threatening another war, Pashinyan characterized Azerbaijan’s blockade of the Goris-Kapan highway as Baku’s effort to thwart his “policy of peace” in the region.
No, Mr. Prime Minister, Baku is not encumbering your “peace-loving” aspirations in the region. It has, for all intents and purposes, invaded Armenia. At the same time, Erdogan’s “positive signals” always come with a caveat that is generally detrimental for Armenia.
Hopefully, Mirzoyan’s on the job training will be sufficient to ward off the menace and peril coming from Ankara and Baku and also will temper the irresponsible and shortsighted statements of his boss, who has turned a deaf ear to the existential threats to Armenia’s sovereignty.
ARA KHATCHATOURIAN!!!!! EASY TO TALK LIVING IN GLENDALE AND SMOKING CIGS WHILE EATING KABOB AT CAROUSEL RESTAURANT!!!!!! ALL ARMENIANS NEED TO GO BACK TO ARMENIA!!!!!!! BUT THEY DONT BECAUSE ARMENIA CORRUPT WEAK AND POOR COUNTRY!!!!! SAD!! SAD!! SAD!!!
Very well said, except that corruption Armenia is being rooted out. It is said that these people never criticized Kocharyan or Sarkisyan and never supported the 2018 revaluation now everybody is an expert
What have we done in the USA in our lobby efforts since the declaration of the independence of the Republic of Armenia 30 years ago to stop USA military/economic aid to both Turkey & Azerbaijan?
The ANC only actively started its “active lobbying efforts” to stop USA to Azerbaijan after the Artsakh War of last year.
I have yet to hear a word from our “FRIENDS” in the The US Congress about putting forth a bill to cut off military/economic aid to Turkey from the USA, which is part of the taxes all Armenians pay to the US government as residents of the US.
Very well siad
Well said Mr. Ara Khatchatourian. I haven’t figured out if Pashinyan is just inept or has a clear agenda to destroy Armenia. How stupid can one be? A proper response to Aliyev is to consider the Nov 9 accord null and void if his army doesn’t vacate our land. The notion that they have more firepower is illogical. The Taliban beat the US! There is no way we are more overpowered that the Taliban. When one is the underdog, one has to fight dirty, not do photo props showing us healing Azeri soldiers. If we are the underdog, then all the gruesome videos should be coming from us punishing the Azeri military. Even the captured soldier now should be treated in kind. The wild animal must fear.
For those that say we sit in the US comfortably and just state opinions, bear in mind of the aid we sent to Armenia last September/October through Armenia Fund ($120 Million), including some young men who went there and sacrificed lives. If we go there, we will be part of the flock that gets beaten up by Nicol’s police and gets a hammer waved at them. Nicol was truly ungrateful and desecrated all of our efforts by LYING to us on the progress of the war for 44 days, then misappropriating that money to the “National Budget,” which means it was and can be used to hire more police to protect his rear end, increase the pay of his party members, or remodel his residence. Members of the Diaspora, those who have enough intelligence to make an impact on matters, are disillusioned and feel betrayed by him. While I vow to support individuals in need back home, I will no longer support any fundraising that Nicol could place his fangs on.
Directed at Hagop’s statement to Ara Khatchatourian:
Pashinyan won because poor rural Armenians were/are suffering while the oligarchs and their families were building ornate mansions.
The traditional Armenian lifestyle will kill you at a young age. Cigs are deadly, as is too much oghi. I have friends who ate at Carousel weekly. Both succumbed at a very young age. There are Armenian delicacies, totally plant-based, that are the way to a long life.
Wise up, Ara !
It is an understatement to say that terrorist Turkey gave military and financial support to terrorist artificial Azerbaijan in its attack on Artsakh. The criminal leadership of Turkey not only planned this imposed war on the Armenians years in advance but it dictated and conducted the war itself. This war, unlike the past wars, was not just between Armenia and the Azerbaijan but that it was a carefully preplanned war by NATO member state terrorist Turkey using the Azerbaijani armed forces. The war was dictated by Turkish generals with Turkish troops embedded into the Azerbaijani army. For 44 days the artificial state of Azerbaijan, a gas station disguised as a country, neither had a government nor an army. They were both turned over to terrorist Turkey. Add to that the military assistance from terrorist Pakistan, CSTO co-member despotic state of Belarus, fatherless Syrian Jihadist paid-mercenaries, and over five billion petrodollars worth of deadly weapons, long range missiles and UAVs (drones), from the hypocritical and morally-bankrupt state of Israel. For thirty years Azerbaijani criminal leaders barked at the Armenians, while brandishing their annual weapon purchases worth more than Armenia’s entire annual state budget, yet the best they could do against much poorly-armed but determined and dedicated Armenian fighters was to last less than a week before they begged for a ceasefire and ran back to their caves with massive casualties as evidenced by the 4-day war of April 2016.
What could possibly have changed militarily and only in a few years’ time that would lead to the disastrous outcome of the September war? NATO member terrorist Turkey’s full military involvement in the war while the entire world, including the so-called Russian ally, turned a blind eye on the collaboration of all these forces against a mere small Armenian defense army. In absence of all these foreign entities, I have no doubt whatsoever; the Armenians in their worst day and with very little resources would have beaten incompetent Azerbaijanis in their best day with all their resources. The Armenian nation was once again betrayed by the world, by the west in particular, in order to protect their multi-billion dollar investments in the Caspian oil and gas. What made it even worse was the fact that the incompetent Armenian leaders gave assurances to the west that they would not target the oil and gas pipelines, which were and are the lifelines of Azerbaijan and through which criminal Azerbaijan was financing its military arsenal, when in fact the pipelines were the first the Armenians should have targeted and hit and destroyed right at the start of this imposed and overwhelmingly unequal war. That would have been the way to get the morally impotent west involved and stop the war instead of standing on the sidelines and watch an attempted genocide in the making. You can’t get the attention of a morally bankrupt west but by hitting their pockets.
You either have to be self-loathing or treasonous to consider any statement coming from genocidal Turkey’s terrorist-in-chief Er-dog-an as “positive signals”, when under the direct orders of this very same terrorist your country was invaded, cultural and religious sites targeted, thousands killed and many hundreds illegally kept in captivity as bargaining chips for future concessions from Armenia. You have to be so heinous as to consider an SOB like Er-dog-an who is not only celebrating your country’s and nation’s demise but someone who glorifies his criminal predecessors who premeditated the Armenian Genocide and put to death 1.5 million of your countrymen only a century ago and confiscated 90% of your historic homeland in Asia Minor. You truly have to be living on another planet to make such statements. You either have to be out of touch with reality or be mentally-handicapped not to realize what terrorist Turkey and Azerbaijan want. Turkey wants the creation of the mythical “Empire of Turan” from Turkey to China, which contemporary Armenian territory is in its way, by removing Armenia from its path and Azerbaijan wants the dismemberment and destruction of Armenia. The first predatory step of these two illegally established terrorist Turkish state and criminal pseudo-Turkish Azerbaijani artificial state in that regard is to connect these two fascist states by land at the expense of Armenia, by cutting it off from the rest of the world and by turning it into a landlocked island, under the false pretense of unblocking or “opening” of transportation lines. This is euphemism for the beginning of the end of the Armenian statehood. We must never allow this Turkish scheme to materialize. We must sober up and drive these two non-indigenous terrorist tribes out of our backyard and recover and free our homeland from their occupation. Armenia today needs a TRUE patriot to lead the country and not someone who has no sense of pride and for whom everything is just a commodity up for sale.
Armenia prepare yourself for an final attack to your existence. From all borders we are surrounded from all corners now. The whole N.K. war its not mission accomplished YET. until there is a clear corridor between Turkey and Azerbaijan. That was the whole ambition. Those 2 criminal untrustworthy terrorist states so far they never honored a single document. agreement. They are Full of lies. No further talks they can get lost. What’s the point for talks. Get trained prepare yourselves. Train the civilians in the border towns. Provide the civilians arms for self defense. Diaspora prepare for cash support. medicines. Man & Wemen fighting power & assistance. Transportation links. Forget Russia they are running their own interests.