The state circles of Velvet Armenia rush to announce that they have nothing to do with the extradition of Kurdish rebels Atilla Çiçek and Huseyin Yıldırım to Turkey.

Such a statement was made by the Ministry of Justice and the National Security Service, which announced that they did not hand over the Kurds. It is still not clear who is the author of that pro-Turkish decision in Armenia. But a pattern is noticeable.

In 1999, Turkish authorities captured the Kurdish revolutionary, the founder of the Kurdish Workers’ Party, Abdullah Ocalan. No European country fighting for human rights and fighting for the LGBT community gave Ocalan’s plane an airport. Russia did not give either, although there are facts, including videos and photos, that Ocalan has been hiding for many years in Russia itself, in the country house of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the deputy speaker of the Russian State Duma. The Russians gave Öcalan time to leave the country, and days after his arrest, it became known that Turkey had bought nearly $400 million worth of weapons from Russia: anti-aircraft defense equipment.
Hungary extradited Ramil Safarov to Azerbaijan in 2012, who killed Armenian officer Gurgen Margaryan with 16 blows of an ax while he was sleeping in Budapest in February 2004, and was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Hungarian court on April 13, 2006. European media reported that the Hungarian government received 7 million dollars from Azerbaijan for Safarov.

After the 44-day war of 2020, Artsakh passed to the Turks and there were rumors that Azerbaijan gave 5 billion dollars for Artsakh to the velvet rulers of Armenia. Even a recording was published, where there is a conversation from years ago about how the president of Azerbaijan offered 5 billion through the president of Belarus to the president of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan in exchange for Artsakh and how he rejected that offer.

Talks about the financial basis of these three pro-Turkish developments continue to this day. There is no clear, direct evidence, but there are people who are aware of something, who talk regularly, there are people who understand the developments, who do analyses.

Let’s go back to the Kurdish rebels Atilla Çiçek and Hüseyin Yıldırım. This is one of the pro-Turkish developments. And the brief historical “tour” proves that Turkey’s only weapon is money, according to the versions, they bought Ocalan, they bought Ramil Safarov, they bought Artsakh. I will not be surprised if it turns out that they bought Kurdish rebels Atilla Çiçek and Hüseyin Yıldırım as well. It remains to be understood from whom and how much.

Areg Margaryan

During the last war launched by Azerbaijan against Armenia from September 13 to 15, Azerbaijani armed servicemen caused mental suffering—apart from physical suffering—to the families of the killed Armenian servicemen. This is noted in a statement released by the Law and Justice Center “Tatoyan” Foundation. The statement continues as follows:

The Law and Justice Center “Tatoyan” Foundation obtained evidence confirming that the Azerbaijani servicemen killed an RA serviceman, then took his photo and filmed a video, then sent the photo to his wife via WhatsApp, and then published the video and the photo on WhatsApp’s “story” section. In the video they sent, there are also other Armenian servicemen who were killed in a group.

The mentioned objective evidence will be given the necessary legal verification by the Foundation.

This criminal act confirms the intention of the Azerbaijani armed servicemen to cause mental suffering to families of victims and Armenian society, to play with emotions.

Similar cases were also recorded during the 2016 April war; the 2020 44-day war. The approach has not changed; these crimes have become chronic, because atrocities are encouraged by the Azerbaijani authorities, and those who commit them remain unpunished.

This evidence will be properly verified, also sent to international partners: perpetrators of these crimes should be punished.

Tural Sadiqli, an Azerbaijani journalist living in Germany, was branded as a traitor on social media. Share

In a Facebook post, Altay Goyusov, a historian from Azerbaijan, wrote: “I am not interested in Zangezur or Yerevan.” His reference to the Armenian capital and a part of Armenian territory where Azerbaijan seeks a transport corridor to reach its exclave of Naxcivan was enough for him to be targeted and tagged on Facebook as a traitor.

Goyusov is not alone. After the recent military clashes on the Azerbaijan-Armenia border, Azerbaijani opponents of the government’s military campaign are being targeted on Facebook and Twitter in what opposition activists claim is an orchestrated campaign.

Beginning on September 13, the two countries, which have been locked in a conflict over Azerbaijan’s breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh for years, traded artillery and mortar fire, and Azerbaijani forces targeted sites within the borders of Armenia itself. Azerbaijan announced the deaths of 79 of its servicemen, while Armenia said more than 200 of its troops have died.

The Armenian side has accused the Azerbaijani side of an invasion and asked for the immediate withdrawal of Azerbaijani armed forces from Armenian territory. The Azerbaijani side said that “Azerbaijan is not interested in destabilization” and stressed Baku’s efforts to rebuild and resettle territory formally under the control of Armenia.

The hashtag #Khainitaniaq — an Azerbaijani word meaning to “know who is a traitor” — has been used to target those speaking out against the war.

Tural Sadiqli, an Azerbaijani journalist living in Germany, received similar treatment. He had said on social media that “the Azerbaijani Army crossed the Armenian border” and that “Zangezur is internationally recognized territory of Armenia.” For that, he, too, was branded a traitor.

Another target of the social media campaign, Tofiq Yaqublu, a leading member of the opposition Musavat party, said that he is not worried about being called a traitor for voicing what he considers to be the correct opinion.

“Those who speak the truth are considered traitors. In fact, it is a dangerous trend. It’s the 21st century, but the atmosphere of repression of the 1930s is coming,” Yaqublu told RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service.

“Traitors are found only in dictatorial states…. I think that the feet of Azerbaijani soldiers should not have touched Armenian soil. What business do we have being in Zangezur or Goycha?”

Yaqublu added that no campaign against him will distract him from speaking what he believes to be the truth. In December 2021, Yaqublu was detained after an unsanctioned opposition rally in the capital, Baku. He emerged from custody with severe bruising on his face and body, the result, the authorities said, of him punching himself.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has ruled the oil-producing former Soviet republic with an iron fist since shortly before his father, Heydar Aliyev, died in 2003 after a decade in power. The president regularly refers to the opposition as “enemies.”

Azerbaijan has been repeatedly criticized by rights groups, international watchdogs, and Western governments for jailing dissidents on trumped-up charges and abusing power to stifle dissent. Dozens of journalists and members of the political opposition are still in prison on politically motivated charges. Others are hit with travel bans or constant harassment from the authorities.

Giorgi Gogia, an expert on human rights issues in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia at the New York-based Human Rights Watch, believes that such a campaign, regardless of who started it, is a threat to freedom of expression.

“According to international law, Azerbaijan and other countries have an obligation to observe freedom of expression. International law considers freedom of expression a fundamental human right essential for democracy,” Gogia told RFE/RL.

“The European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly stated that Azerbaijan has an international obligation to allow the expression of all kinds of opinions, including critical and shocking ones.”

It isn’t clear who is responsible for starting the #Khainitaniaq campaign, although many in Azerbaijan, especially among the opposition, blame the government.

A pro-government deputy, Fazil Mustafa, who is a member of the human rights committee in Azerbaijan’s largely rubber-stamp parliament, shared a “know who the traitors are” video on his Facebook page.

Speaking to RFE/RL, he said all opinions should be treated the same — up to a point — and denied that the campaign is conducted by the state.

“There is someone who thinks, ‘I want peace, I condemn both sides, I do not want any fighting’ — this is an opinion and it should be treated normally. But to say that ‘Azerbaijan entered and occupied the territory of Armenia’ is to repeat what [U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy] Pelosi said. It is an opinion aired to get a grant from foreign intelligence,” Mustafa said.

During a visit to Armenia on September 18, Pelosi strongly condemned and blamed Azerbaijan for the latest attacks.

“We have a million refugees in Azerbaijan, and they have the feeling of being a citizen,” Mustafa added. “This is a campaign conducted by an Azerbaijani citizen. It is a public process, so it is not right to link it with the name of the state.”

Armenian-backed separatists seized the mainly Armenian-populated region of Nagorno-Karabakh from Azerbaijan during a war in the early 1990s that killed some 30,000 people. Diplomatic efforts to settle the conflict brought little progress over the years, and the two sides fought another war in 2020 that lasted six weeks before a Russia-brokered cease-fire was agreed.

Under the cease-fire, parts of the breakaway region and seven adjacent districts were returned to Azerbaijani control. An estimated 2,000 Russian troops have been deployed to keep the peace. Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.

With the exception of a few activists calling for peace, many Azerbaijanis, including members of the country’s opposition, were euphoric and supportive of the 2020 war, seeing it as a righting of historical wrongs.

According to Mehman Aliyev, a media expert and head of the independent Turan news agency, the popular mood is different now to how it was in the aftermath of the 2020 war because society’s expectations from the government after the war have not materialized, and people’s livelihoods have not improved, and there are perceptions that veterans of the war have not been looked after by the state.

“If this [campaign] is happening, then it is organized by someone, and in the present case it must be organized by the government,” Aliyev said.

• RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service

In normal times, the latest upsurge in violence in the South Caucasus would have attracted a lot more attention.

UK journalist Thomas de Waal, who is also a senior fellow with Carnegie Europe specializing in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus region, wrote this in an article ( https://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/87976 ) published for Carnegie Europe. De Waal added as follows, in particular:

Nearly 300 soldiers died in a large-scale Azerbaijani incursion into the territory of Armenia on September 13–14. Armenia says that 202 of its soldiers and five civilians died or are missing. Azerbaijan has put its losses at 80 soldiers. Let’s not forget that these are countries with small populations where these awful numbers resonate even more strongly.

A ceasefire has stopped what was by far the worst violence since the forty-four-day war of 2020 between the two countries, but Azerbaijani forces appear to be still in control of territory in border areas of Armenia.

What happened?

The fighting occurred only two weeks after a fourth round of EU-mediated high-level talks in Brussels between the two leaders, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, where progress was being made. Importantly, it followed on the heels of Russia’s military humiliation by Ukraine in the Kharkiv province.

Some media reports have misleadingly described the fighting as border clashes and made reference to the disputed territory of Nagorny Karabakh, the locus of conflict for more than thirty years. But no fighting took place in Karabakh—now a base for Russian peacekeepers—or indeed in Azerbaijani territory; it was all inside the territory of Armenia.

Azerbaijan said there were Armenian “provocations,” a claim which cannot be verified. Eyewitnesses describe heavy shelling of military targets and civilian infrastructure in, amongst other places, the village of Sotk and the resort town of Jermuk, whose civilian population was evacuated. There are credible reports of atrocities and the hideous desecration of two dead Armenian female soldiers.

Since winning an overwhelming victory in the war of 2020, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has used what a senior Azerbaijani described to me as a strategy of “coercive diplomacy” against Armenia: a mix of negotiations and force.

Having achieved most but not all of his war aims in 2020, Aliyev has new goals. The first one is compelling Armenia to sign a “peace treaty” in which it renounces claims on the Armenian-majority region of Karabakh. The second a demarcation of the Armenia-Azerbaijani border that suits Azerbaijan. The third is a new road rail and link across Armenian territory to the exclave of Nakhchivan—what it calls the Zangezur Corridor—with minimal checks and controls.

The latest round of violence is the most brutal and dangerous since 2020. It seems aimed as much against Russia as against Armenia. Russia is obliged to assist Armenia both thanks to a bilateral defense treaty and to their joint membership of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

But Russia is also of course almost flat on its back in Ukraine. Azerbaijan looks intent on proving both that Russia is slow to support its ally and that the CSTO is a paper tiger—as its failure to act over Tajikistan’s cross-border attacks in Kyrgyzstan also demonstrates.

All this year, Armenia and Azerbaijan have been engaged in negotiations, mediated by Charles Michel, president of the European Council. The violence last week does not mean, as some commentators have asserted, that the talks were a sham or a waste of time. They had actually made a lot of progress.

The two sides agreed the substance of a deal on transportation routes earlier in the summer before the Russians raised some complications, which halted everything. Over the summer they worked intensively on texts which square an interstate treaty (Azerbaijan’s demand) with provisions for the rights and security of the Karabakh Armenians (Armenia’s demand).

The problem is one that has dogged all mediators in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict since 1991: no one pays a price for saying “no.” Condemnation for bad behavior is weak (…). Leaders feel they can renounce in public what they agreed to in private, play for time, or use force.

There is also the problem of “forum shopping.” Russia is still a mediator with powerful interests, even if it is not trusted as an honest broker. Moscow has also reportedly come up with a draft peace treaty, which indefinitely postpones the issue of the status of Karabakh—a formula that the Armenians like more than the European proposal.

Simultaneously, the United States, while strongly supportive of the EU, also raised Armenian hopes by appointing a new Caucasus envoy, Phil Reeker, who is named as co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, the previous mediation mechanism that Yerevan favors. The blitz solidarity visit to Armenia by U.S. Congress speaker Nancy Pelosi sends more mixed messages.

The EU itself comes across as ambiguous.

In July, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen visited Baku on a mission to buy Azerbaijani gas. In her public remarks, she called Azerbaijan a “reliable, trustworthy partner” and did not mention the words “peace” or “conflict” once. Azerbaijanis interpreted this as a big PR victory.

Whatever he intended or knew, this may be the moment when President Aliyev overplayed his hand. The latest fighting has undermined the domestic standing of a serious interlocutor, Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan who had committed himself to talks with both Azerbaijan and Turkey in the teeth of domestic opposition.

It has also triggered dissent inside Azerbaijan for the first time, even among some who supported the 2020 war. A pro-peace activist was sentenced to thirty days in prison. A prominent independent expert called Aliyev “maximalist” and “irredentist” and blamed him for squandering a historic opportunity to make peace with Armenia.

For it to have any chance of success, the Charles Michel process—currently the only viable one—needs much stronger support, from the European Commission, EU member states, and the United States. If it peters out or fails, the two dismal alternatives are that mediation again defaults to Moscow, or, worse: that the two sides get ready to fight the next war.

Lusine Petrosyan

On Monday, the visit of US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi to Armenia ended, which was not unprecedented or historic. It will be written about for months to come, because it marked the visual turning point of the United States of America, the country that assumed Armenia’s mandate in the League of Nations, finally coming to Armenia, settling in Armenia, and standing by Armenia’s side. One can only assume how many disasters the Middle East and especially the Christians of the Middle East would have avoided if the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres had been implemented, if Greece had been able to defend its territories, if Russia, born from the steppes, and Turkey had not invaded the territories of Armenia with a bilateral attack, the Russian-Turkish 2021 expropriation by contract became a fact.

However, no matter how terrible and abominable the Russian-Turkish crime against the Treaty of Sevres and Armenia was, even more terrible was how the huge masses of Armenians were turned into mankurts by the Soviet propaganda, who were the number one responsible for the aborting of the Treaty of Sevres and the loss of the territories of Western Armenia, a country friendly to Russia and the Russians. and they call people. Russia and the Russians are friends for Armenia just as much as Turkey and the Turks. There is no difference between Russians and Turks. None of them should be considered enemies, but it is deeply immoral to call any of them friends.

Mark Twain has a wonderful saying. “Barbarians believe only what they see.” As painful as it may be, it must be accepted that regardless of Armenia’s 4000-year glorious history, contacts with the origins of human civilization, from Akkadia, Assyria and Babylon to Phoenicia, Greece, Israel, Egypt and Marastan, the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire and so on, all the same. a significant part of Armenians remained barbaric, and so barbaric that they did not witness Russia’s tyrannical behavior in the events of September-November 2020, May 2021, and finally, September 13-15, 2022, Russia did not did not understand being friendly. Although I am afraid, those who do not understand still exist.

The second reality, which the Russophiles in Armenia, who have not risen from the level of barbarism, could not grasp was the trivial truth that the alternative of the Russians in Armenia is the civilized world, the European Union and the USA, not Turkey. The worldview of today’s Russophiles is so distorted that until the third official of the US state establishment, the speaker of the House of Representatives, arrived in Armenia, he did not stand on Armenian soil and declare that the US stands firmly by Armenia (due to which military clashes were stopped in two days, not 44 days). lasted), they did not understand that with the departure of Russia, Turkey will not settle in Armenia, but the EU and the USA, Russia’s alternative is not Turkey, but the EU and the USA.

Everyone is aware that the highly announced and visibly demonstrated entry of the USA into Armenia, as a result of which, let’s say, Recep Tayyip Erdogan pulled his tail and growled that “Azerbaijan has finished the military operation on the border with Armenia, so there is no need to address it.” “, it was not the result or the achievement of the efforts of the corrupt authorities of Armenia.

If there are persons and events that played a role in the matter of the US standing next to Armenia and in the future on Armenian soil, then first of all it was several international villains: ISIS, Recep Erdogan, Vladimir Putin. First, ISIS, whose religious extremism and speed of spread showed that Christian Europe needs to be protected, and one outpost of Christian Europe is Armenia, the other is Greece.

Erdoğan has shown how dangerous, ambitious and unreliable Turkey can be, therefore, that country must be contained, economically collapsed and geographically ensnared in such a way that it never again contemplates a-la-erdoghan military adventures or attempts to spread influence. to do Erdogan’s daily calls to Greece come from the fact that Turkey sees how the US is making Greece its main support in the Middle East instead of Turkey.

The Greek port of Alexandroupolis (in the province of Thrace, almost on the border with Turkey) has been under construction and retooling for several years to launch a land route from the Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea to bypass the Bosphorus-Dardanile straits while they are under Turkish control. And after the war unleashed by Russia against Ukraine, Alexandrapolis itself became the transit port where weapons from the US arrive by ship, from HIMARS systems to shells and bullets, and then land to Ukraine (they say, an average of 3,000 pieces of luggage per day). Not to mention the regularly invigorating conversations and calls about moving the main American military base from Incirlik to Greece, which would be very logical, especially after when a new annex to a long-standing agreement between the US and Greece was signed in 2021 and ratified in 2022, providing for joint defense of Greece’s territorial integrity and sovereignty in the event of any external encroachment. In view of the fact that Erdogan regularly rants against Greece’s territorial integrity, of course, the rants will hardly ever turn into action, but if they do, it will turn out that the US can technically attack Turkey from Turkey itself.

In any case, Erdoğan’s delusions and ambitions to achieve any influence outside the territory of Turkey made it necessary for the USA to open the Turkish border with Armenia, first of all, for third countries, which will establish an effective American presence from the Mediterranean Sea to Armenia, then Georgia and the Black Sea with a bow. It is precisely from this perspective of security and prosperity outlined for Armenia, exit to the Mediterranean Sea, that Ilham Aliyev falls into shocks and, most likely, with the latest aggression, allegedly tried to hinder this development. As a result, he received such a warning from the USA that he stayed in place, explaining it by saying that the “military operation on the RA border” had ended. Maybe in hindsight, it now realizes that it shouldn’t have started in the first place.

Finally, the third factor that made it necessary for the US to stand by Armenia is undoubtedly Vladimir Putin. Everyone realizes that as long as Putin gets stuck in the war swamp and self-destructs in Ukraine, it is worth establishing the presence of NATO both north and south of Ukraine, taking the entire civilized and Christian Europe under protection.

Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi has no leverage over the processes in the South Caucasus, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, commenting on Pelosi’s visit to Yerevan, Anadolu news agency reported.

“I am sure her visit caused concern in many places. There is no need to unnecessarily inflate the subject,” he said.

According to him, Turkey today continues “to make certain preparations and we will take appropriate steps soon.” “At the moment we are discussing participation in the upcoming meeting of the European political community in Prague. In case we decide to go to the Czech Republic, presumably Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan will also be there. The Armenian side has previously expressed the idea of a meeting on that platform. Perhaps we will have an opportunity to discuss all these issues there. However, of course, we will also have certain initiatives on the Caucasus. At the moment everything is still at a planning stage. I will discuss these issues with my brother Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, and depending on that we will take steps,” Erdogan said.

The summit of the European political community will be held in Prague on October 6. As previously reported, the organizers intend to invite the leaders of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, among others.