Today.Az » Politics » Armenia's elections: The Azeri perspective
11 February 2008 [09:59] - Today.Az
I spent last week in Azerbaijan and was surprised by
what I saw.
Baku in particular looks like one vast construction site these
days.
The elegant and chic late 19th century buildings in the city's
heart
that reflect its colorful past are being rapidly renovated. I
was,
however, disturbed by the number of what I call beton boxes,
ugly
modern-style concrete apartment blocks, that have sprung up
everywhere
and are destroying Baku's beautiful and unique
skyline.
After seeing a newly built apartment building on nearly every
corner,
I felt compelled to ask my friends whether these flats are
indeed
selling. I had been told that such flats were going for prices
in
excess of $4,000 per square meter. With a wry smile on his lips,
one of
them replied, "Azerbaijan is a capitalist country now. If they
were not
selling, why would our businessmen be investing in them?" I
am sure that
Stalin and his communist comrades-in-arms are turning
in their graves these
days...
I started to wonder whether the countryside, or inner parts
of
Azerbaijan, are also benefiting from this apparent economic revival
in
the capital. My trip to Quba, a beautiful city in the northern
part of the
country, just 50 kilometers from the Russian (Dagestani)
border, gave me the
opportunity to make a first-hand comparison.
Indeed, it seemed so. In Quba,
for instance, I observed that the
locals are enjoying tangible improvements
in their quality of life.
There is a high volume of border trade going on
with Russia and a new
road is being rapidly built from Quba to Baku, which I
was told will
extend as far as the Iranian border.
While I was in
Quba, city authorities showed me a mass grave that they
have just discovered.
It is peculiar in the sense that both Muslim
and Jewish victims massacred by
the Armenian Dashnaks in 1918 are
buried there side-by-side. I took several
photos that I will soon
send specifically to Abraham Foxman, national
director of the New
York-based Anti-Defamation League (ADL) who, a couple of
months ago,
said that the World War I-era killings of Armenians by Turks
"were
tantamount to genocide."
In fact, parliamentary resolutions in
Western countries regarding the
Armenian "genocide" allegations get their
hackles as much as ours. I
attended a lecture at Khazar University where
almost every participant
complained about "Western bias, ignorance and
double-standards." They
could not understand how easily, or without having
any idea about
what really happened, they could arrive at such conclusions. I
later
found out that the government will soon initiate a campaign
against
Armenian propaganda. Atakhan Pashayev, head of Azerbaijan's
national
archives, for instance, told me that they, too, will soon open
their
archives and display the documents of this period on the
Internet.
Actually not a day passes in Azerbaijan without one
hearing
a discussion among the public relating their views on
Armenia,
Armenian-occupied territories, or Western countries' biased
attitude
towards the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute. Among the ordinary Azeris,
the
gackins (approximately one million refugees from
Armenian-occupied
lands) in particular, the belief that use of force seems
to
be inevitable has become more widespread than ever. The
Azeri
government has launched new programs to improve living
conditions
among the gackins. For instance, from the country's oil
revenue,
which witnessed a boom last year, AZN 154 million was allocated
to
refugees and internally displayed persons. Yet, as a school teacher
in
a refugee camp just outside Baku, where three to five families are
forced to
live together in a single room of only 15 square meters,
told me, they would
rather live in tents in their native land than
in palaces in
Baku.
That being said, what I was particularly interested in was how
the
Azeri decision-makers were approaching the presidential elections
in
Armenia, which are scheduled for Feb. 19. I spoke with several
young Azeri
MPs and found them to be brilliant minds with a strong
vision of where the
world, as well as their region, is headed. In
particular, I wanted to know
what they thought about the likelihood
of Levon Ter-Petrossian being elected.
They described Ter-Petrossian
as a leader they could indeed work with, but
expressed doubt about
the possibility of him getting elected.
I posed
the same question to a senior authority and the answer I got
was interesting.
Noting that Azerbaijan's 2007 budget was approximately
$12 billion, he told
me that $1.2 billion of this amount was spent
on the military. Actually, they
would prefer to direct that money
towards solutions to the problems Azeri
people are facing today. "And
Petrossian," he then added, "is indeed someone
to work with and a
realistic politician who is aware of the potential that
the region
holds." However, he too was pessimistic that the elections would
be
fair and free. He doesn't believe, he said, Armenia's "Karabakh
clan"
in power wants a normalization of relations with either
Azerbaijan
or Turkey.
Towards the end of my trip, I came together with
a group of
journalists. In the interviews, the first question they posed to
me was
why Turkish reactions to Hrant Dink's murder had been so
exaggerated,
citing the public slogan "We all are Armenian." This clearly
had
confused and hurt them. I tried to explain that the way Hrant Dink
was
murdered certainly needed to be condemned, and that the people
chanting such
slogans were trying to show solidarity and empathy with
the Armenian Turkish
community. One of them reproachfully replied,
"Our territories have been
under Armenian occupation for the last 15
years. Why do Turkish journalists
in particular begrudge us the same
empathy they showed the
Armenians?"
This was a question for which I had no answer.. .
/Turkish Daily
News/
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