How Baku deprived the Armenians of their last trump card

A couple of years ago, blogger Albert Isakov translated and posted a video online about a five-year-old Armenian who was included in the national "book of records" as a child prodigy. The boy can name the capitals of the countries of the world, knows English, learns Russian, plays chess, has a phenomenal memory, and so on. Little Mikael Hakobyan is the pride of the whole of Armenia. Five-year-old Mikael is just starting life, but he has already turned into a real monster, ready to destroy all non-Armenians. The child plans to create a special weapon that will clear the planet of all other nations, and there will be only one Armenia on earth. He told about it himself in an interview with one of the Internet resources. "I will turn the whole planet Earth into Armenia. Those who came from other nations to our country, I will shoot them on the spot. I will not allow people of another nationality to remain in Armenia... I will leave only the Armenians on the planet. To blow up other nations, I will create a special unidentified flying object," the child said. Moreover, he is going to shoot "without any preliminary conversations in order to kill everyone to hell."..

So far, Armenians have managed to turn not the entire planet, but a certain part of the South Caucasus into a "clean" place, that is, into a territory without non-Armenians. Only Armenians have been living in Armenia for 35 years. The last non-Armenian, namely an Azerbaijani, left this then-Soviet republic in 1990. It didn't even require any special weapons. The neighbors acted, so to speak, in grandfathered ways - they drove, cut and burned. The boy Michael set a broader task - to clean up the entire planet, and here you can't do it with one massacre. "Armenia for Armenians" was a long-standing and most ardent dream of the Armenians. With the help of strong allies, it was possible to implement it so that the secretary of the Gafan district committee of the Mkrtchan party could say with tears of pride in his eyes, addressing marble Nzhdeh: "You have worked hard, but you have not been able to purge the republic of Azerbaijanis. Your grandchildren have fulfilled your big dream."

Today, our neighbors' biggest dream is under threat. The prospect of Azerbaijanis expelled from Armenia returning to their homes in the neighboring country is considered a terrible threat. Military expert David Jamalyan told reporters yesterday that "if Baku's most terrible scenario is realized and 300,000 Azerbaijanis come and settle in Armenia, naturally, from that moment on, their ambitions will become reality."

When talking about ambitions in such cases, Armenian experts are referring to the term West Azerbaijan, which sounds like a threat to them. After Baku raised the issue of the return of Azerbaijani refugees to their historical lands in Armenia, Yerevan lost its peace. For example, political strategist Vigen Hakobyan believes that if the Azerbaijanis return, Baku "may declare that the security of their compatriots is not guaranteed and send troops to Armenia." Hakobyan is confident that the return of the Azerbaijanis will be a ticking time bomb. This is how he reacted earlier to statements from Baku that Yerevan should agree to the return of refugees from both sides, or there would be no such clause in the peace treaty at all. The political strategist fears that this return is also from the category of Azerbaijani soft power. The fears brought Hakobyan's imagination to paintings that are a nightmare for several generations of Armenians raised in phobias. They can already see how Azerbaijani and Turkish special forces are entering Western Zangezur to ensure the safety of the returned Azerbaijanis.

"If the Azerbaijani armed Forces enter Armenia, they will never leave it again," political strategist Hakobyan scares his tribesmen, reasonably believing that the Azerbaijanis can return, "but only if they receive guarantees from the point of view of force."

The last words are reasonable because no international guarantees and Yerevan's word of honor can guarantee the Azerbaijani population life and security in Armenia. It will be a long time before the Armenian society will be able to accept the presence of another nation in the same space with itself, and even more so, the Azerbaijanis. A certain attitude towards the peoples whose lands are claimed by the Armenians is soldered into the Armenian mentality. And it is very difficult to erase this feature of the Armenian mentality. It is constantly fueled by ideological attitudes and new mythologies.

Armenia is very annoyed and concerned that the issue of the return of Azerbaijanis has appeared on the agenda. At first, they hoped that Western patrons would talk to Baku and the topic would leave the discourse, and they would talk, as before, only about the rights of Armenians to return to Azerbaijan. Whether the Western patrons talked or not, we do not know, but the topic did not leave the agenda, and the Armenian side itself had to tone down its demands for the "dignified and unconditional return of the Armenians" to Karabakh, from where they left completely voluntarily and without losses.

As opposition MP Anna Grigoryan correctly noted, a few years ago it was impossible to imagine that the issue of the return of Azerbaijanis in one form or another would be discussed.

Yes, that's right. A few years ago, no one would have thought of this. The issue of the return of Azerbaijani refugees to Armenia has not been considered anywhere in principle, and the Azerbaijani side very wisely did not pedal it, realizing that there is time for everything. The occupier, feeling completely safe, surrounded by the guarantees of the powers, could sometimes afford to contemptuously, lazily yawning, speculate about such a prospect. And, of course, all the arguments ended with a verdict: the return of Azerbaijanis to neither Shusha nor Zangezur is impossible.

Shortly before the liberation war, when, as he believed, nothing foreshadowed a storm for the aggressor, Taron Hovhannisyan, an expert at the Orbeli Center, responding to a journalist's question about the possibility of the return of Azerbaijanis, spoke exactly like this - haughtily, lazily philosophizing, leaning against a strong back in the face of the powers and their guarantees. The Azerbaijanis, he said, want to return to Shusha and live as part of Azerbaijan. This means that they do not just want to return to their homes, but pursue political goals. According to the expert, Azerbaijanis who have been subjected to ethnic cleansing can come on an excursion as tourists, look at their houses inhabited by aliens, but in order to live, "we need to change politics." A representative of the people who totally "cleansed" Armenia and the occupied territories of Azerbaijan from Azerbaijanis accused the Azerbaijani side of "xenophobic and racist policies" and questioned whether the descendants of victims of ethnic cleansing and genocide committed by the Armenian occupiers would be positive towards Armenians. Hovhannisyan believed that in 30 years the Azerbaijanis should have forgotten everything they had to go through because of the Armenians and rushed to them with hugs. And only Baku's "xenophobic policy" and the "threat of repression" prevent them from doing so.

Hovhannisyan received all the answers to his doubts within a few months. Today he sings differently, today he has no time for philosophy. Just like everyone else.

The possibility of the return of Azerbaijanis to Armenia is seen today by the "think tanks" of Armenia no longer through the prism of lazy philosophizing, but as a completely tangible prospect. Once they thought they could set conditions for Azerbaijan, but now they are trembling at the thought that Baku will insist on its terms. The principle of mirroring, which Baku uses to smash all Yerevan's arguments, makes it unarmed and shortens the tongues of its defenders. After all, no one in the Armenian pool is going to really discuss the issue of the rights of Azerbaijanis, and if you insist on the rights of Armenians, then this will inevitably have to be done. Azerbaijan has already made it clear that it is ready to consider two issues in only one package. About 300,000 Azerbaijanis should return to the 277 settlements of Armenia, to the ancestral lands of their ancestors, to their roots. For one and a half million Armenians, 300,000 Azerbaijanis is much more serious than a hundred thousand Armenians for ten million Azerbaijanis. But Baku is very peaceful and is not going to take any forceful steps in this direction. He simply says: if the Armenians want to return to Karabakh, this can only happen in parallel with the return of the Azerbaijanis to Western Zangezur. There are no other options. And Armenia and its support group have to retreat. Many people have probably noticed that the demands for the immediate return of all Armenians to the Karabakh region are becoming less and less frequent. Baku actually knocked its neighbor's main trump card out of his hands.

Yerevan's last hope is to prove that the Azerbaijanis left Armenia only of their own free will, and did not run barefoot through the snowy passes to escape from the brutal nationalists, but left calmly, selling their property and receiving compensation and good wishes from the authorities. That is, they have lost all property rights and civil rights too. As Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said at a press conference in Tehran earlier this year, "The Azerbaijanis left Armenia in a fairly civilized manner. About 100 people sold their apartments, more than 12,000 exchanged them with Armenians from Azerbaijan, and more than 160,000 received compensation from the Armenian government." 

These words greatly angered the refugees. Everything was not at all as sweet and beautiful as Mirzoyan described. The Azerbaijanis did not receive any compensation from the authorities. Many were forced to sign relevant documents, including the alleged sale of an apartment, under threat of reprisals, and the owners of the houses themselves were loaded into freight wagons like cattle and sent nowhere.

But we'll talk about that next time.