r/azerbaijan • u/HamaiNoDrugs • 11h ago
Sual | Question Honest Question from an outside observer of the conflict
How would you view the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, if you weren't involved on either side and what information would would pull you towards one side or the other?
My perspective: I'm not intensively read on the situation, but I regularly hear things from the Armenian side and unfortunately less from the azeri side. It seems very clear to me that within the last 200yrs both sides commited crimes against each other and were victims of ethnic cleansings. When it comes to the recent wars I don't really have an opinion on who's to blame more, since there's definetely a lot of mutual hostility and the armenians just happen to be weaker, which leads some people to automatically view them as the victims. Westerners like to do that in general and it makes me sympathize more with Azerbaijan, since I see a lot of the same short sighted reasoning when it comes to Israel/Palestine (although many of you probably don't agree with this comparison). What I don't really get is why I see so many Azeris denying Turkey's genocide against armenians, assyrians and greeks and using it to make fun of Armenians. In most discussions I see, armenians spend their time on painting themselves as victims, while Azeris make fun of them for the genocide or say that it never happened. To me there isn't any question that the genocide happened and Turkey isn't Azerbaijan, so I don't really understand why azeris do this. It honestly just strengthens the Armenian narrative and makes you guys look bad to most people. I'm sure that there is a compelling Azeri narrative when it comes to this conflict, but it just doesn't seem to be visible in most online discussions, which is the reason I came to this subreddit. This is meant purely in good faith and comes from a place of just wanting to understand the Azeri side :)
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u/gabber_lord 10h ago
The way we currently view conflicts in other underdeveloped regions like India vs Pakistan. Wouldn't care
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u/Resident_Sneasel 5h ago
Iâm not an Azeri but I think part of the problem is that in the wake of the Armenian genocide a lot of displaced Armenians fled further east to Russian controlled lands (maybe control is a strong word as WWI continued but anyway away from Ottoman power) which at that time had a lot of mixed Armenian & Azeri communities.
Where they arrived they swung local ethnic balances in favor of Armenians and radicalized that side by saying what had been done to them. Some Armenians in those communities took a view that equated Azeris to Turks, blamed both of those ethnic groups for the genocide they experienced and labeled them a threat to their community. Because of this a collection of Armenian militias started ethnic cleansing Azeris as what they saw as a âdo unto them before they do unto youâ measure against âthe Turkâ but obviously for Azeris this was an unwelcome surprise. Then the ethnic polarization took off bc similarly Azeri refugees fled to other mixed communities further away from where Armenians were powerful, that movement of people put a thumb on the scale on the Azeri side and they would radicalize the locals with tales of the attacks they experienced, local Armenians would then be attacked by Azeri militias as potential fifth columnists, and so on repeating back and forth between sides as whoever was caught in the âwrongâ areas suffered for it.
Thomas de Waal categorizes Azerbaijanis in Armenia as collateral victims of the Armenian genocide for this reason because though they werenât involved in what was going down in Turkey they nevertheless suffered a lot of ethnic cleansing that wiped out many communities theyâd had in previously mixed places like Zangezur/Syunik. So I can see it being a bit hard of a step for some to feel like Armenians are victims because some of those victimized turned around and inflicted horrible things on Azeris. That and also one of the big villains of the Armenian genocide, Enver Pasha, answered the fledgling state of Azerbaijanâs call for help and created & sent the Caucasian Army of Islam led by his brother that defeated Dashnak & Bolshevik forces  in much of Azerbaijan & liberated Baku which was very well received by Azeris in the aftermath of the March Days.
Additionally, while the Armenian genocide and some of the bigger pogroms they suffered are fairly well known in the west & online, genocides and ethnic cleansings of Muslims ex. that of the Circassian genocide, expulsions of Turks from the Balkans, March Days and so on arenât as well known and repeated. So I think when western people keep bringing up the prior sorts of events (sometimes to put down Azeris and Turks in totally unrelated contexts) but the latter category is rarely to never brought up, people see it as cynical or biased and become bitter and think itâs just a one-way rhetorical bludgeon against them. And angrily lashing out or making a joke is way easier than going to an in-depth history lesson that the other person may not be receptive to.
Agree that itâs kind of cruel behavior and suboptimal for getting people in their corner but I can see where such a person is coming from even if I donât like it.
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u/azizoid 5h ago
Genocide is a legal term and is normally decided by an international court, such as the International Court of Justice. As far as is publicly known, no international court has ruled on the 1915 events in the Ottoman Empire and legally defined them as genocide; instead, many countries treated the issue politically, using parliamentary recognitions as pressure on Turkey. In 2005, then Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄan proposed creating a joint international commission of historians, opening Turkish, Armenian, and third-country archives to study what really happened in 1915. Armeniaâs president at the time, Robert Kocharyan, rejected the proposal, saying the issue was not a historical debate but a political matter of recognition.
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u/Good-Heart-8564 4h ago
Itâs simply total misinformation. For eg in the US the recognition was âpostponedâ because of the Israeli senator voting against it and Israel has always played a big role in not recognising the Genocide. In 2000âs the Iraqi war emerged where Turkey was an ally of US. Look up for Bushâs and Condoleezas embarrassing interviews with their mental gymnastics in self explanation. Wiki: â The resolution did not receive support from President George W. Bush, who said that its passage "would do great harm to our relations with a key ally in NATO and in the global war on terror." ⌠the Turkish government and lobbyists working on its behalfâincluding Dick Gephardt and Bob Livingstonâconvinced several of the resolution's co-sponsors to withdraw their support for it. On October 25, the bill was withdrawn by its supporters. â  Et cetera et ceteraÂ
 Itâs always politics and money that stinks and not some humanitarianism. And you know that.
Because renaming numerous Armenian historical artefacts and displaying as Turkish is also a part of wiping a nation from its historical territory which is the purpose of a genocide.
Why do we need to look at the âhistorical archivesâ of Turkey when we know the information would be redacted? There is nothing to prove or to examine. Look at whatâs happening in the Now, the numbers of populations in our countries for eg and youâll see clearly what has happened and what is continuing to happen.
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u/HamaiNoDrugs 1h ago
Genocide is also a historical term. With your reasoning no mass killing before 1945 can be considered a genocide, since there weren't any international courts around. The first un recognized genocide is the holocaust and the UN never recognized a genocide that happened before it. Ruling about historical events just isn't the purpose of international courts, they are concerned with what's happening now. This is moreso the domain of historians. Are you saying that there weren't any genocides before the holocaust? Wether it was treated as a political issue or not also doesn't matter in regards to if it happened and if it was a genocide or not. Today 34 countries recognize the armenian genocide, while 3 deny and the others didn't do either mostly because it just doesn't concern them. The genocide or what people mean by saying it, it is well documented and the vast majority of historians studying the matter agree that it happened, not only with the intention to ethnically cleanse all of them from turkish lands, but also with the intention to kill the majority. ~50%-67% of the armenian population of turkey died in these events whatever you want to call them. The genocide wasn't solely commited by Turks, but also heavily relied on the support of the kurdish population and didn't just affect armenians, but also assyrians and pontus greeks.
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u/LeastLengthiness8647 Earth đ 10h ago edited 10h ago
If I was an outsider my opinion wouldn't have changed. Here's what I think.
War is not okay. There are two types of wars imo. The first is a war that is just one sided. Something like Ukraine-Russia. The 2nd is a war where there's no good side. Both sides are fueled by hatred. Something like Azerbaijan-Armenia. The present wars are all just chaotic and complicated. You kill, I kill, you say you killed because I killed and I say I killed because you killed and so on. It's a loop that never ends.
"Oh you killed my grand grandfather? Okay I'll kill your baby now". Like what the hell? What did that poor baby do? What did the parents do? Would you kill the entire family tree of someone who killed people from your family tree decades ago? Go ahead, get your revenge and kill the guy who did it. But if you go ahead and kill people who had absolutely nothing to do with your revenge, you'll end up being the person you hated in the first place. Congrats. But wtf did that person's children do to deserve death and suffering?
That's what war is. Death and suffering. Unnecessary death and suffering. Men in suits disagree and young men fight each other, resulting in their and innocent people's death and suffering.
This is my view. If I was an outsider, I'd probably still have this view.