Armenophobia in Azerbaijan

The Armenian pogroms of March 1918 in Baku are covered in a textbook on the history of Azerbaijan for the 11th grade in a chapter entitled The Azerbaijani genocide. Here, the “naive and humane Azerbaijanis” oppose Armenians allied with the soviet (earlier: tsarist) troops. If in the soviet period this event was portrayed as a symbol of the joint struggle of workers of all nationalities against the reactionary Azerbaijani nationalists, now these events are depicted otherwise: as the Azerbaijani genocide. The underpinnings of this change can be traced back to the presidential decree by Heydar Aliyev dated March 26, 1998 declaring March 31 as the Azerbaijani “genocide memorial day”.556

To make things look even more convincing, the authors of the textbook quote at the end of the chapter the words of Mammad Amin Rasulzadeh, one of the leaders of the Azerbaijani Democratic Republic, with reference to these events by adding a note of their own: “M. A. Rasulzadeh characterized the genocide of 1918 as a national and political factor”. However, prior to the official decree by Heydar Aliyev, nobody referred to these events as genocide. Also, this term does not appear in Rasulzadeh’s original quote about these bloody events.557

In 2011, the Department of Strategic Analysis, Planning and Human Resources Management of the Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Education held an examination for applicants who sought to fill 223 job openings for the positions of history teachers in the schools of the country. 761 persons took part in the examination. The applicants could obtain a score ranging from 4–5 to 16–17 points (!) with a minimum passing score of 35. In explaining their failure, the participants made reference to the “complexity” of the questions. The examinees had to answer 35 questions within 1 hour of the exam that started at 9 a.m.558

Against this background, the picture described in an article by Turan information agency seems to be a common occurrence: “A lecturer at one of the Azerbaijan’s universities relished in a rapturous and vivid account of how he would strangle barehanded even a little Armenian child without the slightest remorse”.559 The lecturer in question taught the theory of radio journalism and simultaneously worked on AZTV radio station.

“With this lecturer, all criticism was met with a single airtight argument: “How can you criticize our president when we face such a problem for the entire country: Armenians? We must focus on that”, says the article.

Aydin Aslanov, a candidate of Historical Sciences, associate professor at the Chair of Social Disciplines of the Baku Institute for Advanced Training and Retraining for Teachers, in his turn, laments that the history textbook in its account of the “Azerbaijani genocide of 1918 in Baku” says that the Armenians walked over the corpses (of the Azerbaijanis). The Russian translation says: “They walked over pipes”560. “You can’t do that”, complains Aslanov.

It was the same Aslanov who stated with reference to the errors and blunders in the Azerbaijani textbooks: “We should always indicate in our textbooks that we are an ancient indigenous people of Caucasus which later changed our language into Turkic and became Muslims renouncing our fire worship. We are local and not ecdemic. We must take pride in the fact that our ancestor Moisey Kalankatuyski built the first Christian church in the Orient, in the village of Kish of Sheki region.561 Somehow, we avoid speaking about our church dating back to the 1st century B.C.562

The new tendencies of the historical science of Azerbaijan have also drawn the attention of Russian authors. An article entitled Unearthing the Truth, or Who and Why Overwrites the History563 published on the Voice of Russia website pays a special attention to the absurdities appearing in Azerbaijani textbooks. The article notes that the analysis of 187 CIS-published textbooks conducted by a group of Russian historians has revealed that except for Belarus and Armenia, schools teach a nationalist version of history based on myths of indigeneity, the ancestral land, the linguistic succession, glorious forefathers, ethnic homogeneity and the arch enemy.

The authors of the report Coverage of general history of Russia and post-soviet nations in the school History textbooks of newly independent states, A. A. Danilov and A. V. Filippov write the following:564

“The reasoning behind the antiquity of the national history can reach ridiculous proportions. <…> The ancestors of Azerbaijanis are made out to be the contemporaries of Sumerians: “The first written accounts of the tribes of the ancient Azerbaijan are given in Sumerian epics and cuneiform writings”. Heralding the ancient Azerbaijanis as Sumerian contemporaries seeks to shore the allegations that the modern Armenia came into being on the territory of the ancient Western Azerbaijan.

…

The exemption from the scientific rigor opened ample opportunities for blending entirely diverging concepts. A part of the soviet historians claimed that the ethnogenesis of the Azerbaijanis originally occurred on the Turkic basis with contributions from Persian-speaking and Caucasian tribes; later, the ethnic composition progressively became homogeneous and entirely Turkic. Another group of scholars claimed that the ancestors of the Azerbaijanis might speak varying languages in different periods of time, yet undergoing no ethnic changes. The Turkic language rooted itself in as late as the X–XI centuries, but the Turkic people themselves were assimilated by the local population. Both concepts were united in their alignment to the theory of indigenous origin, but were divided in their treatment of the language as the basis of a unified culture.

In this sense, the authors of the modern Azerbaijani textbooks saw no problems whatsoever: “The formation of the Turkic people of Azerbaijan resulted from the amalgamation of Turkic ethnic groups known under different names, such as Azeri, Gargars, Albans, Huns, Khazars, Sabirs, Oghuz and others, which populated this vast territory from the antiquity and migrated there on regular basis”. However, it is known for sure that the most ancient of the listed tribes – Azeris and Albans – have nothing to do with the Turkic people. To this, the authors produce the following answer. “According to historical legend, approximately in the 2nd century B.C. Albania was ruled by Aran… Because of the ruler’s mild character, he was given a nickname Agu (good, kind), and the country came to be known as Aguan (Albania). It is clear that both the name and nickname of Albania’s first ruler are of ancient Turkic origin”. Thus, both concepts of the Azerbaijani ethnogenesis have been mechanically fused together which allowed addressing the antiquity problem, the linguistic unity problem as well as the problem of uninterrupted ethnogenesis and culture. The only drawback of this truly brilliant scheme is that it is anti-scientific through and through. But on the other hand, it allows substantiating a point of paramount importance: “The modern Armenia came into being on the territory of the ancient Western Azerbaijan”.

In this context, threats of obliterating Armenia and Armenians as well as the claims to the Western Azerbaijan which are voiced in various venues invoking the common Islamic factor come across as quite natural.

I have always supported the idea that the Karabakh problem should be made international, that it should be incorporated into the common Islamic problem so that Azerbaijan could lean upon general Islamic support in addressing the problem and ending definitively the Armenian occupation and the consequences of its aggression.<…>

They were brought there by the tsarist empire in the aftermath of wars with Turkey and Iran in the 19th century. Therefore, this issue, the problem of the Armenian occupation of the Azerbaijani lands including Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent regions of Azerbaijan must be resolved drastically. <…>

As a matter of fact, I believe that Armenia as a state has no place in the South Caucasus. It was artificially created and exists on the territory of our Azerbaijani khanate of Irevan. And the khanate of Irevan must be restored as an integral part of the great Azerbaijan <…>.565

19. Armenophobia in the Azerbaijani literature

Do you know the importance of the childhood impressions?

A mere good habit and inclination in childhood can become a virtue at mature age.

Gogol566

Fiction and academic literature represent one of the most extensive forms of propaganda and indoctrination of ideology.

The literature, particularly the children’s literature, is at the core of shaping the world outlook, moral principles and set of values at the very outset of life. It shapes the sense of morality and appraisal, the code of moral conduct and instills aesthetic perception.567

The assessment of the values underlying the future-oriented Azerbaijani society of our day calls for a scrutiny of the literary works which shape certain attitudes, views and ensuing line of conduct in respect of Armenians.

The factors of the territorial vicinity and a long history of coexistence secure a central place in the Azerbaijani literature for the subject of the relationships between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. A comparison of literary works on the subjects of the relationships between Georgians and Azerbaijanis, Azerbaijanis and Russians, Azerbaijanis and Iranians as well as Azerbaijanis and Armenians reveal the salience of the latter in terms of sheer numbers and representative variety. Over recent years, the number of works containing a negative appraisal of Armenians has noticeably increased.

The inculcation of armenophobia occurs in 2 ways: direct and indirect methods.

The direct method represents an open and unabashed propaganda and a straightforward hate speech. Its incidence increased in recent years compared to the rule of Heydar Aliyev, the father of the current president in office.

The indirect method represents a method that does not explicitly designate the ethnic origin in its depiction of the image and its distinctive traits, but makes the reader guess to whom the reference is made based on the events of the narration and the signature style.

Leyla Sayfutdinova who studied specimens of the modern Azerbaijani literature discerned certain patterns. The author notes that the literature draws a very clear borderline between Armenians and Azerbaijanis: “I don’t recall a single case when the national identity of an Armenian character remains unknown or is absolutely irrelevant to the story and therefore, to the relations between Armenians and Azerbaijanis”.568

The author notes that there is a distinction not only in terms of contrasting Armenians and Azerbaijanis, but also in terms of tagging them as “good our” and “bad other” Armenians, which comes to mean those who live in Azerbaijan and visitors, respectively. “Good” Armenians are those who live in Azerbaijan and are fond of their Azerbaijani friends. “Bad” Armenians are their opposites. Most frequently, foreign Armenians, i.e. Armenians who came to Azerbaijan and Caucasus from other places are portrayed as “bad”.569

The study of 22 latest literary works dated after 2008 made it clear that the image of “our” Armenians is portrayed as “pretenders”, and their sincerity raises doubts or calls for vigilance. Thus, the children’s story entitled Spy by Shabnam Kheyrulla570 is quite illustrative in terms of the educational process; the plot contains the character of aunt Aliya, an Armenian woman portrayed through the prism of the Azerbaijanis characters, through the eyes of children and the author herself.

Military news! It was with this news that the program started. The news reader announced that four of our soldiers had been killed.

<…> The children were curious to see how our guest reacted to the news. This reaction was not long in coming. Upon hearing the news, aunt Aliya looked perplexed and started cursing her compatriots by calling them ignoble and ungrateful. But the children were no longer surprised because they were sure that she was a “spy”, and that was exactly what “spies” were supposed to say… Neither Natik, nor Sabina knew that this “spy” was one of the thousands of Armenians who lived in their country. Another thing the children did not know was that this Armenian woman had changed her religion in good time and later she also changed her name. Whether she did so out of fear or she indeed had renounced her ethnicity was something that even the adults failed to see through. But one thing this Armenian woman could not do to change: the vicious blood of her nation that ran in her veins. Powerless to do so, aunt Aliyah, who was ashamed, had no other choice but to go around abusing and cursing her compatriots at the first good opportunity. At heart, she was tormented by agonizing doubts.

At this point, a woman aged 60 and maybe more went into the street, and the children immediately exclaimed in unison: “Hello, aunt Anya!” and ran up to her. The woman who was their neighbor returned a friendly smile and asked the children how they were doing, what they were busy with and patted them on the head. <…> It would have never occurred to the children that aunt Anya, who they were so fond of and to whom they had just flocked, was Armenian, and she was merely one of the thousands of them who lived in Baku. <…> Once again, I was persuaded that we would never change. Our capacity for enmity would, alas, stay at the level of words and playground rhymes in some game.571

Or, heirs to their legacy, they secretly plot against good-natured Azerbaijanis:

Zayka was a nurse who had obtained the job only days ago. Her interest in the surgical department was nothing but accidental. She had been assigned this mission by her father, a member of a secret Armenian committee. Her assignment was to get access to this department of the maternity hospital and poison non-Armenian newborns mostly of Turkic origin with chemicals. It was beyond doubt that Zayka would handle her mission well as according to her father, in many years that her mother worked at the same maternity hospital she had dispatched many Turkic children. Now Zayka was about to follow her mother’s trade. <…> She took up the dozing Suraya and led her to one of the wards, put her to bed there and hurried up to the surgical department where a young Azerbaijani doctor named Fazil was awaiting her. Winning his confidence, Zayka intended to gain access to the medicines. They entered his office and shut the door.572

The prevailing stereotypes about Armenians planted in the Azerbaijani society certain notions about a “typical Armenian” behavior: the Armenian character must necessarily be envious, feigning and ultimately treacherous (deception and betrayal).

Always abusing our kind-heartedness, friendship, fidelity to neighbors and generosity, in a word, our love of fellow men, Armenians turned it into a weapon against us, repaid good with evil by laying bare their treacherous nature. At the earliest opportunity, they drew their daggers to stab in the back those who had given them refuge, food, drink, protection extending them a helping hand.573

Russian and Armenian joined forces to attack the peaceful nomads’ camp for murder and plunder. The people of the nomads’ camp, Azerbaijanis, who had always considered Armenians as their younger and Russians as their еlder brothers were astounded by their treachery and perfidy <…> He looked up to see his friends, the Russian Stepan and the Armenian Valod enter the forge; they had kept saying to Ilham: “You are my brother”.574

The plot of Ilham and Fariza told the story of a couple that fell victim to the soviet troops moved into Baku after a week-long Armenian pogrom, which in Azerbaijan is referred to as the Black January. It is emblematic in a context where a use of fictional devices and propaganda makes the modern Azerbaijani youth believe that on January 20th, the Armenians and Russians “killed the Azerbaijani heroes”. This is clearly shown in a video report575 in which the schoolchildren answer the reporter’s questions, such as: “what happened on January 20, 1990 in Baku?”, “who did our shekhids fight against and whom did they protect?”, “why did they kill us?” The children gave the following answers:

• On that day, Armenians killed Azerbaijanis, and our heroes courageously protected us.

• Because they didn’t like our motherland.

• They fought against Armenians, whose tanks drove over the heads of our people and they protecting our independence from the Russian imperialism.

Also, Armenians are portrayed as having a characteristic and typical toolbox such as “underhand killing” and “stabbing in the back”.

Leyla Sayfutdinova: The plot of the novel entitled Key to Your House by R. Huseynova (2008) unfolds in a period running from the early 20th century to 1930s, in which the Armenians killed the 9-year-old son of an Azerbaijani named Sadiyar Aga during an incursion into his land. Later, he kills all of the raiders, apart from the instigator named Levon Sarkisyan who comes from the Ottoman Turkey and carries in his heart a loathing for all Turks. The work of the Azerbaijani author tells how Sadiyar gives in to the pleas of his wife not to kill a father in front of his children and spares Levon who then tracks Sadiyar down and kills him from behind.576

The depiction of brutality, bloodshed and violence expectedly perpetrated by Armenians holds a special place in the Azerbaijani literature:

“In the meanwhile, blood flew like water in the nomads’ camp. Pools of blood formed all over the place. Cries and moans rose to the skies. The survivors were looking for their kins. Fariza felt an ill foreboding, she ran to the forge and found Ilham there bleeding to death”.577

“The Armenians torn out his beard, knocked out his teeth, put out his eyes, cut off his ears and nose… My grandmother saw it happen. The women and children of his house were made to watch as they were doing this to him. Next, they started shooting women… The entire Muslim part of the city was committed to fire”.578

“My little one, they were chopping our infants to pieces, ripped our pregnant women open with their bayonets and spoke of the “sweet Turkic blood”, all these beasts!”579

Samvel Martirosyan, a member of the Xenophobia Prevention Initiative, believes that Azerbaijan’s raising generation is targeted by the state propaganda which foments feelings of hatred towards Armenians. This means that the state propaganda infiltrates a domain where it is not supposed to be, and this issue must be raised internationally.

Final remarks

We have attempted to review most, if not all significant aspects of the public life of Azerbaijan that displays a premeditated and far-reaching cultivation and indoctrination of armenophobia at state policy level.

It infiltrates all aspects of the country’s life on both horizontal and vertical planes engulfing all groups irrespective of sex, age and social status. The level of involvement in the fight against “the world Armeniandom” encompasses all most significant areas of country’s socio-economic and intellectual life, such as its science, economy, politics, upbringing, education, culture and sport.

Fallacious practices are employed along with the distortion and arbitrary interpretation of the universal set of values. The core meaning of certain categories is replaced to impose a form that is essentially in contradiction with universal concepts. This comes to discredit such concepts as patriotism and tolerance, law and morality, good and evil.

It is the missing tolerance that sets conditions for an emerging aggression. Unacceptable in a civilized society, it nonetheless exists in today’s Azerbaijan, which, in its turn, signals the continuing existence of a fertile soil for the emergence of a xenophobic propaganda.

However, the ethnic intolerance must not be regarded in isolation from the progression of the Azerbaijani national self-awareness, as it forms an integral part of the process, rather than an individual social and psychological phenomenon.

Yet, it must be noted that the anti-Armenian propaganda which targets the Azerbaijani society carries serious risks for Armenia as well.

Modern.az has conducted a poll among the three generations of Azerbaijanis; the respondents included grandparents, parents and children. Contrasted to a more or less adequate appraisal of Armenians on behalf of adult respondents, the children’s aggression is a matter of concern for the future of our own youngsters.580

Gismet, 5th grader: Lachin is the place, where my father and mother were born, it is my homeland. Now, these lands are in the hands of the mean Armenians. They are bad and cruel people. But they must not be feared, as they are a weak people and a weak state”. <…>In order to make Lachin ours again, we need a strong army to kill Armenians and recover our lands. <…> When I grow up, I will be brave like Mubariz, and I will return our lands. If I can get my hands on an Armenian child, I’ll kill him/ her. I will do all that they have done in Khojaly. My heart is filled with hatred of them <…>

Do we have to fight the enemy on the battlefield only? <…> Armenians must be fought against everywhere, even in sports. The Armenian children always said that Sultanbek was a bad man who had banished them from Lachin. They perceived our heroes as their enemies and hated them.

Aysel, 10 years old: <…> The Armenians are our enemies. They are bad people. They kill people. They want to take our land from us. They want to kill the people, children. My mother told me. <…> If I see an Armenian child, I will kill him/her.

<…>The youngest of children, a preschooler Aikhan, though did not venture to kill an Armenian child, but said that he would still beat him up in revenge.

Sooner or later, the peace will be restored in the region. What will be the face of such peace, if the next generation treads heavy with hatred to another people, and the murderous intent becomes part of its identity?

Will the feelings of hatred towards Armenians dissipate? Will it take years before generations change and those harboring feelings of armenophobia disappear as a form of perceiving the surrounding world?

Yet, such policy of inciting hatred for Armenians is no less prejudicial for the Azerbaijani society in short and long perspective. Unable to show real aggression against the Armenians, the new generations of Azerbaijanis develop psychological phenomena known as transference, when the hatred is directed against a more readily available and weaker entity, and sublimation, when an aggressive impulse takes an entirely different form against an entirely different object.

Father axes his daughter of fifteen in Agdzhabedy”, “Husband kills wife for too little salt in food in Sabirabad region”, “Resident of Baku maims girl for his rejected advances”, “17-year-old stabs his 14-year old brother five times over a computer game in the Khachmaz region”, “Man pours gasoline on civil wife and sets her ablaze in Baku”, “Brother beheads his 16-year-old sister in Shemakha.

<…> The results of a research conducted in a local university were literally shocking for specialists. “The latent aggression among the Azerbaijani youth simply exceeds all limits. Massive verbal aggression (verbal expression of negative feelings), rumors, gossip and envy among the students lead us to believe that a further surge of aggression is to be expected in the coming years”, says Araz A. Manuchei-Lalei, an associate professor at the chair of Psychiatry of the Medical University of Azerbaijan.581

Raising entire generations in a spirit of hatred for Armenians based on false stereotypes, the rulers of Azerbaijan attack the minds of their children robbing them of any chance to follow a natural path of development and personal growth. Instead, the resulting product of such policy is a citizen who takes an aggressive stance against his arch enemy – the Armenian – fully prepared to take ruthless action against Armenians. The heroization of Ramil Safarov by the leadership of Azerbaijan sets a precedent for generations to come which raised under the heavy load of the anti-Armenian propaganda are pushed towards similar ‘heroic deeds’ by all means available.