Armenia and Genocide

The Growing Engagement of Azerbaijan(1)

While the continuing struggle between Armenian and Turkish officials and activists for or against the international recognition of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 shows no sign of abating, and while its dynamics are becoming largely predictable, a new actor is increasingly attracting attention for its willingness to join this “game.” It is Azerbaijan, which has—since 1988—been engaged in at times lethal conflict with Armenians over Mountainous Karabagh.

In modern times, Armenians have often found it difficult to decide whether they should view the Turks (of Turkey) and the Azerbaijanis as two separate ethnic groups—and thus apply two mutually independent policies towards them—or whether they should approach them as only two of the many branches of a single, pan-Turkic entity, pursuing a common, long-term political objective, which would—if successful—end up with the annihilation of Armenians in their historical homeland.

Indeed, almost at the same time that the Armenian Question in the Ottoman Empire was attracting worldwide attention, extensive clashes between Armenians and Azerbaijanis first occurred in Transcaucasia in 1905. Clashes—accompanied, on this occasion, with attempts at ethnic cleansing—resumed with heightened intensity after the collapse of tsarism in 1917. They were suppressed only in 1921, by the Russian-dominated communist regime, which reasserted control over Transaucasia, forced Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia to join the Soviet Union, and imposed itself as the judge in the territorial disputes that had plagued these nations. The communists eventually endorsed Zangezur as part of Armenia, while allocating Nakhichevan and Mountainous Karabagh to Azerbaijan. This arrangement satisfied neither side. A low-intensity Armenian-Azerbaijani struggle persisted during the next decades within the limits permitted by the Soviet system. Repeated Armenian attempts to detach Mountainous Karabagh from Azerbaijan were its most visible manifestation.

At the time, Turkey was outside of Soviet control and formed part of a rival bloc in the post-World War II international order. The difference in the type of relations Armenia had with Turkey and Azerbaijan during the Soviet era partly dictated the dissimilar ways the memories of genocide and inter-ethnic violence were tackled by Soviet Armenian historians until 1988. Benefiting from Moscow’s more permissive attitude from the mid-1950’s, Soviet Armenian historians, backed implicitly by the country’s communist leadership, openly accused the Turks of genocide, but made no parallels between the circumstances under which Armenians had been killed in the Ottoman Empire or during clashes with Azerbaijanis earlier in the 20th century. Getting Moscow’s acquiescence, especially if their works would be published in Moscow and/or in Russian, was not easy for Armenians. However, Soviet Armenian historians were, at the same time, “protected” from challenges by Turkish state-supported revisionism (or, as others describe it, negationism), which was suppressed even more firmly within the Soviet Union.

Hence, it is still difficult to know what Soviet Azerbaijani historians thought about the Armenian Genocide of 1915: Were they more sympathetic to arguments produced by Soviet Armenian historians or those who had the blessing of the authorities in Ankara? The polemic between Soviet Armenian and Soviet Azerbaijani historians centered from the mid-1960’s on the legacy of Caucasian Albania. A theory developed in Soviet Azerbaijan assumed that the once Christian Caucasian Albanians were the ancestors of the modern-day Muslim Azerbaijanis. Thereafter, all Christian monuments in Soviet Azerbaijan and Nakhichevan (including all medieval Armenian churches, monasteries and cross-stones, which constituted the vast majority of these monuments) were declared to be Caucasian Albanian and, hence, Azerbaijani. Medieval Armenians were openly accused of forcibly assimilating the Caucasian Albanians and laying claim to their architectural monuments and works of literature. This was probably the closest that Soviet Azerbaijanis came—in print—to formally accusing the Armenians of committing genocide against their (Caucasian Albanian) ancestors.(2)

Since 1988, however, as the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Mountainous Karabagh has gotten bloodier and increasingly intractable, the Azerbaijani positions on both negating the Armenian Genocide of 1915 and accusing Armenians of having themselves committed a genocide against the Azerbaijanis have become more pronounced and now receive full backing from all state institutions, including the country’s last two presidents, Heydar and Ilham Aliyev. Azerbaijani officials, politicians, and wide sections of civil society, including the head of the Spiritual Board of Muslims of the Caucasus, Sheikh ul-Islam Haji Allahshukur Pashazada, as well as numerous associations in the Azerbaijani diaspora, now fully identify themselves with Turkey’s official position that the Armenian Genocide is simply a lie, intentionally fabricated in pursuit of sinister political goals. Even representatives of the Georgian, Jewish, and Udi ethnic communities in Azerbaijan have joined the effort. Unlike in Turkey, there is not yet a visible minority in Azerbaijan that openly disagrees with their government’s stand on this issue. This probably explains the absence of the Azerbaijani judiciary in the campaign to deny the 1915 genocide. If there are officials or intellectuals who remain unconvinced with this theory propagated by their government, it seems that they still prefer to keep a very low profile.

The Azerbaijani position depicts the same ambiguity as Ankara’s. On the one hand, repeating almost verbatim the arguments in mainstream Turkish historiography, they flatly deny that what happened to Armenians was genocide. At the same time, they frequently contend that this historical issue remains controversial to this day and that these genocide claims need to be further investigated. These two positions can be reconciled only if the outcome of the proposed additional research is pre-determined, whereby the proponents of the genocide explanation would eventually concede that they had been wrong all along. Indeed, Azerbaijanis try to show that Armenians are avoiding such a debate because they fear that they will lose the argument.

Azerbaijanis argue that Armenians want to convince the world that they were subjected to genocide because they plan to take advantage of this to push forward their sinister aims. They warn that, after achieving international recognition of the genocide, Armenians will demand compensation and raise territorial claims against Turkey. Moreover, Azerbaijanis maintain that Armenians, by pursuing the issue of genocide recognition, are seeking to divert international attention from their continuing aggression against Azerbaijan, including the occupation of Mountainous Karabagh. Moreover, any prominence given to the Armenian Genocide claims may—according to Azerbaijanis—also aggravate prejudice and hatred in the South Caucasus, make it difficult to maintain peace, and further delay the just regulation of the Karabagh conflict, which—they argue—is already being hindered because of Armenian intransigence and arrogance. The Azerbaijanis claim that by recognizing the Armenian Genocide, foreign countries will show themselves “to be in cooperation and solidarity with aggressor Armenia.”(3) They will also justify the actions of Armenia, which—for Azerbaijan—is a country that encourages terrorism. They will also become an instrument in the hands of (Armenian) instigators trying to stir up enmity among these countries, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and even the entire Turkic and Islamic world.

In the specific cases of both the United States and France, which are heavily involved in attempts to regulate the Karabagh conflict, recognizing the Armenian Genocide will—argue Azerbaijani sources—cast a shadow on their reputation as bastions of justice and old democratic traditions. It will also weaken their role in the Caucasus and perhaps in the whole world. Reacting to French deliberations to penalize the denial of the Armenian Genocide, Azerbaijanis argued that this would curtail free speech. In Estonia and Georgia, local Azerbaijani organizations have argued that the formal commemoration of the genocide may lead to a conflict between the Armenian and Azerbaijani communities living in those countries. Commenting on the discussion of the Armenian Genocide issue in the French legislature, an Azerbaijani deputy stated that the adoption of that bill might result in all Turks and Azerbaijanis having to leave France. Indeed, some Azerbaijanis have gone so far as to argue that pursuing the genocide recognition campaign is not helpful to Armenia either; such resolutions would further isolate Armenia in the Caucasus, while only leaders of Armenian diaspora organizations would benefit. In fact, those Armenians whose relatives died in 1915 should—according to Azerbaijani analysts—be saddened by such manipulation of their families’ tragedy in exchange for some political gains today.

Nevertheless, Azerbaijanis admit that the current Armenian strategy has had some success in convincing third parties that there was a genocide in 1915. Azerbaijanis attribute this success to a number of factors: the prevailing ignorance in the West regarding the real situation in the Caucasus; the strength of the lobbying efforts of the Armenian diaspora; and the prevailing anti-Turkic and anti-Islamic bias in the “Christian” West.

Because Armenian Genocide resolutions are usually pushed by legislators and opposed by the executive branches of various governments, the Azerbaijanis differ in their explanation of this trend. Some put the blame solely on ignorant, selfish, and short-sighted legislators, while others argue that the executive branch is also involved in these efforts. Vafa Quluzada, a former high-ranking Azerbaijani diplomat and presidential adviser, claimed that George Bush and Condoleezza Rice stood behind the resolution passed by the House International Relations Committee on Oct. 10, 2007. “The Armenian lobby was created by the U.S. administration,” he said. “If otherwise, who would allow the Armenian Assembly to sit in the building of the Congress?” Quluzada claimed that the “Americans established [the Armenian lobby] and support it in order to cover up their expansion in the world.”(4)

Within the context of their campaign against the international recognition of the Armenian Genocide, Azerbaijanis often repeat the official Turkish argument that evaluating the events of 1915 is more a job for historians than politicians. Azerbaijani officials and parliamentarians have publicly objected to the laying of wreaths by foreign dignitaries at the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan, the possible use of the term “genocide” in the annual U.S. presidential addresses on April 24, and the discussion of this issue in national parliaments or by international organizations. Azerbaijani deputies have established direct contact with foreign parliamentarians to explain their viewpoint. At the same time, Azerbaijani politicians, pundits, and news agencies consistently downplay the political weight of foreign parliamentarians who raise the genocide issue in their respective legislatures.

Moreover, organizations of Azerbaijani civil society have organized pickets and demonstrations in front of the embassies of states in Baku, which were feared to be taking steps towards recognizing the Armenian Genocide. Azerbaijani television stations have also filmed documentaries on location in Turkey recording what they describe as acts of Armenian tyranny in Ottoman times. A Russian television station, which is transmitted regularly in Azerbaijan, was temporarily taken off the air when it showed Atom Egoyan’s film “Ararat.” In October 2006, when the French National Assembly was debating the passage of the bill criminalizing the denial of the Armenian Genocide, Azerbaijani Public Television and a number of private television stations stopped showing films and clips produced in France. Finally, hackers from Azerbaijan continually attack Armenian sites with messages denying the Armenian Genocide.

Azerbaijani expatriates have also been active. On April 24, in both 2002 and 2003, Azerbaijani deputies in the Georgian parliament attempted to block suggestions by their Armenian colleagues to pay homage to the memory of Armenian Genocide victims. Azerbaijani expatriates of lesser standing have, in turn, often held demonstrations, issued statements, held press conferences, and organized books and photograph exhibitions in various countries where they reside. In the United States, the Azeris’ Union of America reported on March 15, 2006 that it had “distributed more than 600 statements and letters denouncing Armenian lies among American congressmen and senators.”(5) Azerbaijanis in America also reportedly earned the gratitude of Douglas Frantz, the managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, by sending hundreds of letters to the newspaper in his support, after he was criticized for preventing the publication of an article on the genocide by Mark Arax.(6) The State Committee on Work with Azerbaijanis Living Abroad seems to be the conduit of much of the information on such activities in the Azerbaijani diaspora. There is also evidence that the Azerbaijani embassies are often directly involved in organizing some of the said demonstrations by Azerbaijani expatriates.

Among the books distributed by Azerbaijani activists in order to propagate their own views to foreigners are some of the publications that have been printed in Baku since 1990 in Azerbaijani, Russian and English. Some of these works are authored by Azerbaijanis; others are Russian-language translations (and, in one case, a Romanian translation) of works by George de Maleville and Erich Feigl, and of Armenian Allegations: Myth and Reality: A Handbook of Facts and Documents, compiled by the Assembly of Turkish American Associations—all acclaimed by the supporters of the Turkish state-approved thesis regarding the 1915 deportations. In June 2001, Baku State University invited Feigl to Azerbaijan. He was later awarded the Order of Honor by President Ilham Aliyev. In August 2002, Samuel A. Weems, the author of Armenia: Secrets of a Christian Terrorist State, also visited Baku at the invitation of the Sahil Information and Research Center.

Former and serving Turkish diplomats, as well as Turkish and Azerbaijani parliamentarians, have repeatedly called for further cooperation and the development of a common strategy—both at the official and civil society levels—to foil Armenian lobbying efforts. Part of this cooperation is within the realm of Turkish and Azerbaijani academia; conferences dedicated fully to the Armenian issue or panels on this topic within the confines of broader academic gatherings—with the participation of Azerbaijani, Turkish, and sometimes other experts—have taken place frequently in Baku, Istanbul, Erzerum, and other locations. Among the longer-term projects, one may point out that the Turkish Historical Society, Baku State University, the Institute of Azerbaijani History, and the Association of Businessmen of Azerbaijan-Turkey established a joint working group on May 15, 2006 to make the international community aware of the Armenian issue. It would meet once every three months, alternating between Baku and Ankara. The following year, the League of Investigating Journalists in Azerbaijan launched a Center for Armenology, where five specialists, mostly immigrants from Armenia, would work. This center has reportedly established ties with Erzerum University, which already has a center on what it describes as the “alleged Armenian Genocide.”

Turkish-Azerbaijani cooperation against the Armenian Genocide recognition campaign is also evident among the Turkish and Azerbaijani expatriate communities in Europe and the United States. Indeed, some of the demonstrations mentioned above as the activities of the Azerbaijani diaspora were organized in conjunction with local Turkish organizations. Within Turkey, among the Igdir, Kars, and Erzerum residents, who consider themselves victims of an Armenian-perpetrated genocide, and who filed a lawsuit against the novelist Orhan Pamuk in June 2006, were also ethnic Azerbaijanis; their ancestors had moved from territories now part of Armenia.

Azerbaijanis, like Turks, are very interested in having the Jews as allies in their struggle against the Armenian Genocide recognition campaign. Like Turks, Azerbaijanis do not question the Holocaust. However, they liken the Armenians to its perpetrators—the Nazis—and not its victims—the Jews—as is the case among Holocaust and genocide scholars. The Azerbaijanis argue that Jews should join their efforts to foil Armenian attempts at genocide recognition because there was also a genocide perpetrated by Armenians against Jews in Azerbaijan, at the time of the genocide against Azerbaijanis in the early 20th century. They repeatedly state that several thousand Jews died then because of Armenian cruelty. The support of Jewish residents of Ujun (Germany) to public events organized by the local Azerbaijanis was attributed to their being provided with documents that listed 87 Jews murdered by Armenians in Guba (Azerbaijan) in 1918.(7)

Yevda Abramov, currently the only Jewish member of the Azerbaijani parliament, is prominent in pushing for such joint Azerbaijani-Jewish efforts. He consistently seeks to show to his ethnic Azerbaijani compatriots that Israel and Jews worldwide share their viewpoint regarding the Armenian Genocide claims. In August 2007, he commented that “one or two Jews can recognize [the] Armenian genocide. That will be the result of Armenian lobby’s impact. However, that does not mean that Jews residing in the United States and the organizations functioning there also recognize the genocide.” He explained that because expenditures for election to the U.S. Congress are high, some Jewish candidates receive contributions from the Armenian lobby and, in return, have to meet the interests of this lobby. According to Abramov, “except [for the] Holocaust, Jews do not recognize any [other] event as genocide.”(8)

Azerbaijani arguments that Armenians perpetrated a genocide against Azerbaijanis and Jews in the early 20th century have received little attention outside Azerbaijani circles. However, when the issue was touched upon in a contribution to the Jerusalem Post by Lenny Ben-David, a former Israeli adviser to the Turkish Embassy in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 4, 2007, his article was also quickly distributed by the Azeri Press Agency. Ben-David called on Israel and Jewish-Americans to be careful regarding Armenian claims against Turkey. He listed a number of instances when—he believed—Armenians had massacred hundreds of thousands of Turkish Muslims and thousands of Jews. “Recently, Mountain Jews in Azerbaijan requested assistance in building a monument to 3,000 Azeri Jews killed by Armenians in 1918 in a pogrom about which little is known,” he wrote.(9)

Even if the official Turkish and Azerbaijani positions are in total agreement regarding the denial of the Armenian Genocide, some tactical differences can be discerned when analyzing Azerbaijani news reports in recent years. For example, Azerbaijani calls to impose sanctions against states whose legislatures have recognized the Armenian Genocide have never gone beyond the rhetoric. In 2001, they were openly condemned by President Heydar Aliyev. On a few other occasions, suspicions, not to say fears, can also be noticed, when one of the two parties becomes anxious that the other partner may desert the common cause and appease the Armenian side at its own expense.

Most of these Azerbaijani efforts to correct what they perceive as purposefully distorted history are directed toward audiences in third countries, not in Armenia. For Armenians, on the other hand, the chief opponents in their quest for the international recognition of the Armenian Genocide remain the Turkish state and those segments of Turkish society, evidently the majority, which have internalized the official viewpoint. For most Armenians, the support this standpoint is increasingly receiving from Azerbaijan is still at most a sideshow. They still seem unaware of the growing Azerbaijani engagement in this issue. The “war of words” between Armenian and Azerbaijani officials remain largely confined to mutual accusations of destroying historical monuments. On certain occasions, one side or the other dubs the mixture of acts of neglect and vandalism by the other as “Cultural Genocide,” while at the same time denying that their own side has any case to answer.

However, mutual accusations of the destruction of monuments are just the tip of the iceberg in a larger interpretation of demographic processes in Transcaucasia in the last 200 years as one, continual process of ethnic cleansing. Within this context, the term “genocide” is often used as shorthand to indicate slow, but continuing ethnic cleansing, punctuated with moments of heightened violence also serving the same purpose. Indeed, where the contemporary Azerbaijani attitude toward Armenia departs from Turkey’s is now the official standpoint in Baku that the Armenians have pursued a policy of genocide against the Azerbaijanis during the past two centuries.

While the Turkish state and dominant Turkish elites vehemently object to the use of the term “genocide” to describe the Armenian deportations of 1915, and while some Turkish historians, politicians, and a few municipal authorities have accused the Armenians themselves of having committed genocide against the Ottoman Muslims/Turks—in their replies to what they say are Armenian “allegations”—this line of accusation has never been officially adopted, to date at least, by the highest authorities. It has not become a part of state-sponsored lobbying in foreign countries.

However, Azerbaijani efforts have taken a different direction over the past few years. Azerbaijani officials—even those of the highest rank—now assert repeatedly that Armenians have committed “the real genocide,” resulting in the death or deportation of up to two million Azerbaijanis in the last 200 years. Armenians, they say, invaded Azerbaijan’s historical lands, ousted its population, created an Armenian state, and falsified history through the destruction or “Armenianization” of historical Azerbaijani monuments and changing geographical names. Azerbaijan has even made a few timid, and so far unsuccessful, attempts to have the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) approve a document adopting this viewpoint. In March 2007, Iosif Shagal, the head of the Israel-Azerbaijan inter-parliamentary association, acknowledged that the Knesset had received documents about the genocide committed against Azerbaijanis.

In 1998, President Heydar Aliyev decreed March 31 as Genocide Day—an annual day of national mourning in Azerbaijan. It marks all episodes of genocide against Azerbaijanis by Armenians since the turn of the 20th century. Four specific timeframes were highlighted as periods of intense Armenian persecution and massacres. The first was 1905-07, when Azerbaijanis say that tens of thousands of civilians were killed in Yerevan, Vedibasar, Zangezur, and Karabagh, while hundreds of settlements were razed to the ground. Then, following the Communist Revolution in 1917, the Azerbaijani people reportedly faced a new series of calamities over a period of a year and a half. Tens of thousands were killed by Armenians—with communist support—in Baku beginning on March 31, 1918. (This is the symbolic date chosen to commemorate all acts of violence against the Azerbaijanis.) Azerbaijanis see a third major episode of this Armenian policy of genocide in what they describe as the mass deportation of thousands of Azerbaijanis from Soviet Armenia from 1948-53. Finally, the last intensive stage of Armenian persecution coincides with the most recent phase of the Karabagh conflict, which began in 1988.

Since 1998, a series of annual rituals has been developed in Azerbaijan to mark the Genocide Day, including a special address by the Azerbaijani president, the lowering of national flags all over the country, and a procession by officials, diplomats, and scores of ordinary citizens to Baku’s Alley of Martyrs. Ceremonies are also held in other parts of the country, along with classes dedicated to the Genocide Day in educational institutions and exhibitions. Memorials have already been erected in Guba, Nakhichevan, Shamakha, and Lankaran. Relevant events are also organized in Azerbaijani embassies abroad.

Outside the confines of Azerbaijani state structures, Sheikh ul-Islam Pashazada also appealed to the world in 2002 to recognize the events of March 31, 1918 as genocide. Azerbaijani scholars and politicians have propagated this new thesis during conferences in Turkey. On April 24, 2003, a group of writers and journalists set up an organization called “31 March” to compensate for what they thought were the feeble activities of the state structures and public organizations in this sphere. Action in this regard is also gradually spreading to the Azerbaijani diaspora and involving Turkish expatriates living in Europe.

Among all instances of mass murder specified in the Azerbaijani presidential decree on genocide, the massacre in the village of Khojaly in Mountainous Karabagh on Feb. 26, 1992 is given the most prominence. Its anniversary is now observed annually with rallies and speeches—in addition to the annual Genocide Day on March 31. In 1994, four years before the formal adoption of the Genocide Day, the Azerbaijani National Assembly had already recognized the events in Khojaly as genocide and requested parliaments throughout the world to recognize it as such. Similar requests have been repeated since, both by the country’s successive presidents and other public figures. The massacre/genocide of Khojaly also comes up regularly—and in its own right—in joint academic and educational activities by Turkish and Azerbaijani scholars.

These Azerbaijani arguments that they continue to be the target of a genocidal campaign by Armenians is going hand in hand these days with the historical thesis that Armenians are newcomers to the territories they are now living on, and that they have taken control of these territories through a premeditated campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing. The origins of this modern Azerbaijani interpretation of Armenian history go back at least to the territorial claims that the Azerbaijanis presented at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. It also manifested itself in part during the above-mentioned “paper wars” between Soviet Armenian and Azerbaijani historians from the mid-1960’s. Modern-day Azerbaijanis put the beginning of their woes with the Russian occupation of Transcaucasia in the early 19th century. They consider the districts of Yerevan, Zangezur, and the Lake Sevan basin as being, until then, historic regions of Azerbaijan; but the Russian conquerors deported their Azerbaijani population and settled in their stead Armenian migrants from the Ottoman Empire and Iran. Azerbaijanis also argue that Yerevan was an Azerbaijani city until it was granted to Armenia in 1918. The Bolsheviks are accused of having given additional territories to Armenia when the Soviet regime was installed. And, finally, it is pointed out that Armenians have conquered further territories during the recent war and that they still harbor irredentist designs toward Nakhichevan.

Within the context of this recent historical interpretation, it is becoming more frequent in Azerbaijan to describe the territories of present-day Armenia as Western Azerbaijan, and the ethnic Azerbaijanis, who lived in Armenia until 1988, as Western Azerbaijanis. There exists a non-governmental organization called the Western Azerbaijani Liberation Movement, established in 2005, which aims to protect the interests of the Western Azerbaijani emigrants, including their right to return to their original places of residence. Other related demands go further, from giving these Western Azerbaijanis—after their return—a status of an enclave within Armenia to the outright annexation of Yerevan, Zangezur, and other “Azeri territories” in today’s Armenia to Azerbaijan.

Most issues discussed in this article are of direct relevance to the future of Armenian-Turkish and Armenian-Azerbaijani relations. Any Armenian-Turkish or Armenian-Azerbaijani efforts to overcome the existing, respective antagonisms should necessarily address these Azerbaijani (and similar Turkish and Armenian) convictions and attitudes. For, understanding them will in all likelihood open the way to a better grasp of the problematic situation in Eastern Asia Minor and Transcaucasia, and may lead to those involved in conflict resolution to delve deeper into issues of identity, fears, irredentist aspirations, and prejudices, which have become an accepted part of the respective public discourses in these countries and their respective educational systems.

To escape the existing pattern of mutual accusations, additional research appears to be necessary to write a historical narrative acceptable to specialists on both sides of the political divide, which is based not only on a comprehensive and scientific study of the available facts, but which also addresses the various social, political, and ideological concerns of all the protagonists involved. The Azerbaijani attitudes described here are comparable not only to positions taken in Turkey, but also to some of the prevalent attitudes among Armenians vis-à-vis their Turkish and Azerbaijani neighbors. Limitations of space forced us to avoid this dimension altogether within this particular article. However, comparative studies of the Armenian and Azerbaijani historical narratives may be useful in separating historical facts from ideological statements and may provide an intellectual climate whereby the future coexistence of these two nations as non-antagonistic neighbors can be contemplated and discussed.

This study also indicates that the increasingly politicized use of the term “genocide” among Armenians, Turks, and Azerbaijanis is leading (perhaps unconsciously) to the trivialization of this concept, whereby its relatively strict definition provided for in the 1948 United Nations Convention is being replaced by a looser meaning. The word “genocide” often becomes, in the context described in this article, a synonym for “ethnic cleansing” or even smaller-scale and ethnically motivated massacre or murder. The frequent use of the term “genocide” by Armenians to describe the pogrom in Sumgait (Azerbaijan) in February 1988 is also indicative of this trend. While it is beyond doubt that the murder of individuals, massacres, and acts of ethnic cleansing deserve punishment as criminal offences no less than a crime of genocide, maintaining a healthy respect towards the distinctions, which scholarship has devised over decades to define the various types of mass slaughter, appears to be necessary more than ever in order to have a more accurate understanding of the peculiarities of various episodes in history and similar occurrences in the world today.

Finally, the enthusiasm shown by Azerbaijan in denying the Armenian Genocide (when modern-day Armenians do not usually hold it responsible for committing the crime) brings to attention the fact that denial is not necessarily only “the last phase of genocide”; genocide can also be denied by groups other than the perpetrators and/or their biological or ideological heirs. Genocide can be denied by the new foes of the (old) victims, and again the Armenian case is not unique and can become the topic of yet another comparative study.

EndNotes

1) This article is an abridged version of the paper “My Genocide, Not Yours: The Introduction of the ‘Genocide’ Paradigm to the Armeno-Azerbaijani ‘War of Words,’” which the author presented at the Sixth Workshop on Armenian Turkish Scholarship in Geneva on March 1, 2008.

2) This theory has continued to flourish in Azerbaijan after the collapse of the Soviet system and now often covers all Christian monuments on the territory of the Republic of Armenia, as we shall see toward the end of this article.

3) Rafig, “A genuine genocide was committed in Khojaly: The Spiritual Board of Muslims of the Caucasus hails the present position of the US Congress,” Yeni Musavat, Baku, Oct. 23, 2000.

4) “Azeri analyst sees pro-Armenian US move as assault on Islam,” Day.az, Oct. 13, 2007.

5) E. Abdullayev, “Azeri: Meeting to Denounce Lies on Armenian Genocide to Be Held in New York April 22,” Trend, March 15, 2006.

6) “Los Angeles Times’ Armenian Journalist Leaves Newspaper for Biased Article about Alleged Armenian Genocide,” Azeri Press Agency, June 20, 2007.

7) J. Shakhverdiyev, “Germans of Jewish Descent Protest Faked Armenian Genocide,” Trend, April 24, 2006.

8) I. Alizadeh, “Jews Recognize no Event as Genocide except Holocaust,” Trend, Aug. 24, 2007. This statement by Abramov that Jews recognize only the Holocaust as a genocide contradicts his use of phrases like “the genocide of Azerbaijani Jews perpetrated by the Armenians” or his reference that the massacres at Khojaly in 1992 constituted genocide.

9) “Israeli Diplomat Lenny Ben-David: Armenians Massacred Hundreds of Thousands of Muslims and Thousands of Jews,” Azeri Press Agency, Sept. 6, 2007.