PECULIARITIES OF ARMENIAN ARITHMETIC

Falsifying history is fraught with enormous danger, not only for the purity of the science, but primarily as a source of creating serious precedents, and also as a potential opportunity for causing new territorial conflicts and exacerbating existing ones. At the present time, on the threshold of the centenary of the so- called "Armenian genocide", this problem demands especially fixed attention, for the country shouting about this very serious crime against humanity is the one whose politicians, public figures and military are themselves guilty of committing similar acts on the territory of neighbouring states. The Armenians are also demanding world recognition for their scandalous duplicity, forcing their way through the laws of ordinary logic for their purpose, without any common sense, and also breaching the laws of international law on their way.

The need to expose the threat to the whole region and the world of Armenian politics has become the leitmotif at the international conference "The false genocide of the Armenians: the falsifications and the realities" held at the Baku Institute for Human Rights of the ANAS [Azerbaijani Academy of Sciences] on 10 April.

The stand taken by Turkey which Yerevan accuses of the genocide is well-known, namely that the events of a century ago occurred during the First World War, in which 17m people perished, 5m of them in Turkey, and these were people of different nationalities, which in itself does not give any grounds for saying that there was a targeted annihilation of any specific people. At any rate this is a job for the historians, for the experts, and the Turkish authorities have many times repeated that they are prepared to open up their archives to them.

As noted by a participant in the conference, the head of the Centre for Eurasian Studies of Turkey, Alev Kilic, the experts should at least have tried to prove that the Turkish authorities could somehow have organised the murder, mentioned by Armenia, of 1.5m people at the beginning of the 20th century. You see, for example, a whole system existed to do that in Nazi Germany, ranging from punitive squads to concentration camps. Terrible as it might sound, it is not that easy to exterminate hundreds of thousands of people. It is no less complicated to organise the transfer of such an enormous number of people, and therefore, at any rate, Yerevan would appear to have got things wrong. What Armenians refer to by a big word like "deportation", was forced relocation.

On the impossibility of drawing any conclusions, at least because the historians have not finished the job yet, it is stated in an interview with Regionplus by Christian Johannes Henrich, the director of the research centre for South-East Europe and the Caucasus in the German town of Siegen. "The archives in Armenia are not open to the public. Besides that, Yerevan is refusing to hold a historical conference, which Turkey has many times offered to do," Henrich pointed out.

However, in spite of this, for the moment there are audiences prepared to listen to "Armenian histories" and to completely overlook the fact that Armenia itself is an aggressor, something which is recognised in international resolutions.

The director of the Institute for Human Rights of the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan, Aytan Mustafayeva, reminded those attending the conference that the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict and the occupation by Armenia of 20 per cent of Azerbaijan's territory is part of a targeted policy which has been pursued by the Armenians against the Azerbaijani people for 200 years.

This policy was their motive force during the systematic and targeted murder of the Turkic-Muslim population of Azerbaijan and Eastern Anatolia committed by the Armenian nationalists at the beginning of the 20th century, during the expulsion of the Azeris from Armenia and during the genocide in Xocali [Khojaly]. Unlike the so-called "Armenian genocide", witnesses to these events are still alive and ready to testify. Moreover, the most terrible thing is that those to blame for these tragedies occupy leading posts in contemporary Armenia and are still daring to talk about justice.

Azerbaijan has still not heard an objective political and legal assessment of the atrocities committed by the Armenians against the civilian Azerbaijani population purely on the basis of their ethnicity, although there is convincing evidence that Armenian terrorism has been going on for more than a hundred years. "In 1885, the 'Armenakan' party was set up on the territory of the Ottoman Empire for the purpose of undermining the Turkish state by committing acts of terrorism and implementing an intensive strategy. After the First World War, "Hnchak" and "Dashnaktsutyun" armed detachments on the territories of Azerbaijan and Eastern Anatolia set fire to towns and villages and looted them, and committed the mass extermination of people," Alev Kilic noted in his speech. 

But terrorism may acquire other forms too, aimed at the destruction of cultural monuments and taking over the history and culture of other peoples. It has been proven that mono-ethnic Armenia, which paradoxically exists in a multi-ethnic region, is to blame for the destruction of Azerbaijan's historic architecture and the cultural heritage of other peoples, for replacing Azerbaijani place names with Armenian-sounding ones and for Armenianising the Albanian Christian heritage and churches. "How do these acts committed by the Armenians differ from what Islamic State fighters are getting up to at present, destroying the priceless monuments of human civilisation which have a 2000-2500-year history?" Fuad Axundov [Akhundov], head of section in the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration asked. He called the acts of the Armenian authorities even greater blasphemy than the vandalism of the Islamic State extremists, for the destruction of cultural monuments in Armenia has been legalised by the state itself.

"Today the whole of the civilised world is talking about the moral and criminal responsibility of the extremists in the Middle East for destroying monuments of world culture, while Armenia is the only country in the world where a unique monument has been erected to the architect who was responsible for the destruction. We are talking about the architect Tamanyan who drew up and implemented the master plan, within the framework of which mediaeval Azerbaijani Erivan [Yerevan] was completely demolished," he noted.

According to Axundov, "the historiography of modern Armenia is trying to prove to everyone that two times two is five and three times three is ten".

It would appear that that is history, where arguments can long rage over the origin and date of manuscripts, where every new find can be the reason for revising the previous views, where, when all is said and done, different methodological approaches exist. But the attempts to pull the wool over people's eyes by using the terminology of international law would seem to be absolutely ridiculous. But this is exactly how the unsuccessful attempts to criminalise denials of the "Armenian genocide" look.

And this is yet another clear example of the short distance from the falsification of history to the falsification of political decisions and international legal norms. Any lawyer will tell you that the recognition of the so called "Armenian genocide" by the parliament of any country by no means provides sufficient grounds for introducing a law on criminalising the denial of it. Naturally canny politicians and journalists can adduce far-fetched restrictions as they please with relation to freedom of speech and ideas in all international documents, but that will not have the force of law. And it is pointless to compare the criminalisation of the so-called "Armenian genocide" with the criminalisation of the Holocaust, a fact which, unlike the "Armenian genocide", was recognised by the International Tribunal at which the Nazi criminals were tried. 

 "The Holocaust was a crime which was established by the court, for which specific persons were punished; in the case of the "Armenian genocide", it is presented by the Armenians as they wish, and to demand punishment for denying it is a violation of the bases of the right of freedom of speech. Lawyers look at things in a simpler way, since they are appealing facts established by the court. In any case, criminal responsibility is borne not by a country but by concrete persons," this is how Moldovan ombudsman Aurelia Grigoriu, who also attended the conference in Baku, commented to Regionplus on the issue.

The Armenian lobby is trying to push through recognition of the "Armenian genocide" by means of the state parliaments in different countries. For example, the German Bundestag is to be faced with a similar "test" in the very near future. In the view of Christian Johannes Henrich, which he expressed in his interview with Regionplus, politicians sometimes take decisions in their own interests and not in the interests of science and based on historical debates on the matter. However, the German expert is also convinced that the German parliament is hardly likely to include the word "genocide" in its final resolution.

A similar opinion was expressed by the Moldovan ombudsman: "In actual fact, parliament cannot recognise or not recognise. It can listen to the arguments on the subject, after which each Member of Parliament will make up his own mind. We are not talking about the fact of recognition, but about conveying information to people who are representing their country on an international level and vote in international structures. Naturally, this is precisely why it is important and now I am trying to get the Moldovan parliament to have a hearing on the genocide in Xocali."

In actual fact, in the final count facts and common sense should prevail over falsifications.