"MYTH-MAKING" IN OPERATION

Pro-government media in Yerevan covered very extensively the visit that the Armenian president paid to the Irish capital, Dublin, to attend the forum of the European People's Party. Pundits point out that Serzh Sargsyan's speech tried to persuade those present that Armenia is full of determination to make efforts "towards forming effective mechanisms with the European Union, which, on the one hand, would reflect the content of Armenia's previous discussions with the EU and, on the other, would be compatible with other formats of cooperation". In other words, Armenia expects that after joining the Customs Union it will still get some preferences from the European Union as well.

However, even a quick analysis shows that, according to Yerevan, the economy or customs duties are actually not the fields where those preferences should lie. Sargsyan said directly: "We are we grateful to the European Union for giving Armenia in December 2013 an opportunity to use the generalized augmented system of preferences. Nonetheless, an important problem still needs to be solved before the advantages of this system can be used in a full-fledged manner - the illegal blockade of Armenia by Turkey, a member of the EU Customs Union, needs to be lifted. Today, when humanity remembers the horrors of the First World War which began 100 years ago, Turkey not only does not give up its policy of denial, not only does it try to consign to oblivion the memory of the millions of victims of the "genocide of Armenians" (hereafter we put the inverted commas - editor's note) and to ignore the demands of a nation deprived of motherland, and not only does it not repent of what it did, but it also continues a policy of hatred and xenophobia that aims to harm Armenia and Armenians."

Certainly, one could go on and on speaking ironically of the meaning of the phrase "a nation deprived of motherland" uttered by the Armenian president. What matters is something else: Serzh Sargsyan actually quite officially and in front of a "European" audience voices Armenia's territorial and historical claims against Turkey, removing any doubt that these claims are still on Yerevan's agenda.

In addition, many indirect signs suggest that Armenia pins serious hopes on April 2015, when the centenary of the "genocide" will be marked and when, as Serzh Sargsyan's statement suggests, Armenia expects to "advance" in its political plans, primarily in an issue such as Armenian-Turkish dialogue. I should recall that after the "rise of optimism" regarding football diplomacy and talks in Zurich, that issue hopelessly stalled again.

Perhaps, here I should say that leading world powers are indeed calling on Ankara and Yerevan to "advance the dialogue" and solve their disputes. What is more, those disputes have reached the extent where they are fraught with conflict, pundits warn. They also recall that Turkey is a member of NATO and Armenia is a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, and "bringing back to life" the conflict that originates from the First World War may lead to a large-scale confrontation involving a multitude of "third countries".

However, Serzh Sargsyan's speech in Dublin suggests that Yerevan seriously expects to "remind" Western politicians about those promises that the capital cities of the countries of the Entente generously gave to Armenian leaders ahead of the First World War, i.e. not to negotiate with Turkey but to impose on Ankara some kind of a "disguised surrender". To this end, Armenians are once again staking on the myths about the events of 1915.

Nowadays there are lots of "documents" and "proof", supplied by Armenians in media and global information space, which allege that what the year 1915 saw was "genocide of Armenians" but not a series of Armenian riots at the rear of the Turkish army which were accompanied by a monstrous slaughter of Muslim civilians. Albeit, historians have rejected that "proof" more than once. And the most important thing is that Armenian activists have still not been able to produce proof in the form of mass burials of victims of the "genocide". In any case, Armenian political circles like to tell the story that the not unknown Gourgen Yanikian (a third wave of Armenian terror started after he murdered two Turkish diplomats in California) invented, while living in the USA, a device called "yaniskofom" which could "see" 400 yards deep. 

According to Armenian media, he gave the device gratis to the US government but later asked for it to be given to him so he could search for "mass graves of Armenians" in the Syrian desert of Deir ez-Zor where they allegedly were killed in a planned manner and where he wished to erect "a monument to the victims of the genocide". However, those burials were not found even in Syria's peaceful times, although the authorities there and then were led by Bashar Asad who is very friendly towards Armenians.

Armenia has now again embarked on a search for, so to speak, "virtual dead people" or, to be exact, for large-scale falsifications meant to present anything as "burials of victims of the genocide". Some pro-Armenian specialists even tried to present an ancient roman necropolis in East Anatolia as "burials of slain Armenians" in Turkey. To recall, Turkish media have now reported that a large number of human bones have been found in pits in the historical fortress of Zerzevan, which is between Diyarbak?r and Mardin. An expert examination showed that those were remains of victims of 1990s serial killings. However, Armenian experts and also activists of a human rights group immediately said they had been following the process of the forensic examination and arrived at the conclusion that those were remains of slain Armenians. True, later they clarified that their conclusion was based not on the forensic examination but on "what survivors of the genocide said". Whether such "expert assessments" should be trusted is a purely rhetorical question but Yerevan keeps on creating myths. Sometimes it makes up "legends" that are rather like stories for thrillers than even for bespoke political propaganda. Thus, some Armenian websites are readily saying that a cargo steamship left the Turkish port of Mudanya for France's Marseille in December 1924, carrying "the bodies of slain Armenians" to France.

Naturally, the authors of that "sensation" are not providing any proof but verbal citations of rumours. They are also not explaining why after the monstrous slaughter in the First World War, when fields and roads in Europe were literally peppered with corpses, France needed to buy either dead bodies or skeletons of Armenians in Turkey and, naturally, pay for them an amount of money that would not hurt to keep at the time. The main thing is that the public has been given one more "explanation" as to why the burials of the victims of the "genocide" (of which, according to Armenian sources, there were 1.5m!) have not been found so far. And one should not forget that this myth-making in general and searches for virtual dead people in particular are meant to promote quite real Armenian claims to Turkish lands. Claims which cost huge sacrifices to both sides during the First World War and which Yerevan and circles within Armenian diaspora intend to bring back to life again.