"THE SYRIAN GAME" OF YEREVAN

The confrontation in Syria was a special theme for Armenia from the very beginning - primarily because of the large and influential Armenian community there. And frankly, there was not even a theoretical chance that the bloody civil war, ruining the lives of tens and hundreds of thousands of Alawites, Sunnis, Turkomans and Kurds, would not affect the Syrian Christians, including Armenians.

At the same time, one can see several stages in the approaches of the Armenian audience and political elite to the Syrian crisis. Initially, they quite sincerely worried about the fate of compatriots and reported in detail all incidents that somehow affected the Armenian community. Later, when the civil war engulfed Damascus and Aleppo, where most of the Syrian Armenians were concentrated, the mass evacuation of compatriots to Armenia began. Even special flights were organized. And in the tradition of the Armenian policy of resettlement, it was planned to settle them in the occupied Azerbaijani lands. But the "policy of resettlement" failed. There were no volunteers to go from one war to another. The Syrian Armenians did not stay even in Armenia. To the sheer surprise of Yerevan, even the special flights were cancelled - there were no passengers.

Then the interest in the events in Syria began to decline in Armenia. But with the emergence of ISIS, which later became IS, the situation changed. The crisis in Syria became a convenient excuse to blame all the deadly sins on Turkey and Azerbaijan. The Yerevan media and Armenian lobbyists abroad vigorously "promoted" the simple scheme: the "Islamists" in Syria are supported by Turkey with one goal - to ensure that they "continue the extermination of Armenians" now in Syria. In full accordance with well-known postulate of Goebbels propaganda: The bigger the lie, the more it will be believed. Now almost nobody was thinking about the compatriots in Syria - their fate only interested Yerevan politicians as an "information excuse" for more attacks on Turkey and to a lesser extent on Azerbaijan.

The episode with the capture of the Armenian town of Kesab near Aleppo in the spring of this year is very revealing here. In early April, Armenian, and not only Armenian, media reported chilling details of the capture of Kesab by militants of the Al-Nusra group associated with Al-Qa'eda and the horrific massacre of its civilian population. Moreover, both Armenian journalists and Armenian lobbyists, up to members of the US Congress, asserted that the matter is about terrorists "based in Turkey", who captured Kesab only to "continue the genocide of the Armenians".

And then the media leaked information that in reality everything was quite different. It turned out that Kesab itself interested the Syrian opposition for a reason - near this town there was a radar station, from which the government forces intercepted radio transmissions of Syria opposition groups. Then the mayor of the town, Vasken Chaparian, as widely reported in the press, including in the South Caucasus, confidently said that there can be no talk of 80 killed Armenians and that all civilians had been evacuated from Kesab and, of course, they lost all but are alive and safe. Then, it turned out that the eerie video footage circulated on the Internet and labelled as a "massacre of Armenians in Kesab" has no relation to the Armenians and Kesab. One video shows terrorists executing captured soldiers of the Syrian government troops. This is certainly a grave war crime, but not a massacre of Armenians civilians in Kesab. Another video looked more like a staged scene from a "movie for adults". On top of all, old men evacuated from Kesab were found in Turkey.

Now Armenia started "promoting" a new episode - the explosion in an Armenian church in Deir ez-Zor by ISIS terrorists. According to the Armenian religion expert Vardan Khachatryan, "the fact that the Church of All Saint Martyrs in Deir ez-Zor was blown up on 21 September (Independence Day of Armenia) shows that, in principle, Armenia is one of the targets for terrorists".

Moreover, as emphasized, the church was erected in memory of the victims of the "Armenian genocide". A special statement condemning the attack was issued by many diplomatic missions accredited in Armenia. This is undoubtedly more than clear: the explosion of a church is a crime before God according to the canons of any religion. However, in Armenia and in the circles of the Armenian lobby, they immediately put forward an original theory: behind the explosion of the church was malignant Turkey, which is thus trying to prevent ... the recognition of the "Armenian genocide". And this theory was even repeated by US Congressmen Adam Schiff, Frank Pallone, Jim Costa and Sandy Levin, who are closely related to the Armenian lobby.

Of course, the theory that Yerevan considered the tragedy in Syria to be a good excuse to accuse Turkey of all conceivable sins once again has a right to exist. Professional Armenian lobbyists, realizing that the centenary of the "genocide" is just around the corner, but there are still no special achievements in sight, again saw the Syrian tragedy and the actions of ISIS as an opportunity to "put in an appearance" and remind everyone of themselves.

However, experts do not exclude that the "promotion of the theme" about the continuation of the "Armenian genocide" in Syria may have another component, or rather, goal. And here it is better not to forget that the myth of the "Armenian genocide" was intended from the outset to "justify" territorial claims to the six Eastern Anatolian vilayets from which it was planned to carve "Western Armenia". Now Armenian circles, and not only, are circulating the idea of "Christian autonomy" in the Middle East. 

Reminder: In July 2012, according to Izvestiya newspaper, "the association of Syrian Christians living outside Syria" issued a declaration calling for the unification and creation of an autonomous region or even their own state on the territory of Syria. We should note here that amid the instability in Iraq in the autumn of 2008, Armenian circles very actively discussed plans for Christian autonomy in the oil-rich north of this state. In any case, at the same time the Yerevan newspaper Novoye Vremya openly linked the killings of Christians in Mosul with plans to build ... "Armenian-Assyrian autonomy" in northern Iraq. And it inadvertently let it slip that the majority of local Armenians moved to the oil-rich north of Iraq from the south of the country in the last year or two. "In an interview with the Beirut newspaper Azdak, the spiritual leader of the Armenian Catholics of Iraq, Levon Adamyan, confirmed that the Armenians living in Baghdad receive offers to move to the northern provinces of Al-Hamdaniya and Telkaif. This was mentioned at a press conference in Yerevan by the head of the Central National Office of the Armenians of Iraq, Paruyr Hakobyan," the publication says.

As we see, there was an attempt to knock together "Christian autonomy" near "oil fields" and Armenians were sent there almost under orders from above. This idea was not implemented at the time. But now, it seems, they have recollected it again.