By Ivan Gharibyan

Azerbaijan’s chief ideologist and propagandist of Azerbaijan has decided to make a show of his wit. Elnur Aslanov, Head of the Political Analysis and Information Department, Presidential Administration of Azerbaijan, has let his imagination run wild.

“The Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians are seeking peace in their own state, Azerbaijan. They want to be involved in the socio-economic development and enjoy the preferences arising from effective development,” stated the chief ideologist of modern-day Azerbaijan. Moreover, he expressed the confidence that “the people living in Nagorno-Karabakh do not want to be an object of official Yerevan’s irrational policy.” According to Aslanov, Armenia is holding the Nagorno-Karabakh people hostage, imposing its viewpoint on them.

President Ilham Aliyev’s right-hand man does not appear to be well informed of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, or he decided to deliberately lie through his teeth, as Azerbaijan has not any sound arguments to present. Reading his statements, you think back to the year 1988: February, most people in Armenia are living their life and, all of a sudden, hear about a decision made by the Regional Council of People’s Deputies of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region. The Council decided to petition for the region’s seceding from the Azerbaijani SSR and joining the Armenian SSR. At that time many Armenian citizens had a rather vague idea of Nagorno-Karabakh and even of its geographical location.

The Nagorno-Karabakh people’s aspiration to exercise their right to self-determination gave rise to the 1988 movement in Armenia, which, to a great extent, was catalyzed by the Armenian pogroms in Sumgait just a week after the Nagorno-Karabakh Regional Council made its decision. It was murders of Armenian women and children — most of whom had earlier resided in Nagorno-Karabakh — that proved a response many of the Sumgait Azerbaijanis gave to the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians’ peaceful demand. The Sumgait authorities did not take any measures to prevent the massacre. The future was to bring even larger-scale Armenian pogroms in Kirovabad and Baku, Azerbaijan’s military actions against the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians, days-long shelling of peaceful towns and villages of Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as of Armenia’s borderline regions.

So the Nagorno-Karabakh people, who are well aware of all the “delights” of Azerbaijan’s aggression, “have every reason” to dream of “returning to the fold” in order to get rid of “official Yerevan’s irrational policy,” which is Elnur Aslanov’s opinion, or rather dream. The chief Azerbaijani ideologist is constantly cultivating masochistic propensities in his own people – pipe dreams about returning to the “ancient Azerbaijani lands,” demonstration of pictures of “Azerbaijanis’ murdered by Armenians,” to say nothing of the medieval personality cult of the “national leader” Heydar Aliyev – but let him not compare his compatriots with other nations, namely, Armenians. If we imagined not only “irrational,” but antinational leadership in Armenia, even overheated imagination would not help us built up a picture of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians viewing Azerbaijan as their state.

We can understand Mr. Aslanov’s “throes of creation,” though. Poor lad, he is trying to invent something – now the “Khojali genocide” now the “capital of western Azerbaijan, Irevan.” But, alas, no one in the world has given ear to the “pearls of wisdom.” So Mr. Aslanov decided to reach the point of uttering absurdities to drive his own nationals mad. The only thing for us to do is to feel sorry for them.

T.P.