BIASED CONFERENCE AT CHAPMAN PRESENTS AZERI VIEW ON KARABAKH
Thursday, March 14th, 2013
A scene from the pro-Azeri conference
BY ANI ASLANIAN
ORANGE, Calif.-On Friday March 8, Chapman University hosted an all-day
lecture conference entitled “Struggle between the Seas” regarding the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The conference featured prominent speakers
such as former United States Ambassador and OSCE Minsk co-chair to
the United States, Robert Bradke, and Rudolf Perina
Other speakers included: Thomas de Waal, Senior Associate, Caucasus,
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Tracey German, UK
Ministry of Defense Staff College; Asbed Kotchikian, Lecturer,
Bentley University; E. Wayne Merry, Senior Fellow for Europe and
Eurasia, American Foreign Policy Council; Ambassador Rudolf Perina,
Former Senior Deputy, Assistant Secretary of State for European
and Canadian Affairs; Alexandros Petersen, Advisor, Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars; George Zarubin, President/CEO,
Eurasia Partnership Foundation; Taleh Ziyadov, Research Fellow,
Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy, and in opening and closing remarks,
the director for the Center of Global Education at Chapman University,
James J.
Coyle.
The conference began with keynote speakers Robert Brakde and Rudolf
Perina describing their involvement with OSCE Minsk and how they
envisage prospects for peace in Nagorno-Karabakh. Former Ambassador
Rudolf Perina stated that the status quo will maintain for quite a
while, and that the price of a full-scale war will heavily impact
not only Armenia and Azerbaijan but also the Caucuses region in
its entirety.
Furthermore, Asbed Kotchikian emphasized the necessity of addressing
barriers that stand in the way of peace negotiations such as hateful
rhetoric and a new generation of Armenians and Azerbaijanis that do
not actually live together like they did in Soviet SSSR. According
to Kotchikian, it is necessary to find a dialogue to address these
issues first and foremost.
Taleh Ziyadov’s presentation focused on previous peace negotiations
for Nagorno-Karabakh and highlighted the notion that the only way
a peace process can be settled would be in light of having another
Key West-type negotiation with Western leadership. Ziyadov stated,
“John Kerry is trusted by Armenians in the West and should take over
Nagorno-Karabakh negotiations to make a difference.” One can only
speculate where Ziyadov acquired the generalization and perception
that Armenians trust the new secretary of state for the United States
John Kerry. After all, not too long ago, following the fashion of
his predecessor Hillary Clinton, newly elected Kerry retracted from
his original promise and refrained from using the word ‘genocide’
to describe the systematic annihilation of the Ottoman Armenians
from 1915-1923.
However, the theme of changing the political makeup of OSCE Minsk
group became one of many focal points in nearly all discussions to
follow. Currently the OSCE Minsk group is composed of the United
States, France, and Russia. Wayne Merry for example, even went so far
as to say that the problem with the current OSCE group is that all
countries are biased in favor of Armenia, and spoke about the Armenian
lobby as having a large impact on Capitol Hill. Merry further claimed
that the involvement of Turkey is a necessity in the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict, because Turkey is in a position to “encourage responsible
behavior” by Azerbaijan. Merry suggested a patron client relationship
between Azerbaijan and Turkey to parallel the relationship Armenia
has with Russia. Merry stated, “This is the only way Baku will feel
less threatened and isolated”. When an Armenian student asked Merry
to explicate what he meant about the alleged bias of the OSCE Minsk
group, he reconfigured his original statement and answered, “I didn’t
say that the diplomatic process is biased, I said that there is a
perception in the Azerbaijani government that those three nations
tilt towards Armenians.” However, Merry’s prejudiced and Armenophobic
statements did not stop there, he further claimed that “Karabakh is
being supported immensely by the Diaspora”, and that “the real price
of this conflict is being imposed upon Armenians actually inhabiting
Nagorno-Karabakh”. Perhaps it didn’t cross Merry’s mind that the very
notion that a vast Armenian diaspora today exists is precisely the
result of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the Armenian Genocide.
Notorious Azeri sympathizer Thomas De Waal shared similar sentiments,
referring to Karabakh as a “diaspora project,” and claiming that
Armenians occupy Nagorno Karabakh. De Waal also claimed that the
hateful rhetoric in Azerbaijan is mere “theatrics” and described
Armenians as passive aggressive for maintaining the status quo with
regards to Nagorno-Karabakh.
In defense of De Waal’s original statement, an Azerbaijani student
stated that the reason Azerbaijani people feel a perpetuated sense
of hate toward Armenians is due to the alleged Khojaly massacre.
When a student questioned De Waal and asked him to illuminate on what
he meant by “occupied” since Nagorno-Karabakh has been inhabited by
Armenians for thousands of years as the Ancient Armenian Kingdom of
Artsakh, and to describe how exactly does an Armenian soldier die
in his sleep due to an Azerbaijani axe murderer transcend into mere
theatrics, de Waal retracted his original statement and stated…
“I don’t call Nagorno-Karabakh itself occupied, I believe a lot of
Armenians were born there and resided there. What I regard as occupied
are regions outside of Nagorno-Karabakh, such as Agdam, where there was
zero Armenian population before the war…perhaps there were hundreds
of years ago, but basically, the people that lived there aren’t there
anymore, and these are empty lands. When I say that it is theatrical
I don’t mean to say that it doesn’t have real implications.
The aggression is far more in the public sphere than it is outside
of it.”
In closing remarks, the organizer of the event, James Coyle mentioned
that both Turkey and Azerbaijan are suffering as a result of this
conflict. Coyle claimed that it is unfair that Azerbaijan is an
ally in the war in Afghanistan, yet due to section 907, the United
States requires an annually signed waiver to provide financial aid
to Azerbaijan, while Armenia does not have this precondition. Coyle
further claimed that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict impacts Turkey’s
prospective to join the European Union because the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict “keeps 1915 as a contemporary phenomenon and not something
that took place 100 years ago.”
In response to these preposterous claims, a student in the audience
pointed out that Azerbaijan’s military spending in 2012 surpassed the
entire GDP of Armenia as a country. Coyle’s answer to this statement
was the following…
“I guess I should have said that the U.S. could have provided
Azerbaijan financial assistance in the early years of 1900’s, when
it needed U.S.’s help. In 2005 they started to become financially
very independent because of a pipeline but Pre-1991 they were the
poorest of the socialist republics of the USSR. Even today when the
president signed the waiver to give Azerbaijani defense forces an
economic boost, Azerbaijan said okay, we are going to use it for
our navy in the Caspian sea; from the U.S. perspective that money
would’ve best spent on the Iranian border. U.S. interests are being
hurt, because we have a border we aren’t utilizing and we could be
squeezing Iran through Azerbaijan and we aren’t doing it.”
An Armenian student also questioned the political motives of keeping
these refugees instead of reintegrating them into society considering
the enormous amount of wealth the Azerbaijani government has and the
financial aid from the U.S. To this question de Waal asserted that the
refugees have been reintegrated as far as they could have. However,
in more recent accusations of Azerbaijani suffering, these refugees
from Nagorno-Karabakh are often cited.
Considering the remarks of the organizer of this event, it becomes
all too apparent that this so-called unbiased conference was another
Azerbaijani sympathizing propaganda tactic to take away from the
real problems facing generations of Armenians and Azerbaijani’s that
cannot possibly conceive of peaceful coexistence. Not only did Coyle
compare two incredibly distinct economies, he completely attributed
the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as keeping the Armenian Genocide a
modern phenomenon – as if the denialist policy of Turkey was not
enough of a reason to keep the Armenian Genocide as a modern discourse.
Conceivably Coyle also requires a brief lesson in the Copenhagen
Criteria, which determines what countries are eligible to join the
European Union. Considering Turkey’s occupation of Cyprus, human
rights records, and having the most jailed journalists in the world,
the idea that Nagorno-Karabakh conflict somehow hampers Turkey’s
potential to join the European union is asinine and doesn’t take into
consideration grimmer explanations.
And finally, when one embarks on a conference to shed light
on sensitive topics concerning human suffering and the right
to self-determination, it is best to portray unprejudiced and
unfalsified information to the audience. This audience is not merely
the audience on March 8th, but the international audience, including
the lives of individuals who have been severely impacted as a result
of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. As individuals we must utilize
our intellectual capabilities and ask ourselves how falsified and
one-sided information has ideological implications on our perceptions.
The road to peace and understanding is not through discussing
conflicts in air-conditioned rooms with business suits, spiting
hateful rhetoric about neighboring countries, nor assessing conflicts
through the lens of one view point. Any talks of understanding that
bear these characteristics will only allow for more misapprehensions
and futile discussions. The road to understanding between Armenians
and Azerbaijanis will come to light once the veil of ignorance and
prejudice is unmasked and relationships based on understanding and
the commitment to ultimate truth manifest.
Ani Aslanian is a senior at University of California Irvine, triple
majoring in Philosophy, European Studies, and Humanities and Law.
From: Baghdasarian
http://asbarez.com/108802/biased-conference-at-chapman-presents-azeri-view-on-karabakh/