DEEP DIVE: FILLING IN THE GAPS — READING THE RAMIL SAFAROV CASE IN AZERBAIJAN
EurasiaNet.org
Sept 11 2012
NY
What happens when a state-controlled media sets an agenda and frames
an issue in a particular way? In Azerbaijan, credulity — a state
of willingness to believe in something in the absence of reasonable
proof or knowledge — wins.
In a media environment controlled by the government like Azerbaijan’s,
as my colleague Sarah Kendzior masterfully argues about Uzbekistan,
all potential information is taken seriously. And, in the case of
the Safarov affair in Azerbaijan, the government’s elaborate framing
of what occurred, without any evidence whatsoever, has created a
well-believed narrative. This narrative, originating in 2004, is the
basis for much Azerbaijani justification in 2012.
The murder of Lieutenant Gurgen Margaryan in 2004 by Azerbaijani
Senior Lieutenant Ramil Safarov took place 10 years after a cease-fire
agreement was brokered between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Ironically,
the two military officers were participating in a NATO Partnership
for Peace English-language course.
All governments, to different degrees, use the media to sway the
public. They do this through agenda setting and framing. Agenda
setting is the “public awareness” of a set of issues while framing
is when an aspect of a perceived reality is made more salient in a
communication context to promote a particular problem, definition,
interpretation, or evaluation with cognitive schema for understanding.
By following the media reports about the incident, it is possible to
piece together the agenda setting and framing strategies.
All news content that included the name Ramil Safarov and was
translated into English by the BBC Monitoring Service from 2004-2011
was analyzed. (The search was conducted through infoweb.newsbank.com
and LexisNexis.) Though these results do not include every
possible mention of the Safarov affair, it can be considered fairly
representative of news in the countries it covers. The full text of
media coverage is available here.
The first reports of the murder were published on the same day as
the event and placed Safarov as the sole suspect. The Associated
Press quoted the Budapest police major saying: “[W]e suspect Ramil
S. of having committed murder with unusual cruelty…a number of
knife wounds…the victim’s head was practically severed from his
body.” The Armenian media also reported the murder on the day that it
occurred, based on a statement from the Armenian Defense Ministry. The
initial framing of the murder by the ministry placed Safarov as a
representative of the Azerbaijani government, with claims that the
crime was “a direct consequence of the policy of aggression, hatred,
and animosity towards the people of Armenia.”
Azerbaijani ATV television news responded to the Armenian Defense
Ministry’s statement with a “clarification” from the Azerbaijani
Defense Ministry that Safarov’s mental state must be considered. This
is the beginning of the dominant Azerbaijani framing of “Safarov was
driven to do this because the Armenians made him suffer.” In this
report, Safarov’s status as an internally displaced person (IDP) was
highlighted — his family was from an Armenian-occupied region and
his family “was living in a Baku hostel in deplorable conditions,”
although the statement did not note for how long this had occurred.
The Azerbaijani ministry spokesman also noted that “many” of Safarov’s
relatives were killed by Armenians during the war, although later
reports vary in the number of relatives killed. Thus, Safarov-as-victim
was the first introduction to the story for the Azerbaijani audience,
a completely different framing than the Armenian narrative.
The day after the murder, AFP published quotes from a statement
by the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, again framing the issue as
Safarov-as-victim-of-Armenian-aggression and focusing on his IDP
status, saying that “[A]ll this could not have failed to have an
effect on Ramil Safarov’s emotional state.” The AFP article was the
introduction of what would become the understood straw that broke
the camel’s back: Margaryan insulting Safarov. AFP quoted Azerbaijani
officials claiming that Margaryan “impugning [Safarov’s] honor as an
officer and Azeri citizen and insulting the memory of victims of the
Armenian aggression,” but without any attribution for this information.
At this point, no Azerbaijani officials had been allowed to speak to
Safarov. The only possible source would be one of the other students
at the English-language program. But how would Azerbaijani officials
be able to speak to the other students within 24 hours of the event?
It is likely that as witnesses, they were instructed by police to
not speak to anyone about what had occurred. Moreover, as military
officers, these men have had operations security ingrained into their
psyches. Information disclosure is not something that they would
take lightly. Nonetheless, there was a second Azerbaijani officer,
Anar Aliyev, on the program who may have spoken to someone about
insults, but it is impossible to know if this occurred or if the
insult argument originated from Baku.
The insult incident also conflicts with statements from the program’s
Hungarian rector, quoted in Hungarian media, that the Armenian and
Azerbaijani officers were on good terms and often joked with one
another.
A week after the murder, the kindling of the insult incident began to
ignite. A representative of the Karabakh War Veterans’ organization
held — for no apparent reason — a press conference on the Safarov
case and said that it “did not rule out that the Armenian officer had
made insulting remarks in his relations with Safarov, which brought
about the incident in the end.”
Then the insult turned into “systematically and purposefully exerted
psychological pressure” from Margaryan to Safarov, according to Bilik
news on February 25. Similarly, Azerbaijani Space TV also reported
on February 25 that “It turned out that a week before the incident,
the killed man and another Armenian officer insulted Safarov in a
dormitory. The tension was defused through the intervention of other
officers. However, as Safarov did not produce a strong reaction,
the Armenian officers regarded this as his cowardice and cruelly
insulted him. When they learnt that Safarov was from the currently
occupied Cabrayil District, the Armenian officers started insulting
him in a crueler way and exasperated him.”
It would be logical to inquire about the source of this information,
yet none exists. Azerbaijani news agency Turan said that the
information originated from “unofficial sources” on March 3, but
in the same report: “[A]sked what was known about the reasons for
the incident that led to the killing of an Armenian officer, the
[Defense Ministry] spokesman said the investigation into the incident
was still under way and that the Hungarian side was not disclosing
any information in the interests of the investigation.”
On February 27, the Azerbaijani ombudsman added more twists to the
insult: “Not only did he [Armenian officer] play a tape with the voices
of suffering Azerbaijani women and girls, but he also cleaned his
shoes with an Azerbaijani flag in front of Ramil [Safarov]. At that
moment Ramil defended his national honor and responded immediately
and correctly to this. I think that the world community should
accept this.”
How did the ombudsman learn that a tape of suffering Azerbaijanis was
played? And how did Margaryan, age 16 in 1994 during the last possible
time any such tape could have been created, have such a tape 10 years
later? And why did he bring this tape to Budapest with him? Similarly,
how did the ombudsman learn that about a shoe cleaning incident?
Finally, on March 9, there is a third-hand report of repeated insults.
Azerbaijani Space TV reported that Safarov’s father met with Safarov
and was told about the repeated insults. What seems strange is that
it is a reasonable assumption that Safarov’s attorneys instructed
him to not admit guilt or discuss possible motives with anyone, even
his father. Nonetheless, Safarov’s attorney also spoke to Space TV
and said the incident had occurred because of the Armenian officer’s
“unethical behavior.” After this, the news about the Safarov case
quieted down for a while, but in May, the ombudsman and Safarov’s
attorney met with Safarov. The attorney reported that only 10 people
had been questioned as witnesses and three forensic examinations had
been carried out and that Attorney Ismayilov had not been allowed
to closely familiarize himself with the case. Given this, the claims
over what occurred during the murder are even stranger.
The trial began in November 2004, but was postponed until February
2005. In March, the Azerbaijani Organization of Karabakh Liberation
and other NGOs published a document making the insult argument to the
Hungarian parliament, media, and the court itself to no avail. The
trial finished in April 2006 during which Safarov was found guilty
of both the murder of Margaryan and the intended murder of the other
Armenian officer. The sentence was upheld in February 2007. In August
of 2012, Safarov returned to Azerbaijan and was immediately pardoned
and promoted as a hero.
In the days following the pardon, the Azerbaijani social media
discussion frequently cited the insult incident as fact and the
Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry mentioned it in a letter to Hungary
(it is unclear for whom the letter is intended).
It is impossible to know if, in fact, Margaryan or the other Armenian
officers insulted Safarov, played a tape of suffering Azerbaijanis,
or cleaned his shoes with the Azerbaijani flag. However, no witness
came forward in the media or the trial to support any of these claims.
Non-Armenian or Azerbaijani witnesses have no motivation to not testify
to what they saw. Despite the absence of evidence, the vast majority
of Azerbaijanis seem to believe that Margaryan insulted Safarov.
What role does evidence play in Azerbaijan? The media has to promote
the state’s line and does so by engaging in kompromat (from the Russian
abbreviation of compromising materials). Traditionally mudslinging
about political figures, kompromat “often employs somewhat dubious
facts and figures, sometimes with a grain of truth and sometimes
essentially groundless.” Thus, for the media, evidence does not matter.
But why are Azerbaijani citizens willing to believe stories without
evidence? First, the psychological state of Azerbaijani citizens is
marked by a “pervasive bitterness and growing sense of deprivation,”
a general sense of apathy and fear, and a lack of trust in others.
Second, the Azerbaijani public trusts the state run media. Nearly half
of Azerbaijanis (in an early 2012 survey conducted by the Caucasus
Research Resource Center) cite ANS television as the most trusted TV
channel, and a quarter named Khazar. Moreover, nearly three-quarters
of Azerbaijanis believe that TV channels provide unbiased news
coverage. Third, the narrative presented by the Azerbaijani media fed
into nationalistic and anti-Armenian attitudes already predominant
amongst Azerbaijanis.
This leads to a low willingness to question media reports or express
beliefs contrary to the dominant government narrative. An Azerbaijani
citizen criticizing this story could experience attacks like blogger
Arzu Geybullayeva or anonymous blogger Scary Azeri have. These two
live outside of Azerbaijan and have less to fear than Azerbaijani
citizens inside.
Even critics of the government are reluctant to question the
government’s position on the Safarov affair. Emin Milli, a known
opposition figure, recently blogged that there are Azerbaijanis who
disagree with “the disgusting government propaganda,” although he too
seems to believe that the insults occurred. And while it may indeed
be the case that some Azerbaijanis deviate from the government,
it is not realistic or safe for them to speak out.
Will credulity win in Azerbaijan? It certainly appears to be the case.
Editor’s note: RFE/RL has invited discussion of this article with the
following note. Anyone interested in submitting a counter-argument to
Pearce’s analysis is free to do so. Submissions should be in English,
run no more than 1000 words, and be exclusive to RFE/RL. Email
submissions to Zach Peterson: petersonz[AT]rferl[DOT]org. You can
also comment on the original story page, linked at the start of
this article.
http://www.eurasianet.org/node/65889