Author: Karakhanian Suren

While the world’s attention is focused on Ukraine, another humanitarian crisis on the edge of Europe is unfolding due to an oil-rich dictatorship: the starvation of Nagorno-Karabakh by Azerbaijan.

It is here, in this enclave of 120,000 ethnic Armenians, that one of the worst crises in the wider European neighbourhood is taking place. Under siege for more than eight months, the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh has now been reduced to starvation rations – for most families, just a piece of bread a day – as Azerbaijan seeks to force the population into submission.

Nestled in the South Caucasus, the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh has been the subject of conflict for more than 30 years. As the Soviet Union collapsed, the overwhelmingly ethnic Armenian population’s demand for unification with neighbouring Armenia was met with pogroms and eventually war by Azerbaijan.

While Armenia triumphed in the first war in the early 1990s, Azerbaijan returned in 2020, winning a victory that gave it control of much of the land Armenians had held. The remainder of Karabakh has since led a tenuous existence, connected to Armenia and the outside world by just a single road, the Lachin corridor, ostensibly protected and guaranteed by Russian peacekeepers.

Last December, Azerbaijan put an end to that. Government-organised protesters deployed on the Lachin road, blocking all traffic except for a handful of Red Cross vehicles with humanitarian aid. On 15 June, Azerbaijan cut even that, closing the road entirely via their newly established checkpoint. Since then, not a single shipment of food or medicine has entered Nagorno-Karabakh.

The situation has now become critical. Deaths from starvation have been recorded – the region’s health ministry announced that one-third of all deaths in the territory are the result of malnutrition owing to the blockade. With no fuel available, the meagre crops available can rarely be transported to the capital Stepanakert or the other population centres, not that they can easily be harvested: Azerbaijani soldiers regularly fire at Karabakh Armenian farmers in their fields.

International organisations and actors have long been in agreement that the present crisis is entirely of Azerbaijan’s making. In February, the International Court of Justice issued a ruling demanding that Azerbaijan open the road and restore the free movement of people and goods along the road. The US, EU, Canada and others have regularly urged Azerbaijan to open the road and lift the blockade. Baku remains obstinate, not only ignoring the demands but insisting, farcically, that the road is open, there is no starvation in Karabakh, and that one international statement after another is simply the result of “pro-Armenian corruption”.

More and more observers are now going further, declaring that the actions of Azerbaijan, directed by President Ilham Aliyev, constitute genocide. In August, Luis Moreno Ocampo, the former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, stated in a report that there is “reasonable basis to believe that genocide is being committed against Armenians” in Nagorno-Karabakh. “There are no crematories and there are no machete attacks…starvation is the invisible genocide weapon,” Mr Ocampo wrote. The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention similarly called the blockade “genocidal in its intent, which is to eliminate the Armenian population of Artsakh [Nagorno-Karabakh]”.

One actor conspicuous in its inaction across the entirety of this drama is Russia. Moscow was the third signatory to the November 2020 deal that ended the Second Karabakh War. While its 2,000 peacekeepers were tasked with maintaining the peace and keeping control of the Lachin road, they have stood idly by as Azerbaijani troops enact their blockade. Sapped and distracted by its increasingly difficult war in Ukraine, Russia has lost almost all influence in a region it had long been the most powerful actor in.

In this environment, there are also few hopes for any peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The two sides have met regularly for US- and EU-brokered intensive talks over the past year, with mediators from Washington and Brussels regularly expressing confidence in the progress and stating that peace is within reach. Yet far from any conciliatory measures, Azerbaijan has only tightened its blockade of Karabakh Armenians in this period, bringing them closer to their physical destruction.

Most glaring is the fact that Azerbaijan has already openly ignored the terms of the ceasefire it signed with Armenia not even three years ago, by which it agreed to ensure the free usage of the Lachin corridor. If Baku so openly breaks its word here, what will stop it from simply doing the same in another treaty?

It is clear that the present situation cannot continue for long. The population of Karabakh continues to grow weaker; as winter approaches, their chances of surviving it under current conditions seem negligible. International pressure is growing sharply on Azerbaijan to lift the blockade, but it is similarly evident that only tangible actions, not mere words, by the international community can possibly compel Baku to halt its genocidal path. One way or another, the fate of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh will soon become clear.

https://inews.co.uk/news/world/armenia-families-starve-azerbaijan-genocidal-blockade-nagorno-karabakh-2593573

The U.S. and other countries are facing growing pressure to do more to stop Azerbaijan’s blockade of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, where a former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court recently determined ethnic Armenians are facing genocide.

The big picture: The blockade has left about 120,000 people largely without food, medicine, drinking water and other essentials, despite more than a dozen large trucks loaded with aid ready to enter the region.

• The contested territory of Nagorno-Karabakh is within Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized borders, but its population is predominantly Armenian and it has its own government that is closely linked to Armenia.

What they’re saying: Former ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo concluded in a report last week that the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh is an ongoing genocide.

• “Starvation is the invisible Genocide weapon,” Ocampo wrote, adding that without “immediate dramatic change, this group of Armenians will be destroyed in a few weeks.”

Ocampo is now making urgent demands for the international community, including the U.S., to step in.

• As a signatory of the Genocide Convention, the U.S. has the obligation to act, Ocampo told Axios.
• It’s a call echoed by human rights groups. The U.S., European Union, the UN and others must “press Azerbaijan to stop and to ensure that there is free and adequate flow of food, medicine and humanitarian goods through the Lachin road,” Rachel Denber, deputy director of the Human Rights Watch Europe and Central Asia division, told Axios.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev at the end of July and “underscored the urgent need for free transit of commercial, humanitarian, and private vehicles through the Lachin corridor,” according to the State Department.

• But Ocampo and rights groups say it’s not enough. The U.S. must come together with other parties to “find an agreement on how to treat the problem politically,” Ocampo said, adding that if “there is no such agreement, the problem is now that it’s clear that the U.S. will be an accomplice of a genocide.”

The State Department told Axios in an emailed statement that the U.S. “remains deeply concerned about Azerbaijan’s continued closure of the Lachin corridor.”

• It added that free transit must be restored immediately.

Catch up quick: The entrance to the Lachin Corridor – a lifeline to Armenia for the people of Nagorno-Karabakh – has been mostly closed since December.

• Hostilities between Azerbaijan and Armenia, former Soviet republics, persist despite last year’s Russia-brokered cease-fire that came after Azerbaijan launched an attack on Armenia, escalating a decades-long dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh.
• Russian peacekeepers stationed at the entrance to the Lachin Corridor were supposed to ensure free movement, but months later, the area remains cut off from the rest of the world. Azerbaijan has established a military checkpoint, blocking all traffic, AP reports.

Azerbaijani officials claim the checkpoint is necessary for security reasons. They have accused the International Committee of the Red Cross of using its medical vehicles for “smuggling” undeclared goods.

• The ICRC said in a statement that “no unauthorized material has been found” in any vehicles owned by the organization, but it does “regret” that without its knowledge “four hired drivers tried to transport some commercial goods in their own vehicles which were temporarily displaying the ICRC emblem.”
• Azerbaijani officials have also rejected that genocide is taking place, claiming without providing evidence that Ocampo’s conclusion “represents serious factual, legal and substantive errors.”

What to watch: The UN Security Council is expected to meet later on Wednesday to discuss the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh.

• Ocampo believes that if the U.S., Russia and the European Union, could “combine the efforts, they stop this in 24 hours.” But he acknowledged that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Moscow’s deepening relationship with Azerbaijan have complicated the situation.
• It’s unclear if Russia would use its veto power if the UN Security Council decided to take action and refer the case to the ICC, as Ocampo and others have called for. Still, Ocampo told Axios, “Armenians cannot be a collateral victim of the Ukrainian conflict.”
• Human rights groups and Ocampo have also urged Azerbaijan to abide by an order from the International Criminal Court of Justice to end the blockade.

The bottom line: “This genocide is a test for the international community,” Ocampo told Axios. “Can we create a 21st century with no genocide?”

After years of diplomatic dormancy, the U.S. has accelerated its efforts to facilitate a peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan. But short of ensuring a just peace, the only thing the Washington-backed talks appear to have produced is the emboldenment of Azerbaijan’s aggression against Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh (known as Artsakh in Armenian).

After Azerbaijan abandoned decades of multilateral diplomacy to launch a devastating military assault on Artsakh in 2020, a ceasefire agreement was signed that ostensibly put an end to active hostilities. Despite this, Azerbaijan has pressed its military advantage against Armenia through the invasion and occupation of its sovereign territory and the imposition of a humanitarian blockade on the Lachin Corridor—the only humanitarian lifeline connecting Artsakh to Armenia.

For over eight months, the region’s 120,000 Indigenous Armenians—who declared their independence in the early 1990s following escalating violence and ethnic cleansing by Azerbaijan—have been deprived access to food, medicine, fuel, electricity, and water in what is nothing less than genocide by attrition.

Against the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, one might think the expansionist assault on a fledgling democracy by a corrupt authoritarian regime engaged in weaponizing food would have elicited a strong response from the international community. But the desire to maintain favorable relations with Azerbaijan given its role as a European energy partner has outweighed any purported commitment to upholding human rights—bolstering Azerbaijan’s aggression.

The same week peace talks began in Washington, Baku tightened its blockade by establishing a military checkpoint at the Lachin Corridor. And when Washington-based talks resumed in June, Azerbaijan began shelling the region. In the months since, the International Committee of the Red Cross has been denied access to Karabakh—and later reported that an Armenian patient in its care had been abducted by Azerbaijani forces en route to Armenia for treatment.

This is the predictable consequence of Washington’s insistence on negotiations amid Azerbaijan’s blockade of Artsakh and occupation of Armenian territory. This has signaled to Baku that its strategy of coercive diplomacy is working, disincentivizing de-escalation, and forcing Armenia to negotiate with a gun to its head.

The Biden administration’s approach to Azerbaijan could not stand more diametrically opposed to its strategy toward Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While Secretary of State Antony Blinken has vehemently maintained that there will be “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine”—Washington has forced negotiations on Armenia with such recklessness that the Armenians in Artsakh have been denied a seat at the negotiating table.

Washington has also actively strengthened Azerbaijan’s position by indicating support for Artsakh’s integration into Azerbaijan. Given Azerbaijan’s state-sponsored dehumanization of Armenians, the litany of human rights abuses perpetrated during and since the 2020 war, and its own disastrous domestic human rights record—it is impossible to imagine Armenians could ever live freely under Azerbaijan’s rule.

For Azerbaijan, this disingenuous participation in negotiations has allowed it to uphold the veneer of cooperation while engaging in conduct that has immeasurably set back the prospects of a durable peace. And while Secretary Blinken and USAID Administrator Samantha Power have expressed their “deep concern for the deteriorating humanitarian conditions in Nagorno-Karabakh,” Washington has refused to impose costs on Azerbaijan for its attempts to subjugate the Armenian people through starvation and force. Administrator Power, who once expressed regret for not doing more to recognize the Armenian genocide while in office, now risks being a bystander as a second Armenian genocide unfolds.

Washington isn’t powerless to prevent ethnic cleansing. To deter Azerbaijan’s aggression, it could enforce restrictions on security assistance to Azerbaijan pursuant to Section 907 of the FREEDOM Support Act—as then-candidate Joe Biden pledged to do while on the campaign trail. Despite this, the Biden administration has twice since waived those restrictions—as successive U.S. administrations have for the last 20 years—on the grounds that cutting military aid to Baku would undermine efforts to contain Russia and Iran.

Washington’s approach to the South Caucasus has long been an afterthought of its Russia and Iran policy. The long-term ramifications of a peace that abandons a vulnerable community to the whims of their would-be oppressors is balanced against the illusory perception of Azerbaijan’s support for the containment of Russia and Iran. In that calculation, Artsakh’s Armenians are treated as little more than collateral damage.

But as Baku has repeatedly demonstrated, it has no qualms engaging with Moscow and Tehran at the West’s expense. Azerbaijan has allowed Iranian and Russian entities to purchase major stakes in the natural gas field that supplies Europe—and recently purchased significant quantities of Russian gas to meet domestic demand amid unrealistic export commitments. Azerbaijan has effectively provided Russia and Iran a backdoor into Europe’s energy market—a product of the misplaced belief that you can contain one corrupt authoritarian regime by appeasing others.

As Azerbaijan’s blockade of Artsakh threatens the very existence of the region’s Indigenous Armenians, it’s clear the West’s Faustian bargain with one of the world’s most oppressive regimes has produced the very outcomes it sought to avoid. Now’s the time for Secretary Blinken and Administrator Power to live up to their purported commitment to place human rights at the forefront of U.S. foreign policy, and make clear that authoritarianism will be confronted consistently—not only when convenient.

Alex Galitsky is program director of the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA), the largest Armenian American grassroots advocacy organization in the United States.

Gev Iskajyan is executive director of the Armenian National Committee of Artsakh, and is currently based in Artsakh living under Azerbaijan’s blockade.

The views expressed in this article are the writers’ own.

https://www.newsweek.com/us-diplomacy-failing-armenia-opinion-1819248

Today, the Art Newspaper reported that the Istanbul Biennial rejected Defne Ayas as the next curator of their biannual event in favor of a far more autocratic-friendly curator who is currently working with projects in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, Iwona Blazwick. 

Journalist Christina Ruiz reported that critics are suggesting that Ayas’s curation of the 2015 Turkish pavilion of the Venice Biennale featuring Turkish-Armenian artist Sarkis was partly to blame. It’s clearly the reason, even if no one will go on record to state it, and one that I think is probably accurate based on what I’ve seen over the years around this topic. One cannot underestimate the role Armenian Genocide denial has played in Turkish society, how the state has benefited, and how it trickles down to the culture industries, like contemporary art. 

As Ruiz outlines, the 2015 Turkish Pavilion was impacted by genocide denial. She writes:

A catalogue accompanying the show included an essay written by Rakel Dink, the widow of the Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink who was assassinated in Istanbul in 2007. In her text, Dink made a passing reference to the “Armenian genocide” to describe the pain of her people. Following a complaint from the Turkish government, which denies that the genocide took place, the catalogue was withdrawn. Ayas and Sarkis then placed all remaining copies into a coffin which Sarkis covered in coloured glass and transformed into a sculpture (Respiro, 2015).

At the time, many of us, particularly in the Armenian diasporan art community, were shocked to learn that the pavilion would remain open during the Venice Biennale. A small but significant act of genocide denial was met with an esoteric artwork rather than a clear, open response. Sarkis, who, to be clear, most diasporan Armenians have never heard of, was part of that decision (I think most people mistakenly think Armenians in Turkey are part of the diaspora, which they are not, as they continue to remain in the country of their ancestral lands.). It was all very disturbing.

The same year, the 2015 Istanbul Biennial was curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, and I, for one, refused to attend the show, seeing from afar how serious topics such as the Armenian Genocide were clearly being obfuscated in a nation that has never been safe for indigenous minorities. Just two months before the show opened, Turkey had entered the third phase of the conflict by the Turkish state to eradicate Kurdish insurgents in the same eastern provinces in which Armenians, Assyrians, and Yazidis were massacred just a century before.

Christov-Bakargiev’s program was clear, since she never tapped into the established and growing networks of Armenian artists, curators, and intellectuals from the diaspora, but chose individual artists with little connection or interest in the Armenian arts community. The choice to essentialize Armenians to artists with Armenian heritage, rather than working with a group of people in the Armenian community doing the memory work related to the genocide and our exile from what is currently the Republic of Turkey during the centennial of the Armenian Genocide, was a definitive political choice. All this is also symptomatic of contemporary art, where minorities are represented by individuals, often with no connection to the community they pretend to speak for, who fail to engage with the current conversations raging inside and outside those same communities and with topics that have real-world political consequences.

A full account of how the Turkish art world continues to benefit from genocide denial is too long to list, but it includes museums, such as the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum, where Armenian intellectuals were jailed during the infamous April 24, 1915 events that are commemorated every year by Armenians and human rights defenders the world over. In 2015, I was in Istanbul during the Centennial Commemorations for the Armenian Genocide along with hundreds of other Armenians from the diaspora who were descendants of genocide survivors. Our group wasn’t even allowed the right to gather at the museum for fear of attacks from Turkish nationalists. Then there is the topic of Koç Holding, the main sponsor of the Istanbul Biennial. The country’s largest corporation, Koç Holding is still run by the Koç family, who made much of their money a century ago by buying Armenian properties confiscated during the genocide for pennies on the dollar. The wounds of the genocide, which Turkey continues to adamantly deny, are never seriously addressed, and they never seem to heal.

Now, Istanbul Foundation For Culture and the Arts (IKSV) doesn’t appear to think Defne Ayas is complicit enough in their genocide-denying agenda, so they have inserted the far more ethically challenged Blazwick, who is sure to curate a more plutocrat-friendly exhibition. 

To emphasize what Turkish curator Vasif Kortun told the Art Newspaper:

“The biennial does not know which geography it is in. There has not been a single curator from the Balkans or the southern Mediterranean. Instead, we’ve seen a succession of white Europeans since 2015. I find the whole thing shocking.”

Why are White Europeans always being tapped for the role? It’s interesting that Kortun mentions 2015, which makes me think perhaps they saw how successfully they were able to tap Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev to create the illusion of dealing with deeper societal issues while doing none of that and, in my opinion, hurting the larger conversations that exiled descendants of the Armenian Genocide are trying to have with the Republic of Turkey in relation to its continued history of denial. 

To her credit, Ayas, who can be quite an excellent curator, was very clear with us at Hyperallergic when we asked her about some of the high and low points of 2015: 

Most distressing? When our publication for Respiro by Sarkis at the Pavilion of Turkey at the 56th Venice Biennale was censored. The news arrived to us on April 24 — the day of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Imagine the double pain and terror of working with the strict codes of the deep state, while trying to imagine a breathing space for all of us.

What I hope Ayas, and other members of the Turkish art world (both inside and outside the Republic), realize is that you can never give in to genocide denial in any form. You might think you’re being political but the reality is you’re emboldening the deniers, who will always demand more.

Blazwick is part of the problem. As a former member of the IKSV board, Blazwick was on the same advisory panel responsible for choosing a biennial curator, and has now rejected the unanimously agreed upon advice to appoint Ayas and has snagged the post herself.

When people say autocrats rot culture, this is what they mean. Blazwick now apes the same autocrats and plutocrats she serves and curates for. Why abide by a vote when you can usurp the position yourself?

Editor’s Note, 08/11/23: The term “Istanbul biennial” was mistakenly used instead of “Turkish pavilion” in one instance and that has been corrected.