The dangerous viral function of certain “funds” and “analytical” centers is emerging more and more clearly in Armenian internal information space. These sources disseminate concepts that are a security threat to Armenia and all Armenians – Republic of Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (Artsakh), Javakhk, and the Armenian Diaspora. Therefore defining the external and internal outlets of information threats is an urgent task (G. Harutyunyan. The problems of information security and the civilization factor, collection of articles. “Noravank”, E., 2009, p. 3).
“The Caucasus Institute” (CI) Foundation periodically sponsors intrusions into the sphere of Armenia’s history, passing it as research on “regional cooperation.” Claiming to have an ideological approach, at the end of XX century the current director of the Foundation co-authored an article that gives a completely false assessment of Armenia’s history: “Up until the middle of the last century there was no secular intelligentsia in Armenia, neither was there secular public life, and consequently, no history in the modern sense of the word … The Armenian historical myth is characterized by exaggeration of the image and place of the Armenian culture and its isolation from the neighbors’ culture. The idea of Armenians as the only civilized people surrounded by savages was firmly rooted in the popular consciousness. The result of this hypertrophyc ethnocentrism was the image of an isolated, purely national culture” (A. Iskandaryan, B. Harutyunyan . Armenia: “Karabakhization” of national history. Collection of articles: National History in Soviet and Post-Soviet States, hereafter NHSPS, M., 1999, p.148-149, in Russian). Meanwhile, it is well known that Armenia was in a cultural dialogue with neighboring and distant countries since antiquity. A clear manifestation of this dialogue was the Golden age in the history of Armenian culture (V c. AD), when along with the creation of the Armenian original literature the classical Greek and Syrian authors’ works were translated into Armenian. Later some of the Greek originals were lost, and the Armenian texts are the foundation for their restoration and translation into other European languages.
After a number of criticisms in the press B. Harutyunyan announced that “In the collection, an article was inserted under the names of A. Iskandaryan and my own, but its contents were quite different from the text I submitted to A. Iskandaryan. He essentially changed, made additions, and published it without my consent.” (B. Harutyunyan. Historical Science in Armenia in 1988-1998, “Lraber” (Review) of Social Sciences of NAS RA, 2004, No. 2, p.55, in Russian). Thus, B. Harutyunyan blames the distortion of his text on the co-author, but the latter is silent on this subject. Meanwhile, in the same article co-authors, once again trampling the dignity of the Armenian people, write: “Another phenomenon in the development of historical consciousness of Armenians during the Soviet era was the so-called complex of genocide” (NHSPS, p. 149).
In 2008, the CI organized a conference called “Caucasus Neighborhood: Turkey and the South Caucasus” (CNTSC) in Istanbul, followed by publishing in Yerevan of “a collection of papers” from CNTSC (in English and Russian , edited by A. Iskandaryan, with a portrait of Kemal Ataturk on the cover). “Assistant Program Officer at the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) (Istanbul)” A. Görgülü, denying the Armenian Genocide, repeatedly puts quotation marks around the word “genocide” (CNTSC, pp. 124-145). The editor “protects” this fake of anti-Armenian propaganda by saying: “Here and hereafter the author’s quotation marks are kept” (с.142) . In this collection A. Görgülü represents the official position of his government, which considers Western Armenia as “the territory of Eastern Turkey” (с. 148) or “Eastern Anatolia” (pp.131, 137), and Mount Ararat calls “Mount Aðrý, which is situated in Turkey” (p. 129). Thus, the CI editorial board – by publishing these anti-Armenian insults in RA, violates the norms of national security by ignoring both the Declaration of Independence of Armenia (Article 11: the Republic of Armenia stands in support of the cause of achieving international recognition of the 1915 Armenian Genocide in Ottoman Turkey and Western Armenia) and its Constitution (p. 13), according to which Mount Ararat is depicted in the official coat of arms*. Turkey, according to A. Görgülü, “insists that Armenia should officially rule out any irredentist claim” (CNTSC, p.128), so the CI promotes an attack on the sovereign rights of the independent Republic of Armenia. Finally, on the subject of the liberated territories of Artsakh, A.Görgülü, posing as a “protector” of Azerbaijan, writes: ” During the war, Armenia occupied approximately 20% of Azerbaijani territory…” (p.128).
The Chief Editor of Turkish Policy Quarterly (Istanbul), D. Goksel goes further in his hostile and false statements: “Armenia moved ahead in occupying Azerbaijani regions beyond Nagorno-Karabagh” (p. 24) and about alleged “integrating” of Armenia in “the suggested by Turkey platform to bring together regional countries ” (p.14). He is seconded by G. Ter-Gabrielyan, the head of the “Eurasia Partnership” Foundation’s regional office, who regards “Turkish idea of the Caucasus Stability and Cooperation Platform” (cf. A. Iskandaryan: “…in the South Caucasus, Turkey is not fully perceived as an important regional player “, p. 5) concerning “the South Caucasus” as “the latest idea of building any acceptable regional system” (p.43).
On the subject of the initiative of Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan to establish “the Caucasus platform of peace and stability” (on August 20, 2008 “officially” called “the Stability and Cooperation Platform in the Caucasus”, see S.Markedonov’s Turkish march to the Caucasus, http:/ / www.polit.ru/author/2008/09/25/tur.html), it must be remembered that in whatever format the idea of any regional structure is presented by Turkey, which denies the Armenian Genocide, at its root it will inevitably be the “regenerated” program to create “the independent Caucasus”, developed back in 1915 in Constantinople (Istanbul ) by the criminal Turkish government and a group of Caucasian Muslims. This program was further developed in the book “Georgia and the War” published in Zurich in 1916 (in English) by Georgian immigrants, funded by the German secret services. According to this “idea”, “the entire Caucasus had to become a protectorate of Turkey…” (Georgia and the War. Zurich, 1916., p. 33-34; H.A. Avetisyan, On the question of “Caucasian house”, and Pan-Turkic Aspirations, http:// poli.vub.ac.be/publi/etni-1/avetisyan.htm).
Vice president of the organization Far Center (Baku) H. Hajizadeh, justifying the blockade – an act of state terrorism by Turkey and Azerbaijan against the Republic of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, maniacally writes: “Armenia lays claims to Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh, Georgia’s Javakheti and parts of Turkey adjacent to its border, and consequently finds itself in a hostile environment and de-facto transportation blockade” (CNTSC, p. 31). First of all, the truth about the history of Armenian territories of Artsakh, Javakhk and Western Armenia is completely falsified here. G. Ter-Gabrielyan also uses the name of Javakhk in its distorted form, Samtskhe-Javakheti (p. 41) . Second, most of Artsakh was liberated by Armenian forces in the war that was unleashed by aggressive Azerbaijan.
Ignoring the norms of national security, G. Ter-Gabrielyan attributed “…violating a number of international rules of warfare” (CNTSC, p. 37) to Armenia. However, in contrast to such slander, the truth is that in response to anti-Armenian genocidal actions in Sumgait, Baku and other places, and military aggression by Azerbaijan against the Armenian people of Artsakh – NKR, the self-defense carried out by Armenian liberation forces was “in full compliance with the norms of international law” – stated the President of the Republic of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan in his speech at the OSCE Summit in Astana (December 2, 2010) (http://www.osce.org/cio/73967).
G. Ter-Gabrielyan insultingly declared against both the Armenian Genocide (“…dwelling on the subject of Genocide”, CNTSC, p. 37) and the role of the Republic of Armenia in restoring historical justice in Nagorno-Karabakh (“…Armenia… without annexing it officially”, p. 37), as well as the relationship of Armenia and the Diaspora [“had Armenia renounced the public rhetoric of nationalism (“give back our land”), all 100 percent of the old Diaspora… would have raised Cain”, p. 38; “Armenia dreams of brokering peace programs in the region”, p. 45]. G. Ter-Gabrielyan, having disconnected the notion of “Armenia from sea to sea” (which includes the natural and historical environment of the Armenian people: the Armenian Highland – Great Armenia and Armenia Minor, and Cilician Armenia) from its historical basis (the term refers to the period of the greatest might of the Armenian state), and having completely distorted it, provocatively compares it to Pan-Turkism: ” The stereotypic mind of Armenians and its neighbors is more familiar with the old-fashioned Armenian expansionist ideologies of the type “Armenia from sea to sea”. Those ideas today hold the same marginal places on the outskirts of Armenian ideologies as, say, Pan-Turkism on the fringes of the Turkic ideologies. It is becoming less and less meaningful to argue about Pan-Turkism or Armenia from sea to sea…” (CNTSC, p. 42).
Nobody authorized S. Minasyan, the head of the Department of Political Studies of the CI, to make the following defeatist statement on behalf of the Armenian society from the pulpit of the Istanbul conference: “…as a result of Armenia’s victory in the war, Armenian society is more open to compromises than the Azerbaijani society ” (CNTSC, p. 64).
Ignoring historical facts, A. Iskandaryan writes: “Three Soviet republics (Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia) included autonomous formations of various levels…. Some autonomous units were not based on an ethnic principle: for example, Adjaria was a Georgian-populated autonomous republic inside Georgia, and Nakhichevan, an Azerbaijani-populated autonomous republic inside Azerbaijan” (p. 8). But there was no autonomous formation in Soviet Armenia; the Armenian Nakhijevan and Artsakh (Karabakh) regions were illegally transferred to Soviet Azerbaijan in 1921. Armenians – the natives of the Armenian region of Nakhijevan (which A. Iskandaryan, following a distorted terminology, calls “Nakhichevan”) were annihilated or forcibly were expelled from their homes as a result of anti-Armenian policy of the Baku authorities during the Soviet period. A. Iskandaryan represents the native Armenian territory of Nakhijevan as “Azerbaijani-populated autonomous republic inside Azerbaijan” ignoring both the fact that “Azerbaijan” is an artificial entity with a name robbed from Iranian Azerbaijan with Pan-Turkic (during the Musavatist period) and pan-revolutionary (during the Soviet regime) goals, and the fact of anti-Armenian policy of the Baku authorities.
Any commonly accepted chronology in the world starts with the notion B.C. (or BCE). But A. Iskandaryan, based on his own knowledge, about the region’s “genesis” notes that “up to XIX century, parts of the region belonged to the Persian and Ottoman Empires…” (p.6), purposely giving a “historical” foundation to the pseudo-notion of “the South Caucasus”. However, the Caucasus, in all its parts (Northern, Southern, Western, and Eastern) is located to the North and East of Kura River, which is a fact attested since antiquity by written historical sources.
On the one hand, replacement of the comparative-geographical (though also artificial) notion of “Transcaucasia” with the pseudo-regional – “the South Caucasus” and squeezing Eastern Armenia in it, and on the other – the use of the term “Eastern Anatolia” instead of Western Armenia, come out of the policy of introducing foreign elements of “cultural” and political expansion into the spheres of archeology, anthropology, linguistics, historical geography and ethnography. Its aim is to rob and destroy Armenian historical and cultural heritage, with a long term goal of transforming the region into an appendage of a global system, and the Republic – into a peripheral region by means of the Pan-Turkic idea of the “Turkish united platform” (с. 50).
A. Iskandaryan violates the domain of Armenian historiography again and again as he writes: “Instead of the former “Sovietization” of historical facts, a tendency to “ancientify” and expand the geographic scope of historical past of the Armenian people has appeared. For example, in the 1990s it became commonly accepted among Armenian historians that Urartu, or the kingdom of Van, was a state with Armenian ethno-linguistic predominance. Gradually, the term “the Araratian kingdom” was introduced to be used instead of “Urartu” (A. Iskandaryan. Armenia: Ancientifying of the Modern, NHSPS, II, M., 2009, p. 229; cf. S. Minasyan: How Armenia relates to its past: history and politics; in Russian, http://magazines.russ.ru/nz/2010/5/mi5.html). However, the Armenian name for Ararat has been read as “Urartu” in the deciphered Assyrian inscriptions as early as in XIX century, which, according to some well-known European Orientalists, is an expression of identification with Armenia of the biblical name of Ararat [the Ararat Mountains (“Kαι εκαθισεν η κιβωτος εν μηνι τω εβδομω εβδομη και εικαδι του μηνος επι τα ορη τα Aραρατ”,The Septuagint Bible, “Եւ նստաւ տապանն յեւթներորդում ամսեանն ի քսան եւ յեւթն ամսոյն ի լերինս Արարատայ”, Աստուածաշունչ մատեան, Ծննդ. Ը.4) in the Bible are identified with Armenia, according to the Latin Translation: “Requievitque arca mense septimovicesima septima die mensis super montes Armeniae”, The Bible Latin Vulgate. Gen. 8.4], which correspondingly, is also the name of the Armenian kingdom, headed by Armenian kings (H.C. Rawlinson. A commentary on the cuneiform inscriptions of Babylonia and Assyria, London, 1850, p. 40, 70, J. Oppert, Expedition scientifique en Mesopotamie, Paris, 1863 , t. I, p. 18, 354, H. Layard, Discoveries in the ruins of Ninveh and Babylon, London, 1853, p. 403).
Ignoring information of sources and the results of researches about the history of Armenian statehood, A. Iskandaryan says: “The very atypical for Armenian history period of the rule of Tigran the Great in I c. B.C. becomes extremely important for the Armenian historical narrative” (A. Iskandaryan, Ancientifying of the Modern, p.229). However, according to archaeological and written sources, the ancient Armenian statehood since the III millennium B.C., passing through epochs of civilizational development, reached its climax in the period of the Araratian Kingdom (IX-VII cc. B.C.), and especially during the era of Tigran II the Great’s Empire (95-55 B.C.) who returned the title of “King of Kings” to the Armenian royal throne, confirmed in Armenia in cuneiform inscriptions from the early period (IX c. B.C.) of the Araratian Kingdom.
The external “concepts” introduced into the Armenian internal information space are fueled by an ideology, which is alien to notions like Fatherland and national dignity, national liberation struggle, honor and conscience.
Eduard L. Danielyan,
Doctor of Historical Sciences,
Head of the Department of Ancient History of the Institute of History of NAS RA
_________________________________
[1] For the English translation of E. Danielyan’s present article, the English publication of “Caucasus Neighborhood: Turkey and the South Caucasus” is used. Therefore some additional remarks are added by the author. In order to differentiate Russian and English publications, the book pages, correspondingly, are marked (с.) for Russian publication and (p.) for an English one.
[2] There is no similar comment by the editor in the English publication (p. 124).
[3] In the English publication “the Eastern part of Turkey”(p.128).
[4] Constantinople was officially renamed Istanbul by the Turkish Postal Service Law of March 28, 1930 (http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Names+of+Istanbul).
[5] Javakhk is wrongly mentioned by G. Ter-Gabrielyan as a part of Diaspora (p. 41); Javakhk, historically, is an organic part of Armenia and Armenians living there are the natives of the Armenian land Javakhk.
_________________________________
* In 2009 the ARARAT Center for Strategic Center launched a civil suit against the Caucasus Institute in Armenia for the publication and dissemination of material denying the Armenian Genocide. Refer to the following link for the full text of the lawsuit and other material related to the case: ARARAT v. CAUCASUS (“Ardarutyun” editorial board)
English
