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Nagorno-Karabakh’s Myth of Ancient Hatreds (2020)
- notch656a 4y agoNotably an American, Monte Melkonian, was responsible in part for commanding the retaking of this territory by Armenians in the 90s. "Melkonian had no prior service record in any country's army before being placed in command of an estimated 4,000 men in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War."
- jayhoon 4y agoMelkonian was member of ASALA, a military group that is considered a terrorist organisation in the US and the EU.
- notch656a 4y agoBy the end Melkonian also considered it a terrorist organization, which is why he left and fought for in Nagorno-Karabakh instead. "My Brother's Road" is a decent read that explains much of his thoughts.
- sn41 4y agoFrom the surname, Melkonian sounds ethnic Armenian. So it may not be a case of "a random American".
- cool_dude85 4y agoI have an Irish surname despite having never been to the island in my life. What would you call it if I was leading a division of the Irish army to try and retake Derry?
- pessimizer 4y agoThe average Armenian-American has more connections to Armenians in Europe than the average Irish-American has to Ireland.
- notch656a 4y agoMay be true, but generally Americans outside of a few backwater racist areas will consider it valid to refer to someone as an 'American' if they were born here, unless they renounced citizenship. And doubly so if they were born here and spent the vast majority of their childhood here.
- notch656a 4y agoI'm curious why you put "random" in quotations.
- egiboy 4y agoMelkon is the Armenian form of the name "Melchior", so yes.
- seydor 4y ago(2020) talking about the September war in NK. This september's invasion was within armenia's proper
- rootw0rm 4y agoTurkey just can't get enough of screwing over Armenia
- farseer 4y agoApparently Armenians tried to reclaim historic lands from Ottomon Turkey in WW1 with allied help (vastly overestimating themselves). This led to their genocide at the end of war and subsequent Turkish and Soviet collusion to oppress them for a century.
- seydor 4y agothe genocides happened before the war
- khvirabyan 4y agoI beg your pardon, what? :D The genocide at first happened before the WW1
- psKama 4y agoWikipedia says otherwise, giving the starting date as 1915 for genocide, while WW1 started in 1914. Basically it looks like the same as USA dropping 2 nuclear bombs on innocent civilians in Japan during WW2 when Japan attacked them.
- qwytw 4y agoThe Hamidian massacres massacres were basically a smaller scale Armenian genocide which occurred in the 1890's, only a few hundred thousand died instead of millions though, so I suppose it doesn't count... Anti-Christian violence continued intermittently afterwards, erupting whenever the government was unstable and could not prevent it or needed to shift the blame for it's incompetence on someone else. >Basically it looks like the same as USA dropping 2 nuclear bombs on innocent civilians in Japan during WW2 when Japan attacked them. What? That's a beyond nonsensical comparison. Many of the areas affected by the genocide weren't even close to the front lines, it would be the same as US dropping nukes on North Dakota because too many German Americans lived there.
- impossiblefork 4y agoVery strange article, seeing as the Azeris are a Turkish people and this ancient hatred is in fact real. The pogroms didn't start up in 1988 for no reason, but because there was in fact a racial hatred against Armenians among Azerbaijanis, and one which they probably won't ever let go of, so the hatred survived very intact through the entire Soviet era.
- rootw0rm 4y agoFirst off, I do have family in the region. Secondly, I completely agree with you that the article is a little strange. My first impression was that it doesn't really matter how 'ancient' the hatred is. The facts on the ground is that the hatred is very real today, and so embedded in the culture that it's not going anywhere. I like academic arguments, but this one just doesn't seem to serve anyone. I admit that's possibly because I'm a bit biased to the situation.
- impossiblefork 4y agoI have nothing to do with the region myself, I'm a Swede, but even I know that places like this (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/Ani_seen_from_Armenia.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/Ani_seen...) were once great cities and that they aren't depopulated for no reason-- and these places, it's a huge region in what is now Turkey. Expansionism, while repulsive, is perhaps comprehensible as greed, but to then go after the remainder, those three million who have survived up in the mountains, that is not comprehensible.
- ethanbond 4y agoWhy it’s perfectly comprehensible when you have the special book and your neighbors do not. Then your atrocities are merely expressions of god’s will.
- g8oz 4y agoAlways eye-rolling when those from the West - the same West that pillaged and depoulated entire continents argue that violence is an intrinsic characteristic of another group.
- wrp 4y agoI don't understand why, but it's common for people to make this kind of claim about ethnic conflicts. "Ethnic hostilities in this area are just a recent phenomenon," is a claim I've heard about Palestine, Yugoslavia, the Mekong, the Levant, parts of Africa, etc.
- pessimizer 4y agoIf I had to guess, I think the reason some people make this claim about some ethnic conflicts is usually because they think that the claim is true.
- khvirabyan 4y agoThis article is not correct and gives diffused information on the topic. The general point is that recent attacks are on sovereign territory of Republic of Armenia. I live 110 km away from the shellings, and it is not Artsakh (Nagorno - Karabakh). This post is just misguiding.
- Daub 4y agoDoes anyone else get the feeling when reading political history, that you are really reading a science fiction?
- qwerty456127 4y agoI suspect 1000 years of hatred vs 100 years makes no difference. It probably is enough to brainwash some generations (so the living majority would be affected) to have them hate even harder than if that would have been real history. State-level hatred propaganda (what took place in Russia during the recent years is an example but it's a more or less common practice worldwide - there are many rival countries teaching their peoples to hate each other) should be made a number-2 international crime on the UN level, straight after using biological weapons.
- thriftwy 4y agoThere is no state-level propagation of ethnic hatred in Russia. If anything, Russian Federation tries to downplay any ethnic differencies since its constituent ethnicities are of very diverse backgrounds and that would be throwing stones in a glass house. If you were projecting the Azero-Armenian conflict on the current Russian war, you are mistaken and if you don't believe me, you can refer to the thread by Kamil Galeev, who I mostly don't agree with but who still makes his point: https://nitter.it/kamilkazani/status/1516162437455654913 https://nitter.it/kamilkazani/status/1516162437455654913 This is not unlike the American wars which were motivated not by ethnic hatred towards people in Middle East but rather by desire to transplant some "better ideas" (such as democracy) there.
- actionfromafar 4y agoThat was one very interesting thread, very compelling.
- qwerty456127 4y ago> There is no state-level propagation of ethnic hatred in Russia. Perhaps, but there obviously is state-level propagation of hatred (that's you who added "ethnic"). It's enough to watch some recordings of top political shows on Russian state-ran channels to clearly see they express hatred (and do that on a regular basis), you don't even have to understand the words they speak. Good for them if they don't propagate open racism, but they certainly do propagate hatred towards other countries (not necessarily ethnicities), their own citizens having different point of view, hatred towards sexual minorities (and that's not about the classic conservative stance to refuse accepting sexual minorities as a norm, that's open propagation of violent hatred).
- MomoXenosaga 4y agoAncient hatred is is irrelevant Armenia took a sizable part of Azerbaijan and said country got rich enough to get it back. Revenge is a dish best served cold. Honestly what were Armenians thinking? This was inevitable. Now they are reduced to begging America to save them.
- _0w8t 4y agoThe reason why Armenia managed to capture a lot of land from Azerbaijan around Karabakh in 1991-1994 was that Russia supplied a lot of military equipment to Armenia. One can speculate for reasons, but it is clear without Russian "encouragement" the conflict would be significantly smaller.
- throwaw20_09_22 4y agoAncient hatred is very relevant. If Azeris were not so prone to murdering Armenians that live in their lands, Armenians wouldn't want to secede. After NK voted to separate from Azerbaijan, Azeri response was the Sumgait pogrom [0] and later the Baku pogrom [1]. What were Azeris thinking? That Armenians would just say okay, ethnically cleanse us? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumgait_pogrom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumgait_pogrom [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baku_pogrom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baku_pogrom
- temp-dude-87844 4y agoA balanced summary of the lead-up to the First (1988-1994) and Second (2020) Nagorno-Karabakh war. Note that this is article is NOT about the recent escalation on 2022-09-13 when Azerbaijan attacked inside Armenia's internationally-recognized territory, in territory unrelated to the Nagorno-Karabakh question, clearly well past ridgelines used for the border. Technically the border is "undemarcated", but it's a cheap claim that this is a mere border dispute. Instead, many of the actions of Azerbaijan since the November 2020 ceasefire agreement have been applications of Salami Slicing and Borderization: occupying chunks of the Republic of Armenia bit by bit, to pressure Armenia for a settlement more favorable to Azerbaijan. Specifically, Azerbaijan wants a route between its mainland and its longstanding exclave Nakhchivan (which borders Turkey). Article 9 of the 2020 ceasefire agreement provides for such a transport connection, but does not use the word "corridor" in reference to it. This is contrasted with the 'Lachin Corridor', mentioned several times in the ceasefire agreement, which provides a connection between Armenia and the Armenian-ethnicity areas of Nagorno-Karabakh. Since 2021, Azerbaijan has unilaterally begun using the term 'Zangezur Corridor' to refer to their desired connection, anchoring their expectation that its guarantees would be similar to that of the ceasefire-defined 'Lachin Corridor'. Despite several rounds of working groups and mediation, no progress has been made on a solution acceptable to both Armenia and Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan has the upper hand, with superior military and economy, less democratic government (top-down leadership), and a better geopolitical situation. And it's been steadily bullying Armenia to get its way.
- dundarious 4y agoIt should also be noted that while it has been highly publicized that Azerbaijan receives military tech from Turkey, it also received 100s of millions of dollars of “security support” from the US over the last few years.
- InfiniteRand 4y agoI think if you trace back long enough a lot of the ancestors of Azerbaijanis are probably Armenians, Georgians, Circassians, and other long standing Caucasian peoples who were assimilated by both force and persuasion to some degree or other into Persian influenced Turkic tribes. Likewise in their rise to a regional linguistic group the Armenians assimilated and absorbed other groups (like much of the Caucasian Albanian population). I’m not sure what that means in the grand scheme of things but I tend to be skeptical of the idea that land exclusively ought to belong to one group when a region historically has had many groups whose populations and histories are intertwined. Of course the nature of the nation state being what it is and the history of blood letting in the region, as a practical matter even if you discard ideals of who the land “ought” to belong to, a peaceful solution is tricky