It is an exodus which encumbers Armenia and which raises questions about the times. A predicted tragedy which took place behind closed doors. More than 100,000 inhabitants of Nagorno-Karabakh have fled their mountainous enclave after the major attack by Azerbaijan. The dictatorship led by Ilham Aliev will stop at nothing to get its hands on the country, although it has had an Armenian population for more than two thousand years. Meanwhile, the Western world turns a blind eye. No response from European capitals, no sanction. The dictator of Baku took these silences as a blank check. And sent his soldiers to attack the Armenian bastion.
The blitzkrieg was, however, predictable. Like a two-stage rocket, the Azerbaijani potentate cleverly planned the takeover of the enclave and ordered a complete blockade by cutting off the Lachin corridor, the only route connecting Armenia to this former autonomous republic of the USSR, given to the nascent Azerbaijan in 1921 by Stalin, the “little father of the peoples” who loved them so much that he preferred to divide them. Since December 12, the 120,000 inhabitants of Artsakh, the Armenian name for Nagorno-Karabakh, including 30,000 children, have been deprived of food, medicine and fuel, in defiance of international law and international conventions. ‘UN. Yet guarantors of peace and the protection of populations, the 2000 Russian soldiers – in reality men from the FSB, the intelligence services – remained idly.
Director of the hospital in Stepanakert, the capital of the enclave, Dr. Mher Musaelyan told us during the blockade that he had to give up certain operations for lack of medicines and painkillers. A slow asphyxiation has been planned, with the intention of forced displacement of these people to the thousand-year-old mountains. Azeri soldiers stationed on hills fired intimidation at homes, facing helpless families. Loudspeakers poured out their hate speech in front of the surrounded villages. Armenian historical heritage is devastated. A real headquarters intended to organize the second stage, the big cleaning.
This occurs in September. On September 19, a military operation was launched against a bloodless population. To sow further terror and force the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh to flee, rapes, beheadings and machine-gunning of schools took place in the east of the enclave. Lock up, starve then attack. A real tactic of ethnic cleansing carried out in the cradle of Armenia’s identity, culture and religion, with almost general indifference, even shattering silence. A mass exile followed.
Aliev believes he has the wind in his sails
And if neighboring Armenia welcomes its brothers and sisters released from hell, the small republic of 2.8 million souls, populated by survivors, nonetheless remains fragile itself, facing hostile neighbors , and without wealth. Facing it, a petro-dictatorship of 10 million inhabitants equipped with modern weapons. Heir to a potentate’s throne through his father, Ilham Aliev has believed for three years that he has the wind in his sails, buoyed by the alliance with Turkish President Erdogan. Assured of a certain passivity on the part of the Western world, entangled in the conflict in Ukraine, he continues to deliver hate speech, promising to “hunt the Armenians like dogs”.
A fan of the weapon of terror, will the dictator stop there? In the region, many doubt it. Because his ally Erdogan has vast ambitions. “He wants to impose himself in Central Asia,” said one of his former advisors, speaking on condition of anonymity. “And this involves his own Silk Roads.” The one we call in Turkey the new sultan dreams of a vast corridor from Istanbul and the Bosphorus Strait to Kyrgyzstan, via the Asian steppes, like the Young Turks in the 1920s. A pan-Turkish boulevard in the process of being turn into a boulevard of crime.
The imperial wish is not new, concocted by journalists and academics since the 1990s. Under the banner of a nationalism with strong religious connotations, Recep Tayyip Erdogan intends to restore his image and pursue a neo-Ottoman work, following the construction of his 1,150-room palace on the outskirts of Ankara – four times larger than Versailles. The strong man of Baku extends his hand in this enterprise of new silk roads, even if it means nibbling portions of sovereign Armenian territory, and while Putin, who considers Armenia his “near abroad”, wants to punish it for his outstretched hand to the West.
Nagorno-Karabakh, empty land
A scorched earth, the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave is now emptied of its inhabitants. “A vast operation of crimes against humanity and even crimes of genocide,” summarizes Luis Moreno Ocampo, former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, in his report, who invokes Articles 6 and 7 of the Rome Statute to support his claims. Armenia is now in the sights, with its territory of Syunik, whose annexation by Aliev would make it possible to establish a trade route with the enclave of Nakhitchevan, also offered by Stalin to Azerbaijan in 1921, and Turkey . The first Christian kingdom in the world, the small Armenian republic is biding its time. Only France, in a magnanimous enthusiasm, promised weapons during the visit of Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna in early October to Yerevan.
“If we don’t move, the entire region will be transformed with these pan-Turkish appetites,” believes a Western diplomat, familiar with the issue. A humanitarian, Armenian from France, goes further. “For us, it is the resurgence of the specter of the 1915 genocide, warns Jean-Michel Ekherian, anesthetist at the head of the HayMed medical association, and more than 80 missions in Nagorno-Karabakh to his credit. cannot trust this alliance between Erdogan and Aliyev, which is calling into question the borders of the Caucasus for the sake of greatness and access to Central Asia.” Here again, Russia turns a blind eye and prefers to look towards the side of the adversary, wealthy and sitting on oil wells.
Quite a symbol: a street in Stepanakert, the ghost capital of the enclave emptied of its inhabitants, has just been renamed Enver Pasha Street, named after the Young Turk responsible for the 1915 genocide, the first of the 20th century, at a price of 1 and a half million deaths, always denied by Ankara and Baku. Setting out to conquer the steppes of Turkestan in the 1920s, the former Minister of War of the Ottoman Empire died with his sword drawn during a charge against the Bolshevik enemy, a pathetic battle but with a still legendary legacy in Turkey. . Iron-fisted satraps, Erdogan and Aliyev are taking up the torch. As luck would have it, they met in the Nakhchivan enclave the day after the Azerbaijani offensive to demonstrate their ambitions.
In fact, the neo-Ottoman dream has already taken shape. And Armenia, martyred for so long over the centuries, is trying to limit the damage. This is also one of the reasons why Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian preferred not to act militarily in the face of the Azerbaijani aggression of recent weeks, worried about the fragility of his own army and realistic in the face of the maneuvers of the Russia, which continues to launch disinformation and intimidation campaigns against the small democratic state. Armenia’s cry of distress is muffled by its mountains and by indifference. A Turkish march is expected in the Caucasus. It’s not Mozart and it’s martial music.