The Fiasco of 35 Years of Reality-Detached Questioning and Political “Struggle”: A Contraindicated Guide for Today’s Tasks

Alec Yenikomshian

Hetq.am

This article is the second appendix to the article “Armenia’s Last Chance to Ensure Its Survival,” and is intended to expand and prove the conviction expressed therein, that in Armenia, the development of serious discussions and the search for solutions around all important issues must necessarily take place within the framework of an awareness of the conditions imposed by the fact of the existence of the Pan-Turkist program, whereas since 1990-91, the discussions and decisions made around the most serious agendas and topics fundamentally lacked the acknowledgment of that fact, and were therefore detached from reality from the beginning.

The Pan-Turkist program has existed and continues to exist today with no less persistence than in the past, whether we accept it or not.

Armenia’s and the Armenian people’s primary task has been and remains to build such a state and society that would be capable of resisting the threats of this project as much as possible. Only under these conditions will Armenia be able to survive and have normal relations with its neighbors.

That was the task starting from 1990 and 1991. That is the task today, under conditions of the greatest losses and ongoing threats. And without solving that problem, the threats will become reality, and we will lose everything.

Without solving this most fundamental problem, all other problems, however important, become absurd, anachronistic, and meaningless.

But since 1991 the debates and discussions in Armenia and in Armenian circles in general have ultimately been absurd, because the aforementioned most essential problem has been given at best fourth-rate, if not eighth-rate importance.

We can sequentially list a whole series of questions that have endlessly agitated the political and social life of Armenia and concerned Armenians in general:

Was holding the independence referendum of September 21, 1991, exclusively within the borders of Soviet Armenia, excluding Artsakh and without the participation of its people, the right decision or a treacherous one?

Should the version of conflict resolution agreed upon by Ter-Petrosyan in 1997 have been accepted, or would that have been defeatism?

Should the military-political leadership of Artsakh have accepted in July 2016 Serzh Sargsyan’s proposal to hand over 5 or 7 territories, or not?

Should Nikol Pashinyan have accepted the Minsk Group’s or Lavrov’s plan in 2019, or not?

In case of positive answers to the last three questions, would it have been possible to avoid war, defeat, the loss of Artsakh, and the already formulated Turkish-Azerbaijani post-2020 demands and threats again Armenia “proper”, or not?

Should Pashinyan have implemented point 9 of the November 9-10 declaration, or did he do the right thing by not implementing it?

Did Armenia lose the war and Artsakh because of Russia’s failure to fulfill its alliance obligations and its pro-Turkish-Azerbaijani stance, or was that Russian stance a consequence of irresponsible policies towards it by Pashinyan?

Should Armenia have severed ties with Russia and allied with the West (and should it do the same today), or is Turkey the West’s and especially the US’s main ally in the region, and they protect their interests through Turkey, and besides, the West shares greater interests with Azerbaijan than with Armenia?

Is ‘Real Armenia’ an ideology guaranteeing Armenia’s existence or the destruction of Armenian identity?

Will the August 8 Washington Agreements bring salvation and peace, or yet another capitulation?

And fundamentally the most radical and ‘fashionable’ one: Were the ideology of the 1988 Karabakh movement and the Declaration of Independence of August 23, 1990, about the revival of Armenia and the Armenian people, or were they a movement and a declaration for the ‘non-creation’ of the Armenian state, as Nikol Pashinyan claims?

These questions, the list of which could be continued, are not at all unimportant. But whether positive or negative, the answers would not have changed (and will not change) reality as long as the problem of acquiring maximum possible resistance by the Armenian state and society against the more than creeping pan-Turkist project was not (and is not) solved.

To explain and prove what has been said, let us take three examples:

Let’s imagine, for example, that on September 21, 1991, the ballot contained a resolution on the unification of Armenia and Artsakh and the proclamation of a unified Republic, and the citizens of Soviet Armenia and the residents of Mountainous Karabagh, who had declared secession from Soviet Azerbaijan, had voted in favor of that resolution. Would that have meant that the issue would have ended there? Certainly not. Azerbaijan and Turkey would not have reconciled themselves to it, and the war would have taken place anyway. In the war that took place in the 90s, the Armenians won, and they almost certainly would have won in that case as well. But to preserve the victory, Armenia needed to realize that Azerbaijan and Turkey would seek not only revenge, but much more, and it needed to prepare comprehensively, not only until 1994, but constantly. Therefore, the proclamation of a unified Republic would still have meant nothing if there was no constant awareness of the danger of pan-Turkism and the development and application of a comprehensive strategy corresponding to it.

But even the fact of the proclamation of the Republic of Armenia without Artsakh showed that this does not appease the pan-Turkists. And even in that case, it was possible, if not to certainly avoid future defeat, then at least to minimize that probability, if, by recognizing the danger of pan-Turkism, an appropriate strategy had been developed.”

“The second example: Let’s imagine that the leadership of Armenia and Artsakh had accepted the version of the conflict resolution agreed upon by Ter-Petrosyan in 1997-98 (instead of rejecting it and thus causing his resignation). Recall that the version presented to the conflicting parties at that time stipulated that the Armenian forces would hand over the 7 regions acquired during the war, while what remained, i.e., the territory of the Soviet-era Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast and the Lachin corridor, would remain under the de facto control of the Armenian forces, and the de jure status of that territory would remain suspended, pending a final determination. Would such a development of events have meant that the issue would be closed? No.

First, we do not know if Azerbaijan would not have refused to sign the agreement at the last moment. Heydar Aliyev’s agreement to the understanding reached in Key West in 2001, which he reneged on after returning to Baku, as well as Serzh Sargsyan’s readiness to agree to the proposed settlement in Kazan in 2011, followed by Ilham Aliyev’s presentation of new demands, suggest that the same could have happened in 1998 as well.

But even if that agreement had been concluded, it absolutely would not have meant that the problem was over. Let’s not forget that this version left the status of Artsakh undetermined, and Azerbaijan, at a time it deemed convenient, would undoubtedly have tried to resolve the issue in its favor. To prevent this from happening, even in the case of signing an agreement, Armenia should have been guided by an awareness of the existence of the pan-Turkist program and by the determination and corresponding strategy to prevent its implementation.

The 1997 version was overturned, but even after that, Armenia’s new authorities were not guided by the necessary strategy. Therefore, whether that version was accepted or not, Armenia’s task should have been the same.”

“Third, the ‘fashionable’ and brilliant claim. To assume that if the 1988 movement had not taken place and if the 1990 Declaration of Independence lacked the paragraph on Artsakh’s unification with Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey would have no designs on Armenia, and the latter would live in peace and become a sovereign, prosperous, and happy country is, to put it mildly, the greatest naivety.

As stated, pan-Turkism is not conditioned by Armenian positions. It is an ideology and strategic program that is over a century old. It did not end with the formal defeat of the Young Turks. It was continued by Mustafa Kemal and was only paused due to the new world order established in the 1920s. During the Soviet period, Azerbaijan continued it within the limits of its possibilities. The proof is the complete de-Armenianization of Nakhichevan and the anti-Armenian policy pursued in Mountainous Karabagh and the decline of the Armenian population’s proportion there from 95% to 75%. The proof is the personal testimony of Heydar Aliyev, who led Azerbaijan in the late Soviet period, that he consistently worked to increase the Azerbaijani population and decrease the Armenian one in Karabagh with the aim of absorbing the territory.

The collapse of the Soviet Union created an opportunity for Turkey and Azerbaijan to renew the pursuing the pan-Turkic project, which had taken a break in the 1920s, with new vigor. The 1988 movement and the 1990 Declaration of Independence have no connection to the revival of that program. Even if it had happened that no movement had taken place in Armenia and Artsakh, but the USSR had still collapsed and Armenia, without the Artsakh ‘headache,’ had become a subject of international law, it would have changed nothing. It would still have been obliged to recognize the threat of pan-Turkism and develop an appropriate strategy. One can only imagine in what state Armenia would be with the presence of hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis.

We can discuss all the questions mentioned above in the same way and we will arrive at the same conclusion.”

“Therefore, the main problem facing Armenia has not been and is not the questions listed above, but the many-times-mentioned pan-Turkist program. Those questions would only be legitimate if the fact of pan-Turkism’s existence was already firmly established in the minds of the debaters, and the debates were taking place within the framework of that existential main issue.

But this problem has been left in a state of neglect—both from 1990-91 until 2008, and from 2008 until 2018, and from 2018 until 2020, and after 2020. Moreover, over the course of 35 years, the opposite of what was required has happened: in all spheres of state and public life, there has been an ignoble regression in resilience, more in one phase, less in another. The consequence could not have been different from what we had in 2020, in 2023, and what we have today.

Today too, in the conditions of the loss of Artsakh and Azerbaijan’s continuing threats, the only, and unfortunately now small, opportunity remaining for Armenia is the deep realization, at last, of the aforementioned existential threat and the development and application of a corresponding comprehensive strategy. There is no other way.

The starting point of that strategy and the first guarantee of its success is the preservation of Armenian sovereignty over Syunik and the road through Meghri (the Azerbaijan-Nakhichevan route).

If Armenia loses that sovereignty, the imposition of Azerbaijan’s (and Turkey’s) other demands (the ‘return’ of ‘Western Azerbaijanis,’ the demilitarization of Armenia, $150 billion in ‘compensation for damages,’ etc.) will become a matter of time, even without military operations, and Armenia will enter the final stage of its elimination.”