A Telling Telephone Give and Take
By Jirair Tutunjian
Earlier this week, a more than usually agitated Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan held a three-way telephone conversation with President of Turkey Recep Erdogan and Azerbaijani dictator Ilham Aliev.
Nikol: Thank you for taking my call despite the past midnight hour.
Recep: What’s the matter?
Ilham: What’s the emergency that made you phone us this late?
Nikol: As genuine friend and admirer of you both I am deeply concerned in the calamitous worsening relations between Türkiye and Azerbaijan. I don’t like to see the worsening relations between my two closest friends and allies against the greedy monster of the North who is conspiring to return to our region. As you know, just a few days ago Putin tried to sink two Turkish ships.
Erdo: Nicky, Nicky, , what are you talking about?
Ilham: I echo brother Recep’s question.
Nikol: It seems to me that you are unaware of the growing hostility between your countries. Perhaps it’s because your media is circumspect about what it prints or airs about you.
Recep: Nicky, if you carry on like that, I will hang up.
Ilham: : Me too.
Nikol: This is what I am talking about: Brother Ilham, you or your wife, Mehriban have banned Muslim head dress scarves from schools. Brother Recep’s wife—Amina–condemned the Azerbaijan’s decision as anti-Islam and anti-women.
Recep: Let’s keep wives out of our discussion.
Ilham: Amina…I mean Mrs. Erdogan. While parading as deeply religious, Amina regularly goes on luxury-goods trips in Europe.
Erdogan: Mehriban Aliyev is the pet of the international plastic surgery crowd. On one occasion, a foreign custom officer confused her with her daughter.
Ilham: Brother Recep, let’s keep out our wives from this conversation.
Nikol: That’s a good idea. But how can we keep out our wives from this discussion when they are enflaming the hijab controversy?
Recep: Women will be women. We know they’re emotional. There’s a far more important issue here. It’s about the two Azeri wars which ended with the recovery of Nagorno-Karabagh from the illegal Armenian occupation. Our contribution—training, providing weapons, public relations, and intelligence—was crucial to Azerbaijan’s victory. And yet, Ilham here denies our contribution to the success of the war.
Ilham: I object to that false assertion. It was the discipline and the courage of the Azerbaijani soldiers which enabled our victory.
Recep: You are ingrate and ridiculous. Sorry, Nikol, but if there’s another war, we will sit and watch, even if the Armenians reach Baku.
Nikol: The victory was achieved through the various contributions of Turkiye, Israel, Pakistan, Islamic terrorists. However, it’s a waste of time to dwell on what’s ancient history.
Ilham: I am amazed that Recep and his wife are interfering in our domestic affairs when he should focus on the huge financial fraud his ministers have been caught at.
Recep: Let’s talk about your laundromat scandals and being caught at bribing the former head of German intelligence.
Ilham: I am proud of my intelligence operations.
Recep: You misunderstand me. I was not criticizing your intelligence operations. What I pointed out is your incompetence and being caught red-handed as the English say.
Nikol: Sincerely regret arranging this dialogue. All I wanted was to make peace between two men I admire. Instead, I opened sores . We all make mistakes.
Ilham: My biggest mistake was agreeing with Recep when he referred to our two countries as one people, two states. I think we are the real Turks. The so-called Turks of Turkey have more Arab, Armenian, Cherkez, Assyrian, Greek, and Kurdish blood than my people.
