Normalizing conflict – concealing genocide? Expert neutrality in the Armenian Azerbaijani conflict
Southeastern European and Black Sea StudiesABSTRACT
The article investigates the issue of expert neutrality in the example of the Karabakh conflict. It interrogates the notion of neutrality. The expert publications are studied using the following methodology: first the information included in the text is analysed; second the silences of those texts are considered. In most cases, the experts rely on comparisons of two sides that present what appears to be a balanced picture. Two types of silences were revealed: experts practically always ignore the wider context that could upset the equilibrium of their analysis; expert analysis avoids considering those facts that do not fit the paradigm of bothsidesism. The article argues that this approach produces a normalization of the conflict for the international audience, which creates a dangerous precedent, whereby it successfully conceals a potential genocide in the making from international scrutiny.
Introduction
The Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict started in the wake of democratization policies launched in 1987 by the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. This was when the Armenian majority of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region (NKAO) demanded secession from Azerbaijan on the grounds of discrimination. The conflict almost immediately turned violent with the pogrom against the Armenian population in the Azerbaijani town of Sumgait and metamorphosed into a full-scale war with the disintegration of the USSR (Kaufman Citation2001; Zurcher Citation2009). Due to political turmoil in Azerbaijan, Armenia won the war by capturing most of the territory of the NKAO as well as seven adjacent districts of Azerbaijan (Cheterian Citation2022). The war was accompanied by large-scale expulsions of the ‘enemy’ population from the territories captured by belligerents (all Armenians were expelled from Azerbaijan and all Azerbaijanis were expelled from Armenia and those territories that came under Armenian control). Since the ceasefire agreement was signed in 1994, the conflict remained dormant with frequent outbreaks of violence (most significant of these outbreaks was in 2016 when Azerbaijan was able to re-capture several square kilometres of Armenian-controlled territory). In September 2020, Azerbaijan launched a new war that resulted in the resounding defeat of the Armenian forces, and the loss of the seven districts and several parts of the NKAO.
In this article, I would like to address the phenomenon of academic neutrality, which became a popular stance among some commentators on the matters of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. I argue that this so-called neutrality could have sinister implications, unforeseen perhaps even by its practitioners.
The Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict is one of the conflicts that is only occasionally featured in international news and commentaries. While there is sufficient academic literature regarding it, the conflict itself is largely concealed from the general public, who only hear about it when there is a resumption of violence. The importance of commentators and their ability to influence opinions of public and politicians has been noted in the literature. Bro (Citation2012, 442) commenting on the work of American journalist Walter Lippmann observed that ‘a political commentator can be more valuable than many other types of media experts in terms of the beats they can cover and encompass. Indeed, their reach and relevance also surpass in other ways that of, for example, university trained researchers’. Williams (Citation2020, 101) also suggested that ‘political commentator (…) by virtue of academic qualification (…) is sought by the news media for regular comment on political developments’. Their neutrality is also prised: “commentators became opinion leaders in their field of exercise (…) the political commentator’s veracity will only be accepted by the media (…) if his or her interpretations are seen to be independent, in the sense of not being tied to a partisan position or representing the opinions of some set of vested interests (Reynolds Citation1989, 139). This, therefore, places a special responsibility on the neutral commentators to retain academic integrity since they hold a virtual monopoly on neutral opinion.
Even though the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict is more than thirty years old, this research focuses on the publications that appeared after the 2020 Karabakh War because the outcome of the 2020 war dramatically changed the geopolitical situation and presented new threats that did not exist during the first three decades of the conflict.
First of all, as a result of the defeat, the fate of Karabakh Armenians is uncertain. The Armenians have been expelled from their homes that came under Azerbaijani control; the remaining Armenian population depended on a single road connecting them to Armenia and the outside world; this road has been blocked since October 2022, leaving Armenians in Karabakh completely surrounded by the Azerbaijani forces that enforced a blockade. The combined effect of these developments is that the Karabakh Armenians are facing a potential expulsion and ethnic cleansing from their homeland by the Azerbaijani government.
Second of all, Armenia itself has become vulnerable and is facing a grave challenge to its independence and even continued existence. A narrow strip of Armenian territory, the Syunik region, gives Armenia access to Iran via a 44 km shared border. At the same time, this Armenian region separates the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhichevan from the main body of Azerbaijan. After the Armenian defeat in 2020, the Azerbaijani president and state propaganda have been demanding extraterritorial access to Nakhichevan (which will cut Armenian access to Iran) and tailoring public opinion for the annexation of Syunik as well as the rest of Armenia (Aliyev Citation2021; Kucera Citation2021).Footnote1
Several encroachments into internationally recognized Armenian territory in the Syunik region suggest the possibility of Armenia being cut into two. Finally, for the first time since the Armenian genocide of 1915–1920, Turkey was directly involved in the conflict on the Azerbaijani side, both militarily and politically.Footnote2 During the 1990–94 conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Turkey’s military involvement was limited and unofficial. For example, politically, Turkey supported Azerbaijan, by completely closing its border with Armenia in the wake of Armenian victories in 1992. This border remains closed despite the Azerbaijani victory in 2020, which removed the reason for the closure of the border. Thus, the Turkish involvement on the Azerbaijani side is currently at an unprecedented level, both politically and militarily.
In a view of these critical developments, the period after the 2020 war becomes an important watershed because of the tectonic shift in geopolitical circumstances and power disparity between the opponents. Consequently, adequate reporting on the conflict becomes even more crucial.
The article seeks to critically investigate the practices of neutrality in reporting on Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. It begins with a brief overview of how the Armenian genocide is perceived by the conflicting parties. This section sets the stage for understanding the motivations of the actors involved in the conflict. It also underscores the relevance of the Armenian genocide to present-day politics, a dimension often overlooked in modern studies of the conflict. The subsequent section addresses the methodology employed. Several approaches to neutrality are explored, including comparisons with the use of neutrality in other conflicts, as well as considerations regarding source selection and the timeframe of the research. The research itself is based on the analysis of source texts (think tank expert publications), with the focus on understanding how ‘neutrality’ is achieved. Firstly, it presents a content analysis of the texts, followed by an examination of the silences within them – ranging from excluded context to factual omissions. Conclusion suggests that these practices of neutrality obscure and diminish the gravity of the situation from the international public.
Perception of the Armenian genocide
The question of the 1915 Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire plays a paramount role in the perceptions and calculations of all parties in the modern conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. While the events in question occurred more than a century ago, they are silently present in the minds of all parties involved in the present-day conflict and continue to shape their decision making. Such a point of view can be unfamiliar for a Eurocentric observer, since events of World War I do not have a visible impact on the politics of today’s world. However, this is quite different with regards to the Armenian genocide. The issue of the Armenian genocide informs the perception of all the actors involved in the modern conflict in very different ways. Vicken Cheterian (Citation2018) made a strong argument for including the issue of the 1915 genocide as a necessary element for understanding the modern Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict.
Let us examine how the parties of the conflict perceive the Armenian genocide. For the Armenians, the 1915 genocide is a stark reminder that their culture and physical existence can be erased (Bloxham Citation2003, Citatio
n2007; Cheterian Citation2015; Göçek Citation2015; Hovannisian Citation1978; Suny Citation2015). The Republic of Turkey, successor of the Ottoman Empire that perpetrated the genocide more than a century ago remains unrepentant and spares no effort to deny it in the international arena. Azerbaijan, while not directly involved in the events of the 1915–1920 genocide, has become one of the most vocal denialists of the genocide in support of its ethnic kin, Turkey. In genocide studies, the denial of genocide is considered the last stage of the genocide (Stanton Citation2013). It should not come as a surprise that Armenians see Turkey and Azerbaijan as two states that threaten not only their independence but also their very existence. On the other hand, the perception of the Armenian genocide by the Azerbaijani and Turkish states is different. While both Turkey and Azerbaijan have spent considerable efforts denying the genocide, it nevertheless serves as an example that their Armenian adversaries can be eliminated without a trace – both physically and culturally (Der Matossian Citation2023; Göçek Citation2015). This has been done in the past with impunity and this means that it can possibly be done again. The fact that the genocide is being staunchly denied does not mean that the Turkish or Azerbaijani society is unaware of what happened to Armenians. Ceylan Tokluoğlu observed in her study of the Azerbaijani identity: ‘Azerbaijanis attribute a “unique destiny” to the Armenians: a destiny to be deported from all countries they once lived in’ (Tokluoğlu Citation2011, 1125). As for Turkey, Uğur Ümit Üngör observed: ‘ … the Turkish handling of the memory of the Armenian genocide is characterised by a successful silencing of high culture and written texts, but a failure of silencing the social and cultural memory of perpetrator, bystander and victim communities.’ (…) In a nutshell: to some extent, the Turkish government is denying a genocide that its own population remembers” (Üngör Citation2014, 149, 157). Similarly, analyses of Turkish parliamentary debates revealed that despite denials of the Armenian genocide the knowledge of the Armenian annihilation remained commonplace among the members of the Turkish parliament:
Parliamentarians constantly recounted that Armenian radicals revolted against the Ottoman Empire and attempted to dismember it with the support of foreign powers. This was used as a justification for Turkish retaliation, which the politicians portrayed as merely an undesirable, small-scale act of brutality (…) ‘Yes, we accept that intercommunal massacres between Turks and Armenians took place during the First World War (…), but there was no Armenian Genocide because they were not killed for racial reasons. (…) Adil Kurt (BDP) rhetorically inquired, ‘Where are the Armenians who lived in this country?’ (Türkay et al. Citation2022, 3, 7; see also Türkay Citation2022).
All sides of the conflict operate within this paradigm, even though events of the genocide took place more than a century ago and do not usually openly feature in present-day discourses. Nevertheless, these events are silently present in the calculations of all parties. An outside observer may consider this reference to the genocide out of place, and as an unreasonable ‘ancient hatred’.Footnote3 Some observers went as far as to suggest that Armenians see the genocide as a ‘badge of honour’ (this comment was subsequently removed from the online text after it was challenged on Twitter) (Tonoyan Citation2021). However, the perception of the genocide remains extremely relevant to the present-day parties and informs their political calculations. The inability of the outside observers to take this into account and incorporate these perceptions into their analysis, hinders the understanding of this conflict as existential from the point of view of Armenians.
Methodology
This article will critically investigate academic neutrality in the context of Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. Academic neutrality has been examined by social scientists in a number of contexts. In North America the discussion focuses on the university setting and its impact on students: should the university teaching be devoid of ideological opinions of teachers and to what extent this could be reasonably achieved? (Barnhizer Citation1993; Simon Citation1994; Taylor Citation1973). While proponents argue for the feasibility of academic neutrality, others critique this concept. For instance, Robert L. Simon (Citation1994) proposed a notion of academic critical neutrality, which is based on following the rules of critical enquiry and academic rigour. However, this position is little more than setting basic standards of scientific enquiry. It was criticized on the grounds that humans are biased by nature and attempts at neutrality perceived as superficial attempts to conceal these biases (Werner Citation1994; Fish Citation1994). Another area where academic neutrality and ethics undergo scrutiny is the influence of commercialization on social sciences. Since the latter half of the twentieth century, business practices have increasingly penetrated academia, placing scholars under pressure from grant donors who shape research agendas. Additionally, ideological pressures, ranging from political loyalties to contemporary trends emphasizing societal benefits (it is not clear who defines the benefit of the society) over individual curiosity in scientific work, further encroach upon academic freedoms (Ruser Citation2020; Collyer Citation2015).
Insights into academic neutrality can be gleaned from the work of scholars working on Palestine and Israel, who challenge the notion of academic neutrality. Anne de Jong (Citation2012), demonstrates that framing the Palestine-Israel situation as a binary conflict obscures power differences, facilitating the adoption of academic neutrality by scholars. This approach, however, fails to expose power dynamics and inhibits researchers from posing crucial questions:
Depicting the contemporary situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories as ‘binary conflict’ with the desired solution ‘peace’ is not academically neutral (…) [it] entails a paradigm that encourages binary categories which hold little reflection on the ground; distorts (unequal) power relations, and; sanitizes the ontics—lived experience—of violence. (de Jong Citation2012, 193, 195)
To phrase one’s research in terms of ‘the Israel–Palestine conflict’ was (and often still is) perceived as ‘neutral’ in the sense that it indicates an interest in the situation rather than in a particular view, population or experience. (…) [I]f one approaches a conflict in an academic matter (read: objectively), one is expected to give even space and consideration to both ‘sides’ of the conflict. This obsession with even-handedness and balance, brought forward within the unquestioned ‘conflict paradigm,’ successfully evaded pressing questions on power, practices of oppression and the nature of Israeli society and polity. (de Jong Citation2012, 198–199)
Similarly, Lisa Taraki (Citation2006) highlights how the conflict paradigm in analysing Palestine-Israel relations creates a context where the legitimate academic practice of providing equal coverage of both parties masks power imbalances and distorts the realities on the ground. To underscore her point, she evokes the incongruity of portraying the apartheid era South African situation as a mere conflict between the white minority and the black majority.
The subsequent text analysis reveals significant parallels between academic neutrality discussions in the Palestine-Israel context and those pertaining to the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. However, a notable disparity arises in the pursuit of even-handedness, which in the latter case often becomes the primary objective of research, occasionally taking unethical forms.
As advocated by Robert L. Simon (Citation1994) academic rigour and critical enquiry are indispensable for achieving a minimum level of neutrality, especially when addressing a conflict predominantly unfamiliar for an international audience. The commentators are supposed to be experts in the field they are writing about, possessing specialized knowledge inaccessible to the majority. The expertise, typically acquired through years of study at reputable institutions, remains dormant until instances of violence spark transient public interest, prompting these experts to provide balanced and impartial insights to the media or decision-makers.
The status of neutrality is highly valuable, and it attains an aura of legitimacy and respectability setting neutral observers apart from partisan commentators who often advocate for their own groups. Neutral observers, typically not aligned with conflicting parties, are perceived as unbiased and objective, thus wielding considerable influence in shaping international opinions and policies of governments and international organizations. Consequently, this places a particular weight of responsibility on neutral observers.
This article was conceived on January 21, 2021, the final draft was completed in early 2023, followed by its presentation at the ASN conference at Columbia University in May 2023. The primary material used in this research comes from the period between October 2020 and December 2022. Criticism could be made regarding the absence of the coverage until the expulsion of the Armenian population from Karabakh in November 2023. However, I contend this suggestion for two main reasons. First, the conflict remains ongoing, and it is likely to spread to Armenian territory, rendering the November 2023 cut-off date as arbitrary as the current December 2022 date. Second, the nature of the analysis would not fundamentally change with the addition of new material. As demonstrated in the forthcoming analysis, deconstructing the texts requires considerable space, with several paragraphs required to dissect a few lines of source material. In fact, one paragraph of the source text necessitated several pages of analysis to contextualize that extract. Hence, incorporating new material would unnecessarily expand the article without contributing any new knowledge.
This research uses opinion pieces authored by neutral experts as its primary source of analysis. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, opinion pieces offer more revealing insights compared to academic publications. Without the peer review process, which may temper certain aspects of the paper, opinion pieces tend to present more authentic viewpoints, thereby exposing a writer’s biases more transparently compared to polished, peer reviewed, and scrutinized academic publications.
Secondly, the opinion pieces published by think tanks enjoy a broader readership compared to academic publications, which are often hidden behind paywalls. Opinion pieces are being more widely distributed to the general public which typically lacks in-depth knowledge of the conflict. Equally important is the role of think tanks in shaping the narrative received by political leadership and decision-makers in the West.
The following think tank websites were surveyed in the period between October 2020 and December 2022: eurasia.net, chathamhouse.org, foreignaffairs.com and carnegieeurope.eu. The primary criterion for selection was the perceived neutrality of the authors – i.e., the selected works should not demonstrate support for either side of the conflict. Consequently, any pieces that appeared to support one or the other side were excluded. The second criterion was long-term academic specialization of the authors in the regional conflicts. This was done to exclude those authors who might not have a specialized regional knowledge and, therefore, would be unable to see the wider context of the conflict.
Out of more than a hundred articles surveyed, 22 publications meeting both criteria were selected as sources for analysis. It quickly became clear that providing a detailed analysis of all shortlisted works will expand the text beyond the scope of even the largest academic articles. Hence only several texts were used in the article to represent the broader trends observed.
Hence, this research is using qualitative method and the content analysis method for analysing the texts. The sample works will be studied using a two-pronged approach. First, the texts will be analysed from the point of view of what is included in the text – in other words, what facts are being used to shape the narrative and how the authors achieve neutrality in the text. Second, the article looks at the silences in the text and analyse what facts and contexts are excluded from the text. Why they might be excluded and what impact this exclusion has on the text will also be examined.
What is included in the texts?
One sample text is ‘Augmented Azerbaijan? The return of Azerbaijani irredentism’ published by the well-known British conservative think tank Chatham House on 5 August 2021 (Broers Citation2021a). This is a good example of what appears to be a very balanced expert analysis of the unfolding military-political situation in an obscure region that the general public has never heard about. A close examination of the text reveals a persistent pattern that can be described as ‘bothsidesism,’ as a way to achieve the neutrality of the opinions expressed. It works by juxtaposing similar actions of both sides. Several examples will be provided using content analysis method to illustrate the point. The author writes:
Post-war relations between the two states have remained utterly polarized around a slew of issues, from Azerbaijan’s ongoing detention and trials of Armenian prisoners to persistent Azerbaijani casualties due to landmines. (Broers Citation2021a)
Interestingly enough exactly the same comparison was made later by another author. It is remarkable how two different authors arrived at exactly the same comparison. Since these are not strictly academic works, it can be understood that no proper reference was made. Yet, the origins of this nearly verbatim comparison used by two different authors is puzzling:
Armenia seeks the release of around 38 detainees, considered to be prisoners of war by the Armenians, still in Azerbaijani custody; Azerbaijan accuses the other side of withholding information about the positions of minefields in the territories the Armenians lost in 2020. (de Waal Citation2021, Citation202
2)
In these examples, the authors want to show that both sides have legitimate grievances, but the choice of examples resulted in a morally questionable comparison. On the one hand, there is continued detention and documented torture of a large number of Armenian prisoners of war held in Azerbaijan after the 2020 war (Human Rights Watch Citation2020). Those prisoners were supposed to be released according to the ceasefire agreement signed in November 2020, which Azerbaijan, unlike Armenia, did not fulfil. With the absence of Azerbaijani prisoners of war in Armenia, the authors needed to balance it with something similar. The authors chose the issue of Azerbaijani casualties from landmines on the territories now under Azerbaijani control. The moral flaw of this comparison is that the Armenian prisoners of war cannot escape their fate as they are being held by Azerbaijan (i.e., Azerbaijan has an agency in this case), while Armenia has no agency with regard to the landmines since it no longer controls these territories. This example clearly shows the need to balance the grievance of one side with the grievance of the other, even if this requires a morally dubious comparison. This example is rather unusual because it attempts to compare dissimilar cases. The usual pattern in the quest for neutrality is to compare identical issues, as in the following passage from the same article:
Why would Azerbaijan, having positioned itself as a victim of irredentism for so long, replicate the very same politics so soon after its victory in 2020? (Broers Citation2021a)
In this example of juxtaposing both sides, the logic seems to be the following: since both sides expressed irredentist aspirations, this makes them equal. What this simple comparison is concealing is the wider context of the two irredentist ideologies. Armenian irredentism, in its widest claims, never saw the elimination of Azerbaijan as a state with the official position of the Armenian authorities focused only on self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR), albeit with seven districts under Armenian control and the Shaumyan district that was under Azerbaijani control. While Azerbaijani irredentism seeks the elimination of Armenia as a state or at least a reduction of it to a form of reservation akin to the Gaza Strip in Palestine. This position is frequently expressed by the Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev himself (Aliyev Citation2022). Let’s look at another comparison between two sides:
Baku is seeking to avoid repeating Yerevan’s experience in the 1990s, when the militarily victorious side – then Armenia – was unable to consolidate victory into a favorable peace from a position of strength. (Broers Citation2021a)
This is another example of the author balancing the actions of both sides. This time, it appears that the selected actions practically mirror one another. What we see here is a statement that one side was victorious in the past, and now the tables have turned and the other side has become victorious, so they both act similarly by trying to consolidate their victories. An almost identical example of bothsidesism from another article discusses the Azerbaijani encroachment into Armenian territory in an attempt to secure a corridor to Nakhichevan, which would have cut Armenia into two:
This is precisely what happened when Armenian forces occupied the seven districts around Nagorny Karabakh for almost three decades. (…) And everything is already in place for a similar evolution to happen to any further territories in Armenia occupied by Azerbaijan, should Aliyev act on his threat to make a Zangezur corridor a reality by force. (Broers Citation2022a)
As in the previous example, what we see here is another juxtaposition of the actions of two sides- Armenians occupied territory three decades ago and now Azerbaijan is doing the same. Hence, the moral ground is preserved – both sides have done something that appears comparable, and the author thus maintains his neutrality.
The problem with the two aforementioned examples is that they do not provide the context. These comparisons, devoid of context, conceal the vastly different long-term outcomes of the two military victories. Namely, the Armenian military victory did not threaten the existence of Azerbaijan as a state, while the Azerbaijani victory is a real threat to the very existence of Armenia. Stripped of the context, this comparison appears to be valid, but if the author added the context, the gross distortion of this comparison would be impossible to conceal.
Another interesting but factually problematic passage that requires detailed deconstruction to reveal its biases is from the already mentioned article ‘Augmented Azerbaijan? The return of Azerbaijani irredentism’:
Mirroring the Armenian discourse on Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan’s Zangezur discourse similarly interrogates early Soviet decisions on the allocation of territories. It can also point to a 19th-century Muslim majority, a local Azerbaijani community that remained demographically vibrant through to the 1980s and the role of the forced displacement in eventually reconstituting southern Armenia as an almost exclusively Armenian space in the modern era. (Broers Citation2021a)
Once again, one side is being compared to the other in seemingly identical actions. However, this comparison, like the previous ones, while appearing objective conceals important geopolitical implications and misrepresents a demographic reality on the ground through the calculated selection of the words. Let us consider how the author achieves this. First of all, the author compares Nagorno-Karabakh, a region where an Armenian majority demanded secession from Azerbaijan, with an unidentified entity called ‘Zangezur’. The author notes that in Zangezur there was a ‘19th century Muslim majority,’ which a few sentences later evolved into a ‘demographically vibrant Azerbaijani community.’ However, the word ‘vibrant’ makes it unclear if this is still a Muslim/AzerbaijaniFootnote4
majority or not. Finally, the author notes that through the ‘forced displacement of Azerbaijanis’ (again it is not clear if they were a majority) southern Armenia becomes exclusively Armenian. That paragraph creates an impression that Armenians displaced the Muslim/Azerbaijani majority of Zangezur, making it exclusively Armenian. Let us provide some context to the components of that passage. In the nineteenth-century Russian Caucasus, there was an administrative unit called Zangezur uezd, and we have detailed demographic data from that period, as shown in below:
Table 1. Population of Zangezur Uezd according to 1886 survey (Svod Citation1893).
This data shows that Armenians were the largest ethnic group in Zangezur uezd, comprising the 46.8% of the population, followed by Tatars (30.7%) and Kurds (22%). If Tatars and Kurds are combined under the Muslim umbrella, then their combined numbers would grant them a 52.7% majority. Thus the ‘Muslim majority’ in the cited passage apparently refers to the combined numbers of Tatars and Kurds in Zangezur uezd. However, what is completely left out of that narrative is the fact that Zangezur uezd ceased to exist as an administrative unit when it was split between Armenia and Azerbaijan along ethnic lines in the early 1920s. Armenian majority areas were allocated to the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR), while Kurdish and Tatar majority areas were given to the Azerbaijani SSR. We have detailed demographic data up to the village community level (sel’skie obschestvaFootnote5), which enables us to reconstruct a very precise demographic make-up of the territory that Armenia and Azerbaijan received (see ). The available data shows that the Armenians made up 74% of those parts of Zangezur uezd that became part of Armenia, with Kurds and Tatars making up only 25%. The spatial representation of this data can be seen on the map in Appendix 1.
Table 2. Population of the parts of Zangezur Uezd that became part of Armenian SSR according to the 1886 survey (Svod Citation1893).
What this deconstruction demonstrates is that the author skilfully equated the entire Zangezur uezd with Southern Armenia, blurring the fact that those parts of Zangezur uezd that became Southern Armenia always had an Armenian majority. This also rendered the comparison between Nagorno-Karabakh and Zangezur pointless, as the Armenian part of Zangezur, just like Karabakh, never had an Azerbaijani majority and always had an Armenian majority.
This initial analysis of expert publications reveals the following: first, the authors understand neutrality as a tool for the maintenance of equilibrium between the two sides of the conflict. In the pursuit of this equilibrium, the included information is carefully selected so that each action of one side is always balanced by an equivalent action of the other side. If mirroring actions cannot be found, then dissimilar actions can be used to try to balance the picture. Alternatively, the wording is selected in such a way as to obscure the dissimilarity of evidence, as was the case in the discussion of Zangezur. This technique is used so frequently that it became a distinctive feature of all the texts produced by the neutral experts writing on the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict and surveyed in this article.
Already at this stage of the textual analysis, it becomes clear that while an attempt to maintain an equilibrium between the sides is the most visible feature of the text, it is also evident that the equilibrium is practically always achieved by excluding the wider context from the analysis. The context is silenced for an obvious reason: providing context would have made all comparisons designed to demonstrate equilibrium between the two sides invalid. In the following part, I will focus more on the material that was not included in the text. I will try to provide a typology of the excluded context and techniques of exclusion.
What is not included in the texts?
The silences of a text can often be more important than the actual message found within it. Examining what is left out of the texts authored by the neutral experts can uncover their biases, reveal the techniques used to achieve neutrality, and perhaps expose their intentions. My methodology will focus on two types of information that are omitted from these texts. First of all, I will investigate what essential contextual information has been omitted from the analysis; second of all, I will scrutinize the factual information that has been excluded from the narrative.
The context is silenced through the use of two techniques. First, when analysing the silenced context in the surveyed texts it became clear that the authors often stopped short of making conclusions. However, if the missing conclusions were actually made, they would have exposed the dissimilarity of actions and intentions of the two sides. This would thus negate the whole goal of demonstrating moral equivalency between the two sides. Hence, while logically, the authors should welcome the opportunity to draw a comparison between the two sides, they nevertheless often avoided doing so. Let me illustrate this with some practical examples:
In 2020, the Azerbaijanis recaptured these seven regions and seized around a third of the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, driving out at least 20,000 Armenians. It is the Armenians of Karabakh who now feel threatened, concerned that if it were not for the Russian peace keeping. force, they would be forced to quit their homes altogether. (…) From its position of strength, Azerbaijan hopes to quash the Karabakh Armenians’ desire not only for secession but also for self-government. (de Waal Citation2022)
What the author is describing in this passage is ethnic cleansing even though he stops short of using the term explicitly. A few paragraphs later, the description becomes even more revealing when the author again refrains from using the term ethnic cleansing:
Azerbaijani forces set up loudspeakers outside Armenian villages and played the Azerbaijani national anthem and intimidating messages in the Armenian language, telling the inhabitants to pack their bags and leave. (de Waal Citation2022)
On other occasions authors came close to describing ethnic cleansing but avoided using the term resorting to elusive wording such as: ‘ … Karabakh Armenian fears that Azerbaijan has no other plan but their demographic attrition through intimidation’ (Broers Citation2021b).
The title of one of the previously mentioned articles, ‘Is Azerbaijan planning a long-term presence in Armenia?’ (Broers Citation2022a) is another example of how the language can be used to obscure the true intentions of the parties involved. Azerbaijan does not want to establish a ‘long-term presence in Armenia’ as the article suggests; rather, it wants to eliminate Armenia as a state. In fact, the article even comes close to acknowledging this when it states: ‘Azerbaijan’s attack demonstrated the potential for Armenia to be cut in two … ’ (Broers Citation2022a) but it stops short of making this conclusion and explaining the significance of this observation. If Armenia is cut into two it will lose the border with Iran leading to the subsequent deportation of the Armenian population of Syunik, just like what happened in all territories that came under Azerbaijani control. Afterwards, the remaining Armenian territory will be encircled and will be at the mercy of Azerbaijan and Turkey to access the outside world (with Georgia being economically dependent on Turkey and Azerbaijan). In the medium-long term (5–10 years) the probability is that this will create intolerable living conditions in Armenia akin to those that Palestinians experience in the Gaza Strip, leading to the ultimate exodus of the Armenian population.
Azerbaijani authorities do hide these plans – there is already a government of the Gokce-Zangezur Republic that has plans to annex half of Armenian territory (Eurasianet Citation2022). The Azerbaijani historiography has a long-established claim on the Armenian capital Yerevan and the entirely of Armenia (Aliyev Citation2010). It is evident that these are not insignificant observations that can be dropped from the narrative as irrelevant facts. The omission of this evidence from the article results in the ‘normalisation’ of the conflict and it successfully conceals the intent of the Azerbaijani authorities who aim to eliminate of Armenia as a state. As this example shows, the context can be crucially important.
The second technique of silencing the general context has already been mentioned: the juxtaposition of two sides when making comparisons and highlighting the apparent similarity of intentions, goals or actions between Armenia and Azerbaijan. However, the neutral experts do not state the logical end of that analysis to illustrate the obvious logical long-term impact of those goals, intentions or actions.
For example, Armenian and Azerbaijani irredentism is one of the favourite subjects frequently used for comparison. The logic is clear – both sides display irredentism which makes it a convenient tool to demonstrate the moral equivalency of the parties of conflict as well as the author’s neutrality. However, if analysis went beyond the word irredentism itself and considered the scale of irredentist claims, a huge difference between these two irredentisms would have been revealed.
Armenian irredentism always focused on the independence of Karabakh. In its most radical manifestations it claimed the territories of NKR which included the territory of Nagorno Karabakhskaia Avtonomnaia Oblast (NKAO), a Soviet-era autonomous region of Karabakh Armenians, seven districts of Azerbaijan that came under Armenian control as a result of the war in 1990–94, and the Shahumyan district in the north of Karabakh whose Armenian population was expelled in 1990 as a result of the operation Kol’tso ‘ring’ implemented by Azerbaijan with the help of the Soviet Army. Occasional (but unofficial) irredentist claims were made on the Nakhichevan region of Azerbaijan, with the argument that at the beginning of the twentieth century, it had a sizable Armenian population. The Armenian irredentism, no matter how expansionist it was towards Azerbaijan, did not envisage the elimination of Azerbaijan as a state even in its most radical manifestation.
In contrast, if the experts elaborated more on the details of the Azerbaijani irredentism it would become clear that Armenia in its entirety is a subject of Azerbaijani irredentist aspirations. And these sentiments are not expressed by some marginalized individuals but are part of a coordinated state policy operating on many levels: from the primary school education to the official declarations by the members of the Azerbaijani government and Parliament. Occasionally, ‘neutral’ authors acknowledge the existence and scale of Azerbaijani irredentism but for some reason shy away from comparing it with the Armenian one. For example:
Since the late 2000s, the idea of Azerbaijan as a nation defined by the citizens living on its territory has been increasingly challenged by a political discourse laying claim to the territory of the Republic of Armenia as Azerbaijani “ancestral lands.” These claims deemphasize the country’s modern map as the definition of its nationhood, suggesting instead a much wider ethnic Azerbaijani homeland extending laterally under Armenia. (Broers Citation2021a)
A simple logical continuation of this line of thought would have revealed the scale of disparity between the two irredentist movements. Instead, the author immediately seeks to diminish the impact of what he just revealed by using a strange choice of words – ‘Azerbaijani homeland extending laterally under Armenia’ – when a more proper description of what was described should have been: ‘Azerbaijani homeland extending instead of Armenia’.
These examples have demonstrated that ‘neutral analysis’ almost always avoids considering the bigger picture which would make it difficult to equalize both sides of the conflict. When occasionally the bigger picture slips in, the authors try to downplay what they have revealed. Let us now turn to other aspects that are routinely silenced in the expert analysis – the factual information.
The general context is not the only element silenced in the works of neutral authors. Upon analysing a number of texts produced by the neutral experts, it becomes evident that these publications completely overlook a distinctive pattern of systemic violence and well-documented atrocities committed by the Azerbaijani troops against Armenian prisoners of war (POWs) and civilians. These are not isolated incidents, but a pattern that was evident already during the 2020 war. There is also little doubt that these atrocities are encouraged by the Azerbaijani leadership as the Azerbaijani soldiers openly record and disseminate these recording of the atrocities.
Let me illustrate how the experts silence the atrocities in their texts. For example, the article ‘Is Azerbaijan planning a long-term presence in Armenia?’ was published on 26 September 2022, two weeks after the outbreak of large-scale violence inside Armenian territory (September 12–14, 2022) and the article itself can be seen as a response to that escalation of violence. The only reference to violence in the article is in the first paragraph – ‘[t]he recent large-scale cross-border attacks inside Armenia by Azerbaijan, with reports estimating at least 286 people killed from both sides and hundreds more wounded, highlights the wider picture of a collapsing Russian-led security order in Eurasia’ (Broers Citation2022a).
This dry description conceals horrendous war crimes committed during September 12–14, 2022 that surfaced almost immediately and were widely reported by the media.Footnote6 This was also reported by The Guardian that provided gruesome details (Boffey Citation2022). The Lemkin Institute believes that Azerbaijan is committing a slow genocide – a genocide by a thousand cuts – against Armenians with the full support of NATO member Turkey” (Lemkin Institute Citation2022).
A few weeks later, another gruesome video emerged showing the summary execution of six Armenian POWs during the September 12–14 attack (the second video emerged after the publication of the article in question) filmed by Azerbaijani soldiers. The silence of the neutral observers and their inability to report on a pattern of violence is not surprising if one takes into account the paradigm for achieving neutrality. Reporting on war crimes would upset a carefully constructed balance between conflicting sides.
Another notable feature of the neutral reporting is the reluctance to address the nature of the Azerbaijani political system. The deeply authoritarian nature of the Azerbaijani regime, where one family ruled with a brief interregnum for more than half a century, is practically always overlooked and the personality cults of the regime founder and current ruler are routinely ignored. None of the surveyed articles address the nature of Aliyev’s regime. Here is an example of how one author avoids uncomfortable definitions: ‘In the longer term, as Azerbaijan’s political elite approaches its fourth decade in power, growing ethnonationalism can also be interpreted as a bid for nationalist legitimacy to buttress its continued rule’ (Broers Citation2021a). The practice of avoiding acknowledging the nature of the Azerbaijani regime creates an illusion of moral equivalence between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the texts of neutral observers.
The idea of exterminating Armenians is well established in the popular culture of Azerbaijan and is encouraged by its government. An authoritative analysis of Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev’s speeches suggests that he is using genocidal rhetoric towards Armenians (Sahakyan Citation2023). This is done on many levels – from denying that Armenians lived in the Caucasus, to the denial of the 1915 genocide in the Ottoman Empire, official glorification of Ramil Safarov who murdered an Armenian officer while he was sleeping in Hungary, to the systematic erasure of the Armenian cultural artefacts and monuments – all constituting part of that program. Omitting this context and presenting the ‘neutral’ version of this conflict is disingenuous at the very least. This brings us to another problem – what is a possible reason to omit the facts and alter the overall picture?
One surprising reason could be a habit: the experts developed and perfected their ‘neutral’ reporting style for the last thirty years and now fail to recognize and reflect the new reality in their writings. As I observed earlier, the texts leave the impression that mirroring comparisons have become the natural writing style of the authors. It might be difficult to change the way one writes after so many years to take into account the new reality.
Another possible and surprising explanation is an anti-Russian bias among Western observers. Armenia has long been perceived as a pro-Russian entity and ally. Therefore, subconsciously, anti-Russian bias is being projected on Armenia as well.
The other reason for such selective myopia can be the fear of losing access to Azerbaijan. This overlaps with the phenomenon described by Adam T. Smith (Citation2022) who noticed that archaeologists working in Turkey deliberately choose to ‘unsee’ the Armenian past for fear of losing access to Turkey to conduct archaeological works if they reported finding Armenian artefacts. It is possible that the neutral observers are avoiding addressing what they consider taboo topics in Azerbaijan for fear of losing access to the country.
Finally, there might be a conflict of interest at play when academic integrity conflicts with the work for governmental institutions akin to what was described by Collyer (Citation2015) and Ruser (Citation2020). The energy-rich albeit authoritarian Azerbaijan acquired more priority than the resource-poor semi-democratic Armenia for many European countries. One might subconsciously supplant his professional interests over academic integrity.
Normalizing the conflict
The cumulative impact of the neutral reporting produces a normalization of the conflict in the eyes of the readers (decision-makers and the international public). The previous pages have demonstrated how the illusion of ‘neutral’ reporting is arrived at. The authors seek to establish equivalence between two conflicting sides through the use of three main techniques.
First, the authors seek to find likeness in the actions of both sides (bothsidesism). The facts included in the text are selected in such a way as to balance both sides – practically all actions of one side have to be mirrored by something similar from the other. For example, irredentism of one side by irredentism of the other; reliance on military victory of one side by similar actions of the other; territorial gains of one side by territorial gains of the other, cultural destruction by one side needs to be mirrored by similar actions of the other side (de Waal Citation2020b). Out of the 22 surveyed articles in the period between October 2020 and December 2022, the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ is used only four times. In all cases, this was done in a similar manner to demonstrate moral equivalency between the actions of the two sides: ‘both sides employed systematic ethnic cleansing’ (de Waal Citation2022); ‘both sides would resort to ethnic cleansing’ (de Waal Citation2020a); ‘For decades, Azerbaijan has positioned itself as a victim of territorial injustice resulting from the occupation and ethnic cleansing of its lands’ (Broers Citation2021a); ‘After the mass ethnic cleansing of several provinces by Armenian forces in the 1990s’ (Broers Citation2022b); ‘The Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict has always been characterized by recursive, reciprocal rounds of ethnic cleansing’ (Broers Citation2022b).Footnot
e7 When a mirroring and equivalent act is absent a replacement needs to be found – war crimes of one side have to be balanced by the land mines laid by the other (de Waal Citation2021, Citation202 2; Broers Citation2021a). The second technique deployed is reluctance to provide the larger context of the situation and a broader view. The facts used in the text to balance the actions of both sides are routinely devoid of their context. For example, the irredentism of one side seeks to unify with their kin while the irredentism of the other side seeks to eliminate the statehood of their opponent. It is clear that, when placed within context, the two irredentisms are incomparable. However, while stripped of the context, they become convenient tools for balancing the actions of two sides. The territorial gains of each side are similarly used to provide a convenient balance between the adversaries. However, when placed within the context, they would reveal very different implications. Armenian territorial gains primarily sought to provide security to Karabakh and did not threaten the existence of Azerbaijani statehood. Azerbaijani territorial gains, on the other hand, seek to cut Armenia into two parts with the aim of elimination of Armenian statehood. These examples demonstrate that when placed within context, the examples favoured by the ‘neutral’ observers would have produced a completely different picture.
The third technique used by the authors is excluding or suppressing those facts that could upset the carefully constructed equilibrium. Most notably, the avoidance of reporting on a pattern of horrendous war crimes, cultural destruction, desecration of cemeteries and cultural appropriation is evident. Similarly, the authoritarian nature of the regime in Azerbaijan is never mentioned, as it would once again upset the balance. Since those facts could not be matched to provide a balanced picture, they are simply remaininig unreported. Words are carefully selected to obscure the facts – for example, ‘demographic attrition through intimidation’ (Broers Citation2021b) instead of ethnic cleansing.
The combined effect of these techniques creates a reassuring impression that what is happening is an ordinary territorial dispute between two states. It appears that nothing extraordinary is happening – two sides in a remote part of the world are involved in a protracted conflict that lasted decades. Here is a good example of how normalization of conflict is achieved in the text: ‘[W]ithout the irredentism, what is left is the conflict’s secessionist aspect, foregrounding in new ways the issue of majority-minority relations within the same state – namely, the future relationship between Karabakh Armenians and the Azerbaijani state’ (Broers Citation2021a). This passage normalizes the situation by making the reader believe that there will be some kind of a relationship between Armenians and Azerbaijan in Karabakh. This is disingenuous because if the context of what is happening were provided, it would be clear that there would be no relationship between Karabakh Armenians and the Azerbaijani state because the latter intends to ethnically cleanse the former. Another example of normalizing the conflict: ‘[c]rucial for Azerbaijan is that the issue of the status of Nagorno-Karabakh – the problem at the heart of the conflict – be taken off the table, and that Baku exercise unmediated control over the entire territory’ (Broers Citation2021a). Once again, the situation is presented as a legalistic issue, but it does not go on to consider the logical implications of what ‘unmediated control over entire the territory’ will actually mean – it will mean ethnic cleansing of the Armenian population and the destruction of their culture to erase any evidence of their history in these lands.
What is being concealed by the ‘neutral’ observers is that there will be no Armenians in Karabakh under Azerbaijani rule. After the 2020 war, Armenians were ethnically cleansed from all the territories that came under Azerbaijani control. The Armenian historical heritage has been methodically destroyed for decades in Azerbaijan, and the same fate befell the Armenian cultural heritage on the territories captured by Azerbaijan in Karabakh. Clearly, it makes no sense to include everything, so naturally some facts can be dropped as long as they do not distort or misrepresent the entire picture. But the facts omitted from the surveyed cases, dramatically distort the overall picture.
Any case study is highly specific; however, its value and importance lie in its applicability and relevance to other contexts.Footnote8 Once these publications were systematically surveyed, it became possible to uncover a clear set of patterns, techniques, and overall methodology that were described in the preceding pages. And here lies the main issue – if it takes a considerable effort for someone who specializes on the region to spot and expose the silencing techniques used in reporting on the conflict; then it means that it is nearly impossible to do so for anyone unfamiliar with the issue. More importantly, this also means that other areas with intense conflicts such as Ethiopia, Sudan, or Palestine, with which a non-specialist is unfamiliar with, would leave that person clueless to similar tactics deployed by ‘experts’ in those conflicts. This is especially worrying because in some of these cases we might be left unaware of the genocidal intentions of the parties of the conflict.
This brings us to the question of what can and should be done. First of all, it seems that the practice of equating neutrality with bothsidesism should be exposed as unacceptable. Second, providing context appears crucially important, which would allow the reader to make their own conclusions. Finally, the authors covering violent conflicts should be aware that the facts omitted from the surveyed cases dramatically distort the overall picture. Understanding neutrality as equilibrium between two sides and presenting the facts to fit that picture by silencing and removing context or those facts that do not fit that picture might result in concealment of genocidal policies and indirectly facilitating a genocide in making.
A. Saparov 2009.
Arsène Saparov
Arsène Saparov was educated at Central European University in Budapest and holds a PhD in International Relations from the LSE. He was a Post-doctoral fellow at CNRS, France and at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he taught Russian and Caucasus history for four years during which he published From Conflict to Autonomy in the Caucasus: The Soviet Union and the Making of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh (Routledge 2015). He is currently an Assistant Professor of at Rabdan Academy, UAE. The research interests include the Soviet nationality policy, Russian Foreign Policy and ethnic conflict in the Caucasus. Recent academic publications include: “Contested spaces: the use of place-names and symbolic landscape in the politics of identity and legitimacy in Azerbaijan” in Central Asian Survey, 2017, Vol 36:4 and “Re-negotiating the Boundaries of the Permissible: The National (ist) Revival in Soviet Armenia and Moscow’s Response” in Europe Asia Studies 2018, Vol. 70:6 and most recently: “Place-name wars in Karabakh: Russian Imperial maps and political legitimacy in the Caucasus” in Central Asian Survey, 2022 https://doi.org/10.1080/
02634937.2022.2085664. Notes
1. In his interview on April 20, 2021 Ilham Aliyev stated that: ‘[t]he creation of the Zangezur corridor fully corresponds to our future national and historical interests. We are implementing the Zangezur corridor, whether Armenia likes it or not. If they do, it will be easier for us to implement, if not, we will enforce it. Just as before and during the war, I said that they must get out of our lands or we would expel them by force. And so it happened. The same will apply to the Zangezur corridor.’(…)‘Armenian fascism is the ugliest and most brutal of all those that existed in other countries. In this war, we not only restored our territorial integrity but also destroyed Armenian fascism. This is a historic mission we have completed, and not only for the Azerbaijani people but also for the whole world. Armenian fascism has been annihilated. It has been destroyed by the Azerbaijani people. If certain revengeful forces raise their head in Armenia today, they should know that, if necessary, we will smash their heads at any moment. We cannot allow Armenian fascism the opportunity to raise its head again. We cannot allow Armenia to bring its army to a state that would pose a threat to us again. If we see a potential threat, we will immediately eliminate it.’ Ilham Aliyev claimed that: ‘The creation of the Zangezur corridor fully meets our national, historical and future interests. We are implementing the Zangezur Corridor, whether Armenia wants it or not. If she wants, we will solve this issue easier, if she does not want, we will solve it by force.’/ … /‘Just as before and during the war, I said that they must free themselves from our lands, or we will expel them by force. And so it happened. The same will be the fate of the Zangezur corridor’ (Aliyev Citation2021).
2. By supplying Bayraktar UAVs, stationing its F-16 fighter jets in Ganja Air Base, sending its officers to direct military operations, and facilitating recruitment and transportation of Syrian mercenaries to fight on the Azerbaijani side (McKernan Citation2020; Tsurkov Citation2020).
3. The concept of ‘ancient hatreds’ emerged during the conflicts in former Yugoslavia as a simplistic explanation put forward by some journalists and scholars. It suggested that the Balkan wars were driven by primordial hatreds among the people in the region. Prominent works that embraced this notion include Kaplan’s (Citation1993) ‘Balkan Ghosts’ and journalist Glenny’s (Citation1996) ‘The Fall of Yugoslavia.’ However, this term has faced criticism for its oversimplification. In the Caucasus region, Kaufman (Citation2001) played on this notion with the title of his book, ‘Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War.’
4. Broers (Citation2021a) used these two terms interchangeably obscuring the differences. Therefore, this article presents both of them here.
5. This is a Russian administrative term from nineteenth century designating a grouping of several villages – a community of villages.
6. For example, here is the description from Lemkin Institute (a US think tank) from September 19, 2022: ‘The first Telegram video to emerge shows Azeri soldiers surrounding a naked woman’s body (later positively identified as an Armenian sniper Anush Apetyan). She has been partially decapitated, her legs have been cut off, at least one finger has been severed and placed in her mouth, and one eye is gouged out and replaced by a stone. The Azeri soldiers surrounding her are celebrating and mocking her. Another Armenian woman similarly, stripped naked and mutilated, appears to be in the background of this video. Since then, a second video has emerged, showing the stripped and tortured body of Armenian nurse Irina Gasparyan. (/ …)/’ (Lemkin Institute Anonymous Editorial Citation2022).
7. Only in one article author uses term ethnic cleansing to describe the current situation: ‘This escalates the pressure on Karabakh Armenian civilians to leave, edging towards a final “resolution” through gradual ethnic cleansing’ (Broers Citation2022b).
8. As a historian of the Caucasus working on a period removed from current conflicts one nevertheless acquires a very good grasp of the present-day problems. And yet it took some time to spot inconsistencies in the ‘neutral’ reporting that prompted me to look deeper into the nature of the ‘neutral’ reporting.
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