In the past few weeks, Europeans have witnessed grotesque terror attacks spilling onto the once civilised streets of Nice and Vienna. These shocking events have been echoed by the actions of gangs of Turkish Grey Wolves in Lyon and also in Vienna.
Despite the horrifying nature of these events, however, Europeans are far too detached from anything outside of mainstream media to comprehend how rapidly their continent is changing, with such events incrementally becoming more commonplace. This is not to mention how rapidly such societies are set to change in the coming decade also.
If such brutal incidents as decapitations and mass shootings are not enough to shake them, it is hard to know what will.
The indifference to such events in their own countries goes some ways then towards explaining their indifference towards the sufferings of Armenians over the past numbers of weeks.
Armenia has a long and politically inconvenient history of conflict with its neighbours. Inconvenient not just for them, but also for many Western powers who have spent the past number of decades repeatedly refusing to acknowledge the events of the Armenian Genocide of 1915. 1,500,000 Armenian Christians were brutally murdered and more displaced by the Turks, a fact recognised by only 32 countries in the world, many of them such as the United States only doing so as recently as last year. For most, geopolitical concerns are the main motivation for withholding recognition, with countries reluctant to irritate the ever easily irritated Turks. For that reason, even Israel have been reluctant to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, despite strongly promoting the institution of laws that forbid private citizens in Europe from denying aspects related to the Holocaust. This is where political power trumps historical empathy.
In 2020, the situation is significantly volatile once again between Turks and Armenians, though with a century of developments in tensions to add to it. In 1921, Stalin handed the predominantly Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh region over to Azerbaijan. Over time, the area was slowly ethnically altered as Azerbaijanis influxed into it. This continued until the late 1980s, when efforts by Armenians within it to attain some measure of independence were met with violence. Azerbaijanis responded by expelling many Armenians within their lands. After full scale war broke out in 1994, the Azerbaijanis lost and Karabakh Armenians moved into regions where they had not had control over before.
For several reasons, the eventual cessation of the 1994 conflict has been broken as of late. Azerbaijan have spent years expanding their armed capabilities, talks over resolving disputes within the region have reached deadlock and most crucially, Turkish President Erdogan has been keen to provoke and support the violence for strategic reasons. As they are doing in Syria, Iraq and Libya, the Turks are hoping to expand their influence by undermining the established regional authorities through proxies and military support. In comparison to other current conflicts, this Armenia situation has other things in common also, with the involvement of not just Turkey but Russia also (as peacekeepers), as well as the use of Islamist mercenaries to bulk up the local forces. Although others might try to play this down as purely territorial or ethnically motivated, the fact that Azerbaijan is 97% Muslim while Armenia is 96% Christian cannot be dismissed. Since the early 90s too, Armenia’s population has fallen by 700,000 to just under 3 million, in part thanks to mass emigration and low birth rates. Contrary to this, the Azerbaijan population has risen by almost 2 million, to just under 10 million. If Azerbaijan ever wants to do this, the time is now.
Since the conflict erupted in late September, there have been accusations of war crimes, ignored by a West caught up in the US Election and the Coronavirus Pandemic, and unwilling to take interest in complicated geopolitics that require analysis. There have been reports of Turks and Azerbaijanis employing ISIS fighters, brutal reports of prisoners of war being tortured, bombings of civilians in cities in the Artsakh region, leaving dozens dead and hundreds injured, breakings of ceasefires as well as targeting of schools and hospitals. Some of the more brutal stories involved captured soldiers being skinned alive and dismembered. Significantly too, there were images of a cathedral being bombed by the Azerbaijan forces too.
The issue related to this conflict have been felt across Western Europe. In Austria, 50 members of the Grey Wolves attacked a Catholic Church in Vienna, banging on pews and running riot in an event played down by police. That story eventually went mainstream after the terror attack that led to 14 Austrians being gunned down by Islamic militants days later. In Lyon, gangs of Grey Wolves took to the streets looking for Armenians and hoping to cause harm to them. In various French cities, memorials of the Armenian Genocide were graffitied and ransacked by Grey Wolves. These stories barely scratched the surface of Western mainstream outlets, who seem to be struggling to comprehend the severity and complexity of what is currently happening. This has been extenuated also by Azerbaijani hostility to allowing journalists access to what is happening alongside their social media savvy, despite high profile campaigns by the Armenian diaspora in the United States and elsewhere, the Azerbaijani tweets promoting their perspective are far more prolific.
In the past week, faced with overwhelming losses and little external help, Armenia effectively surrendered. The Armenian Prime Minister has tried to sell this as a necessity, but ordinary Armenians have been livid, some angrily storming the Parliament as a vote was taken on the issue. The worry now, according to Genocide Watch , is that by giving up land in Artsakh, Armenians are leaving their own people open to genocide. Their website states that it, ‘considers that Azerbaijan's leadership may intend to forcibly deport the Armenian population of Artsakh by committing genocidal massacres that will terrorize Armenians into leaving Artsakh’. This naturally evokes memories of the sufferings of 1915, engrained in the cultural memories of Armenians as say the Famine or Penal Laws would be to Irish people.
For wider Europe, the increasingly aggressive behaviour of Erdogan should be a cause for concern. Westerners are accustomed to leaders such as Barack Obama, Leo Varadkar and others who exhibit an infantile inclination towards celebrity and fame rather than an understanding of the necessity for direction and purpose within a state and as part of wider civilisation. Many of them simply cannot comprehend the forces driving someone like the Turkish leader. Just before the Nice attacks, Erdogan spoke of Emmanuel Macron wanting to ‘start a new crusade’. He also implicitly seemed to lend moral support to the Nice attacks. His determination to increase Turkish influence had been abundant for years, but has gathered steam in the past year. The grotesque scenes of the desecration of the Hagia Sophia during the summer should have sparked discussions amongst Westerners about what was happening on their doorsteps, but as one commentator put it, Europeans have become too uncivilised and modern to even recognise such a blatant and provocative affront.
There are certain strands of European nationalism that agree with European liberals in wanting to maintain a post Christian, secular European identity. This naive pipe dream has been exposed in the past year, evident most clearly in the scenes of Emmanuel Macron’s baffled face as he stood inside of the burnt remains of Notre Dame, something that Europeans hadn’t even the courage to admit was likely arson. It is this clash of cultures that led Pope Benedict XVI, in public but also in documents revealed by Wikileaks, to ascertain that Turkey had no place being accepted into the European Union. In fact, that opinion must have only been further embellished after a nun was murdered in Turkey following Benedict’s monumental Regensburg Address.
Far away from Notre Dame, another church is facing a sad fate. Dadivank Monastery, constructed between the 9th and 13th century, lies in the areas that are now being forfeited by the Armenians. The precious art contained within has begun to be moved to Armenia lest it be inevitably destroyed. Many are resigned to the destruction of the church or perhaps conversion into a Mosque. Father Hovhannes Hovhannisyan, abbot of the monastery, has stated that he does not intend to give it up, stating, President of the Republic of Artsakh Arayik Haroutyunyan just called me on the phone and told me not to touch the crosses at Dadivank Monastery since Artsakh won’t be giving Dadivank Monastery to the Turks’’
“I was waiting for a miracle to happen since I wanted to remove the cross-stones that our ancestors have carved and placed here 800 years ago. I was even afraid of being punished for that. I have been afraid and have been waiting for a miracle for the past two days”
Many within the region are now setting their homes on fire before they are abandoned.
The ‘peace’ currently agreed in Armenia is a temporary one. Fighting will resume again soon. Unfortunately, Nato’s alignment with Turkey has given them the upper hand any potential developments. Like the Abbot in Dadivank says, it is now a miracle that must be awaited.