Azeri Geographic Pretensions‏

Book Review: Sleight of Hand on the World Stage
HETQ.AM [ 2010/06/28 | 15:02 ]
Levon Chorbajian reviews The Invention of History: Azerbaijan,
Armenia, and the Showcasing of Imagination.

Rouben Galichian’s The Invention of History: Azerbaijan, Armenia and
the Showcasing of Imagination (Gomidas Institute/Printinfo Art Books)
is a very important book that addresses a core issue facing the
Armenian people 95 years after the Genocide: survival in the face of
further erasures and eradications.

This is an issue with many dimensions, some of them well known and
others not. Galichian, whose prior works include Historic Maps of
Armenia: The Cartographic Heritage (I.B. Tauris) and Countries of the
Caucasus in Medieval Maps: Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan (Gomidas
Institute Books), focuses here on one of the lesser known aspects,

Azerbaijan and its attacks on Armenian history, identity and survival.
Azerbaijan was founded in 1918 under the leadership of the pan-Turkic
Musavat Party. There had been no previous Azerbaijani state in
history, and the name was taken from the territory south of the Arax
River, in northern Persia (present-day Iran), where much larger
numbers of Azeri speakers lived and continue to live today. Galichian
notes that Persian officials considered the use of the name usurpation
and protested its use at the time.


In the territorial jockeying that went on in the early Soviet Union,
Azerbaijan was given control of Nagorno-Karabagh (Artsakh) with its
95% Armenian majority, and Nakhichevan, that was 40% Armenian, in
1920. These were bitter defeats for Armenia, but ironically, they also
further exacerbated Azerbaijan’s own identity problem. The people
called Azeri today are an amalgam of Arab, Turkic, and Persian peoples
who had historically been known as Caucasian Tatars. The territory
that became Azerbaijan not only contained hundreds of thousands of
Armenians but also large numbers of non-Azeri Muslims and some
non-Armenian Christians. Azeri leaders were faced with the problem of
how to forge a national identity where none had existed before.

The answer was to fabricate a history. The officially sponsored
Buniatov or Baku School of Historiography (Ziya Buniatov was an Azeri
revisionist historian) developed to re-write history in the service of
national ambition. In his early chapters, Galichian examines two books
that exemplify the fruits of these labors, War against Azerbaijan:
Targeting Cultural Heritage and Monuments of Western Azerbaijan. Just
as Turkey claims its roots in the Hittites and other people with whom
it has no historical connection, Azerbaijan claims to be the heir to
the Caucasian Albanians, a Christian people who ruled much of what is
now Azerbaijan and had became extinct in the 12th century. This
subterfuge eradicates a millennia long Armenian presence and allows
Azeris to be presented as indigenous and the Armenians as latter day
interlopers. This is the history that has been taught to Azeri
schoolchildren for decades, and its irredentist implications are
clearly revealed when we understand that “Western Azerbaijan” refers
to Armenia itself.

Galichian painstakingly examines the fate of Armenian monuments in
territories that came under Azeri control. No Armenians live in
Nakhichevan today. Nor do we find the more than 200 Armenian churches,
monasteries, chapels and cemeteries that were found there in the early
19th century. In one startling section of his book Galichian
documents the fate of a cemetery that once contained 10,000 khachkars
(carved Armenian burial stones). This cemetery in Nakhichevan was on
the northern bank of the Arax River and clearly visible from Iran. The
last 2000 of these khachkars were toppled and broken up a decade ago
by the Azeri army. The remnants were taken away on trains or dumped
into the river. Galichian provides photographs of this destruction
taken by Scottish architect Steven Sim. Today the site is a military
shooting range.

Galichian has collected and provided ‘before and after’ photographs of
other Armenian sites as well. These include the before and after
examples of abraded Armenian text on buildings which, while not
destroying the buildings themselves, obscures their Armenian origins.
This is an important book for three reasons. First, Galichian’s text
and photographs document the continuation of genocide in the form of
the final eradication of the Armenian people’s history. The story
Galichian tells is not a new one and has close parallels in
Azerbaijan’s sister republic Turkey where Armenian monuments have been
razed, used as targets in artillery practices, taken apart for
building materials, and used as stables. And where the monuments have
tourist value, they have been attributed to others. This is a game
played by both Turkey and Azerbaijan.

Second, Galichian’s book is timely given the terms of the stalled (but
revivable) Turkish-Armenian Protocols that would radically re-define
Turkish-Armenian-Azeri relations without strong protections for
Armenia’s national security interests. The fate of Armenians in
Nakhichevan including the final eradication and erasure of their
historical presence was captured in the term “Nakhichevan-ization”
that became a symbol of cultural genocide and inspired an Armenian vow
that the process would not be repeated in Artsakh. Galichian’s book
stands as a warning. He makes it very clear what is at stake if
Armenia succumbs to Western pressure, and to Turkish and Azeri
promises of brotherhood, good-will, and solidarity.

Thanks to the liberation of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabagh) between 1988
and 1994, the fate of Armenian monuments is now under Armenian
control. The last of Galichian’s contributions is that his photographs
document both the ravages of Azeri vandalism and neglect of Armenian
monuments such as Dadivank and the Gandzasar Monastic complexes and
their subsequent restoration by Armenian artisans after 1994.

Overall, Galichian has made a truly significant contribution to our
understanding of continuing attacks on the history and legacy of the
Armenian people. He has compiled the history and allowed it to speak
through text and photographs of the dangers of any Western brokered
“peace settlement” that calls for the surrender of Armenian held
territory without the full independence of an internationally
guaranteed and recognized Artsakh.

# # #
About the reviewer: Levon Chorbajian, Ph.D. is the translator and
co-author of The Caucasian Knot: The History and Geopolitics of
Nagorno-Karabagh (Zed Books) and the editor of The Making of
Nagorno-Karabagh: From Secession to Republic (Palgrave Macmillan).
Rouben Galichian. The Invention of History: Azerbaijan, Armenia, and
the Showcasing of Imagination.. Gomidas Institute-London and Printinfo
Art Books-Yerevan. 2009. In English. 112 pp. Includes a DVD on
Armenian Julfa and more than 50 color photos and maps. $30 US and £20
UK. Available from AbrilBooks.com, NAASR.org, Gomidas.org., and Amazon


Gün AZTV: "National front for liberalization of Southern Azerbaijan"
planning to capture Iran's northern provinces
15:23 16/06/2010 » Politics

Azerbaijani organizations acting abroad came up with a decision on
establishing “National front for liberalization of Southern
Azerbaijan” at the second congress in Brussels June 12-13, according
to Gün AZTV.

Mechanisms on cooperating with Azeris living in the northern provinces
of Iran (Eastern Azerbaijan, Western Azerbaijan, Ardebil) and leading
anti-governmental activity there, have been worked out during the
discussions.

The 11-member staff of the “National front for liberalization of
Southern Azerbaijan” has been formed at the end of the second congress
in Brussels. Asad Tagizade has been elected as chairman, Eldar
Gharadagli and Nadir Tarik – deputy chairs.

Remind that “Southern Azerbaijan” (GAMOH) national political figures
have held a secret meeting in Baku recently and decided to “establish
ties with the organizations fighting for the democratic and national
political rights of minorities living in Iran and join them to fight
against Iran’s central government and Persian chauvinist system."


Source: Panorama.am