Armenophobia in Azerbaijan

It can be claimed that the educational process in Azerbaijan is made contingent on the ideology that cultivates armenophobia.

Arif Yunusov, conflictologist, in his publication entitled The myths and the images of the ‘enemy’ in historical science and in the history textbooks of the independent Azerbaijan notes that “amid the Karabakh conflict, the schoolbooks in Azerbaijan had the mission of “breeding patriots who know how to distinguish friend from foe and are prepared to take part in another conflict if need be”.

Arif Yunusov: The image of the ‘enemy’ is formed starting from the textbook for the fifth grade, i.e. since the very first year of teaching the subject of history. It is true that it is still not a textbook on the history of Azerbaijan; it is called Fatherland (‘Ana yurdu’), but written in a very emotional way, especially pronounced in the description of Azerbaijan’s confrontation with “others”, much more so when dealing with the subject of its “historical” enemies.

Incidentally, one of the central if not the principal points covered in the textbook refers to sacrificing oneself in the name and for the benefit of the motherland. Thus, in the section entitled “Those Who Live For The Motherland Elevate It”, only a small portion is dedicated to the figures of culture and art. The narrative mostly covers heroes (Babek, Kerogly and Shah Ismail) who dedicate their lives to the motherland fighting in the name of its independence.

According to Yunusov, the patriotic education holds a significant place in the Azerbaijani textbooks and directly ensues from the doctrine of “fighting the enemies”, represented by the Armenians, as well as the willingness to sacrifice own lives for the motherland and in the “heroic struggle” against the enemies.

In subsequent sections of the textbook, its authors pay increasing attention to Armenians who begin to be perceived as “the main infidels clad in black”. Also, a variety of negative epithets (“bandits”, “aggressors”, “perfidious”, “hypocritical” etc.) are used in respect of the Armenians. It were the “perfidious” Armenians who helped Russia in conquering Azerbaijan, it was the result of the “insurrection of Armenian bandits” in Karabakh in 1920 that the main forces of the Azerbaijani army were pulled back from the northern borders, a chance that was exploited by the 11th Red Army which invaded Azerbaijan. Thus, the “black-clad infidels” once again committed their black deed”. In the final part of the textbook, its authors decisively shape the image of the enemy represented by Armenians who have waged for centuries a struggle against the Azerbaijani people and continue to do so in our days: “Armenians, the black-clad infidels and their patrons resort to every treacherous and base scheme to weaken and isolate our state”.

In what follows, the Turkic origin of some persons is constantly underscored. The authors get so carried away with their love for Turkization that they contrive to make preposterous and absurd statements: In 337, the Albanian ruler Sanatruk (Sanaturk of Turkic origin, according to the version advanced by the authors of the textbook) led a campaign against Armenia and “protected the local Turkic population from the encroachments of the Christian preachers!” In the following year, the Armenian military leader, Vache Mamikonyan, launched a retaliation campaign against Albania and defeated Sanatruk’s army. However, the pupils who read about this event will find out that the Armenian military leader Mamikonyan was actually of… Turkic rather than Armenian origin. And, in general, Turkic people played a prominent role in spreading and strengthening Christianity in Armenia! This means we have an absurd picture: First, Turkic people spread Christianity in Armenia. In response to that, another Turk from the territory of Albania leads an incursion into Armenia in order to protect the local Turkic people from Christians. This is followed by a retaliation campaign by another Turk, but a Christian this time, who defeated the army of a non-Christian Turk!

Aleko Partsvaniya, journalist, notes: “Peacefulness and tolerance are other characteristic features of Azerbaijanis. Here, people do not like aggression and resort to it in very rare cases. With one exception. The name of this exception is Armenia. Armenia is hated. They do so with all their heart and their entire state. I do not know all the details of the story with Karabakh and I do not think that most of the Azerbaijanis do, but Armenia is hated for Karabakh. They are taught to hate Armenia from the primary classes. I won’t be surprised if the situation is similar in Armenia, but here things can get ridiculous. In Baku it is even impossible to find the CDs of a Western group, if any of their performers is of Armenian origin”.

In April 2012, at the session of the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly held in Baku, during the meeting of the Committee on Social Affairs, Education and Culture, the question of the Azerbaijani textbooks was brought up for discussion. The Armenian deputy, Aram Safaryan asked: “Is it true that your schools and textbooks contain propaganda of hostility and hatred to Armenians?” To that, the Minister of Education, Misir Mardanov

replied: “There is a vast chasm between our societies. And today’s event is a step towards bridging this chasm. I don’t know what is written in your books, and you don’t know what is written in our books. Therefore, it is hardly possible to find an answer to this question in a single day or during a single event. Questions of this nature call for very serious studies by specialists”.

Fatherland, textbook for the 5th grade: … It was 1945. In January, fierce fighting raged on the Baltic shore near the city of Mitawa. As before, the brigade of the General H. Aslanov was in the vanguard. The victory over the enemy was drawing near with every new day, and it seemed that the tankmen of the courageous general will be the first to enter Berlin – the den of fascism. This was the situation on January 24, 1945 as the heroic son of our people who had gone through the horrors of Stalingrad, through the hell of the Battle of Kursk, General Hazi Aslanov died under obscure circumstances. Who knows, maybe in revealing the circumstances of this death, another case of base Armenian perfidy and treachery will be unearthed?

The website Musаvаt.соm conducted a survey among scholars, pedagogues, psychologists and deputies on the subject of “whether the Azerbaijani textbooks contain propaganda of hatred against Armenians”. Venerable respondents did not refute the presence of armenophobia and set about expatiating upon the question why armenophobia became reflected in the academic literature”.

Tahir Ibragimov, a teacher of history with a service record of 25 years, considers that textbooks reflect the truth about Armenians. In his opinion, with a war going on between the two peoples, it is impossible to create a positive image of the enemy. “Children must have real information about their history. Facts about Armenians may not be distorted. Besides, by the age the children are given these classes, they already possess information about the real deeds of Armenians. In our textbooks, we cannot write the opposite”.

T. Ibragimov also believes that textbooks do not contain any denigration of Armenians, but report true facts: “If these facts make Armenians uneasy, let them change their nature. We may not raise our children in lies just to please them. Presently, there are thousands of pupils whose parents are refuges from Karabakh. They know what Armenians did long before their history classes. Why should we deceive them?”

The dualist approach taken by the psychologist Elmira Qasimzadeh is worthy of a note. On the one hand, she believes that “a textbook should not be turned into an instrument of vengeance” and “instead, attention must be paid to forming historical thinking in pupils. The textbooks must contain essential points enabling to assess one’s country and motherland correctly. I wouldn’t like our patriotism to be measured in the extent of our hatred”. On the other hand, she says the following: “In our textbooks, I never saw any appeals to kill Armenians or the ideas that Armenians are our enemies. My own child goes to school. Indeed, children are well-informed of the wrongdoings perpetrated by Armenians from television and books. How can we conceal from children the tragedies of January 20, Khojaly and the occupation of our lands?

Or, children must learn the whole truth about the history through a factual language: you can’t teach children a false history”.

A pupil of the 11th grade, Hasan Nagizadeh, expressed his full agreement with both the author of the textbook and its content.

The author is Azerbaijani. Of course, he intends to arouse enmity. This is how it should be”, said he. “They definitely don’t want to prepare us for peace. We don’t need peace. Armenians have committed a multitude of bloody crimes against us. The peace would mean disrespect to those who fell in this war.

With reference to the above, we offer the reader a few extracts from the Teacher’s guide on patriotic education of preschool and schoolchildren and Teacher’s guide for the patriotic education of children.

Developed by: Scientific and Methodological Department of the Republican Children’s Library after F. Kocharli and the Methodological Department of the Central Library after S. Vurgun.

Approved by: The Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Azerbaijan Baku 2009 Explanatory note: The guides suggest specific scenarios and recommended words and phrases to be pronounced by the facilitators; besides, the Methodological Guide recommends this training for children starting from the age of 3.

The first facilitator: Our lands must not remain shahids

! Our grandfathers protected this land from the enemies not to be now sacrificed to the calamity of the century, the Armeniandom! The tombstones of the Turkic sons in the Shahids’ Lane are not lined up so that some Russian soldier could say: “Don’t be so anguished, your leaders have sold Karabakh long ago”.

The second facilitator: If the motherland becomes shahid (see above), what can we reply to the infant held in his mother’s embrace on the square and crying “better death than retreat”?

No, the son of Turk, no! You won’t let your land become shahid! Let us swear an oath, all those who have Turkic blood running through their veins, let us swear an oath that even if this world turns upside down, the enemy hands will be cut off from our land! Let us swear an oath that we will avenge every single drop of blood spilled by our shahids and turned into the tears of the earth. Let us swear that our oath will not be like our other vows. Let us swear this oath!

* * *

“To raise the children in a patriotic spirit and to form their civic stand, it is recommended to hold disputes.

The questions of the dispute must be as follows:

– Who are Armenians, and what is our civic duty?”

Foreword to the storybook Hale for high school students:

My young friend!

Hey, the Azerbaijani offspring of an ancient and powerful Turkic nation! A piece of your treasure named Azerbaijan, starting from the mahal of Aghbaba to the region of Aghdam moans under the heel of a nation that has declared you an eternal historical enemy, a nation that has no future, whose morality is dead, who has all kinds of mixed waste running through its veins, a spiteful and scorned nation. You have confronted face to face such a loathsome foe who shuns no savagery, baseness, abomination, barbarity, hypocrisy, slander and evil, who lives and nurtures hopes of creating on a territory where he doesn’t have a single inch of historical lands a state named Great Armenia extending from the Black to the Caspian Sea.

On his way, the foe spilled the Turkic blood, but was never sated. At times, he feigned friendship and gaining our trust revealed his relentless enmity. Laughing us in the face, he prepared a pitfall for us by choosing the way of treachery and treason. Always abusing our kind-heartedness, friendship, fidelity to neighbors and generosity, in a word, our love of fellow men, the enemy turned it into a weapon against us, repaid good with evil by laying bare his treacherous nature. At the earliest opportunity they drew their daggers to stab in the back those who had given them refuge, food, drink, protection extending them a helping hand. Armenians turned us into innocent victims of the policy of ethnic cleansings. We fell victims to genocide.

This restless nation with the satanic blood running through their veins has committed against us countless acts of terror.

They wagged their tails before the Russian Empire which had always kept us under occupation, and they relied on its power and protection. As a rule, they would succeed in isolating and excluding us. For 200 years, the Russian Empire kept our hands tied and urged the Armenians to strike at us.

Armenians took full advantage of this and turned the treachery into a national trait by overstepping the boundaries of unbridled insolence.

At every step, they showed aggression against us and seized parts of our sacred land. And they chose the city of Irevan as their capital which was previously our motherland.

Arif Yunusov, the Azerbaijani political analyst and journalist, wrote that the war in Karabakh called for the role models of independence fighters and national heroes. This resulted in a great number of publications dedicated to the champions of the motherland rather than figures of culture. Incidentally, almost all of them proved to fight primarily against Armenians, as well as against Russia and Iran. It is Armenia (and Armenians) joined by Russia and Iran that are portrayed at an ever increasing rate as the “enemies” of Azerbaijan and its independence. Even when publications did not concern Karabakh, but referred to the reprisals in the Soviet Union in the time of Stalin, in that case too, the Armenian origin of investigators was heavily emphasized.

In the paragraph entitled Kitabi Dede Korkut: the Historical Chronicle of Our Fatherland, the authors again couldn’t refrain from armenophobic accent in their loose interpretation of the original text of the epic common for all Turkic people, albeit azerbaijanized.

In the context of indoctrinating armenophobia, some researchers point out to the warping of historical facts to accommodate the needs of the moment:

a) exacerbate the negative image of Armenians (as well as Russians and Iranians);

b) furnish proof of the “indigenous character of the Turks in Caucasus” and the “ecdemic character of Armenians”;

c) attempt abdicating responsibility for the bloodshed in the late 20th century by putting the blame on Armenians.

Some extracts from Azerbaijani textbooks:

Ancient history 6th grade Section II Ancient world Chapter II Ancient East § Ancient Sumerians Part 1

Question № 4: When and wherefrom did the Turkic speaking people Sumerians arrive in Mesopotamia?

Correct answer: In 7th-6th millennium B.C. from Central Asia and Altai foothills.

Question № 12: Who and when invented the cuneiform writing system?

Correct answer: Turkic-speaking

Sumerians in Western Asia in the 3rd millennium B.C.