Will Europe Walk the Talk? Value and Interest Clash over NK
I remember sobbing at a Christian conference in Yerevan, as European men and women kneeled down before the descendents of the victims of the Armenian genocide in a symbolic act of repentance from their ancestor’s inaction in the midst of the killings. Candles were burning away on a small, rough wooden table. Stacks and stacks of napkins vanished in a collective mourning for the ghosts of women and children who once dragged their small feet through the murderous sand of the Syrian desert to never make it through the death march.
In a 2001 article, “A nation that was killed twice,” the Guardian explored the Armenian genocide and Turkey’s denial of it, indirectly prophesying a second massacre. Now, in 2020, Turkey is once again dipping bloody hands into a second genocide of Armenians, while the humanist West holds hers behind the back. Tightly wrapped around each other. Motionless. Again.
A small 3-million Christian nation squeezed between two Muslim giants — an 82-million Turkey and a roughly 10-million Azerbaijan on both sides. But the telltale geography keeps slipping the attention of the humanist West.
In a tale of shared responsibility, influential media continue to smear the reality on the borders of the mountainous patch of land in Caucasus, where a handful of Armenians live and which they lovingly call “Artsakh”. Europe equates the murderers and the victims defending themselves in hypocritical calls for sides to stop fire, as Azerbaijan, pressed on by Turkey, attacks Artsakh or NK daily.
Will the “Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict” burst the bubble of a “value-based West”, baring an interest-based face to the world? For now, dozens of young Armenians sacrifice their lives on the border daily, to save their beloved at home, as Europe calmly watches Turkey’s empirical ambition unfold in bloody strides.
But lip-service to humanism is not the only Western disservice to Armenians. An indifferent international community in essence legalizes Azerbaijan’s advances on NK by recognizing the “territorial integrity” of Azerbaijan in an approving nod to a stalinistic arbitrary cut and alienation of land. How Europe imagines “self-determination” for NK Armenian population, once within the boundaries of a genocidal Azerbaijan/Turkey tandem, is beyond reason.
Europe could help put a diplomatic end to the war in NK by simply recognizing the independence of Artsakh, and depriving Azerbaijan of its “legal right” to kill children and the teenage soldiers on the borders, who put their lives down for those they have left behind. But will they?
The NK conflict is unmasking. It is not only about Turkey’s intention of wiping out a nation off the face of Earth. It’s also about revealing the truth about Western humanism. Which paw of the scale will go down, when self-interest is on one, and human lives — on the other? Truth will out. After this conflict is over, Europe will have to face the world as it is. Not as it professes to be.
When good, honest European men and women meet with my son in the future, if he’s still alive, will they look him straight into his eyes and hear a touched “thank you,” or will they ask for forgiveness on behalf of their ancestors, who never fulfilled what they professed? It is up to Europeans in power now.
