Azerbaijan demands from its neighbor the land that had never belonged

Azat Artsakh Daily, Republic of Nagorno Karabakh [NKR]
09-06-200

The history of the modern Azerbaijan goes almost according to Orwell,
in spite of the historical facts and numerous confirmations about this
or that land’s belonging to various neighboring countries. To the
territorial claims against Armenia the story with the Georgian
monastery complex `Davit Garedji’ is added now. Who Azerbaijan will
sort out its relationship with next is hard to predict. It could be
Dagestan, Iran, or Turkey. But before making any demands it is better
to try and learn the history of the own nation and not to search any
family tree where it doesn’t exist; among Albanians, Persians, Turks
etc. /PanARMENIAN.Net/ In 1918 the Musafat party (Equality) first used
the term `Azerbaijan’ for the area situated on the territory of two
Transcaucasian historical areas; Shirvana and Arrana. Before that the
place-name `Azerbaijan’ only referred to the territories situated to
the south of the River Arax, in the area of Tebriz, Ardebil and Lake
Urmia. Later the land of Azerbaijan and Eastern Transcaucasia (modern
Azerbaijan) were populated with people of almost identical ethnic
origins. In 1936 Azerbaijan was integrated into USSR on the bases of
the Soviet Republic rights. The Azeri Turks were officially called
Azerbaijani; Azerbaijani was also the name of their official language.
It was then, when with the decision of the Soviet Government the Azeri
written language was translated from Latin to Cyrillic. This is how the
things had been before Heydar Aliyev came to power in Azerbaijan.
Taking the control of the country, he immediately decided to `revise’
the history of the country. It was then, when Farida Mamedov’s
notorious work `The Caucasian Albania’ appeared, Guliyev’s book about
medieval architecture of Albania where all the Armenian churches and
khachkars were announced to be Albanian, i.e. Azerbaijani. All this
enabled Baku to `revise’ the belonging of the territories included in
Az.USSR. The most interesting part is that the Deputy Minister of the
Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan Khalaf Khalafov himself blurted out about
the boarders. `In its time the USSR authorities didn’t regard the issue
of delimitation of the administrative rights among the former Soviet
countries, which led to a number of problems in boarder delimitation.
According to his words, often different documents referring to the
issue of territories of this or that country contradict each other,’
says Day.az. Historian Jamil Hasanly is sure that, `Many native Azeri
territories have gone to the neighboring countries. Today we don’t have
to squander our territories. We must try to save what has been left to
us after giving out Azeri lands, and today we cannot lose a single
square meter’. The parties’ incapacity of finding a peaceful solution
of the controversies concerning the territorial integrity as well as
the right of nations’ self-determination leads to national conflicts
growing into military confrontation. The principle of territorial
integrity exclusively works for the protection of the country against
external aggression, and this is closely interconnected with its
formula in UNO Charter; `All the UN Members in their international
relations refrain from force or its implementation against the
territorial inviolability or political independence of any country, as
well as any other method incompatible with the objectives of the UNO’.
However the UNO Charter states that the principle of the territorial
integrity isn’t applicable for the countries which do not secure equal
rights for the nations and do not allow freedom of self-determination,
and this, perhaps, is the most essential point in the resolution of the
Karabakh Conflict. It should be reminded that the nation’s right on
self-determination is considered to be one of the universally
recognized principles of international law. It gained recognition in
the process of the colonial system breakdown and was toughened in the
Declaration of Independence of the colonial countries and nations (by
the Resolution N 1514 XV of the UN General Assembly adopted on December
14, 1960) and the consequent international pacts and declarations of
UNO. Creation of the multinational empires sooner or later brought to
their breakdown; the Roman Empire, the Golden Horde, the Ottoman
Empire, Austria-Hungary, USSR. Being one of the most significant
features of independence, territorial integrity became one of the
weakest points after the USSR breakdown. The main difficulty concerns
the change of the administrative bounds in the former Soviet Union into
public ones. But if Kosovo falls apart from Serbia why Nagorno-Karabakh
can’t be proclaimed an independent Republic? Maybe because Serbia is of
much less importance to the USA than Azerbaijan, yet for Russia
everything is just vise versa. Unfortunately once again Armenia has
found itself between two rocks, in spite of all international
principles and treaties.

09-06-2007