Azeri, Armenian sociologists conduct joint opinion poll on peace
Ekho, Baku
30 Jul 04
Text of E. Huseynzada report by Azerbaijani newspaper Ekho on 30 July
headlined “95 per cent of Azerbaijani and Armenian citizens want
peace” and subheaded “This is the result of joint opinion poll
conducted in two countries”:
The citizens of Azerbaijan and Armenia are ready for inter-ethnic
peace. The results of the opinion poll that was conducted in the two
conflicting countries testify to this. The absolute majority of
respondents on both sides, 95 per cent, said that they were for peace
when answering the questions.
A press conference was held in Tbilisi to announce the results of the
opinion poll that was conducted by the Millennium Association for
Education and Research from Armenia and the Azerbaijani Sociological
Association. It was said at the press conference that the opinion poll
was conducted in the two countries for two months, and 2,400
respondents took part in the survey. In each country, 1,000
respondents from different towns participated. In addition, there were
200 Armenians who reside on the occupied territories in Karabakh and
200 Azeri internally displaced people from Karabakh among the
respondents.
The project was funded by the US-based American University Centre for
Global Peace. University of Texas Department of Sociology Professor
Jeffrey Halley, representative of the university, noted that he was
very surprised by the fact that the both sides of the conflict have so
many things in common. “When asked whether the re-establishment of
relations between the Azeris and the Armenians was desirable, 97 per
cent of Armenian respondents and 93.2 per cent of Azerbaijani
respondents replied in the affirmative,” Halley said. Meanwhile, the
representative of the American university pointed out the fact that 60
per cent of Armenians stipulate the so-called “independence” of
Nagornyy Karabakh as the main condition for “peace”. The release of
the occupied territory was cited as a top condition for 38 per cent of
the respondents from Azerbaijan, and 31.8 per cent deem the return of
the refugees to their land the main condition as published; in actual
report, 31.8 per cent of the respondents from the internally displaced
persons’ group listed the release of the occupied territory as the
condition for re-establishing relations .
According to Sevil Asadova from the Azerbaijani Sociological
Association, the sum of these two indicators (69.8 per cent) means
that the Azeris support the idea of the liberation of the occupied
Azerbaijani territories as published; the 69.8 per cent figure is not
encountered in the survey .
“The survey showed that 23 per cent of the respondents blame the
conflict on a third party, and 28.2 per cent – on the political elite
of Armenia,” Asadova said. President of the Millennium Rubina
Ter-Martirosyan also confirmed that the majority of the respondents
from Armenia blame the conflict on the “internal” forces, and only 14
per cent – on “external” ones. “In Armenia, 70.2 per cent of the
population obtain information about Azerbaijan mainly from TV, which
presents one-sided information. This situation has to be changed.”
figures in the preceding paragraph not present in the survey results
According to her, the idea of the joint study was conceived in 2000,
when she visited Baku and Sevil Asadova visited Yerevan under the
framework of a conference on problems of women. The researchers were
allocated 40,000 US dollars, which was split equally between the two
countries. The organizers intend to translate their reports into
Armenian and Azeri. Similar events will be held in Baku and Yerevan.
The full version of the reports can be read at
http: