Azerbaijan: Declaration Against the War of the Azeri Left Youth

We share below a statement from the Azeri Left Youth rejecting the imperialist war in Nagorno-Karabakh, originally posted on his LeftEast page. We find it very important to publish this declaration of historical importance:

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has been with us since 1988, since the majority ethnic Armenian population of this province of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic demanded a union with Armenia. The war that followed ended in 1994 with Nagorno-Karabakh and some neighboring territories of Azerbaijan under Armenian control and almost a million people as refugees. Since then, while Azerbaijan has tried to regain lost territories and occasional negotiations have proven fruitless, There have been periodic escalations of the conflict such as the Four Day War of 2016, but the fight has never reached the magnitude of the fighting of recent days, with hundreds of soldiers (and many civilians) dead on each side. As nationalist propaganda in both countries has reached a fever pitch and little anti-war activity is not only drowned out by vitriol but punished with arrests, LeftEast is proud to share this statement from young Azeri leftists.

The recent round of escalations between Azerbaijan and Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh demonstrates once again how outdated the nation-state framework is for current realities.. The inability to transcend the line of thinking that divides people into humans and non-humans based solely on their place of birth and then proceeds to establish the superiority of some "humans" over dehumanized "others" as the only possible scenario for a life within certain territorial borders, It's the only occupier we have to fight. It is what occupies our minds and abilities to think beyond narratives and ways of imagining life., imposed upon us by our predatory nationalist governments. It is this line of thinking that makes us oblivious to the exploitative conditions of our mere survival in our respective countries as soon as the “nation” issues its call to protect it from the “enemy.”. Our enemy, Nevertheless, not some random Armenian, whom we have never met in our lives and possibly never will. Our enemy is the same people in power, those with specific names, who have been impoverishing and exploiting the common people, as well as the resources of our country for your benefit for more than two decades. They have been intolerant of any political dissidence, severely oppressing dissidents through its enormous security apparatus. They have occupied natural sites, costas, mineral resources for your own pleasure and use, restricting access of ordinary citizens to these sites. They have been destroying our environment, cutting down trees, polluting water and doing “accumulation through dispossession” on a large scale. They are complicit in the disappearance of historical and cultural sites and artifacts throughout the country.. They have been diverting resources from essential sectors, as education, health and social well-being, to the army, making profits for our capitalist neighbors with imperialist aspirations: Russia and Türkiye. Curiously, everyone is aware of this fact, but the sudden wave of amnesia hits everyone as soon as the first bullet is fired on the contact line between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Blinded, just like the characters in Saramago's novel of the same name, they immediately become self-destructive, cheering the death of our youth in the name of "martyrdom" for the "sacred" cause. This cause has never been more than an existential platform, keeping the governments of Azerbaijan and Armenia in place and serving as justification for the endless militarization of societies along with the pursuit of more violence and deaths.

Nevertheless, we don't blame people: in the absence of alternative interpretive frameworks to make sense of the war and conflict between the two nations, nationalist ideology remains indisputable. If there's one thing our underfunded educational institutions do right, is definitely teaching how to achieve hatred and spread nationalist propaganda. Because hate is never a product of individual psyches, but is constructed and produced within particular power relations. In a context in which there is no direct contact between the one who 'hates' and the 'hated', the more the ‘hateful’ audience becomes concerned with their own issues of daily economic survival within the system that denies them the equitable redistribution of resources and services and accumulates more and more daily misery, but it is necessary to constantly remind the "hating" audience to hate the "hated" and reproduce their hatred. Hate must be achieved. They stole “our” lands, we say, so we hate them. Never mind that there must be myriad other ways to inhabit that land without a single group claiming undisputed ownership over it..

A teenage brother of one of us once exclaimed in astonishment after hearing about a pending work meeting with Armenian colleagues abroad.. “Are you going to see a real Armenian?”, He said. Now that I think about it, generations of people have grown up in a vacuum without contact with those with whom we lived in the same space for centuries. What kind of violence does that isolation of existence exert on our minds and creative abilities?? Needless to say, it is also a perfect recipe for the dehumanization of the "other.". What can be easier than attributing all the bad qualities to people I have never interacted with in my life??

Years after the signing of the Bishkek agreement (1994) will result in a ceasefire between the parties, The governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan have been accumulating large quantities of lethal weapons, which are now preparing to use each other. The last time the countries came close to a peace resolution was in 2001, during the Key-West peace talks mediated by the co-chairs of the Minsk Group: France, Russia and the United States. Nevertheless, due to prevailing nationalist sentiments and the fact that leaders on both sides were unwilling to compromise, peace talks failed. And it has never been addressed with such decisiveness as at the beginning of the 21st century.

We find it extremely challenging to find a way to avoid another war in the region in the current situation.. We see increasing and widespread hate speech dominating the narrative on both sides, especially when it comes to television channels, official statements or publications on social networks that circulate with a worrying intensity. Claims are being made on both sides that are difficult to verify and, Thus, create an atmosphere of fear, mutual hatred and distrust.

People on both sides have suffered and endured the pandemic and economic recession, trying to keep up with the challenges that the crisis brought with it, and now they are drawn into a military conflict, delaying any possible constructive resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. . It also requires a large amount of economic and human resources to maintain the conflict., so that elites on both sides continue to benefit from it. Azerbaijan's military budget for 2020 has increased to 2.300 millions of dollars, while for Armenia this indicator is located at 634 millions of dollars, which essentially constitutes the 5% of GDP in both countries.

It is time that we, the youth of Azerbaijan and Armenia, Let's take the resolution of this obsolete conflict into our hands. It should no longer be the prerogative of men in suits, whose objective is the accumulation of capital, both economic and political, and not the resolution of the conflict. We should get rid of this horrible cloak of the nation-state, that belongs in the dustbin of history, and imagine and create new forms of common and peaceful coexistence. For it, It is very important to reactivate grassroots political initiatives, composed mainly of ordinary local citizens, to restore peace talks and cooperation. We, left-wing activists in Azerbaijan, We in no way support greater mobilization of the country's youth towards this senseless war and consider restoring dialogue to be our main objective..

We do not see our future or the resolution of the conflict in new military escalations and the spread of mutual hatred. Recent military clashes in NK serve no purpose in establishing peace in the region. We don't even want to imagine the risks of being drawn into a full-scale war, as we understand what kind of implications it could have for our societies and future generations. We strongly condemn all measures taken to prolong the conflict and deepen hatred between the two peoples. We want to look back and take the necessary steps to rebuild trust between our societies and young people. We reject all nationalist and state-of-war narratives that exclude any possibility of us living together on this land again.. We call for peacebuilding and solidarity initiatives. We believe that there is an alternative way out of this impasse through mutual respect, peaceful attitude and cooperation.

Word:

Vusal Khalilov

Leyla Jafarova

Karl Lives

Bahruz Samadov

Giyas Ibrahim

Samira Alakbarli

Toghrul Abbasov

Javed Agha

Leyla Hasanova

Toghrul Mashalli

Orujova's page

Loghman Gasimov

Vahid Ali

Lala Darchinova

Gumru Aliyeva

Nijat Eldarov

Alyosha