Alik Bakhshi
My response to journalist I.
Yakovenko
Following
Ramiz Yunus's scandalous interview on Yevgeny Kiselyov's channel, Ukrainian
journalist and propagandist Igor Yakovenko decided to defend his former
comrade-in-arms in the field of communist ideology propaganda, dedicating his
exposé to this end under the poignant title "Ramiz Yunus's Big Lie."
Yakovenko
accuses Yunus of persistently warning against placing excessive trust in
Russian democrats and the left-liberal crowd of Ekho Moskvy radio station
regulars due to their ties to the KGB. I admit that not all of them were
connected to the KGB, but as members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(CPSU), and many of today's democrats are members, they swore an oath to uphold
the party charter, which amounts to an indirect connection with the KGB. A
striking example of this is the democrat Posner. Incidentally, he's a
hereditary Chekist; his father, who worked in the United States, was forced to
flee due to his collaboration with Soviet intelligence. Posner, like all
Russian left-liberals, opposes Chechnya's secession from Moscow's influence and
considers Crimea to be Russian territory, which is a mistake. Russia is an
empire, and many countries were once part of it as colonies, then as union
republics during the Soviet Union, and Crimea was part of the Republic of
Ukraine. With the collapse of the USSR, Crimea naturally remained part of
Ukraine. Before the formation of the Russian Empire, as well as during the
Kievan Rus' and later Muscovy, Crimea was part of the Crimean Khanate.
Considering Crimea to be Russian territory is the same as considering Ukraine,
Estonia, and Lithuania to be Russian territory.
It's
important to clarify here: Putin considers the transfer of Crimea to Ukraine a
mistake by Khrushchev. However, the transfer of Crimea wasn't decided by
Khrushchev alone, but by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and
approved by USSR law, that is, by a collective decision. If we assume this
decision regarding the republican borders was a mistake, then where is the
guarantee that the borders of all the other republics aren't also erroneous?
Putin's approach will inevitably lead to general chaos and war between the
former Soviet republics, including the autonomous ones. Incidentally, there are
already statements among State Duma deputies about revising the Russian-Kazakh
border. It's a different matter if Putin's scholarly work on the idea that
Russians and Ukrainians are one people is recognized with a Nobel Prize, then
there will be no doubt about whose Crimea belongs. (1) This must be what guides
Russian left-liberals.
However,
let's return to Ramiz Yunus's big lie. Yakovenko found the main argument in
defense of Russian democrats, including those who left Russia because of the
war in Ukraine, in comparing them to Thomas Mann. However, drawing a parallel
with Thomas Mann is inaccurate because Thomas Mann, unwilling to reconcile
himself with the spirit of Nazism, left Germany in 1933, the year Hitler came
to power, long before World War II. Yakovenko felt it necessary to point out
that when Hitler bombed London, Thomas Mann was hosting anti-fascist programs
on the BBC. But I don't recall Mr. Yakovenko himself or his close friend
Yevgenia Albats hosting anti-Putin programs when he bombed Grozny. Unlike
Thomas Mann, Russian democrats calmly accepted the arrival of Chekist Putin in
the Kremlin. Not a single one of them uttered a word in defense of the Chechen
people when Putin launched a war to punish the Chechen people for their desire
for freedom and thereby satisfy the Russian people's shaky imperial worldview.
Unlike Thomas Mann, who blamed Germany and Hitler personally for unleashing the
Great War, Igor Yakovenko and Yevgeny Kiselyov, who had turned democrats, never
even considered condemning the punitive actions of the Russian army in
Chechnya. Among Russian democrats, there were also those who expressed concern
for Chechnya, albeit in a hypocritical manner all too familiar, in keeping with
Putin's concern for the Ukrainian people. Back in 1996, when self-proclaimed
democrats Yakovenko and Kiselyov silently watched the suppression of the
Chechen people's dream of freedom, I wrote in my article "Chechnya: Who's
Next?" (2) cited the words of one so-called democrat, "who went so
far as to say that, after two years of independence, the republic's grain
harvest had declined and it was simply necessary to send in troops and thereby
save the Chechen economy from further decline and ruin." In short,
Russian democrats reacted negatively to the desire of the peoples of Russia to
gain independence. They do not understand, or rather, they do not want to
understand, the simple truth: Empire and Democracy are incompatible. (3) They
did not protest Putin's first political steps, which were aimed at returning to
empire despite social development.
In the
article "When the Donkey Dies," I wrote: "The Empire of Lies
proved powerless against free speech, the power of which was first exploited by
the Baltic colonies, after which the rest of the 'voluntary brotherhood of
nations' dispersed to squalid apartments, leaving behind smoking hot spots"
(4). Therefore, to halt the further disintegration of the empire, Putin
launched a war against the media. This is where our homegrown democrats should
have spoken out in defense of the main principle of democracy, but they turned
out to be bystanders. Where were Yakovlev and his ilk? Didn't they foresee the
disaster if a KGB alumnus ended up in power? For example, when I first saw and
heard Putin, I immediately understood, and was right, what to expect from him:
"...after
a flurry of prime ministers, Vladimir Putin, a KGB protégé, takes over the
Russian government. He differs from his liberal, intelligentsia predecessors in
his formal, drab appearance, typical of KGB employees, and, as it turns out,
the crude speech of a gangster from a St. Petersburg back alley. It seems he's
in for difficulties in dealing with Western diplomats. Putin is the kind of
person who could stifle democracy in Russia." (5)
In
Azerbaijan, there's a phrase, "Özunan danış," whose meaning, in our
particular case, can be expressed in words: who is accusing Ramiz Yunus of
telling a big lie? Isn't it the same man who, for most of his adult life,
rising through the ranks from Komsomol leader and teacher at the Higher Party
School to head of the Moscow CPSU Propaganda Department, stood guard over the
biggest lie that the population of one-sixth of the planet Earth lived with for
80 years. A lie that ultimately plunged this vast country into a catastrophe,
as the revanchist Putin put it, of planetary proportions, reducing the
population to poverty and starvation. As befits any liar, Yakovenko easily
"changed his shoes" to the lies of a democrat. I didn't misspeak with
the word "false," because both Yakovenko and Kiselyov are friends of
E. Albats and other members of the so-called left-liberal democratic crowd from
Ekho Moskvy, who can in no way be considered democrats—all of them are far
removed from true democracy. Moreover, they are ignorant of such concepts as
morality and decency. In this regard, Yakovenko would do well to recall the
well-known saying, "Tell me who your friends are, and I'll tell you who
you are." And your friends, the would-be democrats V. Shenderovich, M.
Fishman, I. Yashin, E. Limonov, and D. Oreshkin, demonstrated their entire
morality naked in a notorious pornographic video. E. Albats behaved even more
immorally in her attempt to justify their behavior. (6) Now I understand why
her program was called "Full Albats," a reference to the well-known
expression "full..." Yakovenko should have remembered his friends
when he accused Yunus of lacking conscience and morality.
Ramiz Yunus rightly doubts the sincerity of the left-liberal crowd that migrated from Ekho Moskvy to Dozhd. In my opinion, they are all not so much pro-Ukraine as anti-Russian, hoping for its defeat, followed by Putin's departure and the rise to power at a time of inevitable chaos of Khodorkovsky, Yashin, Kasparov, or other Jewish oppositionists, whose money is used to broadcast their pro-Ukrainian messages.
Russian
democrats, including Navalny, failed the test both on the war in Chechnya,
which is striving to escape the imperial clutches, and on the question of whose
Crimea is. Moreover, they portrayed the Chechens themselves as Islamic
terrorists, as is the case with all Muslim peoples, which is quite typical of
Jews, who constitute the overwhelming majority among Russian democrats and
human rights activists. Their attitude toward the principles of democracy is
highly selective; for example, the struggle of the Palestinian people against
Israel, which occupied their territory and pursued a policy of apartheid, is
presented as an act of aggression. Russian liberals and human rights activists,
who position themselves as impeccably pure and principled in the fight for
democracy and human rights, are guilty of a biased dependence on their
nationality when it comes to Israel, whose apartheid regime toward the
Palestinians they unconditionally support. All rhetoric about the right of
peoples to freedom and independence is instantly forgotten as soon as the topic
of Israel comes up. These would-be human rights activists ignore the
Palestinians' right to a state and, moreover, are trying in every way to
convince the international community that the Palestinians have no right to
fight for their rights. Thus, the leader of the Russian "Democratic
Union," Valeria Novodvorskaya, calling Israel a "super-democratic
state" whose democracy, in her opinion, is "even excessive,"
finds the Palestinians' desire to have their own state a whim.(7) A human
rights activist, as Novodvorskaya presents herself, essentially denies the
Palestinian Arabs the right to have their own state, which is entirely
consistent with the myth of the Israeli right about the Palestinians' inability
to create a state due to their insufficient mental capacity.(8)
The biggest
lie from Echo of Moscow regulars, including E. Albats, our Yakovenko is so
proud of his friendship with, was reproduced by journalist L. Radzikhovsky in
his article "The Jewish Question," where Mr. Liar writes:
"Jews
RECOGNIZE the Arabs' right to life. Israel recognizes Palestine's right to
exist as a state. And is prepared to live in peace with it if the Palestinians
stop attacking it." "But the Palestinians (specifically Hamas) DO NOT
RECOGNIZE the Jews' right to life. This is clearly stated in all Hamas
documents."
However, the
charter of the ruling Likud party states just the opposite, namely that the
entire territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea is the
territory of the State of Israel, meaning there is no room for another state
there. And this charter was written much earlier, when Hamas and its documents,
to which Radzikhovsky refers, did not even exist. (9) I can assume that Mr.
Radzikhovsky is unfamiliar with the Likud charter, and yet, in this case, it is
significant that he expresses the opinion of the entire pseudo-democratic group
from Echo of Moscow.
I am not
aware that our would-be democrat I. Yakovenko, as Secretary of the Union of
Journalists of Russia, has been critical of such racist statements by
journalists from Echo of Moscow.
Today, after
the closure of Echo of Moscow, the entire pseudo-democratic group is
broadcasting from America in support of Ukraine, but Yunus has legitimate
doubts about the sincerity of their position. The fact is that they demonstrate
completely opposite attitudes to identical situations. I am referring to the
Armenian occupation of Azerbaijani territory and the Russian occupation of
Ukrainian territory. In both cases, military invasion is used, followed by
referendums declaring the independence of the new republics. But why do they so
sharply condemn what happened in Bucha, while they offer not a word of
sympathy, let alone a word of condolence, to the similar atrocities committed
by the Armenian invaders in Khojaly—only silence? The conclusion here is clear:
the Armenians have been committing barbarity for 30 years, destroying the
historical and cultural monuments of the Azerbaijani people, turning mosques
into cattle sheds, and cities into ghost towns. Yakovenko and his ilk show
tacit approval.
The mosque before the occupation.
After the occupation.
Agdam, a ghost town.
I heard no
words of congratulations or greetings from them when the last Armenian occupier
left Azerbaijani territory. I wouldn't be wrong if I assumed that in their
hearts they are on the Armenian side.
Worthy of
note is the statement by journalist V. Portnikov, who defines Azerbaijan's
victory over Armenia as "Ilham Aliyev's victory over the Azerbaijani
people," implying that the fulfillment of Azerbaijanis' 30-year-old dream
has further strengthened his grip on power as a dictator. It's also possible
that, should Ukraine win, some pro-Putin journalist will portray it as a
victory for the fascist dictator Zelensky over the Ukrainian people. Ukrainian
journalist V. Portnikov refuses to acknowledge and accept that democracy cannot
be implemented during wartime, and, moreover, sometimes it is even impossible
to maintain. For example, during World War II, US President Franklin Roosevelt
retained his post for a third term, a direct violation of the US Constitution.
And what will the narrow-minded Portnikov say about Zelensky retaining his post
as president of Ukraine, even though his term in office has exceeded the
constitutionally permitted one? Portnikov's childish criticism of Azerbaijan is
recklessly ill-timed from a democratic perspective. The most important thing is
the country's independence, which will allow the people to choose a path to the
future; otherwise, there will be nowhere and no one to implement democracy
with.(10) Azerbaijan was in a state of war for 30 years, but four years after
the expulsion of the Armenian invaders, Yerevan still refuses to sign a peace
treaty, hoping for revenge and military assistance now from the EU.
Distortion
of the situation and a complete ignorance of history, and perhaps even a
deliberate desire to arrive at a false assessment—this is the essence of the
journalistic activity of pseudo-democrats. This is precisely what Ramiz Yunus
accuses Russian journalists of, calling on Ukrainians not to trust former party
officials in the media, a prominent example of whom is former communist
Kiselyov, who most likely had ties to the KGB as an officer and translator who
served in a group of military advisers during the occupation of Afghanistan.
Yakovlev, the so-called whistleblower of Ramiz Yunus, belongs to the same
category of former communists. There are no former communists! They, including
the whistleblower Yakovenko, grew up and were educated in the USSR; moreover,
they were communists, having consciously become members of the CPSU. If we
assume that they did not believe in the ideology of Communism and, while
holding party membership, were pursuing purely career goals, then their
integrity is highly questionable. Yet integrity and morality are the main
requirements a journalist must possess. Yunus speaks of this, citing the
treacherous act of chess player Kasparov as an example. How else could Yunus
view journalists who biasedly characterized the liberation of Karabakh from
Armenian occupiers as aggression by Azerbaijan? Yakovenko calls all of this
"Ramiz Yunus's Big Lie."
As for
history, party workers truly don't know it, as do most Russian citizens. And
how could they know it, since school textbooks contained nothing but the false
history of Russia and the history of the CPSU written in the Kremlin. The true
history of many other peoples of the empire was unknown to citizens of the
USSR. No history textbooks contained information about the Holodomor, the
forced deportation of the peoples of the Caucasus and Crimea, or the bloody
Armenian uprisings of 1918 in Baku (11) and Tashkent. In the USSR, true history
was passed down orally by the older generation exclusively in the kitchen and
constituted a terrible secret for Soviet society. Officially, the authorities
dismissed such information as conspiracy theories, and it was precisely this
Soviet-style definition of truth that Kiselyov used to terminate his interview
with Ramiz Yunus. Incidentally, while accusing Yunus of telling a big lie,
Yakovenko simultaneously accuses Heydar Aliyev of revising Azerbaijan's
history. It must be assumed that our truth-lover was perfectly content with the
false history of Azerbaijan written in the Kremlin, which mentioned nothing
about the first democratic republic in the history of the East, Azerbaijan,
established in 1918 and crushed by the Red Army under Kirov in 1920.(12) For
many years, a colossal monument to Kirov towered over Baku, its hand ominously
outstretched over the city.
Yes,
Yakovenko, no matter how much you might like it, the people of Azerbaijan have
reclaimed true history as the foundation of their future and consigned the
trappings of their colonial past to the dustbin. Today, in the place of the
Kirov monument, there is an observation deck with a magnificent view of the
city.
Ramiz Yunus
accused Kiselyov of deliberately publishing false data about the number of
Azerbaijanis living in Iran because, as an orientalist by education, Kiselyov
had completed an internship in Iran and could not have been unaware of the
ethnic composition of the population and its numerical ratio. I can only assume
that Kiselyov was reluctant to tell the truth about the significant ethnic
presence of Azerbaijani Turks in Iran because Moscow, for political reasons,
was ignoring this fact. As I said, the population of the Soviet Union was
poorly informed, and many historical facts unfavorable to the Kremlin were not
only classified but simply not disclosed. Only those directly involved and
witnesses knew. For example, information about the USSR's failed military
invasion of Iran was taboo. Perhaps Kiselyov, as an orientalist, knows this,
but as a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he understands that
it is not appropriate to publish such information in the media even today in
modern Russia. The Soviet Union, while remaining essentially an empire,
continued Tsarist Russia's expansionist policies toward Turkey and Iran.
Interestingly, before the invasion, the USSR, using Iran's Azerbaijani
population, planted agents to establish a communist party in Southern
Azerbaijan (northwestern Iran) that would facilitate the Red Army's invasion of
Iran. Even the German attack didn't stop this plan, and on August 25, 1941,
despite the war with Germany having already begun, Moscow sent troops into
Iran, where they remained until March 1946. It's worth noting Moscow's reckless
arrogance: ignoring the Potsdam Conference decision, which required Soviet
troops to leave Iran by March 2, 1946, instead, the People's Republic of
Azerbaijan was proclaimed in Iranian Azerbaijan on March 3, and on March 4,
Soviet tanks were tearing toward Tehran.
The northwestern part of Iran occupied by the Red Army
The
following day, March 5, as the crisis surrounding Moscow's aggressive actions
in Iran reached its climax, Winston Churchill delivered his famous Fulton
speech, opening the eyes of the Western public to the reality of Russia. Here
are his prophetic words:
"Today,
a dark shadow has fallen upon the stage of post-war life, so recently blazing
in the bright light of Allied victory. No one can say what may be expected in
the near future from Soviet Russia and the international Communist community it
leads, or what are the limits, if any, to their expansionist aspirations and
their persistent efforts to convert the whole world."
Although
Churchill's Fulton speech concerns events of the distant past, it contains
words that are very relevant to Putin's Russia's actions in Ukraine and that
point to the great-power mentality of the Russian people:
"They
admire nothing more than strength, and they respect nothing less than weakness,
especially military weakness."
The Soviet
Union's violation of the Potsdam Agreement provoked a strong protest from the
United States and Great Britain, which demanded immediate fulfillment of
Moscow's signed obligations, setting a deadline of May 9, 1946, the anniversary
of the end of the war, for not a single Russian soldier to remain on Iranian
territory. Stalin was forced to obey because he was given to understand that
otherwise the US would not hesitate to use the atomic bomb.(13)
As an
orientalist historian and specialist on Iran, Kiselyov could not have been
unaware of the facts carefully concealed by Moscow. Anticipating that Ramiz
Yunus, in the heat of a dispute over the number of Azerbaijanis in Iran, might
draw listeners' attention to past historical events, he immediately decided to
terminate the program, citing that he could not allow the discussion of facts
on his channel that, in Kiselyov's view, were conspiratorial.
Mr.
Yakovenko's Big Lie of Ramiz Yunus is multifaceted. I got the impression that
the accuser welcomed the opportunity to air all the negative thoughts he had
about Azerbaijan and Turkey.
In this
regard, Yakovenko's own position on the Karabakh conflict is interesting and
revealing: "I formally consider Karabakh to be Azerbaijani." His
words formally sound like a forced admission of a fact contrary to his
personal conviction, which is entirely consistent with the following undeniable
fact: namely, not a single representative of the liberal establishment,
including Kiselyov, has ever spoken about the justice and legitimacy of
Azerbaijan's military actions to restore its territorial integrity, lost as a
result of Armenian aggression.
In
criticizing Yunus, Mr. Yakovenko felt it necessary to touch on circumstances
unrelated to the issues discussed in the interview. Thus, knowing that the
issue of the Armenian genocide is, according to Yakovenko, like a red rag to a
bull for Yunus, as it is for all Turks, he turned to the Armenian genocide,
equating it with the Holocaust. Yakovenko sees no difference between the
tragedy of the Jewish people and the tragedy of the Armenian people, ignoring
their historical causes and, like many who have fallen for the propaganda of
the Nazi Dashnaktsutyun party, acknowledging Turkey as the culprit. Let me
pause for a more detailed analysis of the genocide.
The
extermination of the Jewish people, as well as the Roma, was a consequence of
fascist ideology, which considered these peoples parasitic and, according to
racists who hated natural ethnic diversity, subject to liquidation. The Court
of Nations, based on documentary evidence, handed down a harsh sentence.
Ideology is
also to blame for the tragedy of the Armenian people, but there is a
significant difference: the ideology to which the Armenian people fell victim
was invented by the Armenians themselves, namely, the Nazi Dashnaktsutyun party
they founded in Tbilisi, whose charter contains a clause openly calling for the
use of terror to achieve their goals. I note, and this is very important, that,
unlike Germany, there was no Nazi ideology in Turkey. In accordance with their
party charter, the Dashnaks called on the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire to
ethnically cleanse the Turkish population, a practice the Russian command took
advantage of during World War I, supplying the Dashnaks with weapons. In
anticipation of the Russian advance, they rebelled against the peaceful,
unarmed population in the rear. The Armenian rebels massacred people based on
their ethnicity, clearing the space earmarked for the future territory of
Greater Armenia, which historically never existed. (14,15) Hundreds of
thousands of Turks and Kurds, fleeing extermination, became refugees even
before the arrival of Russian troops. The Turkish government was forced to
disarm the Armenians and, for safety, deport them from the frontline into the
interior of the empire. Columns of Armenian refugees found themselves in areas
where the Turkic population had previously fled to escape the Dashnaks. What
was inevitable happened. Evil begot evil. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians
perished as a result of popular vengeance, but unlike Nazi Germany, where the
massacre of Jews was planned by the government and carried out by specially
assigned units, in Turkey the deaths of Armenians were the result of the
revenge of the common people in response to the sudden and brutal massacre by
Armenian rebels. The propaganda of the absurd Dashnak ideology drove Armenians
into the line of fire at the height of the war between two empires, in order to
build a fictitious state there by exterminating the local population. This
resulted in a true tragedy for both the Turks and the Armenians themselves.
Accusing Turkey of genocide is completely groundless, because, unlike what
happened in Germany, no genocide was planned by the Turkish authorities or
carried out by the army. What happened was a spontaneous popular retaliation
for the ethnic extermination of the civilian population organized by the
Armenian Dashnaks. Responsibility for the tragedy of the Armenians in Turkey,
as well as the extermination of ethnic Turks, lies entirely with the Nazi
Dashnaktsutyun party and no one else.
It was the
Dashnaktsutyun ideologists who organized the extermination of Turkey's Muslim
population in 1915, and later, in 1918, committed bloody massacres in Baku and
Tashkent. To deflect blame, taking advantage of the collapse of the Ottoman
Empire—a period when the Turkish people, led by Mustafa Kamal (Ataturk), were
forced to defend Turkey as a nation in a desperate, mortal struggle—they began
distributing incriminating documents in the form of Andonian's book, "The
Telegrams of Talat Pasha," calling for the punishment of those responsible
for the genocide. In 1920, the British occupation authorities in Istanbul,
acting on an Armenian tip, arrested 144 people as the main perpetrators of the
Armenian genocide. A year later, a trial in Malta failed to find a single
document proving the guilt of those arrested, and Andonian's book was deemed a
gross forgery. The prosecutor's office announced the termination of the
investigation on the grounds that not a single document or evidence proving the
prisoners' guilt had been presented, even though all the empire's archives were
in British hands and all witnesses to the so-called genocide were still alive.
Having
suffered complete failure in court, the champions of "Greater
Armenia" have not abandoned their wild idea. Continuing to exploit the lie
of genocide, despite having no evidence, they are attempting, while calling on
the international community for help, to force not just individuals, but the
entire Turkish people, to face justice. Throughout this false propaganda
campaign, not a single incriminating document has been found proving the
genocide of the Armenian people organized by the Ottoman government. It is
difficult to imagine that every single government and army order, circular, and
dispatch was deliberately destroyed in a timely manner. Despite the general
chaos that accompanied the crumbling Ottoman Empire, at least a scrap of some
incriminating note remained, but...
Incidentally,
Erdogan has repeatedly offered to open all state archives in Turkey and Armenia
to historians and investigators to uncover the truth, but the Armenians
refused. On the other hand, why shouldn't the Armenians appeal to the
International Court again, since there is no statute of limitations for a crime
like genocide? However, instead of pursuing a trial, they prefer to spread
false propaganda, following Goebbels's words, "A lie repeated a
thousand times becomes the truth." Armenians fear that the trial could
result in the accusers becoming the accused. Oddly enough, judging by the
reaction of the international community, which has responded positively to the
mendacious Armenian propaganda, Goebbels knew what he was talking about.
By trusting
Armenian propaganda, many people distort their assessment of the events and
ultimately reach false conclusions. Sometimes, stories about the pogroms in
Baku are so horrific that they are hard to believe. Margarita Simonyan's
television report about the crucified Ukrainian boy is part of the same
pattern. As a witness to the pogroms, I'll tell you an episode in which I could
almost say I participated:
The doorbell
rang, and my friend Sashka Martirosov, who lived on the first floor, stood
there with his wife and two children. Fear was in their eyes, asking for
shelter from a crowd of people calling themselves the Popular Front. A rumor
had circulated the day before that the Popular Front would evict Armenians to
make their apartments available to refugees from Armenia. Sashka had called his
brother, who served as a major in the Salyan barracks. He said he couldn't
help, as they had strict orders not to leave the unit. The gates were tightly
closed. My wife, through phone conversations with friends, learned that buses
were running around the city, picking up Armenians and taking them to the ferry
heading to Krasnovodsk. When the crowd left the courtyard, I went downstairs.
The apartment door was wide open, no one was there, but it felt like quite a
few people had been there. Sashka and I gathered the bare essentials; his
brother would pick up the rug Sashka had dragged to our place later. While we
were fussing with our things, my wife found a phone number and arranged for a
bus to pick up Sashka's family. As we later learned through correspondence,
they had lived with relatives in Dilijan for some time. Later, the family moved
to Moscow. A few years after Sashka's death, he suffered from a strange chronic
illness that only Armenians suffer from, and they ended up in America.
Calling what
happened in Baku a pogrom is, in my opinion, incorrect. Rather, it was a forced
deportation in response to the total expulsion of the Azerbaijani population
from Armenia and the Armenian-occupied part of Azerbaijani territory. Armenian
propaganda conceals this important fact. It should be noted here that in Baku,
the Armenians were deported in an organized manner, while in Armenia,
Azerbaijani refugees with children and the elderly walked through the snowy
mountains in winter. To illustrate, I'll paint the following picture: during
the Allied bombing of Dresden, an alien arrives and is met with horror: a
large, beautiful city is reduced to smoking ruins, its inhabitants perishing
beneath it. His assessment of the actions of the Allied Anglo-American air
forces is undoubtedly extremely negative, a sentiment that will be further
reinforced if he learns the details from Goebbels' propaganda. The alien has no
idea how the German air force previously razed Coventry to the ground.
Knowledge of the sequence of events is crucial here, and this is precisely what
took place in Turkey, labeled genocide by Armenian propaganda. Before reaching
a conclusion about any event and fairly assessing it, one must know its
background, otherwise one could end up like an alien who came to a false
conclusion. This is precisely what happened to I. Yakovenko.
In his
extensive discussion of Ramiz Yunus's big lie, I. Yakovenko also took aim at
the Turkish president, calling him a dictator without any explanation or
evidence. Well, what can you do? He just wanted to. Where's your journalistic
expertise, Mr. Liar?
Thus,
according to Yakovenko, Erdogan is pursuing the goal of recreating the Ottoman
Empire, supporting his accusation—yes, accusation—by the fact that the two
Turkic states of Turkey and Azerbaijan are building their political and
economic relations according to the slogan "one people, two
states," which, in his view, indicates Erdogan's revanchist moves. It
must be said that Mr. Yakovenko is not alone in making such a false and
unfounded accusation. He refuses to acknowledge that the unification of Turkic
peoples into a single state cannot in any way be called an empire. For example,
Russia comprises dozens of peoples, which qualifies it as an empire. One
wonders what Yakovenko's attitude is to the ideology of Pan-Germanism, which
united dozens of German states based on linguistic and cultural identity. The
ideology of Pan-Turkism, which seeks to consolidate Turks into a single state
based on linguistic and cultural identity, was first put forward by Ismail
Gasparali. Calling a state with a single indigenous nation an empire is absurd.
The very word "pan-Turkism" has always inspired fear in the
eyes of the Russian authorities. For obvious reasons, the ideology of
pan-Turkism was strictly banned and persecuted by law in Russia and the USSR.
The Turks are the indigenous people of a vast territory stretching from Crimea
to Altai and Yakutia, which today, after the Turkic republics left the USSR,
constitutes a significant part of the Russian Federation. Interestingly, both
Turkey and Siberia share the same topographic names. For example, the Angara
River exists in both Siberia and Turkey, and, incidentally, Turkey's capital
has the same name. Incidentally, in Istanbul, I stayed in a hotel room named
"Ural." As is well known, "Ural" is a geographical name for
a region in eastern Siberia and carries a significant meaning in the Turkic
language.
To somehow
explain Mr. Yakovenko's aversion to anything related to the Turks, in this case
Ramiz Yunus, a fantastically conspiratorial thought occurred to me: could it be
because Yakovenko, as a Christian, subconsciously considers the Turks his
adversaries? After all, it was the Seljuk Turks who expelled the Crusaders from
the Middle East, ending the invasion of Christian invaders during the Crusades,
to which Ramiz Yunus's conscience likely also has ties.
1. Whose
Crimea? https://samlib.ru/editors/b/bahshi_a/salt9.shtml
2. Chechnya,
who's next? Israel. Our country. 12/11/1996.
3. Democracy
is contraindicated for an empire.
https://alikbahshi.blogspot.com/2019/03/blog-post_23.html
4. When the
Donkey Dies. https://samlib.ru/b/bahshi_a/salt10.shtml
5. Money,
War, and Politics, or Chechnya and How to Crush the Vermin. Israel. Our
Country. October 14, 1999.
6. Word,
Fornication, or Full Albats.
https://alikbahshi.blogspot.com/2026/04/blog-post_26.html
7. My
Response to Human Rights Activist Elena Bonner.
http://zhurnal.lib.ru/b/bahshi_a/bahshi-4.shtml
8. The Main
Myth of the State of Israel.
https://alikbahshi.blogspot.com/2024/04/blog-post_20.html
9. My
response to journalist L. Radzikhovsky.
https://alikbahshi.blogspot.com/2016/11/blog-post_56.html
10. My
response to journalist V. Portnikov.
https://alikbahshi.blogspot.com/2024/10/blog-post_30.html
11.
Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan.
https://alikbahshi.blogspot.com/2016/10/blog-post_94.html
12. 100
years of the Republic of Azerbaijan.
https://alikbahshi.blogspot.com/2018/05/100-28.html
13.
Political collisions and the fate of Azerbaijan.
https://alikbahshi.blogspot.com/2026/05/blog-post.html
14. Great
Armenia or Great Lie. https://alikbahshi.blogspot.com/2023/01/blog-post.html
15. Was
there a Great Armenia?
https://alikbahshi.blogspot.com/2020/07/blog-post_31.html
May 18, 2026
