He talks about how Karabakh Armenians themselves raged: “Why did you come here? Why are you stirring up trouble? We are friends with ‘Turks'”… About how after the beginning of the confrontation Azerbaijani friends, those “kirve”, came to Armenian villages and houses out of habit, how tables were set, how people ate and drank vodka together… And how those Azerbaijanis were caught on the way and beaten up so that they would not come to Armenian villages. How in the village of Aghbulag, where both Azerbaijanis and Armenians studied in the local school, Armenian children were taught to beat their Azerbaijani classmates… “Tushonka-Manvel” let it slip that yes, there were political figures, Dashnaks, in “Stepanakert”, which was called Khankendi, and in Hadrut, who wanted “liberation”, but ordinary people in Karabakh could not imagine life without “Turks”.
That is, all this abomination came from Armenia, and it is simply disgusting to listen to this. But we must. Because here “Tushonka-Manvel” becomes a witness for the prosecution. Firstly, his revelations shatter the fascist ideas about “genetic incompatibility” of Armenians and Azerbaijanis adopted in Armenia: before the arrival of provocateurs and bearded militants from Armenia, Armenians and Azerbaijanis got along perfectly well, went to visit each other, literally shared bread and sat at the same table. But then “liberators” from Armenia came and started three decades of bloody nightmare for both Azerbaijanis and Armenians. They “valiantly” tore simple human ties. Moreover, as Manvel Grigoryan’s revelations show, the majority of the Armenian population of Karabakh at that time did not support the idea of “miatsum” at all.
Of course, Grigoryan omitted many things. Otherwise, he would have had to share too brutal and bloody details of how the indigenous Azerbaijani population was “squeezed out” of Karabakh, what kind of looting and pillage accompanied it all. But even what he was able to tell is a valuable testimony. And it allows us to understand how far from the truth are the Armenian propaganda clichés about how “long-suffering Armenians were languishing under the brutal Turkish yoke and rebelled at the first opportunity”. As it turned out, there was no “rebellion”. There were just provocateurs and bandits who came from Yerevan.
And all this is especially relevant to remember now, when Azerbaijan has finally rid the Armenians of Karabakh of the terror of “bearded men”, “zinvors” and other armed militants. When the agenda today is reconstruction and reintegration. When more than a hundred ethnic Armenians from Karabakh have already applied for reinstatement of Azerbaijani citizenship. When the first to be opened in Khankendi are a polyclinic and a shelter for the socially disadvantaged, simply put, for the infirm old people who were simply abandoned by the “valiant warriors”, by the “lions with hearts of steel” as they fled.
And when someone is very reluctant to admit that the virus of confrontation was brought to Karabakh from Armenia.
Fuad Akhundov, political scientist
Translated from Minval.az
