Social Construction of a Conflict (1996, 2011)

The hot stage of the Nagorny Karabakh conflict is a quarter of a century old. No resolution is in sight. When the conflict started, there were many attempts to explain its escalation. Here is one of them. 

This essay was originally written in 1996. In 2011 it was reworked and published in 'Language, Society, Communication', a peer-reviewed trilingual academic publication of the Brusov University. Though the journal had a short life, the ideas expressed in the essay, quite unfortunately, prove to be long-standing: conflicts are socially constructed and socially escalated, and the Karabakh conflict is a case in point. The essay studies how the language of description of events, the propaganda machines, and the social psychology of the sides were used in order to escalate the conflict. The essay challenges the primordial view on ethnicism and nationalism.

The article describes a specific phenomenon in interethnic conflict, which the author calls „the equation policy”; interpreting the situation as if from a „detached” perspective, the outsiders as well as often insiders in a conflict use such descriptors which present the sides in a conflict equal in anything: in their culture, aspirations, their interpretation of conflict causes, events and outcomes. This significantly distorts the conflict picture and makes its just resolution much more difficult than otherwise. This also sheds doubts as to whether or not the methodology of „impartial outsiders” mediation can have any positive effects. Written in 1996, the article is still relevant: the developments since then demonstrate that the equation policy in the Karabakh conflict (as well as in some other conflicts) brought about to a significant dead-end, characterized by a total change of the initial language of conceptualizing the conflict, which in its turn resulted in having a totally different conflict than the initial one.

Gevorg Ter-Gabrielyan

Social Construction of a Conflict: The Equation Policy in the Case of Nagorny Karabakh

Submitted on: 2011.03.21             Հանձնված է՝ 21 մարտի, 2011թ.

Approved on: 2011.03.30              Ընդունված է` 30 մարտի, 2011թ.

Передана: 2011.03.21

Утверждена: 2011.03.30

Abstract: The article describes a specific phenomenon in interethnic conflict, which the author calls ‘the equation policy’; interpreting the situation as if from a ‘detached’ perspective, the outsiders as well as often insiders in a conflict use such descriptors which present the sides in a conflict equal in anything: in their culture, aspirations, their interpretation of conflict causes, events and outcomes. This significantly distorts the conflict picture and makes its just resolution much more difficult than otherwise. This also sheds doubts as to whether or not the methodology of ‘impartial outsiders’’ mediation can have any positive effects. Written in 1996, the article is still relevant: the developments since then demonstrate that the equation policy in the Karabakh conflict (as well as in some other conflicts) brought about to a significant dead-end, characterized by a total change of the initial language of conceptualizing the conflict, which in its turn resulted in having a totally different conflict than the initial one.

Keywords: mirror image, equation, Karabakh, conflict, propaganda, ethnic, ethnicity, minority, state, genocide, OSCE, discourse, perception, misperception, interpretation, violence, zero-sum game, perestroika, interethnic, nation, denial, social construction of reality, justice, fairness, power

Հիմնաբառեր. հայելապատկեր, հավասարում, Ղարաբաղ, հակամարտություն, քարոզչություն, էթնիկ, փոքրամասնություն, ցեղասպանություն, ԵԱՀԿ, դիսկուրս, ընկալում, թյուրընկալում, մեկնաբանություն, բռնություն, զրոյական խաղ, պերեստրոյկա, միջէթնիկ, ազգ, ժխտում, իրականության սոցիալական ձևակերպում, արդարություն, անաչառություն, իշխանություն

Ключевые слова: зеркальное отображение, уравнение, Карабах, конфликт, пропаганда, этнический, этнос, меншинство, государсво, геноцид, ОБСЕ, дискурс, восприятие, ложное восприятие, интерпретация, хасилие, нулевая игра, перестройка, межэтнический, нация, отрицание, социальное конструирование реальности, справедливость, честность, власть.

Foreword by the Editor

This essay was first completed in 1996. Since then, numerous analyses of the Karabakh conflict have been carried out, and numerous new attempts to resolve the conflict have been undertaken. The world has seen many other conflicts, some similar, some different, but in all of them, the structural similarity of the ways that conflict escalation is built by the sides is striking. As the reader who is aware of this and other conflicts will see, some of the structural-discursive elements of this conflict have remained exactly the same since then and they share clear similarities with other close or distant conflicts, ranging from the Georgian-Abkhaz to the Kashmir conflicts. Just as the US-Vietnam war gave rise to conflict studies in the US, which provided the background for this work (such as White, 1968), the events in the world since 1996 have given birth to numerous new studies, and some of the ideas, which at the time sounded farfetched or mind blowing, sound quite trivial today. The arguments in this essay may have to be updated and changed, but the details of the situation have not changed. For these reasons, this essay has not become obsolete, and that is the motivation behind the Editorial Board’s decision to publish it. The change in the situation has gone in a direction this essay was arguing against: the conflict has become even more entrenched, and the equation policy has brought us perhaps to a point of no return. The author was worried about the two sides becoming antagonistic then, back in 1996. Today, the antagonism is a fait accompli. In 1996, the processes in the Karabakh conflict still had a partly structural character, perhaps also due to the lack of historical experience of those engaged in it, rather than what was taking place was purely due to free will of those who held the political power. Today, the state ideologies are building xenophobia, hatred and mistrust intentionally via explicit state projects and line item allocations in state budgets. The internet did not exist then. Today it gives a ‘great opportunity’ to all sides to experiment with all kinds of propaganda wars. In short, we are all worse off than we were before, as if we wanted to go backwards rather than forward, and that is exactly what we did.

Introduction

This essay is written from a critical perspective. It tries to identify and explain a case of inequality in structural and political power between two types of actors in international politics, a state and a minority, as this inequality is reflected (mostly in the attempts to neglect or hide it) in the discourses of media, academia, politicians, and diplomats. The critical method is the deconstruction of “texts” (parts of academic or media publications and international documents). Deconstruction here means interpretation endeavoring to explain what propaganda message is hidden in the “undertext” that best advances the interests of this or that side in the state versus minority conflict.

Discourses in which these texts appear are politically contaminated. A “neutral” scholarly article, deliberately or not, becomes a political argument, which strengthens the cause of one or another side. A principle of international law is used to silence the advocates of this or that cause and, simultaneously, is violated when its violation would benefit those in charge (but the violation is not recognized as such). The title of a media publication becomes a principle of diplomacy and peace-making for no other merit than the fact that it corresponds to the interests of the powerful side.

In the discourse of international law, for example, this problem is reflected as a contradiction between state sovereignty and the right to self-determination, a topic which many an international lawyer has tried to deal with and failed to resolve. This failure is significant in itself: if self-determination would be unquestionably accepted, the map of today’s world would be drastically altered. If it would be unquestionably rejected, it would be difficult to maintain a view that international law represents, however underdeveloped, a system of justice (with presumably moral foundations). The fact that it is deadlocked in a collision with another principle, that of territorial integrity (inviolability of borders) or state sovereignty, means that whenever which principle better advances the interests of major international actors, then that principle will work. When self-determination works, the international community does not speak about its contradiction with state sovereignty. Only when the community of nation-states does not want self-determination to work, does the contradiction reappear as an argument against it.

In the discourse of politics, implicitly or explicitly, this problem represents the dialectics of justice versus power. Simply put, “naked” power does not need justice. To pursue justice means to pursue something beyond the limitations imposed by a “natural” power distribution. A realist would say that in international relations nothing or almost nothing depends on justice, and there is no system of international justice: the factor of power is decisive.  An idealist would disagree. What I am interested in, is the fact that there are whole strata of international actors, ethnic minorities, which time and again enter the international arena with idealist claims but soon are punished for their idealist beliefs and resort to the paradigm of power and violence. The paradigm of power here ‘shoots’ twice: first, it claims to be the only legitimate paradigm for the representation of relations between state and minority. Second, it excludes other paradigms by force and, thus, becomes the only de facto discourse.

My tasks in this essay are, first, to mention a few theories, such as a version of the game theory and the A-B-C theory, which try to deal with the problem of state versus minority conflict, and to critically deconstruct them as, in fact, advancing the position of nation-states and tacitly justifying violence, either as acceptable means, or as unavoidable means in conflict resolution. These theories work within the framework of what I call “the equation policy,” a conceptual framework wherein state and minority are equated as perpetrators of violence, but the rights of minorities are denied. In short, the essence of the equation policy is to equate state and minority in their obligations (or guilt) but not in their rights. The minorities’ demand of equality in rights is, thus, buried under the equation propaganda.

Second, there is a theory that of misperception in international conflict, in its version provided by Ralph K. White (1968), which is continually cited in this essay. Even though White has not applied his theory to a majority versus minority (or state versus minority) conflict, and even though it is more correct to talk about social construction from a partial perspective rather than about misperception in conflict (since misperception implies the existence of an “objective” or “onthological” perception, which may be methodologically impossible to achieve), some of the “thick” variables White operates with are unquestionably useful for an explanation of the details of the construction of the conflict from the perspectives of different actors involved. For example, the mirror-image (symmetry) of nationalism of enemies, self-fulfilling prophecies in conflict, the exaggeration of the unity of adversary and simultaneous digression of its moral qualities, the diabolic image of the enemy, etc. will be discussed in this essay in some detail.

White has identified the problem of “the mirror image of nationalism” (White 1968, p. 274) in discussing the “black-and-white” thinking in international conflict. He comes up with an understanding of the striking similarity of psychological processes which accompany this kind of thinking by both sides in conflict. Black-and-white thinking makes the hostile nations think about oneself in terms of glorification and about the enemy in terms of digression, and the tendency and strength of such an approach is similar in both nations. Thus, an outside observer becomes unable to distinguish truth from deception and right from wrong.

White does not discuss, however, how the mirror-image of nationalism is constructed. The nations involved in violent conflict with each other can pursue practices which make them resemble each other. Meanwhile, it also happens that a stereotypical perception and the interpretation of conflict makes them appear and, consequently, behave in an even more similar way to each other than they would do otherwise. The mirror-image is comprised of deeds and words. When both sides commit massacres of innocent civilians, these are deeds. However, when the actors in the international arena, such as important political figures, organizations, or media, and the sides themselves, discuss and share the problem in terms of mirror-image, these are words.

If the mirror image is perceived and used as a useful tool for sides aiming at conflict escalation, then if one side commits massacre, the other side feels free to do the same. This is even more so if a massacre is neither condemned nor prosecuted, and is commonly perceived and presented as a rather “natural” action in today’s ethnic conflict.

Third, I develop a narrative where, discussing how a conflict is presented by power elites, journalists, diplomats and scholars (I pick up the case of the conflict between the Armenians in Karabakh and the state of Azerbaijan), I try to expand the understanding of the equation policy and to clarify its ubiquitous forms of appearance. It appears as an appeal to stability (sovereignty, inviolability of borders, fear of anarchy), or as an appeal to observe human rights. But in the particular context, these abstract appeals work for escalation rather than for pacification of the conflict.

The thrust of this essay can be expressed in three theses:

the equation policy, whereby minorities are denied their rights and are blamed for being existentially guilty, escalates rather than pacifies violence (therefore, its discourse must be deconstructed so that it can be critically perceived and consciously avoided);

the equation policy is determined by power distribution in world politics: nation-states govern the international discourse and deprive minorities of their voice; any minority trying to pursue its rights must first overcome the “glass ceiling” and reach through to international audience. In other words, it must become a factor in international politics. In the case of non-democratic non-liberal states, almost all legal opportunities for this are precluded in practice. And the one shortcut opportunity is violence (war).

the equation policy in this, as well as other cases of structural conflicts (between powerful and powerless classes, North and South, White and Black, the masculine world and feminists etc.), works independently of good or bad intentions of those (politicians, academics, diplomats, etc.) who actually produce its discourse. It is the logic of conflict escalation resulting from the equation policy, rather than the explicit intentions of participants, which determines the terms and definitions which are often perceived by the sides involved in the conflict as a result of deliberate conspiracy in order to distort the “facts.” In such a conflict there are no “facts” per se: facts are constructed by the perspectives of adversaries. Actions are recognized or denied, justified or declared illegitimate according to, self-conscious or not, interests of the actors. The conflict is a result of a contested interpretation of a chain of events, a socially constructed rather than a deliberately invented reality (see Berger and Luckmann 1966 on social construction of reality).

Because this is a critical essay, the positive solution, the “affirmative action,” or the principles and means for altering the equation policy are not thoroughly discussed in this essay (they may be a topic for another essay). For current purposes, it is sufficient to state that what must be done is the opposite of the equation policy: the policy of distinction.

Since some examples I use in this essay are more thoroughly discussed, along the similar theoretical lines, in the works of other authors, sometimes unavailable to an English-language audience (such as Babanov and Voevodski, 1992), the background to the Nagorny Karabakh (NK) case is presented here, per-haps, in a sketchier form than a reader unfamiliar with the case would desire. For me, however, the most important thing is to understand and explain the mechanism of the equation policy, that is, why only separate examples from a voluminous data on the Karabakh conflict discourse are presented here, with an obvious aim to make several points in explaining the equation policy rather than to represent all the available material.

Even though this is a case study, it is situated in and animated by the “invisible” context of state versus minority struggle. Ted Gurr (1993) identifies at least 233 cases of minorities at risk after the Second World War and before the end of the Cold War. Today there are about one hundred more of them. Of these, about 70 conflicts evolve, to this or that extent, around the claims to sovereignty, and are violent to different degrees.

Theoretical stereotypes: the “horizontal” equation

The problem of the social construction of conflict becomes especially significant if the status of the actual sides in a conflict is not equal, particularly, if the sides of a conflict comprise a nation-state and an internationally non-recognized ethnic minority. Nationalist paranoia can have different forms, but the stereotypical way of thinking of those who are overwhelmed with it is the same. At the level of intellectual speculation, here is how it works. One side of a potential conflict thinks: “we are a minority, we want independence; they are the majority, they know that we want independence. In order for our effort to succeed, we shall start an outright war, otherwise we will be slaughtered.” The other side thinks along the similar lines: “they want independent statehood. If they are not stopped, they will ruin the unity of our statehood. We shall start to exterminate them first, and the ethnic cleansing is the best solution for preserving our territorial integrity.” They think so simultaneously, and they clash. This is a kind of prisoners' dilemma which evolved from the security paradox: the motivation to outrun the adversary brings about the horror of civil and ethnic war and genocide. In the absence of trust and guarantees, both sides reject concessions and make a fatal choice. The state tends to overestimate its tangible leverage, and the minority overestimates its “spiritual” strength (the strength of its nationalist ideology and belief in the “morality” of its “just cause”).

Different events of the conflicts within the former Yugolsavia, the Nagorny Karabakh conflict, the Cyprus conflict, the Kurdish conflict in Turkey, the Chechnya conflict, and probably many other conflicts can be described within this model. If the sides think along these lines, their thinking influences the conflict and makes it irreversible. This model is too abstract and deprived of historical context. It assumes that distinctions between different conflicts of the same type are not important; that all of them develop more or less the same way; and that no substantial difference can be made by an outsider who analyzes them.

One can notice two types of equations in this kind of theorizing. First, the diversity of conflicts is leveled. Say, all ethnic claims are seen as direct revolts against the state sovereignty (in this case, they are usually labeled “ethnic separatism” or “secessionism”). The question of why did a minority suddenly rebel is passed over in silence: secessionism is secessionism, just as terrorism is terrorism: they are presented as a common evil and must be severely punished by means of retributive rather than remedial justice. This is a “horizontal” equation, or an equation by abstraction, which disregards the unique features of each conflict. It is peculiar to realist theories which try to explain ethnic conflict.

Second, there is a “vertical” equation: the minority and nation-state are equated as equal sides in the conflict (but in such a way which actually hinders, rather than facilitates the minority’s desire to be considered as an independent self-governing unit). In this section, I speak about the horizontal equation, and in the following sections about the vertical one.

The international community, instead of seeking prevention policies or radical solutions, evaluates these conflicts mostly from an outsider’s perspective, from a detached position. It is assumed that the judge must have an independent and detached attitude to the case. Sometimes this is interpreted as the idea that the judge, in order to make as fair as possible decision, ought not to possess the details of information, otherwise s/he will become emotionally attached to this or that side. Instead of true knowledge, deep empathy, and holistic approach, the international community relies on stereotypical thinking. For instance, it takes as argument the A-B-C paradox, as coined by Hans Morgenthau (Snyders, 1993, p. 3; this logic is also sometimes referred to as Matrioshka nationalism): certain minority B wants independence because it feels oppressed by a certain government of majority A, which it considers as foreign. But whenever and if the minority B becomes independent, it becomes a majority and similarly oppresses an ethnic mi-nority C within its own borders. The conflict is, thus, reproduced on a micro-level. To many, it seems that this kind of reasoning is correct and, moreover, that by granting independence to the previously non-state ethnic actors, new conflicts will emerge and continue indefinitely.

Hypocritically, the potential violation of rights of the smallest community C is, in advance, equated to the actual violation of rights of the major community B. This is wrong for two reasons. First, community C is most probably a part of community A. If community A does not oppress community B, then community B will not have reason to react by the oppression of community C. If it nevertheless does so, then it must respond before the law (if any). If community A oppresses community B, then community C becomes a hostage for B to bargain with A. This is a situation of a kind of balance of power, of an equilibrium, or of a guarantee.

Second, as Ted Gurr has pointed out (1993, p. 12), ethnic minorities should be defined from within rather than from without: it is a group of people who share their identity, language, history, and culture, but none of these factors is determinant for a minority to be constituted. What is determinant is their inner self-perception as a group with shared identity and deprived of a respectful status, as opposed to a larger or stronger group (thus, it could be a majority which is in a position of an oppressed minority--as it was in South Africa). This paradox, the fact that a ‘thing’ is ‘unequal’ to itself, is not identical with ‘itself,’ has been discussed in the world philosophy many times: Mikhail Bakhtin would say that a human being from within is unequal to him or herself from without: from without it is finite, and from within it always pre-stands, anticipates him/herself. Witgenstein ones said that he resigned from trying to define what is a game “from without.” A minority, a social capital, an elite, or many such beings, which have ‘self-consciousness’ and define themselves ‘from within,’ but can also be defined ‘materially,’ ‘from without’ (whose definition will usually have a restricted use), these beings can be a thing or a position.

This can partially explain why not all the existing ethnic groups in the world (more than 1000) are in conflict with the majorities or states. In fact, the overwhelming majority of ethnic groups coexist peacefully most of the time. The internal self-definition approach also explains why not all the minorities in conflict seek the establishment of independent statehood (the different types of minority aspirations are analyzed in Gurr 1993). This undermines the claim that if minority B receives what it demands, then minority C will suffer. Group C must acquire an identity of minority, and it must be excluded by the new majority B from access to essential political, economic and cultural opportunities. If all this happens, then minority C has the same rights as minority B had to demand an enhancement of status, but this development belongs to the potential future and must not be an obstacle for a fair decision in the present. Finally, even though C has no direct guilt, its suffering cannot be equated to B’s suffering: C is a smaller community. If one advances such a radical absolutist claim that the potential suffering of a few persons must preclude in advance any possible change in the condition of a larger group, this is a self-contradictory claim, because the suffering of the larger group B is not precluded by the existing order.

Another argument is based on the same line of thinking: if we support the independence movement of a minority in X state, our own minority (-ies) will be encouraged and will start a movement for independence themselves. The rights of minorities are sacrificed to the security considerations based on the idea of “chain-reaction,” or the domino effect. State territory and borders are considered sacred and untouchable. State power is equated to the territory and amount of subjects (irrespectively of the question of whether these subjects want or do not want to be citizens of the state).

At the preliminary stages of the Nagorny Karabakh conflict, this argument was expressed by various political leaders of the former Soviet Union (see Sakharov 1990, p.49). Maximizing power by the states by means of minority oppression is considered something natural. “Civilized divorce,” as the case of what happened in Czechoslovakia and that which is not legally precluded in Canada, are excluded from the value system of most nation-states. While getting rid of a piece of soil inhabited by a bellicose minority could be more beneficial than fighting such a minority for an indeterminate time, in most cases, the preservation and maximization of tangible power by means of the homogenization of subjects through assimilation or, if it does not succeed, through ethnic cleansing of various kinds is considered “rational” state policy. This seems to be particularly applicable to the case of the newly independent states, wherein the most powerful state ideology at the first stage of their existence was nationalism.

Thus, the actual conflict is equated to the potential one, and the treatment of the first is sacrificed to the threat of the second. The stereotypical psychology of exaggerating future security threats and sacrificing today's human and groups’ rights and destinies to that imaginative future of strategic danger usually underlies such calculations. Instead of opening the roots of conflict and seeking policy solutions through expanding the legal framework and providing the minorities with internally available remedies, political leaders of these states want to suppress and freeze the situation. Usually they fail, and the result is war.

This kind of security reasoning, presented as rational, “objective” and applicable to any case of minority/majority conflict independently of context, in fact, represents the bias of the nation-states’ perspective, according to which, there is no territory which would not be divided among nation-states, and nation-states are the ultimate value and frame of reference. Hence, they shape the discussion, and the perspective of ethnic minorities seeking independence is strikingly absent from international discourse.

It is the stereotyped reasoning of a "territory without natives," or "he who wins by force is not subject to trial” kind, borrowed from the histories of nation-states, which allows a Bosnian Serb militant to conclude that since the Serbs were slaughtered by the Muslims in the Middle Ages and by the Croatians in World War II (and nobody recognizes this, and nobody is accountable for this), they have a moral right to revenge, and the only “rational” revenge will be the Final Solution (since nothing else worked out).

It is the same reasoning which morally allows terrorism of any kind: the reasoning of projecting the image of guilty on the available victims (because those who are guilty have al-ready done so in their turn). The same kind of logic (turned around itself) says that victims are themselves responsible for their suffering: “if you would not revolt (or merely prepare to rebel, or at least if we would not assume that you were going to rebel), you would not be slaughtered.”

No international body is powerful enough to effectively deal with an appeal of an ethnic minority (especially in parts of the world far from Europe), if it is off the agenda of powerful states. The offensive majority-nation-state will avoid any possible discussion on this, claiming this as an internal matter (or at least the rebellious minority’s leaders believe so and promulgate this view).

The only available means remains that of terror and war.

War has at least two aims: self-defense and the attraction of international attention.

The minority appears in the state of nature against the majority, a state which Thomas Hobbes described some 300 years ago: "to this war of every man against every man, this also is consequent: that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law; where no law, no injustice" (Hobbes, 1990, p. 78).

Indeed, if the majority regards the ethnic minority as an enemy, but international law prevents the international community from intervening because of the commonly adopted (even though vague) conceptualization of the notions of state sovereignty, territorial integrity and non-violation of borders, the majority has no incentive not to treat the minority as enemies, with all the consequences, and the minority knows this and resorts to arms.

It is believed by the realists that in today's world, there is only one, if any, state of nature--that of international politics, since among states there is no higher authority. If so, then the minority de facto becomes recognized as a state--since it becomes attacked as a state. The state withdraws its authority and sovereign obligation to treat its citizens according to the law from the minority, perfects the enemy image of the minority, and moves to exterminate it. Anticipating this, the minority responds with guerrilla war, terrorist acts and other available violent means.

“Vertical” equation 1: the equation policy “from above”

As stated above, the equation policy is a widely used means to suppress the situation of the minority versus majority conflict is. The reasoning for this policy is never explicit, and perhaps, it is not even consciously realized by many of those who follow it. If it would be a deliberate conspiracy against the minority (who often believe that it is so), an imaginative reconstruction of such a policy would be as follows: “this minority wants change of status, perhaps independence. Let us regard it as responsible as possible for its actions (this is a kind of ironic enhancement of status, isn’t it)? Let us equate it with its oppressor state on the level of propaganda. Let us propagandize its violence. The mirror-image of nationalism is a common parlance. Let us use that and make it impossible to distinguish who is right and who is wrong, who is strong and who is weak. Afterwards, it will be much easier not to resolve the conflict according to minority’s aspirations.”

This approach is advanced, deliberately or not, by the community of nation-states or by a patron state in the case of an ethnic conflict in the client states, as it was when the Soviet Union still existed.

In Gorbachev's times, the following propagandistic steps were used for equation purposes in the Karabakh conflict. First, a peaceful (nonviolent) political movement of the Karabakh Armenians was equated in propaganda with the massacre of the Sumgait Armenians by the Azeris. The former was defined as “mass disorder organized by nationalists-extremists,” while the latter was called “separate cases of hooliganism on ethnic grounds” (Pravda, March 21, 1988).

This is in accordance with a tradition in which the violent nation-state’s nationalism is considered something natural, whereas the minority nationalism is considered illegitimate. Second, the conflict between a minority with compact residence (the Nagorny Karabakh Armenians) and a majority (Azeris) within one republic was presented as the conflict between two republics (Armenia and Azerbaijan). It was described in advance as a never-ending conflict between two ethnic groups (Armenians and Azeris) everywhere in Armenia and Azerbaijan. While there were historical precedents of violence between these two ethnicities, there were also no less striking examples of long-term cooperation, coexistence, and even symbiosis. However, the latter were at once forgotten. Through certain policy actions of the local communist elites, the emphasis on historical enmity gradually bore fruit. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy, and the Azeris from Armenia were expelled. As a result, the purity of the secession cause for Karabakh (territorial compactness, existence of administrative status, the actual exercise of sovereignty over the territory, and the long history of violations of human and cultural rights) was undermined. The ethnic kinship of the Karabakh Armenians and of the Armenians of Armenia was a very useful tool for the success of the equation policy.

Third, after the conflict was presented as a historical conflict between two ethnicities, it was additionally interpreted as the territorial aspiration of Armenia against Azerbaijan. This was untrue for the last communist leadership of Armenia, as well as for the subsequent years of Ter-Petrossian’s administration (Adalian , 1995).

The peaceful movement of the Armenian minority did not succeed. It was successfully equated with the pogroms (massacres) executed by the Azeri side and with the ethnic cleansing of Armenians from the whole territory of Azerbaijan.

The Armenians quickly took lessons from the first stage of conflict. They organized their self-defense. They organized the ethnic cleansing of Azeris from their territories (both in Armenia and Karabakh). The Moscow Communist leadership of the time and the Azerbaijani and Armenian Communist nomenklatura were the major organizers of ethnic cleansing in both republics. But the main beneficiary was Moscow, where it was an argument in equation policy for doing nothing.

There was one particular loser-- Karabakh. The leaders of this small enclave did not want to be losers. Who wants to be? So they organized a referendum, declared an independent republic, and started a war of self-defense. Certainly, they were helped by Armenia, and to some extent by Russia, after she became independent and realized that her foreign policy must resemble that of the Czarist Russia: “divide and rule.” Russia, thus, provided partial support to the Karabakh Armenians in order for them not to be defeated by Azerbaijan, which became increasingly nationalistic, pro-Turkish and anti-Russian under the rule of Elchibey. This is a kind of balance of power game which Russia plays in Transcaucasia, and Karabakh is one of the best levers for such a game.

The equation policy is necessary to make the situation of conflict a dead-end forever. In Gorbachev's times, it was carried forward by such propagandistic slogans as "in such conflicts there are no rights and culprits" (Babanov..., 1992, p. 6). The reference of these words was the Sumgait massacre, the equation was between killings, on one side, and peaceful manifestations, on the other. “There must not be winners and losers,” said Gorbachev (ibid.). This was meant to preserve the status quo. Since the Karabakh Armenians already started from a position of losers and wanted to re-play the situation, no-result would be a defeat from their perspective.

Another widely repeated slogan was "emotions and reason" (Pravda, March 21, 1988). In the context of that time, the Armenian rally participants were evaluated as emotional. The massacre in Sumgait was not properly and decisively condemned. By implication, an Armenian reader had the impression that reason in such conflict requires slaughtering.

Step by step, the minority was educated that justice does not work, and only naked power brings about results. The Azeri side was free to read the same message as an encouragement to reply by a pogrom to any constitutional and legal action of Karabakh. To tacitly declare acts of criminal violence, mass murder, blackmail and threat to a minority a priori rational reply to a legal claim makes them more probable to happen, especially if they are declared so by the highest govern-mental authorities.

The major justification for the equation propaganda was the purely “rational” stereotyped reasoning presented above. The constitutional appeal of the Nagorny Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) to the Soviet authorities was propagandized as equally dangerous as the acts of massacre, because it was considered by Moscow as more dangerous than the mere killing of some three dozen people and a refugee wave of some hundreds of thousands. It manifested the awakening of independent political initiative among the Soviet population. This had not been taken into account by the creators of the perestroika (restructuring) scenario. The priorities were stability, security, and integrity, in order to succeed with restructuring, rather than minorities' concerns. The minority was accused of presenting its claims at an inconvenient time. It was pushed toward violence by the instances of violence against it. In the discourse of media and politicians, it was constantly misrepresented as the guilty side in the conflict, since the initiation of the overt stage of conflict and guilt were equated, initiation meant guilt. These accusations only deepened its outrage, making it a group of self-conscious desperados.

The population of the majority state, Azerbaijan, was also deceived and agitated by the propaganda messages. The absence of decisive evaluations in the media was deliberately pursued in order not to provoke further escalation of conflict. But in fact, it created a situation of dissatisfaction by both sides. The vagueness of moral or legal authoritative judgments was worse than a decisive opinion or judgment in favor of one or another side would be: it was a means for the Azerbaijani elites in power to interpret the messages in an as if non-favorable for the Azeris light and to direct the outrage of the mob against the Armenian minority.

The ritualized public burials of the official Soviet organs of propaganda “Pravda” and “Izvestia,” which occurred in both republics and are discussed in Babanov... 1992, and the general hostility of the regional population toward journalists witnessed by many visiting correspondents indicate that populations on all sides were extremely sensitive to the media representation of conflict.

“Vertical” equation 2: the equation policy “from within”

The sides in conflict make no less, but even more efforts than the external forces to advance and strengthen the equation between themselves. For the nation-state, it is easily understandable: it helps to disguise the fact that it oppresses the minority. But why is it that the minority does the same? In this section, I will discuss how the nation-state advances the equation policy and why the minority follows it.

First, however, a clarification is in order: I analyze here only the “external” propaganda, i.e. propaganda directed to find supporters outside the state and the community. Newly independent states are vulnerable in many respects and lack legitimacy, which is why their rulers direct enormous efforts to secure external support. First, they need external support to be recognized as independent states, and second, to justify their rule and receive economic and other assistance. Their success is in many respects determined by their image in international circles. That is why, for example, they all use the rhetoric of democracy, because the wealthiest and most powerful states are democracies.

The same situation exists in ethnic conflict: the ethnic community appeals for external support because it has exhausted the opportunities of internal appeals to the government of the state; the state develops a formidable activism to match the minority’s propagandistic efforts. Internally, the state develops a propaganda of self-glorification (as thoroughly discussed in White, 1968), so that the majority population participate in the war against the minority. Externally, however, the state develops a propaganda of self-pity, in order to present itself as a just and even weaker side in the conflict with the minority. At the first round of the Karabakh conflict, the Azeri government tried to utilize threat and self-glorification as an argument in external propaganda. Hence, the Sumgait massacres were presented as a punishment of the Armenian minority for its movement. Very soon, however, it was understood that Azerbaijan had been subject to a negative image in the eyes of international community, so all efforts were then made to switch the modus of propaganda and, first, to silence the Sumgait and follow-up massacres, second, to equate them with the deportations of Azeris from Armenia, and third, to develop a propaganda image of Azerbaijan as a victim, suffering from Armenian attacks.

The mirror-image of nationalism was advanced by these attempts to catch up with the other side. A striking example is the continuing struggle to equate one side to another in terms of the quantity of victims and people killed in the confдict, both real and imaginary.

There is also another unavoidable linkage between history and the Karabakh conflict: the comparison between Armenian-Turkish and Armenian-Azeri conflicts. There are some people on the Armenian side and on the Azeri and Turkish side who construct parallels between the beginning of the century Armenian-Turkish conflict and the Karabakh conflict at the end of the century.

From the Azeri and Turkish perspectives, it probably seems that the struggle of the Armenians for recognition of the genocide which they suffered in the Ottoman Empire, as well as the "genocide complex", which makes them sensitive to any excesses on national/ethnic grounds, is a powerful propagandistic tool. Perhaps this is so. Once, an Azeri writer called this a "masochist complex of the Armenians," meaning that the Armenians actually entertain the remembrance of their suffering. Indeed, this tragic event constitutes a part of today’s Armenian identity, but hardly are the Armenians particularly happy to have this event marking their history. Let there would not have been genocide, and the Armenians would not have to refer to it; they would neither use nor abuse it in pursuit of their national goals.

But the inference which the Azeri and Turkish propagandists make is very peculiar: they try to convince public opinion that it was them, rather than the Armenians who have been suffering from genocide, and it was the Armenians, rather than themselves or their ancestors who have been executing that greatest guilt against humanity. Thus, the exploited concept of genocide becomes vague and applicable to any case of mass (or group) murder, or just to rumors about that.

After the Baku invasion by Soviet troops in 1990, the Azeris published a book in Russian entitled “Black January,” where the invasion was described as genocide. After the events in Khojaly, where the offensive of the Karabakh army resulted in the killing of about 200 Azeri civilians caught in the cross-fire, this was reported by the Azeri and Turkish press again, as an act of genocide. So compelling is the power of equation reasoning that both sides do not realize that if one side claims that it did not commit genocide or massacre, this would not automatically lead to a conclusion that, therefore, the other side did. “Genocide” is the key-word, unavoidable from the discourse used in this and any other violent ethnic conflict. It is recognized or denied, it may have indeed taken place or not, but the concept is always present.

An examination of the numerous arguments posted by the Turks in Internet discussion groups concerning the genocide of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire allows one to cluster them in three types. A strong version of denial claims that it was the Armenians rather than the Ottoman Empire who actually committed a genocide, and in which some millions of Turks and even Jews were killed by them (this strong denial can be called the reversal of accusation: the thief says that it was he who was robbed by the victim).

A second, weaker version claims that there was no genocide but a Civil War, and all sides suffered from that. This type of denial aims at substituting one concept, that which implies liability, with another, that which does not: in civil wars, all sides are equated by definition, independently of who wins.

Finally, a version of recognition of the event but not of the guilt says that the Armenians were exterminated rightfully for bad attributes of their national character and habits. This is the extremist version, which for obvious reasons, is not supported by the official position or Turkish scholars who seek international recognition of one of the first two versions of denial, both of which involve equation, the first one, an equation by the reversal of accusation, and the second one, an equation by the substitution of concepts.

The apparent plausibility of the second version, via equation in status of the sides in conflict (“civil war”), is the most easily sustained in international discourse. The absolute lie (as in the first version) is less plausible to succeed. Partial truth (as in the second version) has more chances: there were Armenian victims, it says, but there were also other victims. This was not a policy specially designed to exterminate Armenians: this was merely a “civil war.”

The equation propaganda works best when it is supported by partial truth. Partial truth is convenient, it can be sustained by the community of states, who do not want to be accused of defending the liar, but they also do not want to accuse a fellow nation-state, today’s ally and a potential rival, of a gross crime.

The Armenian side, both in the Ottoman Empire and in Karabakh, was also hypnotized by equation. Equation produces a tit-for-tat psychology (if one side commits pogrom and avoids punishment, another side feels free to do the same). Moreover, equation works to make the peacefulness of political movement meaningless by orchestrating an, as if similar, one organized by the adversary. Babanov and Voevodin discuss the first stage of development of the Azeri national movement in Azerbaijan in 1988: according to them, it was artificially provoked by the authorities in order to counterbalance the peaceful manifestations in Armenia and Karabakh. The non-violent ideology of the Armenian movement in Karabakh was, thus, emptied through the equation policy.

At the first stage of conflict, the situation was clear: the weaker side rallies, the stronger side kills (hence, it is clear who is guilty for what). The very fact of the Sumgait massacre, if justice would work, would be enough to recognize that Karabakh was right in seeking “divorce” from Azerbaijan.  In a year of absence of recognition and principal decision, and of active propaganda of equation, this picture was successfully altered: both sides apparently rallied, and both sides (allegedly equally) killed. Who started what--that did not matter from the distant perspective of the international community. That one movement was spontaneous and genuine and the other was artificially organized and provoked, also did not matter, since the propaganda outlets convincingly argued that there are no “objective” criteria to assess the genuineness of social movements, and that all of them have both spontaneous and provocative features. In some publications in Azerbaijan, an idea was advanced that Armenians usually are peaceful people, but they were provoked by two or three extremist representatives of their nationalist intelligentsia, such as Zoriy Balayan, Silva Kaputikian, etc. The fact that it was the impersonal power of nationalist movement which led the representatives of intelligentsia, rather than the other way around, was neglected.

The Armenians complain that the Turks and Azeris annihilated the Armenian historical culture--ancient churches and cemeteries which remain on their territory. One of the causes of Karabakh’s dissatisfaction with Azeri rule was the Azeri treatment of historical and religious monuments. A propaganda answer of the Azeri side was to declare in 1989 a small Tophana field where the Karabakh Armenians started to build a factory an ancient sacred place of Azeri culture and accuse the Karabakh Armenians in sacrilege. In reality, this was an empty plot of land without any monuments or important historical marks (Babanov..., 1992, p. 14).

Among the curiosities which accompany the spiral of mirroring each other is the renaming policy exercised by both sides. When the Armenians of Karabakh declared an independent republic with capital in Stepanakert, Azeris tried to undermine the legitimacy of the capital by pointing out that it was the old Azeri city Khankendi. For the Armenians, Karabakh is called Artsakh, for the Azeris, it is Karabakh. In fact, every locus in the area has received a double name since the beginning of the conflict. Individuals on both sides follow international news reports with jealousy calculating the amount of references to the local names. If a reporter uses Stepanakert, s/he is believed by the Azeris to be an Armenian agent of influence, if Khankendi, vice versa. Knowing about this effect, most of news reports use both names: Stepanakert (Khankendi), or Khankendi (Stepanakert). Depending on the order in which these names follow each other, viewers make guesses whose side is supported by today’s report. After the Karabakh army occupied territories outside of Karabakh proper, the symmetry of names was expanded to cover new regions. Now, the occupied region Kelbajar is referred to in Karabakh as Karvachar, Lachin is called Kashatagh, Koubatli--Kashounik, and Zangelan—Kovsakan.  These names may or may not have historical roots in the regions. This question aside, the renaming policy, as well as the discussion about the ancient monuments situated in these regions are used to enhance the legitimation of holding these territories (all names of occupied territories see quoted in Aragil: Events of the week, Sunday edition, issue 026, 3 December 1995). This is, again, an action in the historical chain of assimilation/swallowing big or small parts of each others’ histories and cultures, cutting off the association between locus and name, or between locus and its inhabitants. The examples from history of other states are numerous, and it is sufficient to note the German province Kenigsberg, renamed as the Kaliningradskaya Oblast as a part of the Soviet Union (today’s Russia) after World War II. There is a stream of water between two great powers, France and Britain. From one perspective, it is called La Manche; from another, it is the English Channel.

The same mechanism works in representing news from the front: the one and the same army is called by the Armenians the forces of self-defense of Nagorny Karabakh, whereas the Azeris claim that it is the Armenian expeditionary corps or Armenian occupational army, implying the participation of the Republic of Armenia’s forces. The same territories, currently under the Armenian control, are referred to as security zone, buffer zone or liberated territories (the Armenian version) versus occupied territories or one-fourth of Azerbaijan or 20% (the Azeri version). A corridor which connects Armenia to Karabakh and which was opened by force by the Armenians through a part of the Azeri territory is called, from the Armenian perspective, a humanitarian corridor. There is probably no need to stress that the very war is represented as a national liberation struggle by the Armenians, being an act of aggression of Armenia against the territory of Azerbaijan from the Azeri perspective. Since there fortunately happened to be an Armenia nearby, Azerbaijan had a perfect scapegoat to refer to it instead of its own minority--the Armenians of Nagorny Karabakh. It is fair to mention, however, that violent conflict between the minority and state is not at all precluded in the case if there is no other state which would support the minority and represent the same ethnicity. The conflict between Russia and the Chechens, or the Turkish and Iraqi authorities and the Kurds, are cases in point.

It is important not to forget in the context of these examples that simply by the fact that the Armenians have a minority which struggles for the enhancement of their status and Azerbaijan is the state against which they struggle, the Armenian discourse is at a comparative disadvantage: it has a mostly local significance, whereas the Azeri representation of the conflict has an advantage of reaching wide international audiences and of constituting the only legitimate discourse, according to the rules of legitimation advanced by the community of nation-states. For a small ex-ample, in the map printed by the National Geographic the capital of Karabakh appears as “Xankendi” (a distorted Russian transliteration of the Azeri version Khankendi.

Some part of this asymmetry is overcome by the fact that there exists a nation-state, the Republic of Armenia, which stands behind the struggle of the Karabakh Armenians.

This, however, makes Armenia a ‘torn’ country: its “national” interests do not coincide with its interests as a member of the community of states (or, in other words, its ethnic interests do not necessarily coincide with its national interests). The Armenian elites are forced to play a double game, speaking in one language with the community of nation-states and in another with their brethren in Karabakh.

In 1989, the Supreme Soviet of the then Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic issued a decree of unification of Armenia and Karabakh. The Supreme Soviet was at that time overwhelmingly communist, and soon, after the Soviet Union collapsed, a new parliament was elected. The decision contradicts the interests of Armenia as a state since it provides Azerbaijan with the opportunity to justify its claims that Armenia aspires to the Azerbaijan territory rather than the Karabakh minority’s struggle for its rights. The Armenian authorities informally reply that they are not responsible for a decision made by a communist parliament. They nonetheless do not abandon that decision via a juridical action, even though they do not claim Karabakh to be a part of the Armenian territory and they do not recognize Karabakh as an independent state. At the same time, there is a Nagorny Karabakh Embassy in Yerevan. They cannot declare that decision void de jure since that would generate a huge anti-government response among the population who would see this as a betrayal of the Karabakh cause.

Another attempt at advancing the symmetry of the situation was a group of Azeris’ declaration of a “Giokcha-Zangezur Republic” in emigration: the Azeri refugees from Armenia decided to counterbalance the Karabakh movement by similar claims of creating an independent republic for the Azeris on the territory of Armenia, even though there were no historical or practical reasons for that (see Babanov, p.24).

During the negotiations within the framework of the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE, later renamed as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE), the claim of the Karabakh Armenians to properly represent themselves was counterbalanced by the insistence of the Azeri side to include the participation of the representatives of the Azeri community of Karabakh. The actual decision-making side in the conflict, thus, was represented in many occasions at the same level as a group of refugees at the highest level of international negotiations. Conflict becomes represented as that between B and C (the minority and even smaller minority, which is in fact a part of the majority-nation-state A), rather than between A and B (nation-state and minority). Consequently, Armenia as a state becomes the only side in conflict with Azerbaijan. Two states and two minorities are equated. The essence of conflict between a state and a minority is absent from the discourse, just as the fact that the other two actors are involved in the conflict against their own will and are not the major actors. It is considered non-diplomatic to discuss and even recall these examples, especially if they are not counterbalanced by the argument of the other side.

For me, however, these examples are not an occasion to accuse the Azeri side of a deliberate distortion of the situation, but powerful illustrations of how the social construction and interpretation of conflict can affect the outcomes. Many times, the agreements were not reached and/or implemented because the Karabakh authorities were not represented at the CSCE (currently OSCE) level and did not consider Armenia as a substitute for their voice; many other times, the agreements were not reached because the Karabakh authorities rejected to be counted at the same level with the “puppet” representatives of the Azeri community, and a respectful international organization and powerful states of the world were unable to change the situation. Of course, the other side claimed for a long time that the Karabakh authorities are themselves the “puppets” of Armenia.

It seems that both sides ought to be "satisfied" by some outcomes of this propaganda: the Karabakh Armenians could finally rid themselves of the label of historical "losers" and "masochists," and share with their counterparts from Armenia the label of “aggressors” (which perhaps does not even sound bad to a nation which completed the list of national war victories some ten centuries ago), and the Azeris could take over the stigma of the "sufferers from genocide." But since the final accord is not yet signed, and Karabakh is under constant pressure, directly and indirectly, by the international community as well as by its sole natural ally--the Republic of Armenia--to make significant concessions and step back from its independence demand, the result of this switch of the images from victim to offender and vice versa can have very dear historical consequences for the Karabakh minority. Furthermore, if this minority is defeated, this will become another precedent for other nation-states to oppress their advanced minorities; whereas, if the Karabakh struggle results in a fair arrangement which satisfies the demands of the minority, other nation-states will refrain from oppressing their minorities.

The culmination of the equation policy

The culmination of equation policy is to accuse minorities themselves of perpetrating genocide. This is an ongoing theme in the Turkish discourse concerning the genocide of the Armenians. The same theme is being strongly advanced today in the context of the Karabakh conflict. The community of nation-states tries to frighten the international public opinion (which is composed essentially of themselves) by the enumeration of various facts of terror and atrocities committed by the ethno-nationalist violent minorities. If presenting minorities as outlaws and rebels is not enough, it will be complemented by presenting them as monsters. I am far from denying the very facts of atrocities, if they are clearly established. There are, however, certain aspects of the interpretation of the guilt of minorities as a collective body which are obviously worth of discussion.

In a Human Rights Watch publication entitled, "Azerbaijan. Seven years of conflict in Nagorno Karabakh," the events in and around Karabakh since 1993 are interpreted in the following manner: "during 1993, the vast majority of violations of the rules of war, such as indiscriminate fire, the destruction of civilian objects, the taking of hostages, and looting, where the direct result of Karabakh Armenian offensives--often supported by forces from the Republic of Armenia" (p.8), saying in parentheses that the authors do not present any evidence of the participation of the forces of the Republic of Armenia. It is probable that the Armenian forces have participated in the Karabakh army offensives, but to what extent and under what status is an open question. The only evidence is that in 1993, the Karabakh military chief Serzh Sarkisian was assigned the post of Defense Minister in Armenia. This is interpreted as an evidence of the merging of the Armenian and Karabakh military. This however, may mean as well that the Karabakh forces, which are well-equipped and educated regular forces, participated in the defense of Armenia rather than the contention that Armenia participated in the offensives of Karabakh. Apparently, this appointment was an action of President Ter-Petrossian in his bargaining efforts with the Karabakh authorities (as well as for internal political reasons). Supposedly, he would have enhanced his influence over the Karabakh elite through this appointment.

In fact, this sentence, and the whole publication, are directed to an objective to prove that the Karabakh Armenians rather than the Azeri army were the “bad guys” in the conflict since 1993. In a strikingly parallel manner, the recent opening of the Ottoman archives by the Turkish authorities that publicized the release of materials purporting to show the massacres which the Armenians executed against the Turks in the Ottoman Empire, along with claims that the evidence presented by the Armenian side about the genocide of the Armenians is a falsification (Asbarez-on-line, 10-06-95, #6). The coincidence in timing makes this an action of double propaganda. Its aim is, as they say in legal jargon, to “establish a pattern of behavior.” According to this picture, the Armenians were always slaughtering: they killed the innocent Turks then, and they kill the innocent Azeris now; and the Armenians were always lying, claiming that they, rather than their victims were the real victims.

Aside from questions like why, if so beneficial for the Turks, these materials were not publicized long before, what is also unnoticed in this, as well as all other cases, is a simple fact that the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, just as the Karabakh Armenians, did not have recognized independent statehood, therefore, they did not have sufficient reason to follow the rules of war: since the rules of war were not followed by the Ottoman Empire and by the Republic of Azerbaijan in their anti-Armenian policy, because Armenians in both cases were treated as treacherous insiders rather than as the representatives of an outside power, Armenians resorting to self-defense and revenge did not abstain from using the same methods which were used against them, and first of all, ethnic cleansing. Armenians justify their actions claiming that if they would unilaterally follow the rules of war regarding the civilian population of the enemy, their defeat would have been even more complete in the Ottoman Empire, and would be inevitable in Karabakh. They interpret the instances of cleansing civilian population of Azeris from Armenia, Karabakh and from the conquered territories around Karabakh as a “national security” necessity, rather than as a pure punishment of enemy, or, as the international media label it (re: the Balkans), “atavistic revanchism”--a retributive retaliation for the past massacres of the Armenians in Turkey as well as for the ethnic cleansing of the Armenians from Azerbaijan. Violence against the innocent cannot be justified in either case. The genocide of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire was also justified, by some scholars who represent the Turkish position, by national security considerations (the Armenians were “natural allies” of Russia, with whom the Empire was in war). There is nothing new nor worthy of respect in that justification. However, precisely because the Armenians were representing a national movement rather than a recognized state, they were simply incapable of committing such a large-scale crime as genocide, which requires high technological, infrastructural and organizational “virtues” of a consolidated nation-state power.

In this kind of equation propaganda, the level of accountability and liability for the “guilt” of the minority is implied to be equal to that of an independent international actor, whereas the propaganda message itself is not supposed to allow the aspirants to ever achieve independent statehood. A fair rejoinder to this argument would be that if, indeed, the Armenians did commit all these actions, and the Nagorny-Karabakh Republic in particular, then it must be responsible for its actions, and responsible before an international body, therefore, it must be granted international status to be legally liable for its deeds. To sue Armenia for aggression (as Azerbaijan threatens to do before the International Court of Justice) and discount the Karabakh minority as a mere puppet is a perfect example of an artificially enforced construction of reality.

For Turkey, the policy of denial of the Armenian genocide is not an exclusive case: the same policy is used against the Kurdish movement. The editor of a Turkish daily, Ozgur Ulke, was charged for “provoking enmity and hatred by displaying racism or regionalism” for allowing a publication of a statement concerning Turkish policy against the Kurds stating: “the target of the army is Kurdish villages” (Asbarez-on-line, 10-04-95, #7). Enmity and hatred, which generated (and, as a result, were provoked by) the actions of the Turkish army against peaceful inhabitants are ascribed to the reporters of the event. Here, one sees both the misplacement of the real actor (the responsible ones for enmity are not the army and/or the government for their policy of the non-recognition of the rights of the Kurdish minority, but the reporters) and equation (as if the enmity provoked by mere publication is equal to and overwhelms the enmity provoked by governmental policy and/or targeting of civilians).

White (1968) has mentioned the effect of “conspiracy theory” in the misperception in international conflict: the same is even truer for the minority/majority conflict. In rare cases where the abuse of human and ethnic rights reaches international audiences, it is interpreted as a result of a conspiracy of the minority, rather than as a substantial cause to revise policies which may bring about unfavorable international reaction. Since state ideology inculcates that minority’s claims are illegal in advance, they do not exist in legal discourse, hence, they must not exist in any other kind of discourse. From the perspective of a sovereign nation-state, the appeal of a minority to international public opinion or international organizations is perceived, therefore, as an act of treacherous conspiracy. Recent cuts in aid to Turkey by the US (for the first time since the Second World War), motivated by the domestic US distribution of forces (the Republican agenda after the Cold War), by instances of human rights violations in Turkey, and by the fact of the illegal embargo Turkey exercises against Armenia because of the Karabakh conflict, were interpreted as a typical result of lobbying by the Armenian and Greek communities in the US. The fact that by the same Congressional decision the ban on aid to Azerbaijan was weakened means at least that the “Armenian conspiracy” in the US is not as all-powerful as it seems to Turks and Azeris. But they do not want to believe that. This would destroy another myth of the enemy image. In an article published in Washington Post (October 18, 1995) by Amos Perlmutter, one can read: “the problem for Turkey is that it has so far displayed no gift for the kind of lobbying and public proselytizing that is characteristic of the Greek and Armenian efforts” (quoted from Asbarez-on-line, 11-06-95, #5). In other words, Turkey has not displayed enough propaganda! Let us make more propaganda rather than look at the causes of economic sanctions! Turkey wants to be equated with Armenia and Greece to have as powerful a minority in the US as they have. But for this, she “unfortunately” lacks a "simple" historical event of suffering from genocide, which was the main cause why the Armenian and Greek diasporas appeared in the US.  Instead, Turkey resorts to other means--it subsidizes the establishment of Turkish Studies Chairs in leading US Universities, which inevitably brings about accusations in dictating the agenda of scholarly research, in propagating the position of Turkish authorities, and, consequently, in the “anti-genocide” and "anti-Armenian" bias of these academic chairs.

Another feature of nationalist propaganda, discussed by White, is the exaggeration of the unity of the adversary. The structural differences between the interests of Armenians in Armenia, Armenians in Diaspora, and Karabakh Armenians were not taken into account in the earlier stages of the conflict. In the same manner, the Armenians sometimes easily equate Turks with Azeris (and the structural similarities in their behavior in similar situations toward their minority Armenians in different eras of the 20th century, as well as their anthropological kinship, are strong arguments in favor of such an equation, but it must not be exaggerated). The religious affiliation facilitates indeed the self-identification of the sides, helps them to polarize the conflict in their discourse and to seek support among the religious kinship. But it would be a simplification of the concrete features of the Karabakh conflict to equate it with a religious “war of civilizations.”

The Human Rights Watch publication selectively starts from a convenient point, 1993, when the fortune of military victory had turned in favor of the Armenians: the Karabakh forces conquered one-fourth of the territory of Azerbaijan (while losing one-fourth of the territory of Nagorny Karabakh proper) and created a security zone, which resulted in the displacement of vast amounts of the population. If beforehand, there were more Armenian refugees from Azerbaijan than vice versa, after 1993, the situation changed drastically, and the amount of refugees and internally displaced persons in Azerbaijan reached one million, according to the Azeri sources.

But because the argument is a shortcut, and for a reader with no background in the subject it will be unclear why the Armenians felt themselves free to make war and even to disregard the rules of war, this publication becomes a good propaganda tool for the advancement of the nation-state position, which distorts the evaluation of the situation rather than facilitates it. It provides only the partial truth, and this is not easily discernible. To start from a convenient point and avoid the whole history is a good propaganda tool. It is another color in the palette of the equation policy, which aims at final confusion and the mutual replacement of right and wrong, guilty and victim, powerful and powerless, so that the conflict would never be resolved in terms of justice, but only in terms of power.

Equations in histories

I have mentioned in the first section of this paper that the theories which try to deal with state versus minority conflict are sometimes caricature-like simplifications. But those who defend the necessity of theories, among other factors, mention that history is not enough to make a fair decision in every case, particularly because histories are disputed by the sides in the conflict the same way as more recent events. Unfortunately, this is true.

Indeed, there exist two histories of Karabakh: one written from the Armenian perspective and the other, written from the Azeri perspective. In the same way, there exist two histories of the genocide (or of the absence of it) in the Ottoman Empire: the Turkish and Armenian versions. Both demonstrate available documents as evidence. If sometimes this or that document is apparently falsified or used in a propaganda discourse, at least in some cases, one can find evidence which says that both sides have their reasons for their arguments. There was a genocide against the Armenians, and the Armenians, when and where they could, replied by violence too. Or, the Armenians wanted independence, and for this they were subjected to genocide. Is genocide justified by the intentions of minority or by its reactive policy of self-defense? Yes it is, in the world of perfectly sovereign nation-states and power without justice. Of course, those who did not suffer from genocide could simply fail to notice that there was a genocide of the Armenians going on for a while. From their perspective, there was no genocide, because this was not their genocide. They were not murdered as a group: they were waging a war. The Armenians were the subjects of the Ottoman Empire. Their official identification was not that they were ethnic Armenians, but that they were the subjects of the Ottoman Empire. Some part of the subjects of the Ottoman Empire was exterminated during the war, as a result of war, or as a result of civil war. According to this argument, this is not a crime of genocide, because it was not a deliberate policy of extermination of Armenians according to ethnic criterion. However strong the historical evidence would be that it was a deliberate policy, designed and implemented by the Young Turks, it will be rejected or denied. The mere fact of killing does not prove anything. It is not worthy of excuse or regret. Only if it would be a deliberate killing of an ethnicity, then it would be a genocide.

Meanwhile, in the Armenian national consciousness, the fact that the Turks deny genocide (as a historical event) is equated to the denial by the Azeris of the fact that Nagorny Karabakh has a right to remain a territory governed by the Armenians.

The Azeri version of the Karabakh history is that the Armenians came here after Karabakh was conquered by the Russians, in the first half of the 19th century.  There is no indigenous population, therefore, they do not have a right to that territory. The Armenian version is that Karabakh (Artsakh) was populated and actually governed by the Armenians beginning from ancient times, which is proved by numerous historical monuments and by the ancient Armenian historiographies. Only for some time, Karabakh was partially depopulated from the Armenians who fled because of the cruelty of the Muslim conquerors. The Azeri reply has two versions: according to one, many things happened in the ancient times, and any decisive academic truth cannot be established, therefore, it is more appropriate to start from the part of history which is more or less transparent, and this part of history conveniently starts in the 19th century. According to another, the ancient inhabitants of Artsakh were not Armenians but Albanians, the actual ancestors of the Azeri ethnos.

This argument has far-reaching implications. From the Armenian perspective, Azeris as well as all other Turkic nations in the region are newcomers: they first appeared in Transcaucasia in the 10th century AD. Azeris, meanwhile, claim that their ethnos, or at least an essential part of it, are the indigenous people in the region (the historical Albanians), and it is the Armenians who are comparative newcomers. They discount the availability of historiographies written by Albanian scholars in the Armenian language (which, according to the Armenians, means that they were a part of the Armenian ethnos) saying that some time in history, the Albanians were conquered by the Armenians, forcibly Christianized and forbidden to use their own script and language. The script was, thus, lost forever. Or, the Armenian sources are actually translations from the lost originals, which were written in Albanian and destroyed by the Armenian conquerors. Fortunately, the “Albanians” were able to reestablish their identity through abandoning the Armenian version of Christianity and adopting Islam. The Armenian churches situated in the territory of contemporary Azerbaijan and Nagorny Karabakh are not Armenian, but Albanian.

The same kind of propaganda works in Turkey: the remaining Armenian monuments are referred to as “the monuments of the ancient civilizations of Anatolia.” Thus, they can be useful for the development of tourism and at the same time, be secure from Armenian aspirations to reclaim their heritage.

For a nationalist Armenian, the ancestors of the Azeris and other Turkic nations were “wild” nomads unable to value the heritage of settled cultures. For a nationalist Azeri, the Armenians are travelers without homeland, cosmopolitan by nature, easily adaptable to any culture, unable to preserve their own culture, parasitic and full of claims to the territories, cultures and histories of other nations.

These two histories and two characteristics of rival nations do not recognize each other. They actually deny the existence and worth of each other, even though both are tacit or loud responses to each other, and one discourse is impossible without the rival one. But, again, the Armenian version is made weaker by the conventions accepted in today’s world of nation-states.

The idea that early or ancient history cannot be an argument for the decision, whereas recent history can, is structurally similar to the idea that the genocide of the Armenians cannot be recognized (or was not genocide at all) because it happened during the First World War, whereas the international law on genocide appeared only as a result of the Second World War.

It is also similar to the argument advanced by the above-mentioned Human Rights Watch publication, according to which crimes prior to minority violence, crimes which actually pushed the minority toward violent forms of struggle, ought not be considered when the decision concerning minority’s liability is made. It is similar to saying that partial truth is enough for decision-making.

But even those parts of truth which are recognized are selective. One partial truth is that in the recent history, Karabakh was within Azerbaijan (therefore, the argument goes, it must remain there). Another partial truth is that Azerbaijan itself was within the Soviet Union (and rightfully exercised its right to self-determination and seceded). The reasoning in the two similar situations is opposite: according to the first logic, belonging to a state may not be altered. According to the second, it can and even should. Both positions are justified by legal arguments.  Partiality, selectivity, and the use of double (or multiple) standards work together to justify the right of a powerful side and deny that of a weaker side.

In order to achieve the same rights, the weaker side can do only one thing: demonstrate its power. The most straightforward and persuasive way for that is violence.

Finally, the idea that history is inapplicable is similar to the argument that the existing system is just merely because it exists, and that it must not be radically altered; that any challenge to a stable system is a greater guilt than any injustice committed within or by that stable system; that stability and peace are more important values than justice; and that stability is not disturbed by such crimes as massacre, ethnic cleansing or genocide, if only these events are prevented from being recognized by the “international community” and did not catch its attention. Furthermore, those who try to do that betray their allegiance to the state, thus, become deprived of the state support by their own action, and become the enemies of the state.

At the moment when the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic was recognized as a sovereign state (becoming the Azerbaijani Republic), its territorial integrity became sacred. The very act of recognition was a disruption of the existing international order: the Soviet Republics as well as the constituents of the Yugoslavian Federation were recognized at the expense of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia as sovereign states. However, this disruption of the existing international order was actually not precluded, since it was very much in the interests of the international community (i.e. of the major powers of the world). Now, after that has happened, any new alteration to the existing “Order of Things” is declared extremely dangerous and is to be precluded by all means.

In the discourse of international relations, as well as history, recognition of an event or a principle is equated to its existence: if a state is recognized within certain borders, it is within them, even if it is unable to govern a significant part of its territory.

If a state is not recognized, it does not exist for the world, even though it exists and functions successfully, both in internal management and structure and external defense.

If a case of genocide is not recognized, it has not happened at all, and what has happened was not a genocide.

Here, concepts, definitions, and descriptions constitute and legitimize events, even though it is events which generate the necessity of their accession and nomination through conceptualization, description, and interpretation.

The essence of the social construction of reality is this: it is a matter of conceptual choice whether or not to call the events in the Ottoman Empire in 1915, as a result of which about two million Armenians disappeared from that territory, and part of them appeared in diverse places throughout the world, a genocide; but it is not so much a matter of choice whether or not to call this brown wooden object with a horizontal surface and four legs a table. Even though social construction is always present, it increases its significance when the naming of an event will have value implications (ethical or legal accountability).

When the fact that naming of an event will have value implications is neglected as if inadvertently, and the acts of naming with neglected value implications accumulate, the gap between reality and perception increases, history becomes altered, and the conflict between alternative perspectives becomes irresolvable.

The idea that disputed histories of the conflict can simply preclude any possible monoperspective interpretation is itself interpreted in two ways.

For most of those who represent a nation-state perspective, the difficulty of dealing with historical argument is sufficient to declare that the status quo must be preserved, and that no change in the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan is possible.

For the Karabakh people, however, it looks like the opposite. By all these events, they were inculcated one clear idea: that in the future, only victory will remain. They say: just as today we cannot prove the Armenian cause (neither with Turkey nor with Azerbaijan), in the same way tomorrow, the Azeris will be unable to prove their cause (if any). Power, and not justice, is what matters. Power is justice. Your claims are legitimized if you have enough power, which itself is proven by the instances of violence you were able to commit. Furthermore, your claims are only as much legitimized by as much power you have.

But the Karabakh Armenians are wrong, because they are not the powerful side in the long run. Just as in the past, they were unable to prove their cause, in the future, they may be unable to preserve their victory, if the power distribution in the region is not strengthened by a fair international arrangement, which at least partially weakens the sovereignty of states regarding the rights of their minorities.

The Karabakh Armenians felt themselves free to defend their independence by any means due to the absence of sufficient reaction by the international community to the atrocities committed by Turks and Azeris in the past. Now, at a new stage of conflict, the international organizations pay attention to the atrocities; but the times are changed, and without the prior sequence of history former victims appear as aggressors.

The final touch: a linguistic stupor

Naming has value implications. If the ancient monasteries in the Eastern Anatolia are recognized as being Armenian, the question will arise how did it happen that there are no Armenians there now? In order to preclude this kind of question, these monasteries in Turkey are called the "monuments of ancient civilizations of Anatolia." "Ancient civilizations" is a more vague designation than "Armenian," and because it is vague, it is safer.

A similar problem exists before the OSCE: how to name the conflict between Karabakh and Azerbaijan? If to call it simply a "conflict between Karabakh and Azerbaijan," Azerbaijan will complain, pointing out the participation of Armenia. In addition, the fact that an internationally non-recognized entity, Karabakh, is in a conflict with an internationally recognized entity, Azerbaijan, may be interpreted as an indirect international recognition of Karabakh. If the conflict is called a "conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan," Armenia will oppose such a definition, pointing out that it is not Armenia but Karabakh which is primarily in conflict. If the conflict is called a "conflict between Armenia and Karabakh versus Azerbaijan," both Armenia and Azerbaijan will complain: one for the use of its name, and the other for the use of the name Karabakh. If the conflict is called "in Karabakh," this is not true, because after the Azeris from Shushi have been expelled, there is no conflict properly within Karabakh.

At the first stage of conflict, in order to overcome this linguistic stupor, the Soviet newspapers created a special signification: "the conflict in Karabakh and around it." Today, since there is no conflict in Karabakh, only the last part of that label could remain: "the conflict around Karabakh."

But even this form is not vague enough to preclude complaints from the sides in the conflict. Therefore, another form of signification was invented, one which would absolutely preclude any possible interpretation by the sides: '"the conflict in the area dealt with by the Minsk Conference" (Annual Report of the Secretary General, OSCE, 1995, p. 14). He who understands will understand. The perspectives of the sides differ so profoundly that only at such a vague level will a consensus be possible even over the very basic aspect of the conflict: its name. It is the conflict in the area dealt with by the Minsk Conference (area dealt with by or conflict dealt with by?), which (the conference rather than the conflict) has not yet even been organized, as if the conflict is a result of the Minsk Conference's involvement in it or in the area, rather than the other way around.

Conclusion

How a conflict between a minority and a nation-state will be described and represented is decided by the world of nation-states. The latter abuses the lack of leverage on the side of minority to properly advocate its cause. The equation policy is a powerful propagandistic tool used by nation-state elites for this purpose. By equating state and minority for their equal “guilt” in violence or even accusing the minority of precipitating violence via its appeals to justice, and simultaneously by precluding the possibility for minorities to achieve a status which would allow them to fairly represent their cause, the equation policy allows the powerful side to hide the structural asymmetry of power relationship via the perceived symmetry of behavior of the sides in conflict.

Another major feature of the equation policy is that by claiming to pacify violence via regulating the discursive interpretation of conflict, it actually works for conflict escalation.

If change is an objective necessity, but stability is preferred by the powerful side; if the peaceful attempts of change are secretly and violently disrupted, whereas stability is loudly trumpeted as the major official value; if change means achievement of justice, and perspective for future, and stability means the loss of identity, history, and territory by a minority, then violence appears to the minority as the only available means to achieve self-preservation, as well as to bring about favorable change.

The only way to prevent violence is the policy of accommodating the demands of minorities and of compromise by the powerful side in order to preserve at least a part of its power. But this policy is used only by a few enlightened nation-states. The typical policy is the opposite. If the voice of a trouble-maker minority can be suppressed, it will be suppressed. If it is impossible to suppress its appeals, it is declared out of the bounds of law. In the international arena, there is no room for the voice of minorities to express their own perspective on the conflict (except for some special cases, such as Quebec and the Palestine Liberation Organization). Having an ally in terms of another nation-state cannot replace the necessity for such a voice, because the advocacy of an ally itself is used for advancing the equation policy. It strengthens the tendency to replace the minority by its nation-state ally: everywhere in today’s world except in Karabakh the conflict is known as one between Armenia and Azerbaijan rather than that between Karabakh and Azerbaijan. The result is that the minority loses any belief in the peaceful resolution of conflict by non-violent means of negotiations and agreements, and the more it is persuaded to negotiate for peace rather than for the achievement of its demands, the more it perceives itself in a trap of nation-states, from which there is only one outlet—an all-out war.

References

Ralph K. White: 1968. Nobody wanted war. Misperception in Vietnam and the other wars. Garder City, New York: Doubleday.

Andrei Sakharov: 1990. Moscow and beyond: 1986-1989. London.

Azerbaijan. Seven years of conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh: 1994. Human Rights Watch / Helsinki.

Ovchinnikov et al. Emotions and reason. In: Pravda, March 21, 1988.

Asbarez-on-line, 10-06-95, #6.

Asbarez-on-line, 10-04-95, #7.

Asbarez-on-line, 11-06-95, #5.

Aragil: Events of the week. Sunday edition, #026, December 3, 1995.

Igor Babanov, Konstantin Voevodski: 1992. Karabakhskii krizis (The Karabakh crisis). Sankt-Peterburg (in Russian).

Cherni Ianvar. Baku-1990: Documenty I materialy: 1990. (Black January. Baku-1990. Documents and materials). Baku: Azerneshr (in Russian).

Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann: 1966. Social construction of reality. Garden City, New York: Doubleday.

Snyder, Louis Leo: 1990. Encyclopedia of nationalism. New York: Paragon House.

Thomas Hobbes: 1990. Leviathan. Baltimore: Penguin Books.

Ted Robert Gurr: 1993. Minorities at risk. Washington D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press.

David Childs, Letter to the Editor. The Times, April 15, 1996.        

Rouben Paul Adalian: 1995. Armenia's Foreign Policy: Defining Priorities and Coping with Conflict. In: Adeed Dawisha and Karen Dawisha, (eds.), The Making of Foreign Policy in Eurasia. Armonk, N.Y. : M.E. Sharpe.

Audrey L. Altstadt: 1994. O patria mia: National conflict in Mountainous Karabakh. In: W. Raymond & G. Paul Hofman, Jr., (eds.), Ethnic nationalism and regional conflict. The former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Boulder, San Francisco, Oxford: Westview Press

Secretary General, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Annual Report 1995

 Ամփոփագիր. Հոդվածը քննարկում է միջէթնիկ հակամարտության առանջնահատուկ երևույթ, որը հեղինակը անվանում է “հավասարության քաղաքականություն”, իրականության մեկնաբանությանը մոտենալով “վերացարկված” տեսանկյունից, քանի որ թե հակամարտությունից դուրս հայտնվածները, թե ներսում գտնվողները այնպիսի բնութագրիչներ են օգտագործում, որոնք կողմերին ամեն առումով հավասար են տեղակայում, լինի դա մշակույթ, հեռահար նպատակներ, հակամարտության պատճառներ, իրադարձություններ, թե արդյունքներ: Այսպիսի դիրքորոշումը շեշտակիորեն խախտում է հակամրատության խճանկարը և այն դարձնում ավելի խրթին բանաձևում: Այստեղ նաև քննարկվում է “անկողմնակալ դրսեկների” մեթոդաբանությունը բանակցության գործընթացում՝ դրական արդյունքների առաջացման վրա ունեցած ազդեցության տեսանկյունից: Հոդվածը գրվել է 1996թ.-ին, սակայն շարունակում է մնալ արդիական: Գործընթացի զարգացումները ցույց են տվել, որ հավասարության քաղաքականությունը Ղարաբաղի հակամարտության (ինչպես նաև այլ հակամարտություններում) դեպքում գոյացրել է փակուղայնություն՝ դրսևորվելով հակամարտության ձևակերպման նախնական լեզվի ամբողջական փոփոխությամբ, ինչը հանգեցրել է ամբողջովին այլ հակամարտության:

Аннотация: Статья описывает специфический феномен межэтнического конфликта, названный автором «политика уравнения». Интерпретируя ситуацию как бы с «отодвинутой» точки зрения, внешние наблюдатели и игроки, а часто и внутренние учатсники конфликта используют дескрипторы, которые описывают стороны конфликта так, как если бы они были равны во всём: как если бы у них были одинаковая культура, цели, интерпретация причин, течения, событий и результатов конфликта. Такая политика значительно искажает картину конфликта и делает её справедливое разрешение намного более затруднённым, чем было бы иначе. Она также заставляет усомниться, является ли методология медиации «непредвзятых внешних игроков» результативной для разрешения конфликта. Статья написана в 1996 году, однако не потеряла актуальности: события, происшедшие с тех пор, показывают, что политика уравнения в карабахском конфликте (а также в некоторых других) привела к значительному тупику, который характеризуется тотальной сменой начального языка, использовавшегося для концептуализации конфликта, что в свою очередь привело к тому, что нынешний конфликт является совершенно другим, нежели тот, который возник изначально.

Biography: Ph.D. in philology, MA in Society and Politics, MPA in International Administration. In 1991-1993, taught at Yerevan State University and worked in the team of the Senior Advisor to the President of the Republic of Armenia. In 1998-2005, worked as Eurasia Program Director and Senior Advisor with International Alert, London, an NGO working on civil society peace building. Currently works as the Country Director of Eurasia Partnership Foundation in Armenia. Ter-Gabrielyan has tought at a number of universities in Europe and US, worked in think tanks, consulted businesses and has published widely. He is a member of the Caucasus Methodological Committee and organizes and takes part in Creative Games as one of the leaders. His scholarly interests include methodology of systemic thought activity (MSTA), Caucasus, conflict and peace studies, literature and semiotics. He is the co-founder of the Inknagir literary prize for a short story in Armenia; and the Editor-in-Chief of Language, Society, Communication.

Կենսագրական. Հեղինակը բանասիրական գիտությունների թեկնածու է, ունի նաև մագիստրոսի կրթական աստիճան հասարակություն և քաղաքականություն, միջազգային կառավարում որակավորումներով: 1991-93թթ. Դասավանդել է ԵՊՀ և աշխատել է ՀՀ Նախագահի գլխավոր խորհրդականի պաշտոնում: 1998-2005թթ. Աշխատել է որպես Եվրասիայի ծրագրային ղեկավար և ավագ խորհրդական Միաջազգային Ալերտի Լոնդոնյան գրասենյակում: Ներակյումս հանդիսանում է Եվրասիա համագործակցության հիմնադրամի հայաստանյան գրասենյակի տնօրեն: Գ. Տեր-Գաբրելյանը դասավանդել է Եվրոպայի և ԱՄՆ մի շարք բուհերում, աշախատել է վերլուծական կենտրոններում, խորհրդատվական ծառայություններ է մատուցել ձեռնարկություններին և ոինի բազում հրապարակումներ: Հանդիսանում է Կովկասյան մեթոդաբանական հանձնախմբի անդամ, ինչպես նաև նախագծում և մասնակցում է կրեատիվ խաղերին: Իր գիտական հետաքրքրությունների շրջանակը ներառում է համակարգված մտագործունեության մեթոդաբանությունը, Կովկասը, համակամարտությանը և խաղաղությանը նվիրված ուսումնասիրությունները, գրականությունը և նշանագիտությունը: Հեղինակը նաև հանդիսանում է Ինքնագիր գրական մրցանակի համահիմնադիրներից մեկը, ինչպես նաև «Լեզու, հասարակություն, հաղորդակցություն» գիտական պարբերականի գլխավոր խմբագիրն է:

06:27 August 13, 2014