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Our Director, Cihan Erdal, and our researcher, Dr. Öndercan Muti, co-authored an article in EVN Report titled: "The Artsakh War and the Solitude of Armenian Youth in Turkey."
After Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire statement in November 2020, a peace deal between the two countries that would finally recognize the borders of the two countries and provide stability to the South Caucasus was expected. However, just two years after that ceasefire was brokered, fighting broke out again,this time along the eastern border of Armenia proper. After mutual accusations and loss of life, Azerbaijan announced that it had gained control of several strategic locations in southern Armenia. Baku also claimed that Armenia, including its capital city of Yerevan, is actually Azerbaijani territory.
At the same time, parts of the Azerbaijani public opposed the actions and statements of the Azerbaijani government: Azerbaijani activists who opposed the limited but symbolic occupation of Armenia and who rejected official arguments questioning the existence of Armenia were targeted on social media. Ignoring these oppositional voices of Azerbaijani society, the Turkish opposition and Turkish government were vocal in their unconditional support for Azerbaijan. Meanwhile, the Lemkin Institute for the Prevention of Genocide, named after Raphael Lemkin — the inventor of the term genocide — called the language used by the authorities and state-controlled media of Azerbaijan “genocidal” and drew the attention of international organizations to atrocities committed by Azerbaijani soldiers. Simultaneously, Mustafa Destici, Chairman of the far-right Great Unity Party, a member of the People’s Alliance (alongside the ruling Justice and Development Party and Nationalist Action Party), threatened to erase Armenia “from history and geography”.
But how do young Armenians in Turkey, who were born in the late 1980s and 1990s, feel about the use of genocidal language, which is not just used by ultra-nationalist groups? Since the war in 2020, during which Turkey provided military and political support to Azerbaijan, Armenians in Turkey have felt increasingly isolated. Threats to “erase Armenia”, as well as the lack of concern among the democratic opposition for the pain and trauma caused by the war on Armenians, seem to have weakened the hope of Armenian youth to live safely and peacefully in Turkey.
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