WORLD – Turkey’s Hateful Neo-Ottoman Campaign Against The Armenians
The attack on Nagorno-Karabakh is just the latest in a series of imperial moves by Turkish president Erdogan.
Uzay Bulut OCTOBER 28, 2020|1:00 PM
For the past four weeks, the people of the Armenian republic of Artsakh, more commonly known as Nagorno-Karabakh, have been indiscriminately shelled by Azerbaijan, which is militarily and politically backed by Turkey, a NATO member and a European Union candidate.
Some 50 percent of Artsakh’s population has been forced to flee, the region’s rights ombudsman Artak Beglaryan told the AFP news agency on October 7.
Why are these two nations, whose total population is 100 million, targeting Artsakh and Armenia, two blockaded, landlocked, and genocide-survivor states with a total population of around three million?
The director of communications of the Turkish presidency, Fahrettin Altun, shared a video of what he called the “Red Apple” anthem on his Twitter account on August 24. He wrote:
For us, the Red Apple means great and strong Turkey. It is the sacred march of our nation that made history from Manzikert to July 15. The Red Apple is a great plane tree that provides shade for the downtrodden to refresh. The Red Apple is what the entire humanity has longed for from Gibraltar to Hedjaz and from the Balkans to Asia.
The video presents the Turkish military and Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan as heirs to the medieval Turkic Seljuk dynasty, as well as to the Ottoman Empire, and portrays Turkish conquerors praying in the “Hagia Sophia mosque,” a historically Greek Christian cathedral/museum reconverted into a mosque on July 10.
The video also glorifies the Turkish invasion of the then-Armenian city of Manzikert (today’s Malazgirt) in the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire during the 11th century. Turkic military leader Sultan Alparslan, originally from Central Asia, invaded Manzikert and massacred the Christian locals there. The video says in part:
This blood is Sultan Alparslan, who reared up at Manzikert, Osman I, at the founding. The Sultan of the world, who was given good news of conquests and the child heroes at Gallipoli. This same blood comes from the ancestors. It is writing legends again in resurgence. The world is waiting for “There is no God but Allah.” The destination is the Red Apple, we will not despair. Like Alparslan who reared up at Manzikert, like our ancestors, who wrote history with victories, like our grandfather, who closed one age and opened another, our goal is the Red Apple. Forward march!
The video also includes the recital by Erdogan of the first verses of the Surah al-Fath. Erdogan says: “Indeed, we have given you a clear conquest… And Allah may grant you a mighty victory.”
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) explains:
The lyrics mix religious and nationalistic imagery and refer to the Kızıl Elma (“Red Apple”), a concept from Turkish mythology that has sometimes been used to refer to world domination and at other times has referred to a particular military goal by a Turkish state and, once that goal has been achieved, some other goal becomes the “Red Apple,” making it ever-elusive.
A month after the government video was publicized, Azerbaijan, an ally of Turkey, targeted another Armenian territory: Artsakh, a historically Armenian (yet diplomatically unrecognized) country in the South Caucasus.
Since September 27, Azerbaijan has launched a massive military offensive against Artsakh, targeting civilian populations in the region’s capital, Stepanakert, and other towns. This is the largest military assault by Azerbaijan since a ceasefire was signed between it and Armenia following the 1991-1994 war
Turkey’s and Azerbaijan’s violent claims on Artsakh are unsubstantiated: Artsakh is one of the provinces of historical Armenia and has retained an ethnic Armenian majority throughout the centuries. It has mostly remained a semi-independent entity and was never part of independent Azerbaijan. As author Ruth Kupeian notes:
Artsakh (or Nagorno-Karabagh) is part of historical Armenia, inhabited by Armenians even from before Roman times. It has often experienced invasions and wars and massacres over the centuries. But the historical monuments, churches and manuscripts which have been excavated, discovered and restored attest to the resilience of these people who continued to cultivate and care for their land in spite of all opposition and strife.
Artsakh fell under the rule of the Russian Empire with the 1813 Gulistan treaty. In the early 1920s, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin arbitrarily annexed it to Soviet Azerbaijan despite the fact that the majority of the population consisted of ethnic Armenians who voted to reunite with Armenia. Under Azeri control, Armenians of Artsakh and Azerbaijan were subject to political pressures and physical attacks.
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