Arif Agakishiev: "Karabakh conflict has done more harm to Armenians than Azerbaijanis"

This week the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs Igor Popov (Russia), James Warlick (the US) and Pierre Andrieu (France), as well as the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Andrzej Kasprzyk visited the Karabakh conflict zone. They discussed the situation on the contact line of troops after a four-day war in April with the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia. Now the co-chairs plan to meet with the Foreign Ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia on the sidelines of the OSCE Ministerial Council meeting in December 2016 in Hamburg to discuss the possible meeting of the presidents.

The conflict began in 1988 because of Armenia's territorial claims against Azerbaijan. Retired Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Envoy, Arif Agakishiev, who worked in the Soviet Foreign Ministry for a quarter century told Vestnik Kavkaza about the origin of the confrontation.

- Arif Yahyevich, before your success in the diplomatic field, you served as the First Secretary of the Shusha Regional Committee since January 1965. Today, the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh is one of the most discussed historical and political themes. Did you notice any manifestations of nationalism in Shusha when you worked there?

- The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has lasted for many years. During the Khrushchev era, the First Secretary of the Armenian Communist Party, Grigory Arutyunov, wrote a letter to Georgy Malenkov with a request to give the Nagorno Karabakh to Armenia, due to the fact that a lot of Armenians come from abroad and there is no place to settle them. Malenkov forwarded this letter to Baku. After receiving it, the first secretary of Azerbaijan's central committee, Mir Jafar Baghirov, instructed scholars and party leaders to examine the issue and prepare a response. As a result, Malenkov was sent an answer - yes, we agree to give Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia, but with the condition that the territories, which were taken away from Azerbaijan, will be returned to it. The issue has been closed.

- Was it the first territorial claim on Karabakh during the Soviet era?

- Of course, not. This issue has been periodically exaggerated even in the Time of Stalin on the pretext that Armenians coming from abroad need the territories. Then the migration has begun, the first 100-150 thousand Azerbaijanis were resettled from Armenia to Azerbaijan in 1948. Those Azerbaijanis lived mainly in Armenia's mountainous regions and Yerevan. Some of them were moved to Baku and a large part to Azerbaijan's low-lying areas, whose with salt marshes and waterless lands. Many people have died because of this. Then there was further resettlement, after which the territorial issue did not come up for a while.

- Why was it put on the agenda again in the early 1960s?

- A new generation has grown up, a new intelligentsia came to the power - those Armenians who came from Syria, Lebanon and other countries. They had a different mentality.The intelligentsia, which began agitating the territorial issue, came to Stepanakert - a poet Bagrat Ulubabyan, a writer Sargis Abrahamyan. They led the movement to access Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia. But the issue was extinguished again. Changes were made in the leadership of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, they began to treat manifestations of nationalism a little harder. These "comrades" saw that it does not work and left Karabakh for Armenia. But it has not been without tragedy. In July 1967, three Azerbaijanis were accused of killing an Armenian child. Nationalists wanted to hold a public trial at the square in front of the summer cinema. I reported on this the leadership of Nagorno-Karabakh, said that one cannot judge people like this, they need to start an investigation. I was ignored. Using the fact that the trial was held in the open, the defendants were taken from the guards and burned on the square. These were the principal, an assistant manager and the driver in the school where the boy was receiving education. They shouted that they are innocent, but they were also ignored. Later it became known that the boy was killed and thrown into a well by his own uncle. A very sharp conflict between Azerbaijanis and Armenians has been brewing. A more large-scale bloodshed could happen. But thanks to the Chairman of the Council of Ministers and Chairman of the KGB, Heydar Aliyev, they managed to stop the confrontation. All the perpetrators of the incident, who lynched those men, were arrested, the most brutal and strict measures have been taken against them. Although there was no execution, they have been sentenced to long prison terms.

- In your opinion, is there any ways out of conflict today?

- The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has done more harm to Armenians themselves than Azerbaijanis. However, we have lost 20% of the territories, but the country is developing. And Armenia has not moved forward in the last 25 years. Armenians themselves - intellectuals, intelligentsia - condemn the Karabakh clique, which is now in power in Armenia. I think that the conflict will be resolved peacefully. Nobody wants bloodshed. Nobody wants young people to die, neither the one side, nor the other side. I know the Nagorno-Karabakh region very well. I have been in many Armenian villages, I know their hospitality, their attitude towards people. The common people has perfectly lived side by side with Azerbaijanis. I cannot agree with the statement of the second Armenian President Robert Kocharyan, who said that ethnically Azerbaijanis and Armenians cannot coexist. This is not true. Armenians and Azeris lived a long time in peace and harmony. I graduated from the Azerbaijan Polytechnic Institute - there were only two Azerbaijanis and nine Armenians in our group, which consisted of 25 people. History knows many examples of reciprocity both during the Second World War and at other times. How can we talk about ethnic incompatibility?