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Karabakh war: Azerbaijan’s hate of Armenia is fuelled by humiliation [1]

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Date: 2023-10

When I posted a recent Twitter thread about Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh, nothing could prepare me for the ruthless attacks I received from my fellow Azerbaijanis.

I am an Azerbaijani survivor of the same conflict. Writing on X (formerly Twitter), I told of my tragic childhood growing up in Karabakh in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War in the 1990s, and how my earliest memories are of fighting and devastation. How my 18-year-old uncle died after stepping on a landmine. How I slept to the sounds of gunshots and once choked on my food when a nearby bomb exploded as my mom was feeding me.

I also empathized with the Armenians in Karabakh who are now going through similar experiences. And I spoke of my exasperation at the endless cycle of hatred and violence and the repeated reliving of my early trauma, having barely healed from the retraumatization I lived through in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War just three years ago.

With only a handful of followers, mostly friends and colleagues, I did not expect many people to read what I wrote. Suddenly I found myself thrust into the spotlight, with my post getting hundreds of thousands of views. I was deeply touched by the empathy and acclaim I received from complete strangers, almost all of them Armenians and Westerners.

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But the response from Azerbaijanis devastated me.

Obscene homophobic slurs were hurled at me and violent misogynistic ones at my mother. My real ethnicity was questioned. With a few notable exceptions, Azerbaijanis did not believe in my sincerity. They seemed to not care at all about my lived experiences as a victim of war. I was ridiculed and accused of only pretending to care about the Armenians to one or another cynical end.

On X, I wrote that I wished someone would have acknowledged all the pain my family went through at the time, affirmed it. Instead, our tragedy was laughed at, justified, ignored. The response showed me that nothing has changed.

After reflecting on this extreme reaction, I have come to the conclusion that Azerbaijani nationalists are not motivated by pain, but humiliation.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/nagorno-karabakh-armenia-azerbaijan-hate-fuelled-humiliation-online-attack/

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