A funny thing happened to the consul general of Azerbaijan last week on his way to make an audio-visual presentation at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council.
Nasimi Aghayev stepped up to the podium, turned on his fancy laptop, and proudly urged the audience to watch scenes of Azerbaijan on a large screen on the wall. To his horror, nothing but a frozen partial image appeared on the overhanging screen. The consul’s aides and the World Affairs Council’s president rushed to the stage and began pushing all sorts of buttons on the laptop, as the guests waited impatiently. Yet, not only was Aghayev unable to showcase his native land, he wasn’t even able to present his speech, because the text was locked up in his uncooperative laptop.
In desperation, the Azeri diplomat began speaking off the cuff, after pulling a piece of paper from his pocket, on which he had scribbled some notes. This was the inauspicious start of an evening that was intended to show off Azerbaijan’s impressive advances and dazzle the audience with high-tech gadgets.
The consul general appeared agitated throughout the lecture. Perhaps he was unaccustomed to speaking before such an august gathering, or perhaps he was nervous because there were “representatives of the Armenian Diaspora in this room,” including myself and a handful of Armenians.
Aghayev talked at length about Armenia “occupying” a part of his country’s territory, a reference to the liberation of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabagh). Calling this conflict “Azerbaijan’s top problem,” he expressed his chagrin that “1 million Azeris today are refugees.” However, he failed to explain why a government with billions of dollars in oil revenue would allow such a large number of its citizens to live in abject poverty for over 20 years.
Imitating the Turkish regime, the consul general made a serious gaffe by referring to the Armenian Genocide as a “so-called genocide.” Is it wise for Azeri officials to insult Armenians by denying the genocide, at a time when they have their hands full with the Artsakh conflict? Why would Azerbaijan’s leaders want to complicate matters by associating themselves with Turkey’s denialism and further antagonize Armenians, making them less likely to sit with them at the peace table?
Aghayev’s remarks completely ignored the massive violation of the human rights of Azeri citizens, including those of ethnic minorities, as he falsely described Azerbaijan as a land of “religious and ethnic tolerance.” He went on to engage in gross historical revisionism by forgetting the massacres of Armenians in Sumgait and Baku, and claiming that Armenians enjoyed their full freedom in Soviet Azerbaijan. He also described Muslim Azerbaijan as “one of the earliest nations to accept Christianity, in 313 AD!”
After several pre-arranged questions from some in the audience on how “tolerant” Azerbaijan is to “Mountain Jews” and the great relationship it enjoys with Israel, the World Affairs Council president cautiously avoided giving me the chance to pose a question. Fortunately, two other Armenians, Aroutin Hartounian, the president of Unified Young Armenians, and Garo Ghazarian, the chairman of the Armenian Bar Association, were granted the opportunity to ask questions. The two Armenians raised the issue of Ramil Safarov, an axe-wielding Azeri soldier who killed a sleeping Armenian officer during a NATO training course in Hungary. After the Hungarian government released Safarov from prison prematurely and extradited him to Azerbaijan this year, Aliyev pardoned and glorified the axe-murderer. Foolishly contradicting his president, the Azeri consul general stated that Azerbaijan “does not condone” Safarov’s crime.
Aghayev’s appearance before the World Affairs Council raises some troubling questions: Why did the Council take the unusual step of inviting a lowly consul general to offer “a competing view” to the one presented by Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian at the same venue, on Sept. 24? One wonders what inducement Azerbaijan offered to the World Affairs Council to secure a presentation by a junior diplomat, possibly undermining the reputation of this prestigious organization.
Days later, when Aghayev’s lecture was posted on the Azeri Consulate’s website, the laptop glitches were carefully eliminated from the heavily edited video; the 48-minute speech and question and answer period were reduced to just 15 minutes.
The incident with the consul general’s laptop is symptomatic of a much larger problem for Azerbaijan: The country’s leaders have spent billions of dollars to acquire a massive amount of advanced military hardware. But, if they don’t know which button to push, the sophisticated weaponry will be as useless as Aghayev’s laptop!
Rather than labeling the Armenian Diaspora as Azerbaijan’s “main enemy,” President Aliyev should be more worried about his diplomats who cannot use a laptop. Incompetent officials are more of a liability for Azerbaijan than the Armenian “enemy”!
Harut Sassounian
Well, let’s hope they won’t know which button to push and the weaponry fails. It could go the other way, too….they push the wrong buttons and blow up half the world. Bravo to Aroutin Hartounian and Garo Ghazarian for taking this idiot to task over his dishonesty.
This is a prime example that the Axerbaijani leaders and officials are nothing more than a bunch of gangsters disguised as intellectuals who lose their composure and show their true color once they are out of their elements and have to improvise in absence of carefully crafted and fraudulent presentation.
The only thing the Axerbaijani gangesters are concerned about is their egos and could care less about the miserable conditions in which their fellow citizens live. Everything they say and do is centered on themselves. They legitimize their existence and fulfill their self-worth through intimidation of others by all the unfamiliar gadgets they collect from billions they amass by robbing their own people.
But we all know what happens to gangsters at the end. Their lifeless bodies are dragged through the streets, humiliated and hung upside-down from trees or rot in solitary confinement. Axerbaijani gangsters, your days are numbered.
Ararat,
Let’s hope that these particular gangsters in this particular country will stay in power as long as possible. I have no sympathy for a nation who embraced and hero[ed] the axe-murderer.
Maybe the World Affairs Council should be asked why a hostile, war mongering, human right violating country’s representative would be a given a formal stage??????
In fact, maybe many armenians need to take formal action and make many phonecalls to the WAC?
When, newly crowned Turkic Sheikdom think only for corruption, then you should expect their amateur politicians make stupid Turkish style lies, like their Sultan. They embarrass not only their own primitive people, but discredit themselves in the world political forum!!
Really? A computer mishap in a presentation … could have happened to anyone. And you are gonna use that to celebrate your superiority over us Azeris? :) Pretty childish I say, and the whole speak volumes about the rabid hatred you feel towards us (using a minor technical issue to vent your anger).
If you are looking for a metric on who is better, why not look at economic growth? Azerbaijan is way ahead of Armenian. You might say, well, it is oil. Yes, but it takes a lot of brains to convert that into economic growth, epecially when you are in a complicated geopoltical situation. Nigeria too has a lot of oil. But you don’t see their name as one of the fastest growing economies.
The thing is, neither one of us as a nation is inherently better than the other. I was using the economic factor as an illustration on how you can choose things abirtrarily as a means for proving your superiority. We are all humans. We just have differences on where Karabak belongs, which does not make us stupid and you smart. Actually if there is any metric to indicate inferiority, it is making such hateful generalizations and bigotry.
As for what Azerbaijan is doing at this forum, well, my friends, again you are entitled to your opinions. But you are not entitled to facts. It is a fact that it is Azerbaijan whose territory is under occupation by Armenia and not you. Therefore, it is silly to call us the aggressor. It is not just our opinion. UN, EU, everybody, and even Armenia itself recognizes this (why else use the occupied territories as a negotiating chip).
The issue isn’t whether or not Armenians hate Turks or Azeris. The issue is WHY. You can’t try and kill off an entire people, live on lands that historically were their lands first, and then try and play the peaceful, we are all human role. Do many Armenians here hate Turks and Azeris- probably. There is a regular dose of racist, bigoted, stereotypical generalizations made about Turks and Azeris. But there is an equal, if not much greater amount of that on Turkish/Azeri sites about Armenians. The issue again is WHY? Why do Turks and Azeris hate Armenians?… Let me know if you can answer that question.
Kerim,
You probably are not aware of the fact that your country’s GDP grew only 0.1% in 2011. Is that what you call economic growth?
Kerim
“Really? A computer mishap in a presentation … could have happened to anyone. And you are gonna use that to celebrate your superiority over us Azeris? :)”
Strongly disagree. Cannot happen to well organized professionals. Can only happen to disorganized and unprofessional people.
Yes, and things like this should be mentioned. What your politician did was very disrespectful to the audience.
[The thing is, neither one of us as a nation is inherently better than the other.]
The degree of a nation’s advancement is measured by contributions it has made to the human civilization. However hard you try to equalize all the nations, the fact remains that certain nations have made greater contributions than others. Now, it doesn’t make them better than others, but it does testify to a higher level of their advancement. And this answers another poster, RVDV’s, question as to why Turks and Azeris hate Armenians. Because the achievements and accomplishments of the Armenians and their presence in ancient world chronicles as testimonies keep the Turks and Azeris on the hop. Thus, constant attempt to artificially make their nations as old as Armenians, prove their indigenousness to their current place of habitat, portray heavy borrowing from other cultures as their own cultural achievements, etc. And when Armenians laugh at such fake arguments having at their hands ancient Babylonian, Persian, Greek, and other chronicles and maps, as well as achievements in architecture, script, language, music and arts, business and trade, engineering and sciences that are known in the world, posters like Kerim spew out that “neither one of us as a nation is inherently better than the other”. A less advanced nation always tries to diminish the achievements of a more advanced neighbor, because a more advanced neighbor casts shadow at the former. I hope this answers the question why Turks and Azeris hate Armenians.
Actually, Kerim, the UN resolutions condemned AzerBEYjan for escalating violence. In them, there’s no single word of condemning the Republic of Armenia as aggressor. Have you read them or you’re just parroting what Sultan AliOFF has stuffed in the heads of the Azeris?
Kerim: A representative of a made-up nation, that I bet claims it has a sense of shame, would have kept mum here or elsewhere in the blogosphere after his government’s pardoning the murderer of a sleeping person. Some Azeri ‘courage’!
RVDV, I am completely baffled by your bafflement when you say you understand why Armenians would hate Azeris but you cannot fathom why Azeris would hate Armenians. It is beyond bafflement, it is astonishing … your ignorance of facts.
But first things first. I know it is convinient for you Armenians to join Azeris to the Turks when it comes to your hatred. But we are two different nations. It is like if you hate Mexicans because they killed your people, then you also hate the Guatemalans because they are close enough. Azeris had nothing to do with 1915. So, I am puzzled why you would hate Azeris for it.
Now, I do understand why you would still hate us Azeris for Karabak, because we are in your way. Are you tellimg me that we Azeris can produce no valid reason for hating you?!!! How about the fact that you have made 600,000 of us refugees!!! How about the occupation of the 7 Azeri regions adjacent to Karabak, or, speaking of the lobby … how about the fact that Armenian lobby is up in arms everytime there is anything that has anything to do with what is good for Azerbaijan, e.g., there is a US sale of space sattellites pending, let’s get in touch with pro-ARmenian COngressmen and try to create obstacles.
We are enemies. Fine. But please let’s not be delusional either. I understand why you hate me. Don’t pretend that I have not reason to hate you back.
Sella,
people like Kerim agha and Ilham still don’t get it , what a wasting time, that we Armenians trying hard to make them understand about our historical present in Armenian High land and Caspian region!!
Lately Turkey’s population “Kamants-Kamants” waking up, that we are a nation and we have been abused by those invading Mongol Turks, they murdered and raped our entire defenseless population, occupied our beloved historical lands, where most of them still is under occupation not only by Azer Baboons but her cousin Turkey as well!!
Thanks to new technology that turkic tribes outside of their continents can read understand from their “broken laptop”, where they come from, and stop listening to those who are screwing their heads with lies, for their own selfish goal like Sultan Aliev, whose corruption habit came from his beloved KGB father who had the title of “The Caviar Thief ” of Caspian region of USSR, where he was thrown out as member of Communist party, after presenting a very expensive ring to late Soviet boss Brezhnev due to his unacceptable corruption habit!!.
Today Sultan Aliev survival in his Sheikhdom is all depends to the degree of hate, that he can spread within his “disorganized” people, as long as he pump more oil out and makes his pocket heavier, in order to accomplished the title of King of Kings!!