A comparative analysis of the images of the enemy and partner propagandized and widely held in Armenia and Azerbaijan

According to a rather popular belief, the main obstacle to the development of the Caucasian region is the Karabakh conflict, since the other conflicts in the region do not contain as tangible a geopolitical component as the Karabakh conflict. Statements to this effect are often made not only by foreign political scientists but also by Armenian and Azerbaijani experts who have dealt closely with the problem for many years.

However, even if it is necessary today to single out the Karabakh conflict, it should be from two points of view: first, that over the course of time it has taken on the characteristics of a protracted conflict, with all that entails; and second, that in contrast to other conflicts, the parties themselves, without peace-keeping forces, have maintained the cease-fire regime. This second feature is considered to be the sole positive result of the entire negotiating process aimed at the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani relations. And not without reason.

Because everyone who is engaged in the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani relations is now compelled to reckon with- in addition to components typical to any conflict (the diametrically opposed positions of the parties, the strong influence of internal political and foreign political factors) - the fact that the parties are moving farther and farther away from the idea of compromise.

At a Crossroads: No Peace, No War

It is customary in the classical view to consider settlement of a conflict to be the negotiating processes begun right after the establishment of a cease-fire regime, with the participation of an institution representing international mediators, and implying political methods of meeting the requirements of the conflicting parties. It is clear that compromise is the uncontested method of settlement when the concessions made or offered are not only mutual but are also perceived as equivalent. But this is the case when the ultimate goal is a long-term settlement and a solution - even if for a certain period of time after the signing of certain agreements - for all the outstanding points at issue. Only in such a way and with such a perception of the settlement is the transformation of the formula of distrust- "if it is good for them, it is bad for us" (typical of a discourse of confrontation) into the formula of cooperation-" if it is bad, it is bad for everyone" possible.

But this is a theory that is difficult to put into practice by virtue of uncertain and interrelated external political and internal political, psychological, and social circumstances, and because of their increasing worsening. Such a theory will be possible to realize only in the event that the conflicting parties face another danger not related to them. It is, naturally, the most undesirable variant of rapprochement for the Armenian and Azerbaijani sides, for besides the fact that long-term settlement will not be achieved, the sides will be compelled to reconcile in general to decisions that do not satisfy either of them.

The ten-year-old "no war, no peace" regime officially established in 1994 by the Bishkek agreement on cease-fire along the entire perimeter of military operations for Karabakh was a chance to find a formula for compromise, both because it appeared that all the possible stages of the conflict had been passed through and because the further continuation of military operations was not advantageous for anyone - neither to the party that had won nor to the party that had been defeated, nor to the geopolitical players in the region.

However, judging from the fierce information war between the parties directed against each other and toward maintaining a certain militancy within the societies, this chance for establishing peace has not been realized so far. After all, the long-term settlement of the conflict requires not only the signing of agreements, but also an intensive conducting of appropriate advocacy within society. In other words, it is necessary to achieve first of all a receptivity to the idea of mutual concessions in general.

In fact, the logic of the "no war, no peace" regime - a condition which is a short step away from either war or peace - dictates the necessity of conducting contradictory propaganda. If war, then the society should be susceptible to this idea and sufficiently ready for it (propagandizing the image of the enemy). If peace, then the society should be ready not for peace but rather to preserve it in the future (propagandizing the idea of mutual and, most importantly, equivalent concessions).

Statements concerning the settlement of the conflict made by the representatives of the parties in the initial years reflected this ambiguity; on the one hand (for an external audience) they spoke of their intention and readiness to resolve the problem through peaceful diplomatic means, and on the other hand (for an internal audience) they declared their readiness to continue the war if the necessity were to arise. For Azerbaijan , this necessity consisted of the prompt change of the post-war status quo and in regaining Karabakh by any means, for Armenia , the prompt securing of the status quo at the international diplomatic level and in keeping hold of Karabakh.

Lately the official position of Baku has been that if they cannot succeed in regaining Karabakh through diplomatic methods (meaning not only a mutually acceptable agreement but in general any forms of diplomatic resolution, including the method of "compulsion to peace"), Azerbaijan will be compelled to do it by military means. This position, in turn, also causes contradictions in the behavior of the parties.

The language of present enmity and resources for distant partnership

There is also another interpretation of the "no war, no peace" regime. It implies that in real life, peace is maintained by the combined efforts of the parties and the mediators (in general as a result of a multifaceted and multilateral balance of power), and at the propaganda level a fierce war is taking place (mainly between the media of the two countries).

A different times, different forces have tended to be understood as the parties to the conflict - the heads of state of Armenia , Azerbaijan , and, fragmentarily, the leaders of Nagorno Karabakh, the political elites empowered to make decisions on the Karabakh settlement, and the societies. For the last few years, it has begun to be said with more distinct intensity that the societies of the two countries are not ready for making decisions and feel mutual hatred. Even the resolutions and other documents adopted by international organizations emphasize the mutual hatred of the two peoples-obviously, with the understanding that irrespective of who is to make the decision on the settlement, it must be accepted by the societies. Because the societies who at one moment represented the subject of the conflict and at another its object, who went through the war, cannot reconcile to just any decision. Society must understand the acceptability of a potential resolution and the necessity to accept it.

All this has been the subject of our research; through which we have aimed at revealing the real picture of both the stereotypes both propagandized and widely held among Armenian and Azerbaijan societies. This research was carried out over the course of one year (from June 2004 - to June 2005) by the Region Research Center of the Investigative Journalists NGO ( Armenia ) in partnership with the Institute of Peace and Democracy ( Azerbaijan ).

I would like to especially emphasize one "working" condition that arose during the first stage of the research and which couldn't but serve as an indication of the practical importance of this research in general. I am referring to the susceptibility to stereotyping by the members of the monitoring group themselves that was manifested as we determined the sign parameters of stereotypes. The distinctive feature of research like this, in which two groups in two countries carry out a comparative monitoring of the media using a jointly developed technique in parallel, dictates the necessity to formalize as much as possible the content assessments and to stick to the research parameters. In fact, this was exactly what was done. Nevertheless, in the first two weeks of research we faced, for example, cases in which when formulations like "it is impossible to come to an agreement with the aggressors [i.e. Armenians]", "Azerbaijan will never concede to the enemy [Armenians], and "Turkey will not open the border [Turkish-Armenian] until Azerbaijani demands are not met," were marked on the tables by the members of the monitoring group in Baku with a plus sign. Similarly formulations from the Armenian press like "Turkey has no chance to become a member of the European Union," "Merzliakov [the co-chairman of the OSCE Minsk group from Russia] said that the Azerbaijani media attributed statements to him that he had not made," and "Russia will not yield its positions in the region," were marked with a plus sign by the members of the monitoring group in Yerevan. But later on, there were fewer and fewer cases like this.

In general the discourse between the media of the two countries is based on the negativ e. This concerns both so-called descriptions of internal relations (internal political, internal social, and interpersonal) and descriptions of the opposing party, and the countries involved in the mediation missions. The difference is in the proportion of a neutral attitude toward the surrounding world and in the degree to which this attitude is linked to the Karabakh problem. Thus, in the Armenian media, the attitude toward other countries is not based only on their perception of the Armenian position. Comments concerning international organizations and assessments of their work are based on the attitude of the international organizations to internal political questions, to the scope of democratic freedoms, and to the institutional development of the democratic society in Armenia .

However, the attitude of media of Azerbaijan to various foreign countries proceeds from the very degree of their loyalty to the Azerbaijani position in the Karabakh conflict ("Armenians are our sworn enemies, why does NATO openly thrust them on us for a visit?"[1] "We have an obvious enemy - Armenia ; hence, we cannot correspond to the to military standards of NATO," [2] "If they

This difference in propaganda in the two countries is also noticeable in the public opinion polls. In the answers by respondents from Armenia a clearly differentiated approach to other countries appears (differentiation on the basis of strategic partnership in the issue of the Karabakh settlement, on the basis of profitable partnership in the field of economy, and in the military sphere). In the answers by respondents from Azerbaijan , the attitude toward various countries is also based on the principle of their positions regarding the Karabakh conflict.

Positive assessments in the Armenian and Azerbaijani media are exceedingly rare, appearing only in so-called declarations of the readiness of one country or the other to cooperate, in promotional materials in which a certain political engagement is felt, when, for example, the role of international organizations in establishing cooperation between the countries of the region is mentioned by the representatives of the organizations themselves or by the political elites of Armenia and Azerbaijan, or when praise for the government or the opposition is being expressed for their ability to resolve the Karabakh conflict or to solve the questions related to internal development or foreign policy is expressed (by the government about itself, and by the opposition about itself).

Journalists indisputably take the lead among "authors" of the positive and negative directives distributed through the press of the two countries. This is in cases when they make their own comments and interpretations with negative signals, not when they do it indirectly. Judging from the results of our research, journalists are the main disseminators of the image of the enemy in the person of the Armenian in the Azerbaijani press, and the image of the enemy in the person of the Turk in the Armenian press and, thus, become a subject of the conflict with a very an impressive degree of influence on the population of each country. This result confirms the opinion that there is an information war going on between the media of the two countries.

The propagandized image of an external enemy is distinctly concrete in the media of the two countries. Such formulations as "external forces who are trying to destabilize the situation in the country", "the powerful forces of this world who pursue their personal interests in the question of the settlement of the conflict" (a category of an "uncertain enemy"), etc. are seen much more rarely than more negative targeted descriptions-directives: "Armenians are aggressors," "No enemy foot will take a step on the Azerbaijani soil," [3] "Azerbaijanis are no different from Turks at all," "A Turk is always a Turk," [4] etc.

On the other hand the image of the enemy loses its concreteness when indicating those internal forces who "pull the country back, to a precipice," "have occupied the country like our enemies," "spread an atmosphere of fear and impunity," "wage sham battles against corruption," "are preoccupied only by their personal enrichment and well-being," etc. (a collective image of the internal enemy in the person of those in power). There is no concreteness in the descriptions of internal hostile forces who "obediently follow the instruction of their foreign bosses," "dishonor the country and harm the image of the state and the people," "act for the benefit of the enemy," "paralyze the country for the sake of their narrow political interests when the country is facing the threat of losing its statehood as such," etc. (a collective image of the internal enemy in the person of the opposition). Let me cite some typical examples: "Armenian blood flows in the veins of these people [the judges who sentenced the activists from the Azerbaijani Organization for the Liberation of Karabakh who tried to burst into the hotel rooms of the Armenian participants of the NATO exercises in Baku]," [5] "There are traitors in Azerbaijan who are worse than Armenians," [6] "We [the Armenian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE] are the only delegation other than the Albanians whose members from the opposition discredit the country in the Assembly's eyes," [7] "Our [Armenian] people are deeply uncivilized, uncultured. It is awful, but sometimes it seems that our people are completely living the Azerbaijani way. Who knows, if we had been like this a hundred years ago, maybe the Turks would not have destroyed us." [8]

In both cases such descriptions of an uncertain internal enemy have indirect functionality and are directed at consolidating the society, at identifying the essence of the forces indulging specific external enemies.

Propaganda of the image of the enemy in the person of an Armenian in Azerbaijan , and in the person of an Azerbaijani-Turk in Armenia distinguishes itself by its address and intensity. Thus, it should be clear for readers of the Azerbaijani newspapers that the enemies are Armenians, and everything Armenian is hostile, even if it is manifested in the internal political life of the country. For example, any citizen of Azerbaijan who has any Armenian roots is a potential enemy, capable of betraying the country. ("Those who are in power in Azerbaijan should know that the children who were born to them by akhchi [a form of reference to a woman in the Armenian popular language] have surrendered Azerbaijani territory... ") [9]

It must be obvious for readers of the Armenian newspapers that Azerbaijanis are the same enemies as Turks, that they are everything they can for the resumption of the war, that Turks will never recognize the Armenian Genocide, that they are all wily and that will not become more civilized even after becoming a European nation: (" Has the essence of Turkey changed? No, it has not changed, neither has the 'Great ?uran,'" [10] "All those European and Armenian officials who believe that having joined the European Union, Turkey will become a more democratic state should explain why Turkey's laws provide for the arrest of those citizens who speak about the Armenian Genocide." [11])

The method of presenting the image of a comparatively new enemy with the help of a well-known old enemy is employed in the Azerbaijani media as well. The Armenian handwriting, character, and separatism are described, for example, in materials about those countries where there are relatively large Armenian communities (Georgia, Russia , the USA , etc.).

A separate place is occupied by the image of a potential foe who is capable of aiding the enemy. As a rule, this is accompanied by a generalized motivation: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," or "The friend of my enemy is my enemy." This is in material on international organizations adopting certain decisions or formulations regarding the present situation of the Karabakh settlement, on the countries involved in the process of the settlement, and on neighboring states trying to activate their relationship with one of the parties. In the Armenian media, a small proportion of the materials on Turkey with negative directives is devoted to linking the question of normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations with the Karabakh problem. And, conversely, it is on this linkage that positive directives are based in materials about Turkey in the Azerbaijani media. Negative or positive directives in the material on Iran , Russia , the USA , France , etc. are substantiated according to the same principle

Judging by the results of public opinion polls in the two countries, Armenians/Armenia and Azerbaijanis/Azerbaijan are, first of all, ascribed with having all the possible negative characteristics. And one's own people are, first of all, characterized by positive qualities. It is quite natural that the idea held by the populations of Armenia and Azerbaijan about the presence in their countries of forces who regard the opposing party and people positively is rather vague.

It is clear that against a background of general aversion to each other, these forces are either perceived as insignificant or do not receive any public attention at all.

If we summarize the parameters obtained according to descriptions of the opposing party, it is characteristic of the Armenian press that the negative parameters jump sharply against the background of specific events (reaction to statements by public figures in Azerbaijan, reaction to the rallies and pickets on the occasion of the participation of the Armenian officers in the NATO exercises in Baku, etc.). And these negative descriptions can be both with motivation and in categorical forms. During the so-called lulls in the Armenian press, both material on Azerbaijan but and reports on categorical statements or even ultimatums by the Azerbaijani side regarding Armenia are presented neutrally.

The picture is clearly different in the Azerbaijani press. Here, negative descriptions accompany the overwhelming majority of material on Armenians, Armenia , and, in general, everything Armenian. Such unwavering negativity is presented with few exceptions without any motivation, which suggests that the image of the enemy in the person of the Armenian has been formed at the propaganda level. There are numerous examples. The description of this image has a classical character: the Armenian as a person is ascribed with all possible negative characteristics. All his skills he can employ only for cunning purposes, and aimed against Azerbaijan . Here is an example: " Armenia is an example of a knack of presenting everything in such a form and so quickly that the Azerbaijani side has to either swallow silently the products of the intricate propaganda work of Armenians or to appear in a position of explaining everything in hindsight" [12].

Contextually positive qualities of Armenians ("Armenians are persistent and goal-oriented," "they are able to convince people," "they are well-organized abroad", etc.) appear in the Azerbaijani press in material discussing the necessity for solidarity and caution on the part of the society. The positive qualities of Turks ("Turks are good diplomats," "Turks are resourceful," etc.) are mentioned in the Armenian press less often than negative ones. However, if we speak the language of numbers (according to quantitative indicators) the unwaveringly negative past image of the Turk unwilling for so many decades to recognize the fact of the Armenian Genocide and fenced off from Armenia today as well because of the Karabakh conflict has recently appeared in its categorical form only for presenting the image of Azerbaijanis. Although on the whole, there is still more material with negative descriptions of Turkey and Turks than with positive or neutral descriptions, these negative things are mostly given with substantiation-motivation. Negative things without motivation, in a categorical-axiomatic form, come across in the cases of presenting the image of the enemy in the person of Azerbaijanis.

According to the results of public opinion polls in the two countries, 16-25-year-old respondents in Azerbaijan manifest a more negative attitude toward Armenia than do Armenian respondents of the same age toward Azerbaijan. Let us note that this is the generation, which was born and has grown up against the background of various stages of development of the Karabakh conflict. And clearly the difference in their negative attitude to each other is a result of the differing intensity of the propaganda of enmity in their countries.

Conclusions

On the whole, stereotypes propagandized in the Armenian and Azerbaijani media are based on negativity, which speaks to a certain intense-aggressive mood on the part of the political elites of Armenia and Azerbaijan. And this concerns not only Armenian-Azerbaijani but also internal relations. Judging by propagandized foreign policy and internal political clichés, a "regime of compulsion" characteristic of periods of "hot" wars has been consistently preserved in Armenia and Azerbaijan.

In its intensity and content-parameters, the Karabakh conflict occupies a larger place within this negativity in the Azerbaijani media than in the Armenian, which means that in Azerbaijan all questions are consistently linked to and explained by the unsettledness of the Karabakh conflict.

Against the background of intensive referral to the resumption of military operations, a victim complex is taking root within the Azerbaijani media who must in principle be ready for revenge.

The Armenian media, along with the society as a whole, are subject to a victory syndrome, owing to which both behavior typical of a hostile party and, at the same time, behavior characteristic of countries not involved in any conflict is displayed.

The propaganda of stereotypes of the image of the enemy (including the sphere of internal relations) both in Armenia, and in Azerbaijan is addressed to the internal audience, which speaks to the double standards used in the two countries vis-à-vis the issue of compromise in the negotiating process on the Karabakh settlement and the establishment of open civil societies.

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[1] Azerbaijani daily Echo , June 19, 2004 
[2] Ibid. 
[3]The most common expressions printed in the Azerbaijani newspapers during the NATO exercises in Baku in the summer of 2004. 
[4] Armenian daily Hayots Ashkhar in a number of issues in succession printed under this heading information on picket signs posted in front of the hotel in Baku where Armenian officers attending the NATO exercises were staying in June 2004.
[5] Ibid. September 3, 2004.
[6] Azerbaijani daily Yeni Musavat , June 23, 2004.
[7] Armenian newspaper Novoye Vremya, September 28, 2004.
[8] Armenian daily Hayots Ashkhar, September 2, 2004.
[9] Azerbaijani daily Yeni Musavat, July 26, 2004.
[10] Armenian daily Hayots Ashkhar, September 9, 2004.
[11] Armenian daily Azg, October 7, 2004.
[12] Azerbaijani newspaper Aina-Zerkalo, September 11, 2004.