Alec Yenikomshian

This article is the first appendix to the article "Armenia's Last Chance to Ensure Its Survival." The article developed the conviction that for Armenia, the starting point of the answer to the question "what to do" should have been and must be a deep awareness of the most essential fact characterizing its reality - the existence of the Pan-Turkist program and reaching the conclusions that follow from it. This article proves the assertions underlying that logic that Turkey's and Azerbaijan's current policies are nothing other than the pursuit of Pan-Turkist goals, and that, just as in the past, so too in the present, this program is not conditioned by Armenia's and the Armenian nation's positions but is guided by its internal logic.

• Pan-Turkist ideology was born in the last quarter of the 19th century. There are claims that it was created by British and/or Russian secret services, and even by Zionism. These claims may have the right to exist and be discussed. But due to the crisis of the Ottoman state, this ideology was gradually adopted by the Turkish-Ottoman elite.
• Pan-Turkism became state ideology and policy at the beginning of the 20th century, during the rule of the Young Turks and the Committee of Union and Progress party. The attempt to implement this ideology was a strategic-political decision by the new elite of the Ottoman state, which found itself in a deep existential crisis, to resolve that crisis. It was their own decision.
• From the late 19th century, within Armenian reality there existed two currents - revolutionary and conservative. The revolutionary current was dominant. Moreover, this current's strategy was fundamentally wrong and doomed from the beginning, because military actions and activities pursued the naive goal of inciting European states' intervention in favor of Armenians with the Ottoman state.

After the outbreak of World War I, in eastern Armenia under Russian rule, Armenian volunteer battalions were formed under the control of the Tsarist army, which assisted the Russian forces invading the Ottoman state - western Armenia.

• Turkey attempts to justify the 1915 Genocide, which it calls "necessary relocation" and "regrettable losses," by this "betrayal" of Armenians during the war and the "unreliability" they showed in the preceding decades.

However, the Genocide was not a consequence of Armenian demands and Armenian rebellion or "betrayal" against the Ottoman state. It was a step deemed necessary on the path to implementing this new ideology by the new elite transitioning from Ottomanism to Turkism, regardless of Armenian positions.

• Nothing would have changed if conservative thinking and currents had been dominant in Armenian reality. The Genocide would still have taken place. The widespread Hamidian massacres of 1895-96 might not have occurred or might not have occurred on the same scale. But the 1915 Genocide would have taken place, nonetheless. Since history does not move by "what ifs," at most one can say it would most likely have taken place.
• Turkey's official narrative (which regrettably some Armenian circles also contribute to) does not withstand honest scrutiny.

It is true that starting from 1878, the tendency to expect their salvation from European countries' intervention gradually strengthened within the Armenian nation, and parallel to this, in the years 1890-1908, Armenians rebelled against the central authority and its local executors.

These facts can be presented as justified reasons for Armenians to be considered "unreliable" by Istanbul.

But neither until 1914-15, nor in those years, was the overwhelming majority of Armenians in western Armenia and Anatolia involved in rebellious acts or movements against Ottoman central or local authorities. Despite this, both the mass massacres of 1890 and the 1915 Genocide encompassed indiscriminately all Armenians, not only the "unreliable." Even in 1909, when Armenian armed activity had been ended, and when the Turkish genocidal programs of 1913-15 were not yet fully formed, the Adana massacre took place.

The programmatic "ethnic engineering" of the Armenian Genocide was developed in 1913, when World War I had not yet begun and there was no pretext of Armenian "betrayal." In the years 1908-14, Armenians had not shown any instance of disloyalty toward the Ottoman state.

The real reason for the Genocide was the following: Under the conditions of the Ottoman state's existential crisis, in the idea of creating a "Turkish state" adopted after 1908, non-Turkish elements had to either be assimilated or eliminated. In this program, "distrust" toward Armenians was at best secondary. The problem was precisely their presence as a non-Muslim, non-Turkish mass. The Genocide aimed not to punish the rebel, but to transform the state's demography.

Let us not forget that in 1915 took place not only the genocide of Armenians, but also of Assyrians, who had not provided pretexts for being "disloyal."

Armenian behavior could have influenced the pretexts and timeline, but not the essence of the program.

All serious scholarly studies, including those by honest Turkish historians, confirm these facts.

• Pan-Turkism did not end with the collapse of the Ottoman state and the defeat of the Young Turks. Although Mustafa Kemal was guided by a program of saving what was possible, rather than restoring the empire, the Kemalist movement did everything to establish the foundations for the future realization of Pan-Turkism. He supported Musavatist Azerbaijan against Armenia, attacked the latter, and in his negotiations with Bolshevik Russia secured the handover of Nakhichevan and Karabagh to Soviet Azerbaijan. Only the handover of Zangezur-Syunik was not realized. In the preliminary phase of Kemalist-Bolshevik negotiations, it was envisaged that the Surmalu region (including Mount Ararat) would belong to Soviet Armenia, while Batumi would go to Turkey. But by the March 16, 1921 treaty, Batumi was handed over to Georgia, while Surmalu was handed over to Turkey. Thus, Turkey's borders moved closer to Nakhichevan. In 1932, because of territorial exchange with Iran, Turkey received Little Ararat and the surrounding area and became directly adjacent to Nakhichevan. The post-World War I established world order temporarily halted the implementation of the Pan-Turkist program, but with the establishment of the Turkey-Nakhichevan geographical border, the preconditions for its future pursuit had already been created. It remained to wait for the return of a favorable moment.
• During the Soviet period, Azerbaijan continued, within the limits of its possibilities, a nationalist policy in harmony with the Pan-Turkist program. Nakhichevan was completely de-Armenianized. An anti-Armenian policy was pursued in Nagorno-Karabagh and the proportion of Armenian population decreased from 95% to 75%. Heydar Aliyev, the long-time leader of Soviet Azerbaijan and member of the USSR Communist Party Politburo, has explicitly testified that he consistently worked to increase the number of the Azerbaijani population in Karabagh and decrease the Armenian population, with the aim of absorbing the territory.
• With the collapse of the USSR, Pan-Turkism gained the opportunity to revive again. Armenia once again found itself in a target status.
• From the early 1990s, Turkey revived its Pan-Turkist ambitions. In 1993, President Turgut Özal threatened to bomb Yerevan. In 1992 and 1993, former Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit and President Süleyman Demirel called Syunik and Armenia a "delicious piece torn from the Turkish world" and "a thorn stuck in the Turkish body." Ecevit first proposed an exchange of Meghri and the Nagorno-Karabagh and Lachin regions between Armenia and Azerbaijan, then called for opening a corridor between Nakhichevan and Azerbaijan with air force strikes. It is impossible to have more convincing proof of Turkey having Pan-Turkist ambitions from the early 1990s, and of this presenting an existential threat to Armenia, than the pursuit of seizing the Meghri region, even at the cost of losing Nagorno-Karabagh for them.

On one hand, the victories achieved by the Armenian side on the battlefield, and on the other hand, the facts that Turkey had not yet acquired sufficient power and the ability to violate the then global and regional order, and that this order was still relatively stable, halted the realization of those Turkish goals in the 1990s.

• Over the past decades, Turkey has gradually acquired impressive power and become a regional superpower. Over the last two decades, in the context of the end of the unipolar world and the absence of a single global hegemonic power, among the countries aspiring to regional hegemony, Turkey has exhibited the most aggressive and expansionist behavior. It has expanded and pursued an aggressive policy to the south—towards Syria and Iraq—and in the direction of the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas; it pursues a "soft power" policy in Georgia and the Balkans; it strengthens its positions in the Black Sea, not hiding its veiled ambitions regarding Crimea; it has actively intervened militarily in Libya; and it has established military bases in Qatar and East Africa. And since 2020, with overt aggressiveness, it has launched an offensive towards the east—to the South Caucasus and beyond. It is increasingly giving substance and blood to the Pan-Turkist program, to the foundational and practical programs for the formation of the "Turkish world," and it does not even hide its long-term appetites towards the Turkic-speaking regions of Russia.

During the same period, Azerbaijan has also gained power and has devoted a significant portion of that power to the purpose of seizing Artsakh and bringing Armenia to its knees.

• One might argue that the Turkic-speaking states of Central Asia and their leaders, and even Azerbaijan itself, are zealous in preserving their independence, the power acquired by their elite, and their indescribable material advantages, and would not want to relinquish them; therefore, the chances of the Pan-Turkist program's success are not that great. However, it must be understood that modern Pan-Turkism, at least at its current stage, does not aspire to create a unified Turkic state, but rather to create a Turkish world under Turkey's leadership. But for us, what is more essential is the following: It is of no importance to us whether the Pan-Turkist program will succeed in Central Asia or not (although the probability of success is high). For us, the essential point is that in our region, it is already underway, and we are its primary target.
• While Turkey and Azerbaijan were gaining strength, Armenia during this period not only failed to work towards acquiring resilience against the revived Pan-Turkism, but its successive governments and the politico-economic elite in Armenia, as well as in Artsakh, created a rotten system and deepened it. They created and deepened a plutocratic and oligarchic system, corruption, plundered public property, deepened social and legal injustice, established a repressive atmosphere and practices, installed an authoritarian, sometimes even dictatorial system, etc. These pernicious phenomena also prevailed within the armed forces. As a result of all this, a moral-psychological atmosphere of decline deepened within the population, and an exodus of unimaginable proportions took place. As a result of all this, the authorities, lacking internal legitimacy, sought it externally, and in one direction only, thereby deepening the country's dependence in all areas (and primarily in the military). No real and serious work was done to develop genuinely multifaceted external relations and, through them, achieve gains not only in the diplomatic but also in the defense sphere.

After all this, the events of 2020, 2023, and the current situation were guaranteed.

One could counter by saying that during the same period, the internal situation in Azerbaijan and even Turkey was no less corrupt and deformed, quite the contrary. But those two countries found themselves in incomparably more favorable conditions, and they could afford such excesses without endangering their statehood, whereas the same behavior was contraindicated for Armenia from the very beginning. And then, despite those deformities, they consistently pursued the implementation of the Pan-Turkist program, while Armenia exhibited criminal inaction in defending itself from it.

• Currently, Pan-Turkism has reached the stage of realizing a direct geographical connection between Turkey-Nakhichevan-Azerbaijan through the seizure of Syunik. The balance of power is so disrupted that they are attempting to achieve this goal already without military actions, through threats and pressure. In case of success, it will be incomparably easier for them to also realize their other goals without military means: "Western Azerbaijan," the demilitarization of Armenia, the imposition of $150 billion in "reparations," etc. These would mean the death of Armenia.
• The "Zangezur Corridor" is not an economic objective for Turkey and Azerbaijan, but rather, first and foremost, a strategic-geographical one. This reality is obvious to many, but some stubbornly choose to consciously ignore it. Azerbaijan and Turkey already have a route passing along the other side of the Araks River, through Iran. This only extends the journey by a few dozen kilometers, which is of minor significance in the context of a complete east-west route. This single circumstance is sufficient to be convinced that the significance of the "Zangezur Corridor" is primarily territorial and strategic-geographical, not economic. One can arrive at the same conclusion when familiarizing oneself with the capacity of the "corridor" or TRIPP*. They do not even hide this truth. At the end of August, Turkey’s Minister of Transport Abdulkadir Uraloğlu declared: “We regard the Kars–Iğdır–Aralık–Dilucu railway line not only as a transport route, but also as a strategic investment that will change the fate of the region. [emphasis ours].” He added: “With a 30-year projection, the project will yield a profit (equivalent to 3.6 billion dollars).” Just imagine—3.6 billion dollars of profit over 30 years, for a country whose GDP in 2024 amounted to 1.32 trillion dollars.
• The only way to prevent the "death of Armenia" is the absolute maintenance of Armenia's sovereignty over the east-west road supposedly to be opened through Syunik. Parallel to that and thereafter, Armenia must, finally, develop a comprehensive strategic program based on the awareness of the Pan-Turkist threat to acquire resilience against it, and implement it with the complete mobilization of all its forces and those of the diaspora.
• A question may arise: If Pan-Turkism is a purposeful program of more than a century, if at the beginning of the 20th century no choice by the Armenian people, whether revolutionary or conservative, could or would have been able to prevent the Genocide, and if the revived Pan-Turkish program post-1990s has also lost none of its purposefulness, and those striving for its implementation are so strong, then what is the guarantee that Armenia and the Armenian people will be able to become resilient this time, unlike in 1915? The answer: although a 100% guarantee does not exist, the fundamental, profound, essential difference lies in the fact that the Armenians at that time did not have a state; they were subjects of the Ottoman Empire, whereas today, despite all losses and limitations, a state called Armenia still exists, which, although weak, nevertheless has numerous levers that the millet (subject community) of the empire was devoid of. It is necessary to lean on that small possibility and try to multiply and strengthen them. We simply have no alternative.

*Based on numerous sources, Chat GPT dresses the following picture:

Land transport accounts for 15% of total east-west trade (the remainder being almost entirely maritime).

In its short-term phase, the "Middle Corridor" ("commercial routes passing through the South Caucasus") could account for 5-10% of all land transport.

If fully saturated, the Syunik route would be able to serve 3-8% of all east-west land trade, which would correspond to only 0.45-1.2% of total trade (including maritime).

As a result of the ongoing expansion of the capabilities of Georgia's Poti port, a significant portion of the "Middle Corridor's" transport will be directed towards that port, and land transport towards Turkey, including via the Syunik route, will decrease considerably accordingly.

Syunik's share in all east-west land transport will fall to 1-2%, perhaps even lower, and in total trade to approximately 0.15-0.4%.

And if Georgia's deep-water Anaklia port is built and becomes operational, then a very large proportion of east-west land trade will pass through the "Middle Corridor", but not through Turkey, and consequently not through Syunik, but through Anaklia itself. This will further diminish the significance of the route passing through Syunik.

All this leads to the conclusion that the commercial and economic significance being attempted to be assigned to the "Zangezur Corridor" is largely exaggerated, , and its true significance is strategic, first and foremost for Turkey and Azerbaijan, but also for Russia and the West.