STEPANAKERT (Realist English). The main goal of Azerbaijan is the destruction of Artsakh as an Armenian state entity. This implies resolving the conflict in strict accordance with the formula: “If there is Karabakh, there is a problem, if there is no Karabakh — there is no problem.” This was stated by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh David Babayan in an interview with Realist.
“In fact, the main, if not the most important reason for such behavior of Baku, for hatred of Artsakh is that the process of formation of the Azerbaijani people has not yet been completed. A number of peoples were assimilated and lost their national identity, joined the united Azerbaijani people. But there are peoples who have still preserve their national identity and self-consciousness and have not become part of the united Azerbaijani people,” the minister stressed.
The Artsakh Foreign Minister is convinced that Karabakh cannot have a future as part of Azerbaijan: “It will turn into either a reservation or a concentration camp. And no guarantees, even of an international nature, are able to prevent this. Our people are well aware of this truth and therefore, any kind of association with Azerbaijan is absolutely unacceptable for us. We will defend our country from such prospects. If this is not possible, then there will be an exodus of the Armenian population from their historical homeland.”
Babayan reminded that in the XVIII century, the Armenians of Karabakh together with the Turkic peoples of Transcaucasia fought against Turkey, and the Azerbaijani people themselves, as a separate community, first appeared in 1936: “Before that, such a people simply did not exist. The Azerbaijani people were created for geopolitical purposes by artificially uniting a number of Turkic, Iranian and Caucasian peoples and tribes. This, again, was not a natural process.”
According to the minister, in 1921, Artsakh “became part of Azerbaijan against its will, and besides, a united Azerbaijani people was not yet created at that time”:
“With the beginning of the process of the collapse of the USSR and the acquisition of independence by Azerbaijan, hatred towards everything Armenian has already openly become the cornerstone of the philosophy of state-building in Azerbaijan. The pogroms and genocides of Armenians in Sumgait, Kirovabad, Baku, Maragha, the first, second and third Karabakh wars are a manifestation of this.”
