Armenia-Azerbaijan: BBC Azeri Facebook Diary
This post is part of our special coverage Caucasus Conflict Voices.
As part of the BBC Superpower Season, the BBC's Azeri service approached Global Voices Online's Caucasus editor to participate in its own reflection on the power of the Internet. Locked into a bitter stalemate over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh, BBC Azeri were specifically interested in how new and social media could bring the two warring sides together.
What follows is part one of the series, originally published yesterday in Azerbaijani, translated or using the original texts in English. Two more parts will follow today and tomorrow.
The BBC Superpower season is in March. In these programs we discussed the power of Internet and the way it affects the lives of people.
The Internet has brought big changes to the lives of people starting from personal relations to business contacts. New media has opened up a new way not only for journalists. It has also inspired an audience and civil society towards free thought and social activism.
The wide use of social media has changed cultural and political values throughout the world. People are willing to communicate, participate and share their thoughts.
This new online project prepared by the Azeri service of the BBC within this Internet season is called Facebook diary.
Every day the participants of this project will follow social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and share their observations with readers of this site.
The first part of our Facebook diary is called Social media and conflict resolution.
As an observation, the main purpose of using Facebook is about the opportunities offered to users of social media as well as using it as a think-tank platform.
What opportunity does social media offer to peace activists from Armenia and Azerbaijan? Can new media tools change the current situation? What are the negative effects of social media in the light of nationalists using new media for an attack on the “enemy”?
Answers to these questions will be given by diarists writing on “Social media and conflict resolution” – Arzu Qeybullayeva from Azerbaijan and Onnik Krikorian from Armenia.
Arzu Qeybullayeva is a regional analyst in Baku, has a blog and conducts trainings on social media.
Focusing on the positive
Browsing through status updates on Facebook, I come across one by an Azeri friend of mine, who posted a link as his status. I was also inspired as the caption of it read “Organizer of this event is my friend, mets ashkhatavor (great worker) Georgi Vanyan!”
This is just one of numerous examples on Facebook. one of the most popular social networks used by millions today. Also part of a new phenomenon, new social media such as Facebook has become a platform for Azerbaijanis and Armenians to share their similarities and differences, talk about politics, culture, life, and art etc.
The use of Facebook, Twitter, and blogs in the Caucasus, and especially in Armenia and Azerbaijan, have all in their own ways opened up new opportunities for youth living in the two countries.
I joined Facebook in 2005, back in the day when it was only available for students living and studying in the UK, Europe and the US. If I was told back then that in few years I would be holding trainings on new social media such as Facebook, I would probably have dismissed that idea as, and also found it, somewhat ridiculous.
However, fast forward five years, and I cannot conceal my excitement every time I talk about this to an audience of Azerbaijani, Armenian and Georgian youth, sharing the positive experiences I have had and citing an incredible amount of positive feedback on my work on building cross-country dialogue.
As a result, I have met many Armenian talented young minds and also taken part in what was a spontaneous and unexpected trip to an ethnically Azeri-populated village in Georgia with a journalist from Yerevan, Onnik Krikorian. We then shared our experience on the Internet via Facebook, personal blogs, and of course, Twitter.
The amount of positive feedback we received was incredible, demonstrating that things can change in a positive way, and that not only can both Azerbaijanis and Armenians work together, but they can also co- exist together.
Onnik Krikorian is the Caucasus regional editor of Global Voices Online as well as a freelance journalist and photojournalist based in Yerevan, Armenia.
The Human Touch: Online personal communication between Armenians and Azerbaijanis
The Internet has changed lives the world over, especially when it comes to news and access to information, but the situation is not quite the same in the South Caucasus. Albeit slowly changing, going online had been the preserve for the fortunate few and until recently mainly via dial-up. Even so, costs still remain prohibitive for many, especially in the less well-developed regions of the three countries making up the South Caucasus.
Plagued by political instability and ethnic conflict, especially between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh, those that did have access to the Internet were also more likely to use it to continue the war online rather than strive for peace. Yet, if the Internet was once used by both sides to spread negative propaganda and sometimes misinformation about the other, there is now the possibility to achieve the opposite.
Telephone lines may be monitored or blocked, but those Armenians and Azerbaijanis wanting to communicate with each other can now do so on a daily basis via email, blogs, and micro-blogging sites such as Twitter. They can also speak to each other thanks to Skype. Previously influenced by a usually less than objective and often nationalistic local media, Facebook in particular allows both to glimpse into the lives of each other free from negative stereotypes.
True, nationalists on both sides continue to use the same tools for the opposite purpose, but their previous monopoly on disseminating partisan propaganda is now being broken, especially as Internet penetration increases in both countries.
Over the coming days, Arzu Geybullayeva and I will be looking into both the positive and negative use of the Internet in the context of Armenian and Azerbaijani relations. Since we first made contact online a year and a half ago, it has become increasingly obvious that online tools offer an unprecedented opportunity to break the information blockade and restore open communication between the two sides.
However, to start the ball rolling, there's probably no better place to look than everyone's favourite Facebook as well as the newest (online) kid on the block, Twitter. Although those opposed to peace may have set up countless hate groups on Facebook, they have failed to counter huge progress in personal relations and communication via personal user pages. The same is true for Twitter, where alternative voices have drowned out the propagandists.
Both have also managed to remind others of one reality forgotten by many since the ceasefire agreement between the two warring countries was signed in 1994. That is, Armenians and Azerbaijanis have more in common than some would care to admit.
This weekend, for example, marked the beginning of Novruz, a festival celebrated in Azerbaijan, Iran, and Turkey, among others, marking the beginning of spring. Not only did many Azerbaijanis on Facebook update their status lines or post photos marking the holiday, but so too did some Armenians, especially those who recognize the Persian influence on both cultures.
One of those was Liana Aghajanian, an Iranian-Armenian now living in the U.S.
“[…] being Armenian doesn’t symbolize an all inclusive club where only one set of traditions are observed and one language spoken. We are an amazingly diverse group of ancient people, who have, through the years, influenced and been influenced by a set of beautifully rich and magnetizing cultures, and denying this would be doing a disservice. […] I guess what I’m trying to say is that simply speaking, diversity is good. Embrace it. […]”
After her post, a brief conversation followed with an Azerbaijani on Twitter, noting the similarities between Novruz and Trndez, an Armenian holiday likely with the same origin, but radically changed to fit into the church calendar after Armenia adopted Christianity in 301AD. This reality is a perfect counter to comments from former Armenian president Robert Kocharian in the 2000s saying that Armenians and Azerbaijanis were “ethnically incompatible.”
A year ago, such open communication was unheard of, but now there are many such examples of civil, polite and friendly discussions taking place as comments on blog posts, as tweets, and on the Facebook pages of like-minded individuals. Indeed, that will be the message Arzu and I share with the audience during our co-presentation next month at a social media conference in Tbilisi, Georgia.
Just don't expect such a reality to be conveyed by the local media in either country. For now, it’s only to be found online. Of course, the negative still exists as well, but more on that as our observations continue.
The original text in Azerbaijani is available on the BBC Azeri web site. Many thanks to Konul Khalilova for permission to post a version in English. The main collaboration between the BBC and Global Voices Online for the Superpower Season is here.
This post is part of our special coverage Caucasus Conflict Voices.
17 comments
Despite the differences and defensiveness and alertness of the two countries and people, I am with this initiative. This is about open discussion and opportunity to know the HUMAN across the border. You can communicate openly without letting go of your rights or being gullible. This is true for both sides.
You are comparing apples to oranges, Onnik jan. Like I noted above, while there are nationalists in Armenia, the level of their extremity is in no ways comparable to to the hostility found in Azerbaijan. All this talk of the “psychology” of having a victim’s mentality is absurd: the suffering the Armenian people have been put through during the twentieth century is still something that requires redress for Armenians. The wounds are still fresh and the call for dialogue is oddly reminiscent of the Republic of Turkey’s calls for Armenians to simply talk together and forget the past.
History has taught us, or at least those of us who still bother to read books nowadays, that the world powers have always attempted to take advantage of Armenia and all this sweet-talk is window dressing for their own nefarious designs on our country. It reminds me of Vardan Petrosyan’s “Verelk'” play, where he highlights the Armenians naivety during the 20th century as they constantly play into the hands of the Turks by thinking that times have changed for the good: in 1908, after the Young Turk Revolution; in 1920, after Ataturk invaded Armenia; in 1988, after Sumgait, etc.; and nowadays it’s as if we’re still living in this fantasy world that things have finally changed for the better and that our neighbors are still well-meaning and all we have to do is talk away our differences, esp. by highlighting our similarities with one another.
I’m sorry Onnik, but while I admire your attempts to show that the peoples living in this region are truly not that different and have much more in common than either side will care to admit, I have to side with history and common sense here and emphasize that this is a deeply flawed and discredited mentality, no matter how widely accepted it is in some of these countries. You may think that the Azerbaijani govt. and the people are two different entities, and that the former has simply hijacked the voice of the latter, but my interactions with them all throughout my life and right to the present has taught me otherwise.
A simple search through the media will let you know that today is the Azeris commemorate the alleged genocides (again, note the plural) the Armenians committed against them over the past two centuries. Gurgen Margaryan’s death is not an aberration but rather an accurate reflection of how an entire society thinks and is grown up to hate and even physically harm at any opportunity they get. How on earth you and others can compare the Armenian and Azeri/Turkish governments’ policies is stupefying but it’s something which I do not accept at all and it’s something which requires rectification from the skeptics among us. My position will naturally earn me the appellations of being a “blind fanatic”, “narrow-minded”, and “ultranationalist” who is only poisoning the atmosphere but we have so many historical questions we Armenians must resolve and avenues like the ones you have listed above are ones we are better off not taking. You may not realize it, but they are concessions through and through.
It’s a harsh reality but if concessions have to be made, the onus does not at all fall on Armenia: we’ve given away enough deaths and lands and monasteries and churches and homes and memory to last us another two or three millennia. The most extreme Armenian nationalist is the lesser equivalent to the most benign and left-wing ones in Azerbaijan or Turkey. If the Turks and Azeris are so desperate to mend the broken fences of their neighbor, let’s see what exactly they have to offer; otherwise, all this supposed dialogue we’re engaging is hot air and, quite frankly, a waste of our time. All this will hopefully change in the future, but for the moment, this isn’t the time for pleasantries and all those fuzzy feelings of international brotherhood and friendship and bonding. For once in our lifetimes Onnik, let’s be a little more realistic with reality and be more in-tuned with the dangers that confront us, hmm?
Yervand, we will just agree to disagree. I judge my opinion upon being in the region and being in contact with many Armenians and Azerbaijanis as well as see how ethnic Armenians and Azeri co-exist in Georgia.
Meanwhile, others can make their own minds up. I’d also recommend they read Thomas de Waal’s Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War for an account of the conflict as well as its background free from Armenian and Azerbaijani propaganda.
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/59291/robert-legvold/black-garden-armenia-and-azerbaijan-through-peace-and-war
Part of it is also online:
http://books.google.com/books?id=pletup86PMQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=thomas+de+waal+black+garden&source=bl&ots=AZb1tPzbIN&sig=zNYyAKEYG3RIlhJ5YTwlipVUsIk&hl=en&ei=DMC0S-WBENCrsAb25-isDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CAoQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=&f=false
Anyway, we’re going around in circles. You’ve made your point from abroad, and I’m making mine before I set out next week for a few mass meetings between young Armenians and Azerbaijanis in Georgia. Looking forward to it, in fact.
Perhaps that may be the only solution for us at the moment…
Regarding Thomas de Waal, I have read his book several times now and while I don’t wish to spark another debate on this blog page and thus detract from the actual conversation, while he and others may think he is presenting everything sans propaganda, he tends to favor the Azerbaijani side, makes illogical comparison between two sides and really stretches it at times to somehow make out Armenia and Azerbaijan equally guilty regarding certain events, and otherwise make many allegations without ever citing them in his sources. It’s not a bad book, but it’s certainly not that good and only a real specialist in the matter would be able to challenge and refute some of his more ludicrous statements…
That aside, I shall continue to follow up in the news and posts.