The Cooperation Council of Turkic Language Speaking States held a summit last week in the capital of Kazakhstan. This institute of Turkic solidarity was established by the decision made two years ago during the 9th Summit of leaders of Turkic language speaking states in Nakhijevan.


It was an outstanding summit when in the presence of leaders of Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and high-ranking officials from a number of other Turkic language speaking states, Azeri president Ilham Aliyev stated: “Nachijevan is an ancient Azeri land. The separation of Zangezur- a historically authentic Azeri land – from Azerbaijan and its annexation to Armenia at the time geographically dismembered the great Turkic world.”

Armenia viewed this statement as a potential threat, and as an expression of pan-Turkism only under new political circumstances.

And so now the first summit of the Cooperation Council of Turkic Language Speaking States was held in Almaty, during which the Azeri president declared: “Turkic world is a great world! We have to make it become even more united. We have all the means for that. First of all, there is a strong political will.”

This might seem like an innocent statement. However, from the perspective of the Armenian perception of the very concept of “Turkic world” is quite unequivocally associated with “the Great Turan” (Turan is the Persian word for Central Asia) - the very idea by which the Armenian nation has been victimized. In the beginning of last century two innocent scientific concepts (Turkic and Aryan) were used by Pan-Turkism followers and Nazis in a way that the contemporary usage of these terms can’t help but objectively sound ominous.

During the summit Aliyev also stressed: “The main issue Azerbaijan is facing is the Armenian-Azeri one, the Nagorno-Karabakh problem. It is a source of the biggest threat and injustice not only towards us, but the whole region. Armenia committed ethnic purges against Azeris. As a result of that policy around one million Azeris have become refugees and migrants in their own motherland; 20 percent of our lands are occupied.”

Obviously, such statements cannot be purely viewed in the context organizers of such summits commonly voice: “strengthening economic and cultural ties with brother republics”. Quite the opposite, it perfectly fits into the historic context.

Back in 1933, during the period of drastic cooling of relations between Moscow and Ankara, Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal stated: “One day Russia will lose control over the nations it is keeping tightly in its hands today. The world then would reach a new level. And at that very moment Turkey has to know exactly what to do. Our brothers by blood, faith and language are under Russia’s reign. We have to be ready to support them. Our common language is our bridge, our common faith is our bridge, our common history is our bridge. We have to remember our roots. We should not wait for them to reach out for us; we have to draw nearer to them ourselves. One fine day Russia will fall.”

This “eastern vector” specified by the founder of the republican Turkey has remained the most important guideline for the country’s political elite for the following several decades.

Leader of modern Turkey Abdulla Gul’s speech at the Nakhijevan summit is exemplary: “Nakhijevan is native and precious not only to Azerbaijan, but to Turkey as well. The border between Azerbaijan and Turkey in the Nakhijevani region is physically small, but politically this 10-12-kilometer-long border has huge significance. This border of ours is a symbolic transition geographically linking Turkey with Turkic republics.”

If today’s use of the term “Aryan” is under strict “international control” (and is practically impossible from high international rostrums), things are different with the “Turkic” concept. To a certain extent, it is a consequence of who has, and when, condemned the crimes committed by Nazis and Pan-Turkism supporters.

It is the lack of the total international condemnation of the crime of the Armenian Genocide that has allowed the concept of “Turkic” to return into the scientific ethno-linguistic arena, and conditions the world community’s indifference to the application of that ominous term today.