Jamalyan believes “it is difficult to intimidate President Sargsyan” with Aliyev’s “primitive statement”.
An Armenian military psychologist says Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev made his “war-mongering statements” ahead of his Munich meeting with the Armenian leader last weekend in order to “cause anxiety in Armenian society”.
President Serzh Sargsyan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Aliyev met in the German city on Sunday. It was their sixth meeting this year to continue talks on the settlement of the long-running Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Before the Munich negotiations, Aliyev stated that unless immediate progress was made, Azerbaijan might go to war with Karabakh again and “had the right to liberate the Azerbaijani lands by military means.”
“Obviously it is difficult to intimidate President Sargsyan with such a primitive statement, and the statement is very clearly aimed at the Armenian public,” said David Jamalyan, a military psychologist, at a press conference Monday. He called Aliyev’s statement “revanchist (revenge) swaggering”.
According to Jamalyan, Aliyev had hoped he could generate “domestic pressure” on Sargsyan with his war threats made shortly before the talks and thus make the Armenian leader agree to certain concessions. However, the military psychologist says, making concessions, on the contrary, will increase the likelihood of war, because the party that agrees to concessions gets weaker.
In Jamalyan’s opinion, times when wars began with appropriate declarations are long gone.
“At present, the efficiency of a war is in its suddenness,” said the psychologist.
Jamalyan said that for years Aliyev has been preparing for war, however, according to different military experts, Azerbaijan has not yet managed to build a military capability to wage a successful war against Karabakh. He said renewed hostilities were impossible at this moment. According to Jamalyan, only two factors can create a possibility of renewed hostilities – if Armenia’s statehood for some reason gets drastically weakened and Armenia becomes vulnerable to external aggression, and if the world centers of power grow interested in such a war.
Jamalyan also spoke about the developments in France last week when a Turkish student was penalized for denying the Armenian Genocide.
Regarding the 1915 Genocide of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey Mustafa Dogan, 13, said during a discussion at a school in Nancy: “Even if it did happen, they [Armenians] deserved it.”
The administration of the school in France, a country that has recognized the Armenian Genocide at the state level, suspended Dogan from school. Eventually, the student apologized for his statement and was allowed to continue to attend.
The behavior of the student, according to Jamalyan, is proof that even in Europe that advocates tolerance a Turk has not changed, “let alone Turks who live in Turkey with its chauvinist ideology of Kemalism.”
“The statement by the Turkish boy is only a piece of Turkish extremist positions,” said the psychologist, adding that specialists consider Turkish communities with their extremist and nationalist positions as difficult for integration everywhere.
Jamalyan considers it strange that a Turkish teenager born and raised in Europe should reject European civilization, tolerance and value system.
“This should give an occasion for serious thought. Even if the Armenian-Turkish border is opened, one should be realistic in making contacts with Turks,” said the psychologist.
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