Mahir Zeynalov Profile picture
Sep 30, 2020 16 tweets 2 min read Read on X
A lot of people have been asking me about the latest flare-up between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Here is what happened and why:
Let me start with a little background. Throughout the history, Armenians were scattered around the region in the Middle East and South Caucasus, including eastern Turkey, Iran, Syria, Lebanon and some lands in South Caucasus.
Ironically, today's Armenia, including its current capital Yerevan were predominantly populated by Muslim Turks, or Azerbaijanis. After twin Iran-Russia wars in the early 1800s, the demographic landscape in the South Caucasus had been changed significantly.
Azerbaijani population in Armenia had slowly started dwindling. The latest round of mass deportation of Azerbaijanis were in the late 1980s, when nearly 300k Azerbaijani Turks were forced to relocate (And over 150k Armenians had to leave Azerbaijan.)
In Karabakh, an island-like enclave within Azerbaijan, Armenians and Azerbaijanis had been living together for centuries. In the latest census during the Soviet Union, just before the war in the early 1990s, Armenians made up 78% of 145k people living in the Karabakh region.
During the chaotic collapse of the Soviet Union, Armenian forces staged a multi-pronged offensive against Azerbaijani territories, including Karabakh. Over 30,000 people were killed, including civilians.
In one of the darkest chapters of the war, Armenian troops ransacked a town called Khojaly in 1992, massacring civilian population, including children, in a Srebrenica-style pogroms that illustrated the barbaric nature of the conflict.
Not only did Armenian forces occupy Karabakh region, they also occupied 7 provinces around Karabakh where Azerbaijanis lived, calling them "buffer zones" and drove out nearly 1 million Azerbaijani civilians out of their homes.
OSCE Fact-Finding Mission concluded recently that Armenians started settling down in those 7 occupied provinces that are not even disputed. 30 years of diplomacy yielded no results to resolve the not-so-frozen conflict.
Azerbaijan promised to grant the "highest autonomy possible" to Karabakh and let Armenians self-rule in the region if they agree to leave 7 provinces what Armenians claimed constitute a buffer zone. Armenian refused.
UN Security Council, with the blessing of Russia, chief patron of Armenia, adopted four resolutions, calling on Armenia to withdraw from occupied Azerbaijani territories. Armenia refused.
All countries in the world recognize Azerbaijan's territorial integrity, including Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan. Even Armenia has not recognized Karabakh as an independent state.
Armenians try to portray this conflict as a self-determination fight of Armenians in Karabakh, unrelated to the Republic of Armenia. This is ludicrous. Everyone knows that it is Armenia who occupied those territories and help -- financially and militarily -- Karabakh Armenians.
Sandwiched between Russia and Iran, and sitting on top of one of the world's largest oil and gas reserves, Azerbaijan is in a tough spot. How can you drive out a country out of your territory that is supported by Russia?
Every nation has a right to live in a prosperous, free country ruled by their own people. Armenians aren't an exception, of course. But when you drive out 1 million Azerbaijanis out of their homes to build "a buffer zone" in a neighboring country, it complicates the situation.
Hoping that this war will end quickly and wishing that justice will be served for everyone.

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More from @MahirZeynalov

Sep 22, 2021
Study shows that a simple act of asking yourself whether you will remember something significantly improves the odds that you will remember, in some cases by as much as 50 percent. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21443325/
8 experiments revealed that pronouncing words aloud, instead of reading them silently, improves explicit memory.

“A simple but quite powerful mechanism for improving memory,” the studies said. doi.apa.org/doiLanding?doi…
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Apr 28, 2021
Erdogan is arguably one of the history’s most cunning politicians. He is such a magician that Turkish opposition falls for his tricks every single time.
Nearly a decade ago, Erdogan tried to limit alcohol sale late at night, introducing restrictions that were not necessarily harsher than the ones in US. Instead of justifying it with reasonable arguments, he insulted Ataturk & said laws “created by two drunks” aren’t respectable.
The opposition was furious. Now they started defending being “drunk” in a Muslim-majority nation, granting Erdogan unparalleled political fodder in his quest to trap the opposition. He buried the opposition with just two incendiary words.
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Apr 9, 2021
Just like the militaries of Egypt, Pakistan, Thailand, Burma etc., Turkish military had been the fundamental tenet of the establishment that wanted to create a society that were Sunni (No Alawites/Shia), secular (No conservatives) and Turk (no Kurds or other nationalities).
Every time there was a threat to the Turkish state, either through communism or Islamism, the military acted. It is in the army’s DNA to “protect” the nation as a Sunni, secular and Turkish entity. Those genes still exist in the military.
Every time things “went wrong”, the military contemplated the possibility of overthrowing the government. In the mid-1990s (against Islamist govt), in 2003 (to protest Annan’s Cyprus plan), in 2007 (against Erdogan) and in 2016 (against Erdogan).
Read 30 tweets
Nov 9, 2020
Azerbaijani Presidents signs a deal that ensures the surrender of Armenian forces and the end of the war in Karabakh. Azerbaijani president says it is a 'historic day' and 'very happy' over the agreement.
Armenia agrees to surrender the province of Aghdam to Azerbaijan by November 20.
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Many people keep asking me what is going on regarding Trump-Erdogan meeting and why Trump seems like taking a step back in imposing sanctions on Turkey over its purchase of Russian S400 systems. Here is what's happening:
Almost ten years ago, Turkey started negotiations with U.S. and European defense contractors to buy air defense systems to bolster its three-tiered Mediterranean air defense system and integrate into NATO's existing ones.
Around this time, several pro-Iranian groups in Turkey organized a humanitarian aid flotilla to confront Israel's blockade of Gaza. The bloody brawl on Mavi Marmara ship pitted Turkey and Israel against each other for many years to come.
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Jun 11, 2019
In the age of Trump, these polls don’t tell the entire story. That’s the reason why all polls failed to predict his victory. One reason is that some people avoid saying publicly (some ashamed, some fear backlash) that they support Trump, even to a pollster.
2. To win the presidential elections, you don’t need to win the popular vote or have high approval rating. You just need to win several battleground states like Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania. These are Trump strongholds.
3. U.S. electoral system is designed to favor rural voters. It worked until today because in no time in the history did any party has such a disproportianate representation in rural areas than the GOP today.
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