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Joshua Kucera Profile picture
Joshua Kucera
@joshuakucera
Caucasus editor at @eurasianet. 🇦🇲🇦🇿🇬🇪🇹🇷 Грантоед. Iowan.
Oct 4, 2020 • 16 tweets • 6 min read
At @EurasiaNet we have been covering this conflict for long before this week. If you are trying to study up on the conflict, here are some of our pieces from the last few years that may offer useful background. A thread: A dispatch from Kelbajar, one of the territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh, formerly entirely populated by ethnic Azerbaijanis, that have been gradually settled by ethnic Armenians. This has been one of the key sticking points between the two sides. eurasianet.org/for-armenians-…
Sep 21, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Karabakh announces move of parliament eurasianet.org/karabakh-annou… The move to the city Azerbaijanis consider their historical capital has been seen as a provocation in Baku. Image So this post became more controversial than expected and it may need a little more explanation. The controversy was about one paragraph describing, very briefly, a bit of Shusha’s history, which I think was misinterpreted by many people on both sides.
May 5, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I'm intrigued by Aliyev's new teleconferencing setup. What is the point of this huge screen being set up so far away? Is this electronic social distancing? Image Putin also doesn't use the simple webcam-and-laptop-screen setup that the rest of us plebes do, but this seems to be more ergonomically logical. Image
Apr 30, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Azerbaijanis in lockdown send love letters to their president eurasianet.org/azerbaijanis-i… The trend is evocative of Azerbaijan’s Soviet past, when young pioneers wrote precocious letters to the editor about the nation’s astute leaders. @TamadaTales breaks it down. Image Azerbaijani press keeps cranking this stuff out. "Citizens' letters: we are proud that we have such a president as you, who cares about the people and puts its health above everything else."

trend.az/azerbaijan/pol…
Mar 23, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Oh boy. A new twitter account launches supposedly about the "Armenian Community of Azerbaijan." The first post is of a church which does in fact still stand in Baku. The second is of this wedding scene that appears to have taken place in the 70s or 80s... In fact, both Armenia and Azerbaijan have been ethnically cleansed to the point where there is effectively no one of the other ethnicity remaining, except for some elderly widows.
Mar 17, 2020 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Comrades, I'm interested in your thoughts on the Caucasus entries in Eurovision. My personal favorite this year is the Azerbaijani one. Unlike most from the last few years, it's at least identifiable as Azerbaijan (if only the landscape in the video).
A bit odd to self-orientalize with the Egyptian theme, but it's catchy. Reminds me a bit of the great Turkish ones from the 80s and 90s.
Mar 16, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
This elegy to Europe under siege by coronavirus refers heavily to a essay, "The Idea of Europe."

nytimes.com/2020/03/15/wor… Image So I followed the link to that essay, and nearly spit out my coffee at the second paragraph:

opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-… Image
Mar 4, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Is it a post-Soviet thing where leaders give one another dogs? Seems like Putin is regularly getting dogs as gifts. But does this happen other places? ImageImage
Feb 24, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Following a coronavirus outbreak in Iran, Armenia closed its border to all but cargo traffic for two weeks. Azerbaijan, meanwhile, is the only neighboring country to not close its border with Iran at all. eurasianet.org/following-coro… Turkey has now closed its border post with Azerbaijan apparently because the latter hasn't closed its border with Iran in response to the coronavirus outbreak: haqqin.az/news/170815
Jan 30, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Still no statement from the meeting of the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers. But that it has gone on for two days, and the first day's talks lasted seven hours, suggests something relatively significant is up.

azertag.az/en/xeber/Azerb… Interesting statement from the Armenia-Azerbaijan FM meeting today:

"..possible next steps to prepare the populations for peace; principles and elements forming the basis of a future settlement; and timing and agenda for advancing the settlement process."
osce.org/minsk-group/44…
Jan 14, 2020 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
After news came out that the World Bank projects that Armenia will overtake Azerbaijan in GDP per capita this year, and much was made of it by Armenians, Ilham Aliyev responds with another long list of the ways Azerbaijan is still ahead of Armenia: haqqin.az/news/167488 It reminds me of my last trip to Karabakh, where my fellow marshrutka passengers, on learning that I have been in Azerbaijan, insisted on comparing Armenia to it. One woman tried to get me to acknowledge that Azerbaijanis were at a "lower level" than Armenians.
Nov 18, 2019 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Georgian police forcibly removed protesters from the parliament building; they had been blockading it to try to force the government to unrenege on a promise to reform the country's unfair electoral system. Pretty tense scene but apparently no real violence. ImageImage
Oct 28, 2019 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
A resolution to formally recognize the Armenian genocide is going up for a vote this week in the House, and it looks like the votes are there to pass it:

eurasianet.org/is-the-us-goin… The fact that an Armenian genocide resolution is going to pass in response to a crisis in U.S.-Turkey relations has rubbed some the wrong way.
Oct 11, 2019 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Ilham Aliyev, sitting next to Nikol Pashinyan at a CIS summit in Turkmenistan, picks a fight over Armenia's lionization of a Nazi collaborator/liberation hero: ria.ru/20191011/15596… Image Best part of this, probably, is the facial expressions of the presidents of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan as they listen to Aliyev recite his speech about Armenians and Nazis. (h/t @atanessi) ImageImage
Oct 7, 2019 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Spent a weekend in the (de facto) Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (and a bit in Cyprus proper as well). instagram.com/p/B3SGs__ADlT/ ImageImageImageImage It was a thought-provoking comparison to the newer, post-Soviet unresolved conflicts, and there were a number of ways in which the Cyprus conflict has developed that one could easily see happening in the Caucasus, as well.
Oct 2, 2019 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
With news today of the death of Giya Kancheli, it occurred to me that he might have been the first Georgian I knew of as a Georgian. I didn't know anything about this part of the world, or anything international, but I was a fan of this album when it came out: open.spotify.com/album/03eTsBW2…
Sep 17, 2019 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Yesterday Pashinyan kind of tried to walk back his statement from last month that "Karabakh is Armenia - period." It caused huge controversy in Baku and some pushback internationally as well. eurasianet.org/pashinyan-call… Pashinyan said yesterday that he has made overtures to Azerbaijan but they haven't been reciprocated, and if Baku sticks to its maximalist position, "then our principle should be 'Karabakh is Armenia, period." ru.armeniasputnik.am/karabah/201909…
Jun 13, 2019 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Azerbaijan military reports that Armenia/Karabakh air defense tried to shoot down an Azerbaijani aircraft. Some reports said it was a drone but the AZ MoD praised the "professionalism of the pilots." Also as yet unclear: what side of the front line it was on. So far no confirmation from the Armenian side. But follows steadily escalating tensions over the past couple of weeks. Azerbaijan also reported (and Armenia denied) that Armenians fired mortars over past two days: panorama.am/en/news/2019/0…
Jun 12, 2019 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Within the first thirty seconds the host, the deputy director of the Eurasia program, mispronounces both Hajiyev's name and "Caucasus." The state of Caucasusology in D.C. Typical discussion of Azerbaijan in DC, but one relatively novel talking point: Hajiyev cites a chapter of Kocharyan's recent book describing how in 1993 Armenians faced international condemnation after taking Kelbajar, part of Azerbaijan not in Karabakh. Kocharyan said...
May 24, 2019 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Good timing for Trend to come out with an interview with some Armenian-Russian gymnasts about how safe and pleasant it is to visit Baku: en.trend.az/azerbaijan/soc… Bizarrely, a second interview with a different on the same website with the same gymnasts, with more quotes about how nice it is to be an Armenian athlete in Baku: en.trend.az/azerbaijan/kar…
May 21, 2019 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Now that @HenrikhMkh has said he's not going to Baku, the hosting of the Europa League final can officially be called a debacle. eurasianet.org/arsenals-retur… @HenrikhMkh It should be noted that Armenian athletes have competed without incident at other high-profile sports events in Baku, like the 2015 European Games. And I'm sure Mkhitaryan would have been fine. But you can't blame him for being cautious.