What is Pakistan’s dispute with Armenia?

Armenia is a country in the southern part of the Kauf Mountains, bordered by Georgia, Azerbaijan and Iran, with cities, villages and towns, where there are rivers, lakes, mountains, and the mountains are also the Kauf Mountains, but Pakistan’s official According to the position, this country does not exist because Pakistan is the only country in the world that does not recognize Armenia.

This is surprising because Pakistan has no direct conflict with Armenia, the two do not share borders, and neither have any good or bad historical ties between them.

Then what is the reason that Pakistan has kept enmity with Armenia, although the President of Armenia has indicated that he wants to develop relations with Pakistan?

The reasons for this conflict are historical. First of all, let’s understand the summary that in the opinion of Pakistan, Armenia had usurped the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh of Azerbaijan.

Another case is Turkey. Armenians believe that the Turks committed genocide against them during the Ottoman era, which Turkey vehemently denies and the two countries do not have diplomatic relations.

First of all, we have to see what is the dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan, where is the saying about Pakistan that ‘Abdullah is crazy in a foreign marriage?’

‘Black Mountain Garden’

Nagorno-Karabakh is a disputed territory between Azerbaijan and Armenia. 95% of the population in this area is Armenian, but it is part of Azerbaijan.

The name of this region is often spelled Karabakh, but in Ottoman Turkey it is actually pronounced as ‘Karabagh’. Qara is called black in Turkish and it means hua, black garden. Nagorno-Karabakh is a Russian word meaning ‘mountain region’.

At one time, these areas were part of the Ottoman Empire, so the Turkish language was dominant here, but in the 19th century, Russia captured them and wrapped them under the wings of its vast empire. When the Soviet Union was formed in 1917, it inherited these territories.

As the Soviet Union began demarcating its various administrative divisions, this included demarcating the borders of Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Interestingly, a committee headed by Joseph Stalin, who later became the head of the Soviet Union, initially included Nagorno-Karabakh in Armenia, but changed its decision the next day to make it part of Azerbaijan.

Divide and rule

Historians believe that the purpose of this decision was the ‘divide and rule’ policy so that these two nations would not fight the Soviet Union but would continue to fight each other.

Since the majority of the area was Armenian, they demanded that they did not want to live with Azerbaijan, so the area should be annexed to Armenia.

In 1988, the region’s local parliament also passed a resolution in favor of annexation with Armenia, and a referendum was held, which Azerbaijanis boycotted and the majority voted to secede from Azerbaijan.

They alleged that there are no books in the Armenian language in their region, nor is their language represented in the media, but Azerbaijan is making everything Azeri, which threatens their identity.

Another issue was religion. The majority religion of Azerbaijan is Islam, while the majority of Armenians are Christians.

After the parliament’s decision and the referendum, mass protests and strikes by Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, which were countered by Azeris, soon erupted into ethnic riots and bloodshed on both sides.

At that time these two countries were part of the Soviet Union and efforts by the head of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, to resolve the issue were futile.

In February 1988, a war broke out between the two countries over the same issue, which continued for four years. Both countries participated in the genocide in which between 20,000 and 30,000 people were killed on both sides.

Meanwhile, when the Shiraz of the Soviet Union disintegrated, Nagorno-Karabakh declared independence. Armenia launched a massive offensive and expelled the Azeri forces from Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding areas.

The region later declared independence under the name of the ‘Republic of Artsakh’, thus linking Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh geographically.

In 1994, after efforts by Russia, America and France, a ceasefire was reached, but despite this, the series of clashes could not stop there from time to time.

Last year, the war between the two countries started once again, in which Turkey openly supported Azerbaijan and also provided it with rockets and war drones.

More than five thousand people were killed in this war. After the war, Armenia ceded the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan under the mediation of Russia.

But the Armenian people mourned him and accused Prime Minister Nikol Pashinan of treason and demanded his resignation.

The case of Armenia and Turkey

Most of the inhabitants of Azerbaijan are of Turkic descent and the majority of them speak the Azeri language, which is actually a dialect of the Turkic language itself.

The two countries have centuries-old religious, linguistic and ethnic ties, so the enemy of one is considered the enemy of the other.

The cause of conflict between Armenians and ethnic Turks is a century old. The story goes that before World War I, many Armenians settled in present-day Turkey, especially in the eastern part of the country.

But when the Turks suffered successive defeats in the Balkan War that began in 1912, they feared that the Armenians would take advantage of this opportunity to declare secession.

The government of the Ottoman Caliph Abd al-Hamid II ordered the Armenians to leave their territories in order to reduce the threat of an uprising on their part.

Millions of Armenians were killed in the process, while Armenians allege that the Turkish military deliberately targeted them, leaving them to die in the Syrian desert and forcibly converting many to Islam.

The Turkish government’s official position is that the displacement of Armenians was legal and legitimate, that it was a time of war and threatened the integrity of Turkey, and that the loss of life during that time was inadvertent, not deliberate.

But Armenia is not ready to accept it and every year on April 24th, it commemorates the Armenian Genocide.

31 countries of the world, including the European Parliament, call this incident a genocide, but Turkey strongly responds to any such attempt.

Currently, there are three countries in the world that deny any such genocide, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Pakistan.

Pakistan Connection

We spoke to former Foreign Secretary Tahmina Janjua about what is the cause of conflict between Pakistan and Armenia and why Pakistan has not recognized Armenia.

He said that “Pakistan’s position in this matter is principled because the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh is the same as that of Kashmir.”

Just as India has usurped Kashmir, Armenia also occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, which is why Pakistan did not recognize it when Armenia broke away from the Soviet Union and became independent.

He said that like the case of Kashmir, the United Nations Security Council passed several resolutions on the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh, which demanded Armenia to withdraw its troops from the disputed area, but Armenia did not follow them.

Tehmina Janjua further said that ‘since there is tension between Armenia and Turkey over the issue of genocide, therefore keeping in mind the sensitivity of its friendly country, Pakistan did not try to build relations with Armenia.’

Moscow-based American political analyst Andrew Kurbekov wrote in an article in the newspaper Tribune that “Pakistan’s warm relations with Turkey and Azerbaijan have also played a role in this, but this issue is also behind the decision not to recognize Armenia.” Pakistan is against the principle of changing international borders by force.

Going forward, he has written that “few people are aware of this principled position of Pakistan, and if Pakistan presents this position to other Muslim countries, its ‘soft power’ can increase.”

Soft power in its place, however, Tehmina Janjua also said that ‘in the future, Pakistan needs to rethink this policy because Armenia has a powerful lobby in America.’

Especially in the current situation when Armenia has left the Azeri territories and the President of Armenia himself is talking about increasing relations with Pakistan, Pakistan should think about its policy.