Armenia-Azerbaijan: Make love, not war…

In recent days, some media outlets in Azerbaijan and Armenia have covered a story originally reported by Yeni Musavat about an Armenian man and an Azerbaijani woman involved in a love affair in London. According to those reports, threats were made and the British-Armenian Community was concerned about their safety. However, email correspondence with the main organizations representing the community showed this to be far from the truth.

Indeed, none knew about the story at all.

But while some minor Armenian and Azerbaijani newspapers attempted to exploit the story for partisan political gain, at least one newspaper took a different approach. Although friends in Azerbaijan say they too had not heard about the story, raising doubts about how much of a scandal the initial story actually caused, the following article marks a very different approach to Armenia-Azerbaijan relations. Translation from Azerbaijani into English is below:

Is it okay to make love to an Armenian?

The incident really caused shock in Azerbaijan. Just to remind, after the emergence of Karabakh conflict these kind of issues have always been in the spotlight. Azeris married to Armenians before the conflict faced serious problems later because of this. Really interesting. Can conflicts be regulators of personal relationships? Do people have to hold back their personal feelings because of these issues? To clarify these questions and shed light on the above-said incident we picked the minds of a few representatives of society.

A writer, publicist Zahir Azamat, does not believe that this incident published by the media happened: “Firstly, I do not believe in the veracity of this news. I consider this writing to be a product of a pre-election period. I think this writing came to a life as a “fight of discrediting evidence” between sides. The spread of news by the leading opposition newspaper one day about one minister’s wife “running away with a driver” and the other day about a “minister’s daughter making love to an Armenian” is a slipshod “fight of discrediting evidence”.

In Zahir bey’s opinion, if there had been a certain time interval between these two pieces of news, it would have been more effective. Because highlighting these issues one after the other can be seen as not convincing: “It would be better to give a time-off between these two incidents. At the present a close link between these two pieces of news is apparent. I think there are no facts. If there is no fact, it is pointless to interpret it. For politicians to suck human’s emotions is no new thing.”

In general, Zahir Azamat’s reply to the questions of how you view making love to Armenian was this: “From near sight I view making love to Armenians well, from the afar I view it badly. Basically, I am short-sighted. As for me, I will not do it. The reason is simple. If I was to take such a step, I would be scared of Akif Naghi, the chairman of the Karabakh Liberation Organization, and my wife, and would have changed my mind to do so”.

Emin Huseynov, head of the Institute of Freedom and Safety of Reporters, thinks that these kind of issues are people’s personal business. “In my opinion, it is not correct for someone to interfere with people’s business in this matter, to express their opinions, however, there is one issue - young Azeris meet young Armenians regularly, they participate in the same events, and implement the same projects. I think every war results in peace. Maybe in the future all nations in the Caucasus will live together peacefully.”

In Emin bey’s opinion, the fact that one of the sides involved in this kind of incident is a child of some official does not give a basis to look at this issue differently. “The child of an official is also a simple human and the child of a worker is also a human. The only difference between them may be material. Love is such a thing that people make love, meet, and live their own lives. I personally cannot find a moral right in me to express any opinion on this matter.”

As for highlighting this issue in media in such a way, Emin Huseynov thinks that these things are mostly “yellow” journalism: “I suppose spreading news related to personal matters as shock news is the work of a yellow press. However, considering freedom of expression, it is normal. Even legislation allows it. However, the world practice shows that this kind of news is mostly published by yellow or tabloid press. Serious newspapers prefer political topics. People know well which newspaper published which information.”

Meanwhile, Anar Orujov, head of Internet TV “Channel 13″ on a positive note, said that these issues can help solve even the Karabakh problem: “Generally, making love to each other is a positive thing. That is, if there is love, there is a harmony, there is passion or there is no problem. If Azeris loved Armenians there would not have been the Karabakh conflict. The root to problems lies in hatred and discrimination because there is no love there. We should take one Azeri girl making love to an Armenian normally, because I would take it normally as well if one Azeri boy made love to an Armenian girl.”

In Anar bey’s opinion, there is no difference if the person who makes love is a child of an official or worker: “A child of an official is also a human and regardless of race, religion he or she can love someone else. It is not right to look at this issue in the context of if this is a child of an official or someone else. In other words, an Armenian is a human too and there are good and bad among them too. But if the issue is about one Armenian hating Azerbaijan it would be the topic of another discussion. ”

Anar Orujov thinks that the presentation of this news as shocking hinges upon mental values: “Maybe if it was a son of a Minister making love to an Armenian girl this news would not cause such a shock. But because Azerbaijan pays attention to human values, such a situation arose. I am not saying it is a normal reaction, but it is as it is, I think.”