The Awakening Specter: Azerbaijani Troops in Nagorno-Karabakh and the Lessons from History

The entry of Azerbaijani troops into Nagorno-Karabakh on September 19 awakened the specter of the Armenian genocide, this scar which forever disfigures European memory. Have we learned nothing from history? How long will Europeans hide their faces? Allowing the politics of the worst to take place is the worst of policies: that of brutality, of fait accompli, of arbitrariness.

At the time these lines are written, a people is suffering, in indifference, violence and humiliation. Purification is underway. Independence is dying. Averting our gaze from what is happening in Nagorno-Karabakh is not only a moral fault, it is also a tragic geopolitical error. By wanting to be indifferent, Europe above all demonstrates its weakness and authorizes all future attacks.

After the Russian offensive in Ukraine, we thought that Europe had finally understood its role. Along the way, a lesson had been learned: compromises – more or less passive – with authoritarian regimes in the name of so-called “realpolitik”., but above all well-understood energy and economic interests, always end up paying a high price. It was said that in the face of Moscow’s coup, the Twenty-Seven had come together like never before and that European diplomacy was entering a new era.

No illusion

A few months later, faced with a new invasion of the region, brutal but sadly predictable because it was planned, Europe shows a distressing face: that of an unworthy pusillanimity in the face of the abuses committed. Russia, which was presented to us as a stabilizing power in the region, is looking elsewhere. It must be said that it is entirely mobilized by the dirty colonial war it is waging in Ukraine, and that Vladimir Putin has in this context every interest in sparing the susceptibility of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for whom Turkey and Azerbaijan constitute, let us remember, “one nation, two states”.

Already in July 2022, when everything augured for the worst, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, appeared all smiles in Baku, alongside President Ilham Aliev. However, it was already impossible to entertain the slightest illusion as to the nature of the regime installed by the latter for almost twenty years. But now, we feared a particularly harsh winter, and we had to look for gas elsewhere than in Russia. The agreement had been concluded: it was better to depend on Baku than on Moscow.

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