• Geopolicy
• National Security
• Issues of Armeniancy
• Economy

09.11.2009

ANTI-ARMENIAN INFORMATION POLICY OF AZERBAIJAN

   

Anna Zhamakochyan

It is necessary to study the types of the anti-Armenian information attacks, to elaborate the research methodology and to inform the society about the results in order to provide the informational security of the Armenian society. The formation of the ideas of Azerbaijani information attacks, which have gained abruptly growing tendency recently, is especially important and we shall try to present it in our article.

Without touching upon the dynamics of the development of the anti-Armenian mood let us observe what main approaches have been used by the architects of the anti-Armenian mood in the neigbouring country.

We find it reasonable to study the Azerbaijani anti-Armenian moods within two analytical planes:

I. within general infopolitical system
II. within definite informational actions

I. Anti-Armenian moods in the plane of Azerbaijani information policy

Within the first plane we can see that anti-Armenian information policy of Azerbaijan is the integral part of their state policy and is directed to the comprehensive discredit of the Armenian subjects (RA, NKR and Armeniancy), in order to influence various target groups. At the same time such a policy is accompanied by the formation of the auspicious image of their own country and people and dissemination of the Azerbaijani comments and approaches to the matters of argument. Those two parallel processes have merged at such an extent that the contraposition to the Armenia and Armeniancy has become the component of the contemporary self-presentation of Azerbaijan which is also one of the crucial factors inculcated in the new identity of Azerbaijani society. Thus, today anti-Armenian information policy is one of the important directions in political strategy of Azerbaijan, and the main principles of that policy are:

• The full-fledged gathering of the information about Armenia and Armeniancy, the orientation in the domestic problems of the RA, the study of the social and psychological and cultural image of the Armenian.
• Targeting and elaboration of anti-Armenian information policy based on the experience of other countries (mainly Turkey)
• Maintenance of the anti-Armenian policy by the formation of the positive image of their country and the dissemination of the Azerbaijani point of view on the matters of argument.
• Multi-vector attacking stance in anti-Armenian policy, opposition to the pro-Armenian information flows in operational and strategic planes.
• The dissemination of the anti-Armenian information among the differential and target groups (Azerbaijani public, Armenian public, Muslim world, Russian and CIS public, Western and international public choosing as a target, particularly the youth and even children, as well as those who take decisions in the countries significant from geopolitical point of view and international structures).
• The usage of special approaches and discourse in regard to any audience depending on its peculiarities,
• Integration of the anti-Armenian policy into all the spheres of state policy and its comprehensive system usage.

And the following components stand out as the constituent parts of the information policy system and interconnected platforms of Azerbaijani information actions:

• Historical and cultural component with the help of which, in order to prove that the Azerbaijanis are autochthons and Armenians are newcomers, the historical events are falsified and rearranged, the Armenian cultural traces are obliterated.
• Legal component, with the help of which domestic and international positions are consolidated and the rational basis is formed in order to promote the pro-Azerbaijani solution of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue.
• The public diplomacy component with the help of which, on the one hand, the potential of Azerbaijani NGOs is used for the propaganda in the societies of the third countries and on the other hand, the works are carried out for the formation, organizing and usage of the Azerbaijani “diaspora”.
• Lobby component with the help of which through not only diplomatic structures but also through the community structures formed abroad the decision making by the actors of the third countries is influenced.
• Domestic policy component with the help of which the hatred towards Armenians and revanchist atmosphere is formed
• Media component with the help of which the authorities not only can manage domestic media-resources of Azerbaijan but also attain the leverages for mass media of the third countries.
• Technological component with the help of which the Internet, satellite communication and other technological capacities serve for dissemination of anti-Armenian moods and loyalty to Azerbaijan.

II. Anti-Armenian mood in the plane of information actions

Analyzing Azerbaijani attacks in the plane of concrete information actions and taking into consideration their communicative character let us take a look at the structural elements of those attacks:

1. social context
2. source of information
3. means of communication
4. message
5. audience
6. main purpose

From the methodological point of view separate characteristics of those elements, as well as their synthesis, are extremely important in regard to the success and their influence. Thus, let us see how the elements of communication system are used and what kind of mechanisms and methods of anti-Armenian information actions could be seen in each of them.

1. Social context. To wide extent, it is the spatial and chronological environments where the communication or information action take place. Azerbaijani party, taking into consideration the importance of anti-Armenian information actions, tries to take the advantage the favourable situations and to balance the unfavourable factors or to neutralize it on operative and tactical or strategic levels. Thus, the opening of the Azerbaijani embassy in Hungary in August 2004 was conditioned by the tactical and strategic intention to balance or neutralize the unfavourable factors of social context. Its purpose was the coordination of the information and other actions connected with the trial of Azerbaijani officer Ramil Safarov¹.

It is remarkable that the information actions directed to the strengthening of the position of Azerbaijan in Hungry continue till now. In November 2008 the 3rd International scientific conference “Hungary – Azerbaijan: Cultural Dialogue”, which has already become traditional, was arranged and its discussions, among other topics, were devoted to the issues of Azerbaijan’s history in contemporary Hungarian historiography².

The unfavourable factors are also balanced by the operative informational actions. Thus, if the president of neigbouring Georgia M. Saakashvili visited the Memorial of the Genocide Victims then in Azerbaijani informational space the interview with 1 or 2 Georgian historians who deny Armenian Genocide, deprecate Armenian-Georgian relations, label and blame Armeniancy will surely appear³.

From the point of view of usage of the favourable factors of social context by Azerbaijan the speculations about the political situation in Armenia after the March 1, 2008 events in legal, foreign policy and other planes is remarkable. In this very context Azerbaijan succeeded to introduce the “Situation on occupied Azerbaijani territories” resolution to the agenda of the 62nd session of the UN General Assembly and to obtain its recognition while only 39 countries of 192 UN member countries voted “for” that resolution.

Thus, the monitoring of the social context and the elaborating of any new factors both on the international and Armenian scales promote the aspirations and efficient implementation of the Azerbaijani information actions.

But Azerbaijani party is not content with the objectively created conditions of the social context and it is implementing through the attacking actions artificial factors (e.g. the declaring of the mourning days when Armenians massacred Azerbaijanis) and tries to carry out the subjective formation of the social context. This allows transforming the logic of the communication and putting Armenian party into defensive position. The social context formed with the help of such methods becomes definite stable environment where Azerbaijani propaganda is carried out with the implementation of the prearranged templates. Those templates are also used in case of calendar dates (such as April 24 – the memorial day of the victims of the Armenian Genocide) and other predictable situations.

2. Source of information. The trust, authoritativeness, diversity and “legitimacy” are the main characteristics of the source of information. That is why in the issue of the spreading anti-Armenian information Azerbaijani party uses the prearranged approaches. First of all, it tries to attain authoritativeness to Azerbaijani propaganda sources, to form their positive image and to provide confidence in them. E.g. the analyst of the official Azerbaijani informational agency “Azertadj” Vugar Seidov is presented as a “well-known political scientist” who signs his material from Budapest or Berlin and makes an impression of the international expert. On the similar principle all the anti-Armenian propagandist figures are stated “celebrated scientists and figures”.

The other methodological tactics is the creation of the illusion of diversification of the sources of information through involving into anti-Armenian actions not only local but also foreign researchers and journalists. And the involving of the pseudo-neutral foreigners (as, for example, Erich Figle and Yuri Pompeev) is used as a means to legitimization of the anti-Armenian information activities. The important part is assigned to the pro-Azerbaijani statements of foreign diplomats and political figures which are presented as an objective opinion of the international community.

In order to legitimate its own disinformation Azerbaijani party tries to make a reference to Armenian or seemingly Armenian sources. With this purpose, sometimes under the propagandistic text the not existing persons with Armenian surnames sign, the fictitious sentences are ascribed to the well-known Armenian figures or their thoughts are presented out of context with the changes in their sense. The following is a typical example of ascribing fictitious ideas to the Armenian figures: on June 2, 2006 the director of “Bank of information” centre brought “quotations” from Zori Balayan’s “Resurrection” book about “the atrocities of the Armenians in regard to the Azerbaijanis”. It is also mentioned that the book was published in 1996 in Vanadzor, meanwhile, neither Z. Balayan nor any other author have ever published such a book⁴. It is remarkable that during the summer session of the Council of Europe in 2009 the deputy of the Meli Majlis Ganira Pashaeva (sister of Mehriban Alieva) in her address “cited” from that mythical book again (this time it was called “The Resurrection of Our Sprit”), thus refreshing that anti-Armenian disinformation before the international community⁵.

The Azerbaijani sites which were registered in “.am” domain space and presented as Armenian sites (xronika.am, versiya.am) also served for the legitimization. One of them (versiya.am) existed for comparatively short time and was exposed after the first false pro-Armenian information. The site was scrutinized by the Armenian Internet community⁶ and blocked by the efforts of the Office of public relations and mass media of the RA president staff. Xronika.am which had existed for comparatively long period tried to influence Armenian-Georgian relations spreading in August 2008 anti-Georgian disinformation about the conflict in South Ossetia on behalf of “Patriots of Javakhq”⁷. Latter on the contract of that domain was not prolonged by the understandable reason.

It is remarkable that Azerbaijani anti-Armenian informational actions are directed not only to the rising of the confidence to their sources, their diversification and legitimization but also to the discrediting and delegitimization of pro-Armenian or Armenian sources. To this purpose not only the Armenian sources, which are labeled as “propagandist”, “disinformational”, “criminal” or even sometimes “terrorist”, are discredited but also those foreign sources which views run counter to the anti-Armenian propaganda aims. In this issue Azerbaijanis follow the Turkish methodology which striking example is depreciation of Franz Werfel’s famous “The Forty Days of Musa Dagh” historical novel. With this purpose Turks in 1989, on the threshold of 75th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide created infologeme according to which Werfel in the last years of his life “found out that his work has no historical background”, And the Turkish party, taking into consideration the Jewish decent of Werfel and, therefore, the meaning of his work to the Jews, in order to balance reliability of the primary source by the source of spreading of the infologeme, chose American rabbi Albert Emethew (this mythological figure is also presented under the names of Abraham Sabar, Abraham Son Sever). Emethew who emigrated from Turkey to the US in the early age made that “discovery” when he was 101 years old, in 50 years after the death of Franz Werfel⁸. The classical anti-Armenian Erich Figle and other anti-Armenian propagandists referred to that source later.

3. Means of communication. The quantity and the variety of the means are very important parameters due to which the information dissemination and the creation of the illusion of trustworthiness are provided. The variety of the means of communication is provided by the implementation of all the possible formal (state bodies, mass media, diplomatic means, NGOs) and non-formal (movable informants, internet resources, social networks) routes and communication networks with the purpose to cover the wider possible audience to which the information is addressed thus making that information as accessible as possible. Azerbaijani party widely uses the mechanism of mutual references⁹ when the same information is disseminated through many sources which refer to each other. This mechanism not only multiplies the means of communication thus providing maximum availability to various audiences but it also promotes the creation of the quantity effect. When the same information is disseminated with the help of various means of communication (personal contacts, mass media, books, and video films) the impression of quantitative multiplication of the means of communication is created and this creates the illusion of trustworthiness.

The re-printing of the same information by the mutual references method is also an additional means for the increase of the Internet sites’ rating and priority access to them by the search engines.

4. Message. Message is the most multi-layer component of communication which main characteristic is the content – theme, object, discourse, methods of textual influence, argumentation, emotional load, creation of the image (its symbolism), the frequency of repetition, multi-genre character.

Frequent repetition of the message, fist of all, pursues the aim to bring it within the reach of the audience and draw attention to it. Besides, it has more deep consequences: due to the appropriateness of the mechanisms of perception and memorizing frequently repeated message is fixed in the public conscious more efficiently. Even if the message is unacceptable it receives trivial character and becomes a part of social reality. This mechanism is also a means to substantiate Azerbaijani propaganda; being repeated for several times even groundless message becomes substantiated. Azerbaijani propaganda even resorts to the multi-genre “packing” of one and the same message (the desired information is presented not only in the form of political texts, but also in the form of cultural, sport and texts of other character), visual expressiveness and visualization (peculiarly motivated “documentaries”, fabricated photos, maps, animation and etc.). Great attention is paid to the attractiveness of text’s headlines, symbols, and emotional saturation.

Any subject which is of great value for Armeniancy and which is its symbol, whether it is a common person, historical hero, political history of Armenia, state, social or religious figure, becomes a subject of discussion or even an object to attack in the Azerbaijani information texts. Among the most frequently met anti-Armenian attacks the following hot topics can be distinguished:

• The history of Armenian statehood and Armenian people, mainly, the political history of Artsakh, the issues of the origin of the Armenians and their being the autochthons.
• Interpretation of the formation of the Azerbaijani state, the origin and the formation of the people and the fixing their nativity in accordance with their own aims.
• The denial of the Armenian Genocide in 1915 and the projecting of the crime.
• The accusations of carrying out in the 20th century the “genocide of the Azerbaijanis” incriminated to the Armenian party:

- The collisions between the Baku commune and Muslims in 1918 which are presented as a realization of the “criminal plan” of the “Azerbaijani genocide” by the Armenians
- The presenting of the Azerbaijanis killed during the operation of the Soviet army in Baku in 1990 as the victims of the Armenian provocations;
- The presenting of the events in Khodjalu in 1992 as the slaughters, i.e. the genocide, carried out by the Armenian solders,

• The blaming of the Armenians in the “crimes” against other peoples, total hatred to Turks and anti-Semitism; the infologeme of the “international Armenian threat”;
• The misrepresentation of the moral and psychological image of the Armenians and the system of values of the Armenian people
• Speculation round the social and economic and political problems of the RA and NKR, ascription of the imaginary problems to them.
• Speculations round the problems of the Armenian army, the dissemination of the discrediting infologemes.

While examining the communities in the aforementioned topical messages we can notice that there are mainly 4 mechanisms used by Azerbaijani propaganda machine in the anti-Armenian texts:

• The mirror reflection of the successful actions initiated by the Armenian party in the Armenian-Turkish information relations.
• The mechanism of the direct projection of the weak points and negative information regarding Turkish-Azerbaijani party.
• Mechanism of using anti-Semitic schemes for anti-Armenian activity
• The mechanism of implementation of “anti-racist racism”.

The best example of the mirror reflection is the notion of “Western Azerbaijan” (like Western Armenia) which has been put into circulation recently and under which not only the territory of the NKR but also the territory of the modern RA and a part of Georgia are understood. Due to the mechanism of mirror reflection the contemporary Turkish-Azerbaijani propaganda makes symmetric response to all Armenian informational flows on the subject of the Armenian Genocide and at the same time it projects the known Turkish and Azerbaijani problems and tangled events to the Armenian party.

Anti-Semitic schemes are also mainly used in regard to the themes connected with the Genocide as well as in the issues of discrediting the system of value of the Armeniancy, moral make-up of the Armenian. On the same principle that anti-Semites blame Jewish people in the creation of the “myth” of Holocaust, its provoking and arranging for the achievement of their own aims, in the same way Azerbaijani and Turkish propagandists blame Armenians in the creation of the “myth” of massacres, their provoking and arranging. The forms of anti-Semitic labels are also used in regard to the Armenians (“perfidious”, “traitors”, “greedy”, “liars”).

As for the principle of “anti-racist racism” it is manifested in the form of spreading anti-Armenian moods by blaming them in anti-Turkish moods and anti-Semitism. By analogy to how the racism in regard to the whites is motivated by the racism of the latter in regard to the coloured people (which, in fact, is the same racism), in the same way Azerbaijani and Turkish anti-Armenian moods are tried to be motivated by the total anti-Turkism and anti-Semitism of the Armenians.

In all the aforementioned thematic messages the forms of historical, legal, religious and cultural and everyday discourse take considerable place. They all are united around their main purpose – the dissemination of the anti-Armenian moods. Generally, such methods of textual influence based on logical mistakes and semantic manipulations can be met as:

• Insisting on simple disinformation, false, inlogome;
• Usage of verisimilar lie;
• Exaggeration or running to extremes;
• The presentation of the half-truth or selective information;
• Anti-scientific induction – groundless generalization of the particular;
• Asymmetric comparisons;
• Pinning of the archetype and stereotype labels, mocking, irony, attribution of the negative qualities;
• “Disclosure of the dark pages”.

5. Audience. The efficiency of the information action depends on civilizational, religious and cultural peculiarities of the audience. In this sense Azerbaijani informationl and propaganda initiatives clearly differentiate target audience and discourse of the messages sent to them. Thus, the appropriate differentiated approach is shown to every audience.

• In Muslim societies Armenia is presented as a terrorist Christian state, or a puppet in the hands of world Zionism and Christian states,
• In Jewish circles – as an anti-Semite country,
• In Western countries – as an anti-democratic element and a break on the regional progress,
• In international structures Azerbaijan sets up its own claims as if they meet all the international legal norms,
• And in their own society for false historical and cultural groundings and revanchist reasons the image of “enemy Armenian” is formed.

6. Main purpose. The main purposes of the Azerbaijani information actions are:

1. The depreciation, “annihilation” of the spiritual, cultural and material values regarding to Armenia and Armeniancy in contrast to raising, attaching significance and spreading of the Azerbaijanis.
2. Demoralization, weakening of the Armeniancy, forming of the feeling of defeatism in contrast to the aspiration to unite Azerbaijanis in their revanchism and struggle with common enemy (Armenian).

The first purpose has wider orientation and is aimed to the formation of the appropriate position in all the target audiences, including Armeniancy, by implementing mechanisms of discrediting and blaming in inhuman crimes. Though the efficiency of its influence on Armenian audience is more than arguable it is aimed to the formation of the inferiority complex in Armeniancy and it serves as a basis for the second main purpose. The second purpose is oriented to particularly Armenian and Azerbaijani audiences. In this case not only the mechanism directed to the humiliation and blaming Armeniancy but also the threats of restarting the war and blockade with the aim “to stifle” the RA and the NKR economically as well as the mechanisms for the splitting of the Armeniancy through introduction among Armenians the differentiation based on the place of birth or any other differences. What in Armenian audiences plays a role of demoralizing factor or the factor of formation of the defeatism, in Azerbaijani society stirs up pride and believe in “victory over Armeniancy”.

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