The Nagorno-Karabakh region is a mountainous area in the South Caucasus where Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a bloody war in the late 1998s and early 1990s, and it has been a trigger for following violence in the years since (2016, 2020). This conflict has never come so close to the final peace agreement, as the peace negotiations are being carried out directly between Armenia and Azerbaijan while the possibility of Tbilisi mediation is on the table. The ongoing process brings people’s minds a question: Can Armenians and Azerbaijanis really live together again over all of the happenings?
Over the 30 years, propaganda related to the conflict has emerged from both conflict sides and third parties in an attempt to exacerbate tensions and keep alive two-sided hate.
Modern social media platforms also have played a negative role in shaping such undesirable establishments for the region. “Telegram” is one of them where hate speech targeting Armenian and Azerbaijani people is widely circulated by using dehumanising language to fuel violence and justify violent acts against each other.
According to January 2023 research conducted by the analytics company Similar Web, Telegram is the most popular messaging app in Armenia, while in Azerbaijan it is in third place.
Common Slurs have been used in Telegram channels (DFRLab)
“Successful” dissemination of such media courses in this regard has easily led to emerging stereotypes that stress Armenian and Azerbaijani communities can’t live together peacefully anymore due to committed crimes and two bloody wars. But is this real? Really Armenians and Azerbaijanis can’t live together in harmony?
There is an example which is next to the conflict region to hope for future coexistence: Marneuli, Georgia. There are a number of villages in the Marneuli region of Georgia where ethnic Armenians and Azeris citizens of Georgia live and work together in harmony.
Renewed fighting between Armenians and Azerbaijanis in Nagorno-Karabakh touches everyone there, but the villagers try not to argue about it. Being a Georgian citizen and having not been exposed to dehumanising propaganda over the years has played a crucial role in the shaping of such attitudes in the minds of these people.
The latest census in Georgia in 2014 shows that, out of about 8000 ethnic Armenians living in the region, Azerbaijanis are at around 85.000. They are most compacted in several villages of the region, such as Khojorni or Tsophi. These villages have become exemplary cases while a dozen media contents disseminate propaganda against the possibility of their coexistence.
According to previously realised reports from the region, the villagers are questioning mostly one question: Why are young soldiers dying and why all this bloodshed? One of the Armenian villagers of the region stresses that the last ethnic incident happened in the village of Khojorni in the late 1980s while also mentioning that they are against the war and the deaths of young due to the conflict( October 24, 2020).
Apart from that, it is interesting what the exemplary region’s population think about the peace prospect between Armenia and Azerbaijan, as well as the future coexistence in the disputed regions nowadays after the erupted war in 2020 and the following escalations within 3 years.
According to Haji Khalilov, a regional journalist from the region, the residents of Marneuli are positively approaching the potential coexistence and peace agreement. Additionally, he mentions that the residents of the region see accepting the citizenships of Armenia and Azerbaijan by the people who have left their hometowns as a result of the bloody war as a fruitful step and key solution for solving this conflict.
On the other hand, Rima Marangozyan, a journalism student at the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs (GIPA) emphasises the other dimension of the region. Firstly, she underlines her research outcomes about the region during The Forty-Four Days War. According to her research, the relations between the two communities got tense because of the ongoing war celebrations. Despite this, she also stresses that the people are still living peacefully in the region while mentioning that the other sides of the borders and all happenings are not related completely to ethnic Azerbaijanis or Armenians because they are Georgian citizens.
It is an undeniable fact that the bloody war in the Karabakh region has also influenced these people, even though, fortunately, the 2 communities in the region are living peacefully nowadays as before.
After the recent escalation in September, the Azerbaijani government announced the reintegration plan for Armenian residents who live in the Karabakh region. Furthermore, according to Internal Affairs of the Republic of Azerbaijan, a number of Armenian residents also have applied for Azerbaijani citizenship while nearly 100,000 Karabakh Armenians from the region have left the region following the 23-hour military clashes.
In the shadow of massive propaganda against the co-existence of the two communities by both conflict sides and third parties, the Marneuli region is a hopeful and exemplary case for establishing peace and diversity in the region.