Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 24
By Elmira Tariverdiyeva – Trend:
For the first time in the history of Azerbaijani football, Qarabag FK entered the UEFA Champions League group stage.
This is, undoubtedly, a great joy for the whole Azerbaijan, especially the country’s football fans, but there is another important point in the victory of this team – its name.
The fact is that the matches of such a significant event in the football life, as the Champions League, will be broadcast in dozens of countries, and millions of football fans around the world will many times hear the name of the team – Qarabag, which is an inseparable part of Azerbaijan. And this means that Armenia was defeated by Qarabag FK in the propaganda field of Europe and the world.
The aggressor country, which has been occupying the lands of others for many years, has always deemed it extremely important to justify itself in the eyes of the global community, by spreading false information about the Azerbaijani region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia, using propaganda resources of its lobby, diaspora organizations and diplomatic missions abroad, promoted its myth which says that Karabakh is an Armenian land, and even made up an Armenian name for it that is actually used by nobody, except for the Armenians themselves.
However, the Armenian propaganda machine did not shun weaving a web of lies around the whole Azerbaijani heritage of Nagorno-Karabakh, starting from carpets and famous Karabakh horses to the cuisine. An undereducated resident of a European hinterland could easily believe in this Armenian lie, which was in most cases suppressed by the Azerbaijani diplomatic missions.
But the victory of Qarabag FK can help in a wider coverage of the occupation of Azerbaijani territories and after the Champions League matches, many more people around the world will surely know that Karabakh is an Azerbaijani region, and they will not yield to the primitive provocation by the Armenian propagandists.
Elmira Tariverdiyeva is the head of Trend Agency’s Russian news service.