Baku, Azerbaijan, June 9
By Rufiz Hafizoglu – Trend:
It is no secret that the West seriously fears the Russian-Turkish rapprochement, which is very important today primarily for the resolution of conflicts in the Middle East.
A serious shift occurred in the resolution of the Syrian conflict after the creation of the Turkey-Russia-Iran format.
But there is another country - Armenia that also extremely fears rapprochement between Turkey and Russia.
The simplest reason is that now a friend of Armenia - Russia - has a different relationship with the enemy of Armenia - Turkey.
Armenians lived peacefully in the Ottoman Empire for centuries, and the Ottoman sultans called Armenians "Millet-i sadika" or "Tebai sadika", which mean faithful nation or loyal subjects. In the Ottoman Empire, Armenians held high positions at the courts, occupied leading positions in the financial sector and trade. Ottoman Armenians also held important positions in the civil service.
But despite all this, the "faithful nation" always looked for a reason to rebel against its master.
One of such "significant" events for the "faithful nation" was the weakening of the Ottoman Empire, as a result of which Armenian gangs rebelled in a number of areas of present-day Turkey and found support from the Russian Empire.
I would not like to compare the current Russia with the Ottoman Empire, but still some parallels can be drawn.
While the West imposed pressure on the Ottoman Empire, today a similar pressure is imposed on Russia.
It has already been noted above that the weakening of the Ottoman Empire led to the Armenian uprising, which means that the "faithful nation" has no permanent friends, but only its own ambitions.
In fact, today, Armenia, which has become a parliamentary republic headed by Nikol Pashinyan, pursues a policy of getting out of Russia's influence.
The policy pursued by Pashinyan once again proves that Armenia can turn away from Russia to the West at any moment, and this is well understood in Russia, which has rich and long-term traditions of statehood.
On the other hand, representatives of the "faithful nation" are well aware that Armenia is less interesting to Moscow than Turkey, as evidenced by the economic, political and military cooperation between Moscow and Ankara against the backdrop of tense relations between Turkey and the West.
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Rufiz Hafizoglu, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Trend
Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu