"Faced with European inaction in Armenia, let's rebuild our security policy"

From Armenia, we come back devastated. From April 24 to 29, our delegation from the Cercle d'Amitié France-Artsakh visited the land of Mount Ararat and the small neighboring republic of Nagorno-Karabakh to show France's friendship to a hard-hit nation. by a lost war; lost in the face of incomparably superior forces, infinitely hostile forces and under the fearless eye of a West as entertained by the great spectacle of the American elections as it was shut up by the archaic fears aroused by the Covid-19 epidemic.

In Europe, the demiurgic progress of medicine had - it was believed - evacuated a death now perceived as scandalous and senseless. In Armenia, we have seen that death retains a meaning, that of sacrifice, that of the defense of its own, that of the Nation. Yes, we have seen the still fresh graves of the Yerablour military cemetery, the weeping mothers and sisters, the fathers mad with grief, the inconsolable wives and white widows, collected or dazed on the thousands of graves of twenty-year-old kids. Yes we have seen the hairless and destitute refugee cohorts who crowd the borders of their lands now occupied by the Azerbaijani dictatorship. Yes we saw the checkpoints held by benevolent Russian conscripts in the heart of Artsakh now amputated from its southern part and from Shushi,its cultural capital. Yes we saw within twenty meters of the demarcation line the fierce, radically alien and hostile and yet unmistakably human faces of the Azerbaijani soldiers; Yes we saw at less than five hundred meters the emblematic cathedral of Shushi in the process of being disfigured and disarmenized as was recently razed the church of the green narthex (Ganatch Jam) which already no longer exists. Yes we now understand the meaning of the words of the previous Catholicos - the supreme authority of the Autocephalous Armenian Church - when he said that “Yes we saw at less than five hundred meters the emblematic cathedral of Shushi in the process of being disfigured and disarmenized as was recently razed the church of the green narthex (Ganatch Jam) which already no longer exists. Yes we now understand the meaning of the words of the previous Catholicos - the supreme authority of the Autocephalous Armenian Church - when he said that “Yes we saw at less than five hundred meters the emblematic cathedral of Shushi in the process of being disfigured and disarmenized as was recently razed the church of the green narthex (Ganatch Jam) which already no longer exists. Yes we now understand the meaning of the words of the previous Catholicos - the supreme authority of the Autocephalous Armenian Church - when he said that “

Westerners know Christ but no longer know the crucifixion

”.

With the Armenians, we have rediscovered what it means to be crucified.

Karabakh is our Guernica

Beyond the emotion, there is an error which would be fatal to us: the one which would consist in considering that this massacre hardly concerns us; that it is one of those incomprehensible ethnic conflicts that the sense of history will soon relegate to the rank of horrors of the past. No ! This aggression with exterminating accents committed by Azerbaijan against the Armenians of Artsakh is by no means a local conflict. No ! We cannot fail to summon neither the deeply racist speeches of the Azerbaijani dictator Ilham Aliev, promising to “

hunt Armenians like dogs

”, nor their translation into action which is the “

museum of horror”.

»Inaugurated in Baku and dehumanizing these Armenians even more in the eyes of a population already indoctrinated with hatred. This reminds us too much of the anti-Semitic propaganda exhibition of the “

Eternal Jew

” organized in 1937 by the Nazis, as, moreover, this war brings up the grim specter of the Armenian genocide of 1915. Moreover, if the Armenians have indeed lost this war, it was not so much the master of Baku who won it as Turkey, its overlord, its jihadist auxiliaries and its bayraktar drones. For Erdogan, the Turkish president, Karabakh was only a trial run. We must take him for what he is, in the military sense as in the political sense: our Guernica.

We see a Turkey, encouraged by its military successes and by European indolence and pusillanimity, become emboldened in Syria, Libya, Cyprus, Ukraine, the Caucasus still further and deliberately increase the arc of crises which surrounds Europe. .

First of all in the military sense, where Karabakh turned out to be a fantastic testing ground for Turkish drones as the Spanish Civil War had been for the stukas of the Condor legion. These drones have shown formidable efficiency and are now exported all around a European Union which remains scandalously devoid of domestic production in this area. In the political sense above all, where we see a Turkey encouraged by its military successes and even more by European indolence and pusillanimity, emboldening in Syria, Libya, Cyprus, Ukraine, the Caucasus again and deliberately increasing its arc of crises which surrounds Europe.Do we still have the strength and the capacity to resist? One would have to be very naive to believe that the dissolution of the Gray Wolves in France - courageous but in practice formal and without effect - or the tactical retreat of Milli Görüs in Strasbourg prevent Erdogan from advancing his pawns; at a time when the Balkans are already an area of ​​Turkish influence; at a time when many elected Europeans, and even reputedly powerful states such as Germany, are paralyzed in the face of Turkey due to the presence on our soil of a considerable Turkish diaspora, most of which has won over the cause of the Sultan and of which too many members behave in fact like devoted soldiers.advance his pawns; at a time when the Balkans are already an area of ​​Turkish influence; at a time when many elected Europeans, and even reputedly powerful states such as Germany, are paralyzed in the face of Turkey due to the presence on our soil of a considerable Turkish diaspora, most of which has won over the cause of the Sultan and of which too many members behave in fact like devoted soldiers.advance his pawns; at a time when the Balkans are already an area of ​​Turkish influence; at a time when many elected Europeans, and even reputedly powerful states such as Germany, are paralyzed in the face of Turkey due to the presence on our soil of a considerable Turkish diaspora, most of which has won over the cause of the Sultan and of which too many members behave in fact like devoted soldiers.a considerable Turkish diaspora overwhelmingly committed to the cause of the Sultan and of which too many members behave in fact like devoted soldiers.a considerable Turkish diaspora overwhelmingly committed to the cause of the Sultan and of which too many members behave in fact like devoted soldiers.

For an aggiornamento of the European security policy

In this context, France and Europe must take their responsibilities, that is to say their aggiornamento. We continue to live in a long-past political representation of the world. In view of the upsurge in threats, this is not a mistake, it is a mistake. The President of the Republic understood this perfectly, which shocked the deep state, its Gamelins and its Maginot line zealots - by evoking the brain death of NATO. The European security architecture is entirely based on a Soviet threat which has now disappeared and on the existence of a Warsaw Pact sent back to the dustbin of history. In Karabakh, France, the United States and Russia were supposed to help Armenia and Azerbaijan to resolve the conflict within the framework of the OSCE,an organization that was also born out of the Helsinki Agreements and the Cold War. The precarious cease-fire wrested on November 10 by Russia alone, the subsequent arrangements between Moscow and Ankara and the de facto eviction of the West complete the demonstration of the obsolescence of the paradigms on which our foreign and security policy is based, and incidentally of the structures which were to lead it.

If France's verbal demonstrations are not accompanied by real political and military action, they will only increase the hateful resentment of Turkey and Azerbaijan.

We must implement this aggiornamento for Armenia which, caught between deadly enemies and a cornered ally, does not deserve to be overwhelmed with dangerous friendships. If France's verbal demonstrations are not accompanied by real political and military action, they will only increase the hateful resentment of Turkey and Azerbaijan. This French contribution to strengthening the security of Armenia would also correspond - we are convinced - to the will of France expressed at the highest level by the President of the Republic, and recalled in Armenia itself in recent days by Gérard Larcher. the President of the Senate for whom "

Armenia is not a file but a duty

".

Finally, we owe this aggiornamento above all to ourselves, that is to say for the future security of our own citizens. The South Caucasus, but also Syria and the Ukraine, can and must become the site of the reconstruction of a new joint security architecture between Europe and Russia. Russia alone could not hold out for long in distant theaters of operation in the face of Turkey's disproportionate ambitions; it may not want to, moreover, confident in its ability to forge pragmatic agreements with the Turkish autocrat. But it is we who would suffer the most from these ambitions if they were to materialize even more, which is unfortunately no longer in the order of fantasy. As we left Nagorno-Karabakh, an old Armenian prophesied to us “

today, it is still us that the Turks are massacring;

tomorrow it will be you

”.

We must not allow it.

Signatories:

Guy Teissier, deputy, president of the Cercle d'Amitié France-Arktash

Valérie Boyer, senator, member of the Cercle d'Amitié France-Arktash

Marguerite Deprez-Audebert, MP

Xavier Breton, deputy

Jean-Pierre Cubertafon, deputy, member of the Cercle d'Amitié France-Arktash

François Pupponi, deputy, member of the Cercle d'Amitié France-Arktash