Effects of 2016 April Clashes on Armenian Diaspora Media Diplomová Práce

MASARYKOVA UNIVERZITA Fakulta sociálních studií Katedra politologie

Effects of 2016 April Clashes on Armenian Diaspora Media Diplomová práce

Tarlan Aliyev

UČO:479427

Vedoucí práce: prof. JUDr. PhDr. Miroslav Mareš, Ph.D. Politologie Brno 2020

Prohlášení o autorství práce Prohlašuji, že jsem diplomovou práci na téma „Effects of 2016 April Clashes on Armenian Diaspora Media“ vypracovala samostatně a veškeré zdroje, jež jsem pro vypracování práce použila, jsou uvedeny v seznamu pramenů a literatury.

Declaration of Authorship I declare that I have written the diploma thesis on “Effects of 2016 April Clashes on Armenian Diaspora Media” independently and used only the sources listed in the bibliography and identified as references.

Brno, 02. 06. 2020 Tarlan Aliyev: ……………………….

Abstract This Diploma Thesis tries to analyze the effect of April Clashes in 2016 on Armenian Diaspora Media. The main question was that if Armenian Diaspora Media changed their narratives because of April Clashes, then further look for what was the change and the reasons for it. The thesis work observes diaspora media in three countries with a considerable Armenian diaspora community and collects data from there. With the help of the collected data, examples, and theories in the field, thesis work makes an analysis of the case. The thesis work finds that there is a narrative change in Armenian diaspora media as a result of April clashes.

Keywords April Clashes, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Diaspora, Media, Nagorno Karabakh, Narrative

Anotace Tato diplomová práce se snaží analyzovat vliv dubnových střetů v roce 2016 na arménská média Diaspora. Hlavní otázkou bylo, že pokud arménská diasporální média změnila své vyprávění kvůli dubnovým střetům, pak dále hledejte, co to bylo za změnu a důvody. Diplomová práce sleduje diasporová média ve třech zemích se značnou arménskou diasporou a shromažďuje data odtamtud. Práce pomocí analýzy shromážděných dat, příkladů a teorií v terénu provede analýzu případu. Diplomová práce zjišťuje, že došlo k narativní změně arménských diaspór v důsledku dubnových střetů.

Klíčová slova

Dubnové střety, Arménie, Ázerbájdžán, Diaspora, Média, Nagorno Karabakh, Výpravný

Table of Contents:

Introduction ______5 Theoretical Background ______9 Methodology ______17 Data ______22 Armenian Diaspora Media in Russian Federation ______22 Before the April Clashes ______22 After the April Clashes ______24 Armenian Diaspora Media in United States ______27 Before the April Clashes ______27 After the April Clashes ______30 Armenian Diaspora Media in Turkey ______33 Before the April Clashes ______33 After the April Clashes ______35 Analysis ______38 Numbers______38 Russian Federation ______38 United States ______40 Turkey ______42 Narrative and Content Analysis ______44 Russian Federation ______44 United States ______46 Turkey ______49 Results ______52 Discussion ______56 Conclusion ______60 Bibliography ______63 Appendix ______71

Introduction

The conflict in Nagorno Karabakh region has long been an issue between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Importance of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict for parties can be illustrated by the fact that two governmental changes happened in Azerbaijan and one in Armenia because of the defeats and the perception of losing in the conflict. First, 1992 and 1993 political transitions in Azerbaijan, first bringing nationalists to the power and later bringing Haydar Aliyev into power. First transition resulted because of Khojaly Massacre. “In late February 1992, Armenian forces attacked the village of Khojaly in an attempt to take control over a nearby airfield. Khojaly had been under a blockade for a few months and was only lightly defended. As the village was attacked and the Azerbaijani inhabitants fled Khojaly they were gunned down by Armenian forces. An official Azerbaijani investigation confirmed that 485 persons lost their lives in this atrocity, which has since been termed as the single worst massacre in the Nagorno-Karabakh war.” (Karčić 2016, 597) This massacre in the village of Khojaly had a huge effect on the people and in the government, which led to the resignation of Ayaz Mutallibov. Although he returned to the power and wanted to suspend election and ban all parties in coming months, he faced a huge resistance from Azerbaijan Popular Front Party and they took the power from Mutallibov. Another major event in this period was the invasion of Shusha by Armenians, a city that always had a significant importance for Azerbaijanis for its historical and cultural importance. In the correlation, we can see how massacres in Khojaly, and later invasion of Shusha, led to the political transition and changes in the Baku. The second transition in 1993 was against the Elchibay when “he was overthrown by Surat Huseynov”. (Fairbanks 1995, 16) Although not directly linked to the Karabakh conflict, their disagreement started after humiliating defeat in Kalbajar and start of losing territories afterwards. In Armenia side, 1998 resignation of Levon Ter-Petrosyan also came after his willingness to back down on the Nagorno Karabakh conflict and accept the offered peace deal with Azerbaijan. “Ter-Petrossian's unwillingness to give up on Karabagh proved his downfall. He supported the OSCE proposal for phased settlement of the dispute, withdrawing Armenian forces from occupied Azeri territory and negotiating Karabagh's status. Those who had assured the president's hollow victory were steadfastly opposed, forcing his resignation.” (Bremmer 1998) His resignation were also supported by diaspora too. It wasn’t welcomed well by diaspora how Ter-Petrosyan wanted to focus on the economic and political development of Republic of Armenia while mostly ignoring the demands of diaspora on relations with Turkey and Azerbaijan. “After Ter-Petrossian’s ouster on 3

February 1998, the newly installed president, Robert Kocharian, reverted to traditional anti-Turkish modes of Armenian nationalism, taking his lead from the diaspora.” (Shain 2002, 123) Most recent concern in Armenia came in 2018 revolution, when Armenians are feared of change in political power may encourage Azerbaijan to start an offensive in Nagorno Karabakh. “Both in the Russian media and in Armenia there were warnings that the current political crisis might fuel a renewed outbreak of the conflict. Thus, the Russian online newspaper Gazeta.Ru warned that the South Caucasus could become “something like a Middle East in miniature, the hearth for a new war,” if Azerbaijan were to exploit the current political crisis in Armenia and intervene militarily to reestablish control over Nagorno-Karabakh.” (Weiss 2018) Similar news also air in the Azerbaijan side when any major disruptions expected or happening. While Nagorno Karabakh issue affected on the internal politics of both countries, it also used as the deterring factor for governments. Above-mentioned events show how Nagorno Karabakh can directly or indirectly affect the internal politics of both countries or be the issue to take into account when dealing with internal politics. Although it should be noted that Nagorno Karabakh conflict isn’t the sole reason for the changes, it should be considered as one of the most important indicators in determining the decisions made. The recent such event, and the case in point in this work, will be April Clashes in 2016. “In the early hours of 2 April, 2016, following the return of the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents from the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, intense clashes between the Azerbaijani and Armenian armies commenced along the north and south lines of contact. Although Azerbaijani forces initially captured several strategic posts around the villages of Seysulan and Talish (north) and the Lele Tepe heights (south), Azerbaijan was eventually able to hold only the latter post. . . According to Armenian experts, the situation was escalated by Azerbaijan, as it represented a message to both Armenia and the West that Baku can also use military power to resolve problems.” (Bayramov 2016, 118-119) The result of the short war was in favour of Azerbaijani side while Armenia was the one that lost some parts of territory in the frontline. Although the gains and losses for parties was not huge, the importance of the event lays on the fact that it was the first major, and comparably longer, clashes between parties after the 1994 ceasefire agreement. However, clash doesn’t limit on the frontlines where hot confrontations take place from time to time. While trying to possess strong army and hard power to have upper hand in talks, and be able to conduct defend or attack operations in the region, it is important to gain international support for their cause and hope that it will benefit them during peace talks or in getting more recognition and

6 support for their causes. Parties also try to maximize their use of media in persuading external actors on their cause in the conflict. Diaspora media, in its turn, takes important role in this effort since they have wider relations and more widespread local followers in the countries they reside. Through the course of the conflict, those media organizations have followed some patterns in portraying the events in Nagorno Karabakh or justifying their cause in similar ways. However, some extraordinary events that are different from the similar pattern of the conflicts take place during the conflict and might cause some changes in the pattern of the normal discourse of diaspora media to change. 2016 April clashes is one of such events and had an effect on the diaspora media discourse. Armenians have many diaspora communities around the world but some of these have higher population and influence than others. Considering the high number of Armenian population in OSCE Minsk Group countries, which will be United States and Russian Federation in our research, and Turkey, as a country have close ties with Azerbaijan while also having considerable number of Armenian people in the country, Armenian Diaspora has more influence in these countries through their media organizations that are active there. Most of the media organizations that are present in these countries have long history and played a significant role in creating the Armenian narrative for the local people in these countries. Having the exceptional cases may also put these media organizations to reflect on the new emerging issues and respond it quickly to be the first ones in creating the narrative for local people. The main research focus will be on the change of this narrative in Armenian diaspora media during 2016 clashes. Any considerable change or silence on the issue would mean the support for government in calming the population after considerable lose in April. However, diaspora and government relations should also be considered when assessing their reaction to the April War. In the current literature, we have many works on diaspora, media and conflicts. One of the books on the exact topic is “Media, Diaspora and Conflict”, which talks about the role of diaspora media in promotion of recognition of diasporas and their constructive or destructive role in the process of conflicts. (Ogunyemi 2017) Another book on the topic focus on how diaspora media can re-create the conflict for the local population of the host country. (Osman 2017) Further, we can see a lot of work on Armenian diaspora too and separate research about the diaspora media also available in the literature. Works on how new generation of Armenian diaspora relate to Nagorno Karabakh war through collective memory is also researched. (Chernobrov and Leila 2019) However, these works usually focus on the some parts of the issue while leaving the rapid reactions aside. Therefore, we lack the exact work focusing on Armenian diaspora media and also looking for

7 the rapid changes in the attitude of diaspora media after significant event in the homeland. In order to fill the absence in the literature and look at the effects of clashes on diaspora media, we will look for the changes in narratives of Armenian diaspora, whether there was any or not, and try to explain the reasons of such change. In order to address the case above, we will look on narrative changes in Armenian diaspora media through the research. First, we will describe the necessary terminology in our theory part and try to formulate the system in assessing the data we collect. Moving to methodology part, we will define the method we are going to use and define our coding scheme for the data collection. The coding scheme will be formulated after defining two main categories and pilot coding with one of the media sources. As a result, we will define subcategories of these two main categories and code all media sources according to that procedure. After, we will look on the examples from the media sources in point throughout the defined period. It will be for the purpose of illustrating the main theme of media sources before and after clashes to better observe the difference. Although it isn’t possible to include all of the articles, most important ones related to the clashes and resembling the main narrative will be used. In analysis part, we will observe our data to see how different categories in our coding scheme changed comparing to the period of without effect, which will let us to determine the effect of clashes was significant enough or not. After that we will look deeper into the changes and see how they change depending on the timeline and on the countries the diaspora media residing on. Further, we will assess the main narratives in the period of interest and will look for the changes. The changes we look for will be the significant change in the context that Armenian diaspora media uses. We will collect all our results in result part and try to explain the reasons for the change or the stability.

Theoretical Background

Diaspora groups might take an important role in the internal affairs of the country. Their influence into the host country also depend on how well they integrated into this country and society. “Very little can be said that is equally true of all of these diasporic groups. Nearly all consist of four categories of people who exist at different levels of integration into the host society: the assimilated or nearly assimilated; the comfortably ethnicized; the new migrants and refugees who still hold on to, or are in the grip of, traditional homeland identities; and the diasporic element. These categories are not “stages” in a unidirectional historical trajectory; while often there is a tendency, over time, to move from immigrant to diasporic and then through ethnicity to assimilation, intermediate stabilities and even reversals are possible; the rate and direction of assimilation are neither predetermined nor inexorable.” (Tölölyan 2001, 9) Usually the number of generations diaspora spent on this country affects the level of their interests in the home country. While the first generations usually do have a stronger bonds with the home country, couple of generations later it might turn into the abstract feelings towards homeland rather than strong bonds with homeland. However, more generations spent in the host country makes diaspora more powerful since they became adapted to the internal politics of the country and possess more sources to influence on the internal politics. Therefore, both extremes of assimilated and new migrants of diasporic groups can be less effective while other two groups can play more important role for the homeland. As diasporas inside themselves have different relations toward their homeland, there is also a difference depending on the type of conflicts too. Depending on the how conflicts take place or in which stage they are, diasporas can change their type of involvement in it. “On-going Conflict: Advocacy, lobbying, petitions, campaigning, sending financial support to armed groups, joining the army or the insurgent group as fighters, extra-territorial voting. Peace Processes: Spoiling or supporting the process, getting involved as third party, facilitating host country’s engagement in peace processes in the homeland, taking part in the process as negotiators. Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development: Making investments, practicing entrepreneurship, participating in return migration, development projects, development support, and to assistance to foreign donors.” (Toivanen and Bahar 2020, 3) For the case in the point, we see characteristics from all on-going conflict, peace process and post-conflict reconstruction. While lobbying and campaigning for Armenia and against Azerbaijan, we also see the facilitation of host country’s engagement in the peace process in the homeland. Further, there are many initiatives on making 9 investments by diaspora on the Nagorno Karabakh and supporting the repatriation attempts of the government. It is also related to the nature of the conflict since there are clashes even during the peace talks. Therefore, we can’t solely put Nagorno Karabakh conflict into one specific category. It is also because of the different interpretations for the conflict since it might be considered as a settled dispute for some groups in Armenia side so they work on the issue as peace process or as a post-conflict reconstruction. Different important events in the homeland can affect the way diaspora approach to the conflict. “Massacres, pogroms and ethnic cleansing in the homeland serve as transformative events prompting diasporas to shift from contained to transgressive contention. Diasporas expand their repertoire to include fund-raising for weapons, drafting of fighters and aiding radical factions in the homeland. Formerly inactive diaspora members become mobilized. In short, a communal threat prompts a communal response from diaspora circles. . . Global media cover extensively grave violations of human rights, and indirectly expose diasporas to images of mutilated bodies, burials and vandalized religious places. While such reports may trigger limited response from international organizations, they have a magnifying effect on diaspora populations. With their real or ‘imagined’ affective linkages to kin and identity locked in a collective trauma, diasporas experience powerful emotions of fear, anger and threat to their collective identity. Such emotions become instrumental in firming a population’s resolve to use violence. As Goldstone and Tilly (2001) argue, attribution of threat becomes a powerful mechanism mobilizing against repression ‘when the costs of not acting seem to be too great’.” (Koinova 2011, 347-48) Therefore, media has a great role in activating the diaspora groups. While events might seem smaller for the outsiders, it might have bigger effects on the diaspora than expected. Furthermore, diaspora groups themselves have media organizations that might target the diaspora members and aim to activate them in the participation on the conflict. Combining both international media and diaspora media, importance of the events might be multiplied and presented in that way to the audience of diaspora groups. Media starts to play a key role in all conflicts and in policy process. Accessibility and understandable content to whole population makes it easier for media to engage with public and affect their opinion in particular cases. Media might be used by government itself or can be coordinated by independent groups to focus on the particular issue and emphasize the parts of this issue that are most beneficial for the actors supporting them. Diaspora media is another tool available for the actors in politics to use and influence the policy process in diasporated conflicts. “Diasporated conflicts are conflicts where there is a hegemonic involvement of the diaspora that can

10 result in offline benefits. This is chiefly cultivated on diasporic media platforms that serve to enable and empower diasporas through (1) structural dominance by having a monopoly of media ownership and editorial oversight, and (2) accumulated mediated representation of diasporas as primary definers. . . Within this concept, diaspora communities can exercise their authority in progressive and/or regressive manners depending on their ideological dispositions, lived experiences in their host countries and the extent to which they carry conflict trauma and baggage.” (Osman 2018, 62) They can use different methods and tools in their possession to take part in the process especially in the modern time with the help of social media. Having the little interest on the local conflict, diaspora can take the role of only definers in the media. This might give them the chance to manipulate or counter-manipulate. In this process, main narratives can help the diaspora media to portray the conflict as beneficial for their party. “Narratives are “the primary way by which human experience is made meaningful” and what arrange the world of ours.” (Polkinghorne 1988, 1) In the absence of any prior information on the particular issue, it is easier to fill it with the first narrative told to the individual than changing the existing narrative in the mind. It is one of the reasons that might motivate diaspora media to take faster action and portray the new narrative on the eve of changing nature to gain upper hand in the future. Narrative text is the main medium to convey the narrative. “A narrative text is a text in which an agent or subject conveys to an addressee (‘tells’ the reader) a story in a particular medium, such as language, imagery, sounds, buildings, or a combination thereof. A story is the content of that text, and produces a particular manifestation, inflection, and ‘colouring’ of a fabula; the fabula is presented in a certain manner. A fabula is a series of logically and chronologically related events that are caused or experienced by actors.” (Bal 2009, 5) In the modern world, media uses fabula to convey the same feelings caused or experienced by actors to the group that isn’t in the reach of these events. That might be done with the purpose of empowering the bonds with the members of the community that are farther from the events or creating the better understanding for the outsiders of the group to gain their support. Important events can make the usage of such fabula more often than the normal because it opens a window of opportunity for the media to take advantage of. Although people have a tendency to direct their attention to past, present or future depending on different reasons, media sometimes also try to actively participate in this process in an attempt to direct their attention to more crucial events. Depending on the culture, social environment and other affecting characteristics, people have different temporal focus in their daily lives. “Temporal focus is the extent to which individuals characteristically direct their attention to the past, present, and/or

11 future. To varying degrees, individuals live in the moment, dwell on the past, or dream of the future. . . The relatively stable tendency to think about the past, present, and future derives from socialization in early childhood. . . This primary socialization also occurs through the influence of national culture.” (Shipp and Aeon 2018, 37) Although people might have different focuses to the past, future or present events in their daily lives, special events in their lives or in the life of the whole society might affect to change their focus. “. . .significant events can alter temporal focus when values and priorities are questioned. For example, the 9/11 terrorist attacks created initial changes in a stronger present focus and a stronger past focus that persisted a year later.” (Shipp and Aeon 2018, 38) These events are the windows for the media to stress on the event and highlight it, and be successful in their work. While it was entirely up to the professionality of the media in the absence of significant events, these events give media a fertile environment, in which they can work and sell their narratives easily. That brings us to the idea that media might be more interested in narrative creating or in narrative changing when significant events take place in the life of the community. Narrative Policy Framework gives the details of the policy narratives in the policy process. “The NPF (Narrative Policy Framework) seeks to explore the role of policy narratives in the public policy process. In doing so, the NPF accepts the social construction of reality as a guiding assumption and argues that narrative plays the role of a heuristic, reducing ambiguity. Based on classic work by Deborah Stone (2012), the NPF asserts that a policy narrative consists of a setting, characters (heroes, villains, and victims), a plot, and a policy moral or solution. In particular, in order to classify as a policy narrative, a story must at least include a policy issue, characters, and policy moral. At the meso level of analysis, the NPF concerns itself with how groups use policy narratives to try and influence public policy. At the micro level, it focuses on how individuals are influenced by policy narratives including the influence of such concepts as confirmation bias and identity protection cognition. At its core and despite its acceptance of social construction, the NPF advances the study of narrative in public policy through empirical examinations using content analysis, experimental design, survey research, and other traditional social science methods.” (McBeth and Lybecker 2018, 870) The role of media in the NPF usually lays in the meso level since it tries to use policy narratives as a group to influence the target group in aim of changing their attention to the particular significant event and into the present focus in their temporal focus. Significant event in the meso level becomes the policy issue while actors that take place in the event become characters for the story, which depends on the media to define them in a positive or in a

12 negative way. At the end, policy moral becomes the stance of the media on this particular significant event that how they choose to define and portray it to the whole group. The Multiple Streams Approach gives more broad image in the process where media tries to take a part and influence. “The MSA (Multiple Streams Approach) asserts that, metaphorically, three streams exist in the U.S. political system: problems, solutions, and politics. The problem stream consists of problems that require attention from the government, and identifies ways decision makers, and others, become aware of these problems. The second stream in MSA is the policy stream. Kingdon (1995) argues for the existence of policy entrepreneurs who rather than finding solutions to problems, shop around to find problems for their solutions. Boscarino (2009) calls this “problem surfing,” and suggests solutions precede problems. Finally, the third stream is the political stream. The political stream examines the political mood or public opinion to determine if a solution would be supported.” (McBeth and Lybecker 2018, 870-871) Media usually stands in the political part of the streams. While checking the public opinion on the issue, media also takes active role in opinion shaping in the public. Media tries to shape the opinion to the point that would accept the suggested solution for the problem. In diaspora, media can both try to present the solution as a better or worse option for the problem. The decision on this issue usually lays on the standpoint or the profit of the diaspora itself. “Media interact with and influence the policy process in two paramount ways: (1) by selecting issues of importance to highlight to the public and policy makers (agenda-setting), and (2) by problematizing policy in a way that attaches meaning to it in a manner that is comprehensible (framing and constructing narratives).” (Crow and Lawlor 2016, 472) In diaspora media, media always try to select the important events for them in the homeland or related to their concerns in the host country over other events which take place in the host country. By doing it, diaspora media try to influence the policy process in host country, and sometimes in the home country, especially if the decisions concerning the events that are important to them. Therefore, it is possible to have different agenda of diaspora media while more serious issues taking place in the host country. It might be difficult to have their issues on the agenda during that time, but important event in the focus gives more space for diaspora media to be able to show their claims about the issue. “Media can shape discourses and network links of imagined (co-)presences and imaginative mobility as well as what Urry calls ‘interpretative tools to make sense of ‘what would otherwise be disparate and apparently unconnected events and phenomena’ (Urry, 2000, 180). As such, they reinforce a sense of belonging but also awareness about links and possibilities for links and connections. At the same time, media

13 often project a dominant model of identity as a holistic, essential quality of life. In their ever- presence, they repeatedly project particular perceptions and values that ascertain commonality and community. Media become involved in the everyday construction of images of Us and the Others, while fixing and (re-)broadcasting those images to members and non-members of a group.” (Georgiou 2010) Along with the creation of images of Us and Others, media also decide how to create those images. Usually, Us became goodies in the issue while Others became the baddies when there is a conflict in the focus. In the second way, diaspora media starts to problematize the decision-making process in a way that if decision makers don’t approve the stance of diaspora they violate the fundaments of their own society and vice versa. They try to put more burden on the policymakers to think more when taking action on the issues that are important to their diaspora. This is also related to the image creation. Us is on the side of the values of the host country while Others is on the side against of the fundamental values of host country. Host country can’t defend its own fundamental values by being on the side of Others, it has to be on the side of Us. While trying to shape the opinion for the diaspora itself or for the locals of host country, some elements of propaganda might be used by the actors. “Of twenty-six different definitions examined, all agree that propaganda is the art of influencing, manipulating, controlling, promoting, changing, inducing, or securing the acceptance of opinions, attitudes, action, or behavior. Norman John Powell defines propaganda with these two elements and nothing else: propaganda is the "spreading of ideas or attitudes that influence opinions or behavior or both," he writes.” (Martin 1958, 10) The main target is to influence the opinions of local people for the diaspora media, which might turn to the political support if they achieve to reach at the level of influencers in the state level. Propaganda can focus on different concepts depending on the context. During the time of war, we observe the similar concepts to be highlighted more than others for specific reasons. “In times of war, a debate takes place about national identity, homeland, duty, patriotism and spirituality. Those who dissent from the official narrative are unpatriotic, failing in their duty, traitors. When nations talk about war, they talk about who they are and who they are not. Paradoxically, war divides nations and gives them meaning and purpose. . . however, the purpose and nobility of war are mostly illusions for the home front crafted from corrupt language. When nations go to war as a crusade or a jihad, they go to war ‘not against a state but against a phantom’. War propaganda uses false dichotomies, such as good versus evil or civilisation versus barbarism, to identify threats and prop up morale with national myths: divine providence, defence of empire, manifest destiny, duty to allies, responsibility to protect.” (Soules 2015, 126) Therefore, propaganda during the times of war

14 don’t just focus on the people but also focus on the allies to show their support for the cause. Furthermore, Others in the narrative of the media don’t actually embody into the bodies of the people rather becomes an evil in some abstract form. Others have to be corrupt, barbaric, aggressive while Us should have superior characteristics with the divine goals that can be achieved only through defeating the Others. Others usually is the obstacle in the road to such national goals, it has to be like this in order to be able to mobilize whole population for the cause. When using the propaganda, usually fake news also comes into the floor to further motivate or demotivate the people depending on the purpose. “While there are many ways to categorise fake news, fake news is understood here as a medium for a spectrum of phenomena comprising below categories: (i) Disinformation – falsehoods and rumours knowingly distributed to undermine national security, which can be part of state-sponsored disinformation campaigns; (ii) Misinformation – falsehoods and rumours propagated as part of a political agenda by a domestic group/the relativisation/differing interpretation of facts based on ideological bias.” (Vasu, Ang, Teo, Jayakumar, Faizal and Ahuja 2018, 5) We will use the two main categories of fake news that is focused on the whole population and intended to be used. Diaspora groups can aim to undermine the national security of Others in an attempt to demotivate the population of Others, which will decrease the support for them. To sum up all these concepts in our case, we have to define and elaborate of these concepts inside our case. We take Nagorno Karabakh as diasporated conflict to some extent since Armenian diaspora has some kind of effect on the conflict, whether it is political, economic or just through the media. While talking about the media, we take narratives as one of the tools used by diaspora media. Narrative texts in our case conveys the narrative itself to the target audience. We will look at the fabula inside these narrative texts of Armenian diaspora to understand the different parts of the whole image that diaspora aimed to convey to the target audience. However, we also need to have a window of opportunity that creates a chance for the diaspora media to actively engage in presenting this fabula. Therefore, we take April clashes in 2016 as a such significant effect, which is able to at least change the temporal focus of Armenian diaspora. While it changes the focus of diaspora into the conflict, at the same time it also gives chance to be more active in the issue itself. These will comprise the hard core of the theory of this work and we will look into the flexible core of the theory. Using the Narrative Policy Framework, we define three characteristics for the media to work on: policy issue, characters and policy moral. These characteristics are all flexible depending on the

15 context they are used. Policy issue usually will be about Nagorno Karabakh in our case, while characters may include Armenians, Azerbaijanis or other supporters/opponents in the case. Policy moral will be how characters or policy issue described and portrayed in the narrative text. As we settled in Multiple Streams Approach, media takes the role in political stream and tries to find the public opinion on the case and shaping of it for the benefit of themselves. Depending on the local people, political system of that country and other issues, there might be difference in the characteristics of the media. Therefore, diaspora media might change its narrative text to increase the effectiveness of their influence over the local community of host country. While we might observe differences in the narratives of different host countries, we expect to have somehow similar narratives where only some parts of policy moral changes. This change also might be a result of the differences in the sensitivity of the issues for the host countries, which creates a chance for the diaspora media to exploit from it.

Methodology

For the purpose of this work, content analysis will be used as the method. “Content analysis is a research procedure for obtaining systematic, quantitative, descriptive information from written documents, audio and video recordings, or other forms of media.” (Vonk et all 2007, 106) Content analysis provides us objectivity in the analysis, especially in the such a sensitive topic that might be considered biased on the author side. During the analysis, we will count the unit of analysis of this work. Unit of analysis is the “text – where you will find the information you are interested in – and what specific part of the text you will be analyzing.” (Davies and Mosdell 2006, 99) Unit of analysis is categorized according to the unit of measurement. Unit of measurement is the categories that will be used in the coding scheme to fit all units of analysis into these predefined categories. Since the purpose of the work is to analyze the effect of particular event, our analysis will be event-driven. Therefore, coverage of this event defines time period of the analysis. This time period is divided into two parts: first part with no effect of the event and second part with the effect of the event. We will be able to see the normal way of unit of analysis without any significant event affecting on it and making it to change into that direction in the first part without any effect of the event. On the other hand, second part will have the effect of the event and will show us how the event in the focus affects to the diaspora while other external factors become the same or similar. It should also be noted that when analyzing that coverage in the media might be increased because of this important event. It is also important to consider the audience of these media and stance of the editors or writers, but to focus on the occurred changes even in the light of these indicators. As a result, we should define the main terms as followed in the next paragraph. Armenian diaspora media includes the online media platforms that directly controlled by Armenian community members living in the country other than Armenia itself. Firstly, in the demographic section of our data, we choose three countries out of the countries with significant number of Armenian population. Considering the high number of countries with Armenian diaspora media, three countries with the high number of Armenian population, also the members of the OSCE Minsk Group that might be more important to have the positive attitude in the Nagorno Karabakh issue, were chosen to analyze. Those countries are United States and Russian Federation from OSCE Minsk Group members, and Turkey. United States historically has a big Armenian community, Russian Federation also have a significant number of Armenian people in the country because of the common Soviet history and huge migration flow after the collapse of USSR because 17 of economic hardships in the country. Turkey, on the other hand, has a considerable Armenian community in the country while having really good relations with Azerbaijan. The chosen data sources are media articles or news written in target of influencing the local people in those countries. In order to sustain the aim of local influence, languages of the articles were decided as the local languages used in those countries. While Armenian language can be aimed at Armenians living in the host country, local language includes both Armenians and locals in the host country. Using the language of the host country, it aims to inform and present the standpoint of diaspora in the issue. As we look into the narrative changes in the selected diaspora media, change will be understood as the categorical differences in the theme of the texts before and after the stated event. Considering the high quantity of the articles published in the chosen data sources, only the general content of the articles was coded, not the exact words or phrases inside the articles. Change in the number of articles in some categories usually derive from the change of the focus for particular topic as a result of the specified event. Furthermore, arguments presented in the articles were generalized into the main topics and examples from these articles were presented in the data section of each country. It will help us to illustrate the main theme of the media sources before and after the events to help us when analyzing them. As we stated in the earlier of the work that narrative change is used as a method of influencing the local people, we will accept it as a way of propaganda method used by diaspora media. “Propaganda is the art of influencing, manipulating, controlling, promoting, changing, inducing, or securing the acceptance of opinions, attitudes, action, or behavior. Norman John Powell defines propaganda with these two elements and nothing else: propaganda is the "spreading of ideas or attitudes that influence opinions or behavior or both," he writes.” (Martin 1958, 10) Therefore, articles in post-event categories usually might target to influence the opinions of the audience. This audience might be diaspora itself or usually the local people of the host countries. Since the main question is about the narrative change of diaspora media related to the Nagorno Karabakh issue, research will divide data into two general categories: any presence of arguments or news about Nagorno Karabakh and articles not related to Nagorno Karabakh or April clashes in any way. Two main side of the propaganda used as the indicators of narratives: praising/showing power/showing capacity/heroism (and similar) of “your side” and showing weakness/inefficiency/dependency (and similar) of “enemy”. Therefore, two subcategories will be present in the articles that has relation to Nagorno Karabakh and/or April clashes: power of the own and weakness of the enemy. The scheme will be drawn like this and pilot had been run on this scheme.

Table 1. Main structure of articles in Armenian Diaspora Media

Articles

NK* NoNk**

Power of Weakness "own" of "enemy"

*NK = Articles has relation with Nagorno Karabakh, Nagorno Karabakh War or April clashes **NoNK = Articles has no relation with Nagorno Karabakh, Nagorno Karabakh War or April clashes

After, the pilot coding according to the above-mentioned scheme had been run in the website of “Erkramas”. Seven subcategories defined to understand the nature of the articles in that period after running the pilot on “Erkramas”. These categories include history of Nagorno Karabakh, news about current clashes, praising the concept of being Armenian, praising the army and military power (heroism or military power in NK war, April clashes or in other way), foreign support from other countries, foreign support for enemy, weakness of enemy, and political history. Furthermore, three subcategories found for the articles not related to Nagorno Karabakh. These categories include articles devoted to the diaspora-host country relations, creating the figure of challenger/enemy for Armenia or the host country, and articles that has no relation to the Nagorno Karabakh/conflict/clashes or any similar. Below are the definition of each concepts and the policy of inclusion if data matched under more than one category. Policy of inclusion used in order to avoid double counting of articles in more than one categories.

Table 2. Coding sheet of categories and their definitions.

No relation to Articles related to the relations of Armenia/Armenian diaspora with host NK or “enemy” country, trying to show the importance of Armenia/Armenians in host country figure (NoNK) – (DspA) Creating the enemy/challenger/competitor figure for Armenian/Armenians/host country – (ECC) Articles that has no relation with Nagorno Karabakh, April clashes (NNA)

Articles has Praising Praising the concept of being Armenian, praising the old relation to Armenia/Armenian history of country, courage of people, high culture, Nagorno (PArm) previous achievements, sacrifices for country, and Karabakh, similar. Nagorno Praising Army High value for the army, praising their victory in the Karabakh War or (PArmy) current clash or in NK war, and similar. April clashes Foreign Support Foreign support from other countries (diplomats, (NK) (FS) government workers, famous people), their interview, show of support and ask for these support or similar. Foreign Support Foreign support for Azerbaijan, entities or people ally for Enemy (FSe) with Azerbaijan, their hostilities against Armenia/Armenians and similar. Weakness of Showing how enemy was weak/unable to achieve Enemy (WE) victory in April or in NK, bad economic/political situation, how dependent for allies, and similar.

April Clash (AC) Any news about the April clashes

History of History about Armenian heritage in NK, justification of Karabakh (HNK) belonging/not-belonging, and similar.

Considering the fact that some articles may fit in both categories, coding process will follow the certain rule. First step in the decision process starts on determining that if article fits in NK or in NoNK category. If not related to Nagorno Karabakh conflict, then second step becomes the decision of the fit for the subcategories under NoNK. If related to Nagorno Karabakh conflict then second step becomes the decision of the fit for the subcategories under NK. Any article that fit in the category that is above in the list will not be included in the category that is also fit for article but not in the higher order in the coding scheme. Subcategories ordered for the importance of the category and according to the frequency of appearance in the articles. Media sources from mentioned countries found from the website of “Armenian Diaspora Survey”, from the list on the section of diaspora media1. Only the media sources with the archives of the 2016 used for the data. Also, some of mentioned sources were not functioning during the clashes and had to be taken out. For Turkey, only one source found from the website and one more source found from inside of other articles where the name of media source mentioned. Overall, twelve media sources found for the research. Five sources for Russian Federation, five sources for United States and two sources for Turkey. Media sources for countries listed below: Russian Federation: 1. Dobroye Utro! 2. Erkramas 3. Gorcarar 4. Khachkar-Kaluga 5. Noev Kovcheg United States: 1. Asbarez 2. Massis Weekly 3. The Armenian Mirror Spectator 4. The Armenian Weekly 5. The California Courier Turkey: 1. Agos 2. Ermenihaber

1 https://www.armeniandiasporasurvey.com/websites-and-other-resources 21

Data

Armenian Diaspora Media in Russian Federation

Before the April clashes Before the April clashes, Armenian diaspora media in Russia mainly focused on the promotion of their culture and interests, either political, cultural or sociological, in Russian Federation. Provided articles in the media usually tried to show the role of Armenian people or Armenian products in the history of Russia to establish the fact of long-term relations of countries. For example, in one article in the newspaper of “Dobroye Utro!”, it describes the history of the Armenian cognac in the history of USSR and how it played a role of creating friendship between other nations (2016, 1). While other articles also focus on the general information, like Tsar family and their relations with Armenia, there isn’t any article concerning the Nagorno Karabakh or directly targeting Azerbaijan in any issue. In another newspaper of “Khachkar-Kaluga”, again Armenian relations with Russian Empire is highlighted and focus was that Russians accepted Christianity with the request of Armenian Princess. (Mirzoyan 2016, 1-3) Other articles are based on the common culture, especially on the national food and promotion of it. In general, history of the nation is in the first place along articles, ranging from the alphabet to the Armenian soldiers in WWII. One small diversion from the general course of content was the news about the stolen Armenian relicts from Cyprus. Different from the previous course, emphasis was on the fact of stealing and the ethnic identity of the smuggler, who was from a Turkish origin. (Khachkar-Kaluga 2016, 3) In another journal of “Gorcarar”, similar pathway is followed in the articles. Articles are mainly about the important Armenian people in the Russian history and the things they did for Armenia or for Armenians in their lifetime2. Again, the cultural and political relations are highlighted and the common history under the rule of USSR was praised. Different from previous journals, another focus was on the decreasing population in Armenia and in Nagorno Karabakh, which is described that can be an alerting fact if any new war occurs in Nagorno Karabakh. In the article about the life of the famous Russian-Armenian billionaire, author talks about his dedication

2 Historical people usually included the scientists and government workers in USSR, modern period people usually included the wealthy Armenian people. 22 in the increase of population in Armenia and in Nagorno Karabakh. While talking about his donations to the newly-weds in Nagorno Karabakh, author provides the words of the billionaire: “All this is done so that in the near future we can bring the population of Karabakh to 500 thousand people3. This will ensure our safety. Indeed, the Karabakh people are born fighters.” (Pogosyan 2016, 5-6) All listed media sources are the journals, published monthly or quarterly, therefore they were mild in their approach and main focus was on the culture than political issues. Different from the newspapers, websites are considerably different, more political, in their rhetoric because they reflect daily activities easier than newspapers that are published couple of times a year. These media usually focus on the political events and provide analysis from their own perspectives. Website of Noev Kovcheg is one of them, it is published monthly and reflected on the events of previous months. Target of the website was usually Turkey and Azerbaijan in most of the cases. For example, the website describes Turkey in the position that its conservative regime blackmails Europe in the immigration crisis4. (Noev Kovcheg 2016) Furthermore, the role of Turkey in the Syrian conflict, its policy against Russia in the Crimea issue and support for Azerbaijan are the key points usually brought up. There is a tendency to present both Turkey and Azerbaijan as similar in their nature because of the ethnic similarity of the countries. Political events in Azerbaijan became the valuable news for the website, most of them reflected in the website. One of the news portrays the attendance of Azerbaijani President in Munich Security Conference as given: “Then he took part in the Munich Security Conference, which once again highlighted the difference in approaches to this very security on the part of Moscow and the “collective West”.” (Noev Kovcheg 2016) The main attitude taken here is from the Russian perspective to portray any pro-Western action of Azerbaijan as a hostile action against Russia. Another online news website, under name of “Erkramas”, was active about the internal issues of Azerbaijan and its international attempts even before the clashes. Articles related to the previous and current events in Nagorno Karabakh conflict were periodically published in the website. Couple of them includes the memories about Khojaly, current ceasefire violations, portraying of Turkey as provocateur in relation to Nagorno Karabakh and others. Overall, websites were more focused on the political news going on in Armenia, Azerbaijan and in Russian Federation.

3 Current population in the region is around 150.000 people, which rose from around 125.000 after the ceasefire in 1994. 4 Referring to the statements from Turkey that they might open borders for refugees to go to Europe. 23

After the April Clashes

There are significant changes in the context of the media right after the April clashes took place. Newspaper of “Dobroye Utro!” although still focuses on the history, they focus on the Nagorno Karabakh War and current clashes in the frontline. They published the interview with the Bulgarian publicist about the heroism of the Armenian people in April clashes, in which Bulgarian publicist Paskov told that Armenian people passed the test to be the hero nation (Dobroye Utro! 2016, 1). Other articles again follow the similar pattern of Armenian heroism and discuss about the how Armenians made heroic actions even before the war started and started the discussion of the status of Nagorno Karabakh. Different from the previous edition of the newspaper, this time articles about Azerbaijanis also included in which Azerbaijani writer admits that Azerbaijanis lost the war to the culture of the Armenians. (Hazi 2016, 3) This edition of the newspaper ends with the article about how a bomb landed in one of the regions of Azerbaijan in 1994 and how ex-speaker of the National Assembly of Azerbaijan had to go there to calm the people since they were so afraid of Armenians. However, no source or the name of writer of this article is provided in the newspaper. In the last page, picture of Julius Caesar, and his words about how brave Armenians are, were shown: “When these people, these Armenians, grab each other’s hands and tread the earth shoulder to shoulder to the sound of their drums and apricot instruments, the columns of my palace will soon turn into dust particles because they can’t be stopped.” (Dobroye Utro! 2016, 4) Newspaper of “Khachkar-Kaluga” follows the similar content as it was in previous editions by sharing again about the history of the Armenians and their monuments. The main focus again is on the Russian Federation and on Armenian culture here or in Slavic nations. However, the last page has dedicated to the history and claims on the Nagorno Karabakh conflict while totally ignoring the current clashes. While mentioning Armenia existed since the time of Babylon and Assyria, article claims that Azerbaijan only came to exist in 1918 and the concept of “Azerbaijani” even later on 19365, and that article claims that Nagorno Karabakh became independent state in 1991. Article also states that Statue of Liberty is 32 years older than Azerbaijan. While claiming that Karabakh was

5 The concept of “Azerbaijani” was introduced by USSR in 1936. Previously, the population of Azerbaijan was named as “Turks” or “Tatars”. Historians claim that it was intended to create a made-up difference between Turkey and Azerbaijan. This is the source of the argument that concept of “Azerbaijani” didn’t exist before 1936. 24 given to Azerbaijan by USSR6, article continues to argue that Nagorno Karabakh wanted to separate since they weren’t treated well under the rule of Azerbaijan. Article argues that the only reason is war continuing is that Azerbaijan is corrupt and underdeveloped country and wants to distract its population from these problems with the help of war. As the justification for whose land is Karabakh, article brings that there are older Christian monuments7 in Karabakh and gives choice to the reader to decide. (Khachkar-Kaluga 2016, 4) Journal of “Gorcarar”, while somehow keeping the previous trend of publishing about the Armenian culture and the important Armenian people in the Russian and USSR history, they also devote a huge part of the journal for the April clashes. In the thank you article to the general, author talks about the attacks by Azerbaijani army and the professionality of Armenian general. (Leonidova 2016, 7) Article continues with how general noticed the trick of the enemy army and destroyed around 500 enemy soldiers just in this spot, which is the reason Azerbaijan can hide its casualties because most of them are in the Azerbaijani territory. Author continues with the specific details how enemy lost two commanders there and how scared people fled to the highway, which created the traffic jam and support army couldn’t reach for the help8. Other articles again cover the history of Nagorno Karabakh and settlements there in an aim of proving that these lands belong to Armenians, and the interview with Armenian pastor about his ideas on army, how they support army and always are near them to motivate. Journal again stresses the demographic problem9 in the country by saying that April clashes showed how dangerous situation can get in sudden time. While author emphasize the demographic problem and the urgency to solve it, also provides that April was a story of heroism for the country: “It may seem unrealistic, too imaginative, perhaps to give rise to skepticism, but the April Four-Day War has destroyed many of our beliefs, proving that we have to unite at lightning speed and jump like lions to defend their own land, while at the same time proving much to the world and giving lessons of faith and heroism.” (Gorcarar 2016, 21-22)

6 As a result of Soviet policy, there have been changes in the territory of countries. Some of territories with Azerbaijani majority were given to Armenia and Azerbaijan sometimes bring this up. Armenia also claim that Nagorno Karabakh was given to Azerbaijan. 7 Azerbaijani side claims that most of these monuments belong to Albanians, ethnic minority lived in South Caucasus and later assimilated into Azerbaijanis and Armenians. On the other hand, Armenians claim that Azerbaijan misinterprets the history and all of these monuments actually belong to Armenians. 8 If we believe to the people who tell the stories from the war, similar situation happened during the Nagorno Karabakh war and people fled because of the fear of Armenians. This article brings up the past experience. 9 The population of Azerbaijan increased from around 7 million to around 10 million after independence while the population of Armenia decreased from around 3.6 million to around 2.9 million after independence. 25

Website of “Noev Kovcheg” became more political afterwards of events and increased its emphasis on the April Clashes. Mostly, website referenced to Azerbaijan and Turkey, and their connections in relation of April clashes and other initiatives. While covering the April clashes, website also constantly refer to the regime types in those two countries. “It is possible that Erdogan will also be interested to learn about how new “power verticals” and de facto hereditary monarchies are created. After all, he already has adult children, although with a dubious reputation, and he will probably want to transfer power to one of them. Thus, the two leaders have something to talk about. So to speak, exchange creative experience.” (Archruni 2016) Starting from this point, arguments mainly go for the behavioral nature of Azerbaijan in the talks, destructive role of Turkey in the peace process and similar. There is an emphasis that both Azerbaijan and Turkey are authoritarian countries; therefore, they can’t be negotiated with in the peace process. A website of “Erkramas” continues its narrative while radicalizing it more. Main target of the propaganda again was Turkey, that it is the enemy of Armenia, as well as Russia. In the following extract from the article under name of “Whose orders Baku follow?”, author clearly shows Turkey as a provocateur in the conflict and as a party interested in creating more problem for Russia because of its regional interests. “Regardless of who suffered and how many losses, it is interesting to know reliably what or who this time served as the casus belli, which may well lead to escalation into a full-scale war if there are forces interested in this. As a rule, such forces can be very remote from the theatre of real or potential military operations.” (Shakaryants 2016) In the light of the tense relations of Russia with Turkey on the eve of downing of Russian jet by Turkey10, it was a fertile environment to use Turkey argument in the conflict to get support from Russia. The website also spread couple of propaganda videos during the period of clashes. In one of the videos, website claimed that Azerbaijani army tries to stop civilians from running away from the fear of Armenians in the border region of Tartar. (Erkramas 2016) This information published or mentioned inside other articles couple of times. After watching the video, it became clear that this video isn’t from Azerbaijan, but from Turkey as it is obvious from the language spoken in the video. Although Azerbaijani and Turkish languages are similar enough for foreigners to be mistaken but it is really easy for any native speaker to determine which language is spoken11. Another news was about the

10 Turkey shot down Russian Su-24 in 24 November 2015, about 4 months before the April clashes. Because of this event, Russia-Turkey relations were very bad and Russia put some sanctions on Turkey. 11 Suggested video was a clash from Turkey between some group of civilians and couple of army officers, where civilians shout “Askerler bize saldiriyor”, which had to be said something like “Əsgərlər bizə hücum edir” if it was really from Azerbaijan. The original video can be checked from this link: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x41pjri?playlist=x4epw7 26 joining of Azerbaijani ISIS fighters to the Azerbaijani army in order to fight against Armenians. “The Azerbaijani ISIS terrorist group of 50 to 70 militants left Syrian Raqqa, LifeNews reports citing military sources. It is reported that radicals from Transcaucasia through Turkey returned to Azerbaijan to participate in hostilities in the Karabakh conflict zone.” (Erkramas 2016) Furthermore, Grey Wolves also referred as a terrorist group and claimed to take part in the conflict12 against Armenians during April clashes. Sources claimed that soldiers heard that there are people in Azerbaijani side speaking Arabic or Turkish and soldiers decided that they are actually terrorists13.

Armenian Diaspora Media in United States

Before the April clashes The California Courier is the weekly American-Armenian newspaper, which also has online web presence. Target of the website mainly focused on the political support for Armenians, also non-support for the opponents. One of the articles during March criticize the congressional representative who had relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey. “It is hard to feel sorry for a man who had eagerly gone to bed with the dictatorial regime of Ilham Aliyev until the money stopped!” (Sassounian 2016) While it only aimed one congressional representative, it was also aimed at others indirectly to make them abstain from supporting the opponents of Armenians. It is interesting that these opponents are usually mentioned as Azerbaijan and Turkey together. In another article in March, author describe these two countries together and asks for non-support for them. “Fortunately, Armenian-American groups do not need such exorbitant sums to pursue their political goals in Washington because it costs much less to present the truth of their just cause, unlike Turkey and Azerbaijan which have to spend huge amounts of money to deceive the politicians and the public!” (Sassounian 2016) Massis Weekly is another diaspora website that mainly focused on the anti-Turkey narrative by highlighting the particular problems in the Turkey and the negative attitude towards Armenians. However, Nagorno Karabakh issue was also in the regular agenda although very little space given

12 During the Nagorno Karabakh war in 1990s, a group of soldiers from Turkey participated in the clashes with Azerbaijani army. These soldiers belonged to the Grey Wolves (used the logo in their uniforms and vehicles too) commanded under Yusuf Ziya Arpacık. Although emphasized by Azerbaijan and Turkey a lot, their involvement was really limited and didn’t continue for the long period. 13 It should also be noted that Azerbaijani language belongs to Turkic family so very similar to Turkish, and it has lots of words borrowed from Arabic because of the Islam. 27 for that comparing to Turkey. Turkey again was in the role of guarantor for Azerbaijan in terms of political and military assistance. “Based on numerous agreements on joint military exercises as part of bilateral progressive efforts towards military cooperation, the Azerbaijani and Turkish armed forces have held regular drills, featuring various tactical and combat tasks so far.” (Massis Weekly 2016) In almost all media sources, there was an attempt to make Turkey and Azerbaijan alike because of ethnic and religious similarity. While featuring the support for the enemy side, website also continuously state the military power of Armenia. ““We’re afraid of war, but we’re not afraid of fighting, i.e. we are ready to protect Armenia and Artsakh – a sacred part of our country. The Armenian Ministry of Defense is preparing for war every day,” the Defense Minister said. Ohanyan added that the Ministry always stands ready to resist possible aggression, preparing itself for a war in its daily activities.” (Massis Weekly 2016) Asbarez, another American-Armenian diaspora media, focused on the local news about the Armenian community in the United States while also focusing on the relations of the community and local people and politics. Although Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan mentioned couple of times, they were not the focus topics and took very little place among other articles. The existing articles usually highlighted the “evil” side of the enemy. “The relationship between international terrorist groups and Azerbaijan originates in the early 1990s. Back then, the Azerbaijani army, having failed in the aggression against Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR), retreated with losses. Trying to save the situation, the Azerbaijani leadership, headed by Heydar Aliyev attracted to the war against the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh international terrorists and members of radical groups from Afghanistan (groupings of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar), Turkey (“Grey Wolves”, etc.), Chechnya (groupings Basayev and Raduyev etc.) and some other regions. Despite the involvement of thousands of foreign mercenaries and terrorists in the Azerbaijani army during the war, the Azerbaijani aggression against the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic failed, and the Baku authorities were forced to sign an armistice with the Artsakh and Armenia.” (Asbarez 2016) Addition to the terrorist labeling, mentioned treats had been explained as the ethnic characteristics of people. They provided the conversation between Azerbaijani and Armenian intellectuals during Soviet time as the justification of it. ““I remember Levon’s conversations with Abbas Abdulla, who told Levon, ‘Every Turk’s duty is to kill at least one Armenian.’ Levon, come on, I will kill you, too,” Osmanoglu said as cited by the website.”14 (Asbarez 2016)

14 The story mentioned in one of the Azerbaijani website and then used by Armenian diaspora. Person who told the story claimed that he heard the conversation. 28

The Armenian Weekly mostly concerned about the issues such as promotion of educational, artistic events and of Armenians in these sectors, entries and news concerning the US politics. Concerning the Nagorno Karabakh, it was about the recognition issue and the involvement of the diaspora in the development of the region. Therefore, investment in Nagorno Karabakh was highlighted and ARI was one of them. “ARI’s model has been a successful way to develop a sustainable economy. To bring about more rapid economic growth and make a substantial difference in the region, ARI needs to grow. This will be possible if all Armenian communities in the diaspora are involved.” (Gharabegian 2016) However, more focused approach towards the Turkey and its internal politics stand out. Especially, any actions done by Turkish government that contradicted with ethnic minorities were mostly cited ones. In this issue, PKK and Kurdish relations were the mostly talked ones as it is also seen from the news how the terrorist attack in Turkey presented in the website. More focus were given to the perpetrator of the attack and Kurdish issue, rather than the fact of attack itself: “Though no group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, Turkish officials were quick to point to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) or an affiliated group as the perpetrators.” (The Armenian Weekly 2016) In general, the Mirror Spectator covers issues concerning educational, academic and artistic events and their promotion within the Armenian community. In addition, special focus can be observed on matters related to the Armenian genocide issue, stance against Turkey and its politics, and church. It mainly focused on the issues related to Armenian minority in Turkey. The website claimed the presence of hatred towards Armenians in the state level of Turkey. “The document stated, “an individual named Firant Dink is among our targets due to his pro-Armenian activities. He is the editor-in-chief of Agos periodical, published in Istanbul by Armenians and is in close ties with the vicar of the Patriarchate, Mesrob Archbishop Mutafyan, famous for his Armenian nationalist inclinations.” It turns out that the “deep state” in Turkey had targeted Hrant Dink15 long ago, as revealed by recent court documents.” (Azadian 2016) As it is the case in The Armenian Weekly, it is also similar in The Armenian Spectator to highlight the problems with other ethnic minorities in Turkey: “Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s lawyer has filed a criminal complaint against Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) co-chair Selahattin Demirtas, claiming that the latter “insulted” him in a recent speech.” (The Armenian Mirror Spectator 2016) Along with the news related to the

15 Hrant Dink is Turkish-Armenian journalist, who was killed in 2007. He was the editor-in-chief of the Turkish-Armenian newspaper of Agos. Agos is also in the list of media sources and will be looked in the section concerning diaspora media in Turkey. 29

Armenian and other minority communities in Turkey and a very few related to Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan, internal politics and other related topics, usually in the aim of showing the undemocratic nature of politics in Turkey, of Turkey highly covered during March. “There are 1845 cases pending against Turkish citizens for insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Those found guilty face one to four years of imprisonment, according to the Turkish criminal code.” (The Armenian Mirror Spectator 2016)

After the April clashes Although slight changes occur due to the April clashes, The California Courier follows the similar pattern as they did previously. However, during this time other international actors also blamed for their unsatisfying support. “However, there are other countries that have a share of the blame: First among these is Erdogan’s Turkey for its direct participation and support of Azerbaijan’s military misadventures. The Minsk Group of mediators (France, Russia, and United States) are also guilty for remaining silent during previous Azeri aggressions and blaming both sides each time Azerbaijan attacked Armenia or Artsakh. The international community’s shameful silence and doubletalk routinely equated the victimizer with the victim, thereby emboldening the warmongering Aliyev!” (Sassounian 2016) Yet again, the two main opponents for Armenians remained unchanged as Azerbaijan and Turkey, and their level of collaboration always emphasized while highlighting the ethnic background. “The Azeris are a Turkic people who adhere to Turkey’s bizarre and fascist tradition of rewriting history and denying the Armenian Genocide.” (Sassounian 2016) This ethnic similarity brought up during many news to create the image for the diaspora community. Massis Weekly follows their similar pattern of March in April but the clashes affect here too and change the course of narrative towards the Nagorno Karabakh issue. Therefore, main target becomes Azerbaijan and its functioning organizations including army, government and others. ““The Azerbaijani leadership does not refrain from accepting, that it is behind the cease fire violations and escalation of the situation. It is even boasting of that fact. Leaving aside whether Baku genuinely thinks there is something worth boasting of, or it is just a propaganda trick for the internal consumption, it should be once again stated that the Azerbaijani leadership has lost its sense of reality,” Minister Nalbandian said. “This refers not only to the Nagorno Karabakh issue. They state, that Azerbaijan is no less than the most economically stable, the most democratic, the most tolerant state and the most secure place in the world in terms of the protection of human rights, that they may set an example for other states, while different international organizations, international

HR institutions state the opposite. A kingdom of crooked mirrors is created in that country, the leaders of which, looking in those mirrors, admire themselves and call upon others to live in such a kingdom of crooked mirrors,” Edward Nalbandian stated.” (Massis Weekly 2016) Following from this standpoint, Massis Weekly continues to emphasize the enemy’s weakness and power of Armenian army. “The Defense Ministry also presented an intercepted recording of a phone conversation between two Azeri women, according to which the number of the casualties on the Azerbaijani side exceeds 2,000.” (Massis Weekly 2016) Although the source of the news is really doubtful, this news aired in many Armenian diaspora media. Similar recordings were common during that time in Azerbaijan and spread through WhatsApp16. This recording was one of them and can be the example of the one-sided journalism. Asbarez changed its discourse visibly after clashes and Nagorno Karabakh issue, along with the news regarding to Azerbaijan, were published more in this period. These news mostly included the different ways to describe the nature of the Azerbaijan. ““The actions of the Azerbaijani forces are typical of a terrorist, Nazi state, which violates all norms of international humanitarian law,” Spokesman for the Nagorno-Karabakh President David Babayan said to Public Radio of Armenia.” (Asbarez 2016) It also included the Turkey in the news while portraying them at least as a supporter for the above-mentioned actions of Azerbaijan. “Turkey’s any interference17 with the Karabakh conflict settlement can only harm the process, because of Turkey’s unilateral stance and its mania of supporting Azerbaijan at any cost, Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharyan said. “The aggression unleashed by Azerbaijan along the Nagorno Karabakh line of contact and Turkey’s provocative statements are the best proof of it,” he added.” (Asbarez 2016) Asbarez don’t limit with the claim of state level support and claim that there is a terrorist support for Azerbaijan not only from Turkey but other religious terrorist groups: ““Soldiers that fought the enemy in the battlefield could see that among them were older individuals speaking in Arabic and Turkish. They were mercenaries. We have grounds to say that some of them were militants of terrorist groups, in particular, of the ‘Islamic State,’ ‘Grey Wolves’ and others,” Babayan said.” (Asbarez 2016)

16 Some of such recordings in WhatsApp included the news like “I have a relative in army and he says we (Azerbaijan Army) freed all invaded areas”, “I have friend in army and he says right now he is in Shusha” or in a similar content. Although not possible to understand why people spread such recordings, some people spread such exaggerative news during the important events almost without exception. Recently, new changes made in criminal code against such actions in Azerbaijan. 17 From time to time, it has been discussed by Azerbaijan that Turkey also should be part of the talks and Armenia objects to the suggestion claiming Turkey is pro-Azerbaijan. 31

The Armenian Weekly changed its discourse and focused more on the Nagorno Karabakh issue while also following the similar pattern. Again, the target was the US politics and the demands this time was for Nagorno Karabakh than Turkey. “The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) is calling on the Obama Administration to investigate violations of the “Leahy Law”18 regarding U.S. military assistance to units of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces that are credibly reported to have committed “gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.”” (The Armenian Weekly 2016) Along with common policy, individual politicians that made speeches on the issue were criticized by the media. One of them was John Kerry. “U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry issued on April 2 a statement condemning “in the strongest terms” the ceasefire violations along the Nagorno-Karabagh Republic (NKR/Artsakh) Line of Contact (LoC). Kerry’s statement avoided assigning blame, and instead appealed to “the sides” to “show restraint”. . . “The ANCA is sharply disappointed in Secretary Kerry’s false parity in the face of open Azerbaijani aggression19,” said Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) Executive Director Aram Hamparian. “The Obama Administration recklessly set the stage for this escalation by so warmly welcoming [Azerbaijani] President Ilham Aliyev to Washington.”” (The Armenian Weekly 2016) Along with the political support, the image of Azerbaijan was also targeted and media source tried to convey the newly set image. “According to the ministry, the documents belonging to the Azerbaijani crew prove that the downed helicopter was transported to the Line of Contact (LoC) from an airport near Baku with clear instructions to attack specific Armenian targets. According to the head of the aviation department of the MoD, Avetik Muradyan, a notebook that had been in the possession of the pilot contained notes from March 31 that detailed instructions about the flight mission, which suggests that the pilot had received instructions about the flight 1-2 days in advance, reported Armenpress news.” (The Armenian Weekly 2016) The Armenian Weekly focused on the claim that Azerbaijan is the first one to start aggression and therefore they should be blamed by United States in taking actions to suspend the military assistance and other helps. The Armenian Mirror Spectator followed their previous style but increased the number of articles on the issues related to Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan. In these articles, Turkey was on target most of the time for supporting Azerbaijan. “Azerbaijan did not act on its own. According to eyewitness accounts, Turkish troops and equipment were involved in battles near the Iranian border.

18 Leahy Law means the prohibition of military assistance by US Department of State and Department of Defense to the political actors that breach the human rights and not be accountable to their actions. 19 Both sides actually blamed other party in the state level for starting the aggression in the line of contact. 32

The Azerbaijani offensive was immediately endorsed by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “Nagorno-Karabagh will be returned to Azerbaijan.” Erdogan added, “We will support Azerbaijan until the end.”” (Phillips and Krikorian 2016) While showing the support for Azerbaijan, declining importance and power of diaspora in Armenia also mentioned. “During the first years of independence, Armenians in the homeland used to brag to Azeris, “If you have oil, we have our Diaspora.” Today, no one in Armenia, to my memory, is bragging any more to the Azeris. . . Of course, in the Karabagh issue, Ankara supports Azerbaijan’s position.” (Azadian 2016) Furthermore, arguments were also given to claim the support from terrorists. ““Azerbaijan has brought out to the frontlines mercenaries who are wanted by different countries. All this shows that Azerbaijan flagrantly violates all international humanitarian norms and conventions, in particular the Geneva Convention, using weapons that have destructive features in targeting civilian facilities, involving mercenaries and international terrorists in its armed forces,” David Babayan, a spokesman for the Nagorno-Karabagh president, said.” (The Armenian Mirror Spectator 2016) Website also published an article about the leaked documents about Azerbaijan in Panama Papers. Although not related to the conflict itself or Armenia, it was mainly aimed to portray the enemy figure in a negative way. “Despite global criticism of Azerbaijan’s mounting authoritarianism, the Aliyev regime has been a friend of successive US administrations. The United States has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the Aliyevs’ Azerbaijan, including millions for military and security training.” (Fitzgibbon, Patrucic and Rey 2016)

Armenian Diaspora Media in Turkey

Before the April clashes Agos is the Turkish Armenian website that mainly focused on the problems of the ethnic and religious minorities in Turkey. Mainly the rights of Kurdish people is the focus of the website in the eve of terrorist attacks in the country and military operations against PKK. We see that website demand to have equal treatment towards all ethnic minorities and claim that it doesn’t exist right now. For example, here website criticize the government for applying ethnicity codes for the citizens. “We were aware of the existence of this practice, it was said to apply not only to non- Muslims, but to all citizens, which is even worse. It was a known fact that we were not actually equal, so it was called equal on paper, now it is accepted by the high level of authorities that we are not even equal on paper.” (Estukyan 2016) There were also couple of articles showing the 33 similarities between Armenians and Kurds. ““On that day at the meeting with the non-governmental organizations in Bingöl, Davutoğlu said these about HDP: “Do you know what those who exploit when freedom is given, those who provoke our Kurdish citizens do when they feel pressure? They want the people of this country to go into the fight that will kill their own brothers. Like Armenian gangs went to the Moscow as the collaborators of Russians inside our country20, whom we stopped in the Şeref Square, they are also going to Moscow and collaborate against Turkey.”” (Danzikyan 2016) However, website mostly focused on the political problems in the country, rights and freedom in the country. While it might be aiming to portray Turkey negatively if was in another country, having these articles puts the website more of the opposition media to the government actions. Agos usually criticized government for their actions and took the stance of opposition media. Ermeni Haber Ajansi is the news website that usually focus on the genocide issue and demand the recognition from Turkey. Other news also include the issues of Armenia rather than issues in Turkey, as it was case in Agos. “"Prime minister of Turkey clearly express that saying what happened to Armenians during genocide as happened on the context of war was a clear lie. Official Ankara actively and openly declare that the genocide committed against Armenians, who were accused of collaborating with the Russians, was intentional and planned. Today Kurds are facing the similar threats. For the international community, this is a serious message that what might happen to Kurds."” (Ermeni Haber Ajansı 2016) There are also news about claims against both Turkey and Azerbaijan. In these articles, we observe the similarities attached to them as in the form of at least a competitor for Armenians: “Babukhanyan said that "The treaty was a great importance for Armenian people in a negative way because beside the lands given to Turkey with this agreement, also Nakhichevan21 was given to Azerbaijan. Today, every Armenian carries with it the demand and desire to take back the lands legally owned by them. Today, the genocide carried out against Kurds living in those lands as it was carried out against the Armenians 100 years ago.” (Ermeni Haber Ajansı 2016) Other articles on the issues related to Azerbaijan, mainly focused on the hatred in Azerbaijan against Armenia or Armenians. Usually, the news about the famous people in Azerbaijan was example for such articles. For example, “The article, which claims that his translations from other languages are nothing more than "a word stack", is titled “What will we do if the Armenians

20 Refers to the collaboration of Armenians against Ottomans during WWI. 21 Autonomous republic under the Republic of Azerbaijan. It is landlocked, has no direct land border with Azerbaijan, and has only small border with Turkey. Under the Moscow treaty in 1923, Turkey is the guarantor of Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic. 34 put these lines22 of Samed Vurgun into our eyes.”” (Ermeni Haber Ajansı 2016) And this article from the contemporary times. “Another novel of 'Dreams of Stone' by Eylisli, which creates a controversy, is about the massacres of Azerbaijanis applied to Armenians in Baku and Agulis in 1989. After the publication of this book, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev withdrew the title of "people's writer" from Eylisli on February 7, 2013.” (Ermeni Haber Ajansı 2016) Beside these examples, we observe another kind of articles that portray working for Armenians as treason for Azerbaijanis. “Mirkadirov claimed that he didn’t cooperate neither with Armenian nor another country’s intelligence services.” (Ermeni Haber Ajansı 2016)

After the April clashes After the clashes, we see little change in the discourse of Agos. Ethnic and religious minority rights still are on the main target of the website. Agos still criticize government actions, which they think is wrong or unjust. However, we observe the new criticism on the issue of Nagorno Karabakh too. Statements supporting Azerbaijan in the last clashes usually criticized on the ethnic similarity basis. “Armenia's Deputy Foreign Minister Şavarş Kocharian reacted to Turkey's statement on the conflict occurred in Nagorno-Karabakh. Kocharian said, ''Unfortunately, Turkey considers the value of human losses based on the nation, '' and he emphasized that "Turkey's racist statements encourages the continuation of the aggression against Karabakh". . . Sargsyan specifically noted that Turkey's support to Azerbaijan's adventurism is without a doubt.” (Balyan 2016) Similar to other diaspora media sources, Agos also had claims that Turkey might actually be in behind of Azerbaijan’s aggressive actions. “There were conflicts in Karabakh border, especially in the last year. But the last conflicts were out of routine. Heavy weapons were used and the Azeri forces carried out an operation to take land. The rationale of this operation by Azerbaijanis was “conditions are available, the other party is very weak, we will take it if needed” type of assessments along with the support of Turkey. The first part of these words is unreal. But Turkey's support is clear. This was reflected in Erdogan's statements too.” (Dink 2016) While support to Azerbaijan was criticized, any support for peaceful settlement was encouraged. “We call on the Armenian and Azerbaijani governments. Against the AKP’s provocation of war, please sit down at the table and try to solve the problem with dialogue. From the very first moment, Erdoğan-Davutoğlu makes statements that fuel

22 It refers to the poem written by Azerbaijani poet Samed Vurghun during Soviet times. He praises the Armenian Bolshevik revolutionary Shaumyan and calls him “Caucasus Eagle” and continues that “Steel heart beats in his chest”. 35 the war. They are excited to start a new war with the headlines “Let the Azerbaijanis smash”.” (Agos 2016) Beside the criticism of government, we also observe the emphasis on the religion and the image of religious terrorist acts of Azerbaijan. “The persecution of soldiers and civilians is often compared to the practices of the Islamic State by the society. Even official statements were made. It was emphasized that the torture against Armenian soldiers and civilian people was very similar to the policies of ISIS.” (Balyan 2016) Although we see little diversion, mostly the website follows the similar narrative as it was in March. Although very little place was given to Nagorno Karabakh in March, we observe the number of articles related to the conflict during April in one or another way. Similar to other sources, we see the articles about the foreign military support to Azerbaijan. “According to reports, military instructors and mercenaries sent from Turkey to the southeast of the front line to help Azerbaijani forces.” (Ermeni Haber Ajansı 2016) Beside Turkey, articles also claim the presence of terrorist in the frontline. “These hired soldiers are usually gray wolves. There is information that ISIS militants might also participated.” (Ermeni Haber Ajansı 2016) Beside these, there are also articles that claim and try to disprove the propaganda attempts of Azerbaijan. There is an article about the letter that website claims Azerbaijanis attempted to fake from the name of Armenian general and tried to use it as a tool of propaganda but failed since they didn’t know Armenian very well and made grammar mistakes. (Ermeni Haber Ajansı 2016) Further, website also tried to disprove the claimed success of the enemy and showed it as another attempt by the enemy to spread fake news. “Azerbaijani sources claimed that they "captured" Talish23 and Jabrayil, and even placed Azerbaijani signs in Talish. However, both the Armenian media and foreign journalists in the region say that this news are not real and that the regions in question are under the control of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.” (Ermeni Haber Ajansı 2016) While attacking to the government actors, website also attack on the president of Azerbaijan and high level military officials. It makes a mockery and publish caricature about the president and army generals that they spread fake news and only think about their own benefits while sacrificing the ordinary people. (Ermeni Haber Ajansı 2016) Beside disproving enemy propaganda, website also claim that they publish correct numbers and facts. “Expressing that the number of casualties of Azerbaijan in the four-day armed clashes in Nagorno-Karabakh is

23 According to official sources, Talish was captured by Azerbaijan but taken back by Armenians. 36 around 2,50024, Babayan noted that the relatively few bodies left by the Azerbaijani soldiers in our lands proved that they could not enter our lands much.” (Ermeni Haber Ajansı 2016)

24 Official sources say 94 casualties by Azerbaijani side. Claimed numbers make up around 2% of the active personnel of Azerbaijani army. 37

Analysis

Numbers

Russian Federation

Table 3. Total numbers of articles in Russian Federation according to categories.25 Column Sum of ArticleSize Labels

Row Labels AC DspA ECC FS Fse HNK NNA PArm PArmy WE Grand Total March 0 61 110 71 24 7 625 33 19 49 999 April 161 136 100 277 79 21 495 120 189 251 1829 Grand Total 161 197 210 348 103 28 1120 153 208 300 2828

Chart 1. Visualization of change in total numbers of articles in Russian Federation according to categories.

700

AC 600 DspA 500 ECC FS 400 Fse 300 HNK NNA 200 PArm 100 PArmy WE 0 March April

During the two months observation, we see that there is a difference in the number of articles that we divided into categories. First of all, there is an increase in the number of articles in April.

25 For the detailed information on the separate media sources in Russian Federation, please see Appendix A. 38

We see that there is an 83% increase in the number of articles published in April comparing to March. While March had 999 articles in total, April had 1829 articles in total verifying that April clashes had significant effect on the diaspora media and created a window of opportunity to present the fabula in their narrative texts. While we see that number of articles with no relation to NK or “enemy” figure26 decrease in April, we observe that number of articles that has relation to Nagorno Karabakh, Nagorno Karabakh War or April clashes27 tend to increase during April. Only deviation in this trend is the increase in DspA category, which includes the articles that related to the relations of Armenia/Armenian diaspora with host country, trying to show the importance of Armenia/Armenians in host country and similar. This deviation might originate because of Genocide Commemoration day in April 24 since more events and meetings were hold because of this and reflected in the media. Although we see decreases in smaller percentages, increases usually tend to happen in higher percentages. Especially, the power of the own army and the weakness of enemy army shows that considerable importance was given to the military.

Table 4. Change of number articles in Russian Federation by categories defined in percentage. Sum of Column ArticleSize Labels Row Grand Labels AC DspA ECC FS Fse HNK NNA PArm PArmy WE Total - - April NA 122.95% 9.09% 290.14% 229.17% 200.00% 20.80% 263.64% 894.74% 412.24% 83.08% March Grand Total

26 NoNK 27 NK 39

United States

Table 5. Total numbers of articles in United States according to categories.28 Column Sum of ArticleSize Labels

Row Labels AC DspA ECC FS Fse HNK NNA PArm PArmy WE Grand Total March 0 87 71 48 11 4 313 14 9 22 579 April 10 99 46 121 31 2 191 28 15 47 590 Grand Total 10 186 117 169 42 6 504 42 24 69 1169

Chart 2. Visualization of change in total numbers of articles in United States according to categories.

350

AC 300 DspA 250 ECC FS 200 Fse 150 HNK NNA 100 PArm 50 PArmy WE 0 March April

During the two months observation, number of articles tends to stay similar with very little increase in April, only 1.90%. However, we observe high level of difference in the number of articles published under different categories. While Russian diaspora media increased the number of articles under NK category and keeping NoNK category somehow similar, United States diaspora media redistributed number of articles more into NK category by decreasing number of articles in NoNK category. The similar trend is also visible in US diaspora media that DspA category increased while other NoNK categories decreasing. Similar logic might apply here too that

28 For the detailed information on the separate media sources in United States, please see Appendix B. 40

Genocide Commemoration day in April 24 affected to have increase in this category. Different from the data in Russian Federation, we don’t see higher increases since number of articles usually stayed the same. However, the weakness of enemy army in this case still increases considerably. Furthermore, we see that importance was mainly given to the foreign support, either for own or for the enemy in United States diaspora media.

Table 6. Change of number articles in United States by categories defined in percentage. Sum of Column ArticleSize Labels Grand Row Labels AC DspA ECC FS Fse HNK NNA PArm PArmy WE Total - - - April NA 13.79% 35.21% 152.08% 181.82% 50.00% 38.98% 100.00% 66.67% 113.64% 1.90% March Grand Total

Turkey

Table 7. Total numbers of articles in Turkey according to categories.29 Column Sum of ArticleSize Labels Row Labels AC DspA ECC FS Fse HNK NNA PArm PArmy WE Grand Total March 0 62 63 15 1 1 337 5 4 11 499 April 39 37 70 63 14 2 234 18 42 40 559 Grand Total 39 99 133 78 15 3 571 23 46 51 1058

Chart 3. Visualization of change in total numbers of articles in Turkey according to categories.

400

350 AC DspA 300 ECC 250 FS

200 Fse HNK 150 NNA 100 PArm

50 PArmy WE 0 March April

During the two months observation, we see that there is a slight increase in the number of articles published in April. While it is less than it was in Russia, it is higher than it was in United States. While the trend of decreasing number of articles in NoNK continues, and NK increases, we see different distribution inside categories. While NNA follows the trend and decreases, ECC and DspA changes their places. While ECC increase, we observe that DspA decreases. This trend might be related to the fact that Turkey was mostly in the target of ECC and since the observation is from Turkey we observe this result. Although support from other countries awaited by diaspora and direction moved away from Turkey, this time support awaited from Turkey doesn’t seem realistic and Turkey is indirectly accused for its support for Azerbaijan and also accused for the genocide.

29 For the detailed information on the separate media sources in Turkey, please see Appendix C. 42

Similar to the observation in Russian Federation, we again observe the decreases to be smaller while increasing categories increased considerably. Different from the previous observations, we observe that both foreign support for own and enemy, and praising own army while showing the weakness of enemy showed considerable increase during April.

Table 8. Change of number articles in Tukey by categories defined in percentage.

Sum of Column ArticleSize Labels Grand Row Labels AC DspA ECC FS Fse HNK NNA PArm PArmy WE Total March - - April NA 40.32% 11.11% 320.00% 1300.00% 100.00% 30.56% 260.00% 950.00% 263.64% 12.02% Grand Total

Narrative and Content Analysis

Russian Federation

In Russian Armenian diaspora media, we can observe two narratives during March: 1. Armenians have important role in the Russian history and current politics, and 2. Azerbaijan is corrupted, not able to play good role for Russia and the one collaborating with the enemies of Russian Federation. In the first narrative, policy issue is that Armenia/Armenians are friend, which mainly included the characters like historic Armenian people in Russian history, scientists and others who contributed to Soviet Union and current Armenian descended people in Russia that contributes to the country. Since the government is more controlling in Russia, diaspora media also adapted to the system. Rather than criticizing the Russian government, diaspora media usually targeted the enemies of the Russian government to get support. “Over the past decade Russia has taken an ‘authoritarian turn’ accompanied by the strengthening of central government. As already noted, winning hearts and opinion requires the mainstream media, which have a limited amount of editorial autonomy and space for free political discourse in Russia’s ‘neoauthoritarian media system’.” (Pantti 2014, 5) Therefore, Russia is always in the position of a friend and very few articles criticize Russia for supporting Azerbaijan. However, policy issue is that Azerbaijan is the enemy or opponent of Armenia, also for Russian Federation in the second narrative. Characters include Turkey as a challenger of Russian influence in the Caucasus region, West as the opponent of Russia in the global politics, and Azerbaijan as the one collaborating with challengers and opponents of Russia. Turkey always portrayed as a regional power along with Iran in the region, therefore supports Azerbaijan to have a stronger hand against Russia. On the other hand, West always portrayed as it was in Cold War period that tries to encircle Russian Federation. Following Ukraine and Georgia, Azerbaijan also helps them in their goal as it is visible from the political and economic actions of Azerbaijan. Therefore, we see two main narratives before the April clashes, one as hostile and one as friendly narrative. While friendly narrative highlight the importance of Armenia, hostile narrative highlight the actions of Azerbaijan supporting the opponents of Russia. In this sense, main target of diaspora media usually is to formulate the public opinion in favor of Armenia and against other competitors. We observe this trend in our data too. Beside the articles under category that is not related to any narrative, most of the articles published in March fall under categories that highlight the relations of 44 diaspora with Russia and highlight the foreign support for Armenia/Armenians or foreign support for opponent characters. We can again observe two narratives, one as hostile and one as friendly, during April. However, this time narratives have changed and became more specific in the nature rather than being general as it was in March. It was caused because this time main target of media was to shape the public opinion rather than forming the public opinion. Because of the active nature of the events that demanded quick response, media also adapted to the nature of events and started to react the exact events rather than forming an argument from indirect cases. Therefore, we see reactive narratives during April since they focus to react to the events happening during this month. First narrative is the powerful image of Armenians in terms of army, history and culture. In this narrative, characters became Armenians as heroes, Azerbaijanis as villains and enemies, Turkey as the supporter of the evil. It is visible when some exaggerations take place such as destroying almost all army in one spot, historical arguments to prove that nation has long history and enemy doesn’t, and others. We observe it also in our data that the categories, which include the articles with show of foreign support, praising Armenia and praising army increase substantially during April. The second narrative is hostile one to show Azerbaijan this time as a weak enemy that went for all bad ways to compensate its weakness. In this narrative, Azerbaijan holds the character of challenger to the whole nature of the world order while Turkey plays the character of the supporter and provocateur of the actions. At the same time, Armenia plays the character of the defender of what Azerbaijan tries to destroy. These claims include ones that Baku is following the orders of Turkey, Azerbaijan use terrorists to fight against Armenia, showing how civilians are afraid of Armenians and others. The main image that wanted to be created was that Azerbaijan is weak and has to cover it by getting support from outside and forcing its own people into something too. “There are huge new dispersions of Armenian refugees and migrants who have fled the wars and economic collapse of Transcaucasia; these now number over 2 million in the Russian Republic and across the former Soviet Union, where a diaspora is in the process of emerging beyond the reach of most observers located in the West.” (Tölölyan 2001, 9) According to the description of Tölölyan, Armenian community in Russia might fall into the categories between immigrants and diaspora. Although not clearly fall for the category of immigrants, who are actually newcomers and usually care about their satisfaction of financial needs, not whole Armenian community can fall for the category of diaspora since not adapted to the society and politicized as a whole. These people usually have stronger ties with homeland therefore, they are more interested in the problems of

45 homeland. Furthermore, their stronger ties make diaspora media more prone to take active side in the conflict and use different methods to address the local population. In the Russian Federation, Armenian diaspora media usually focused on the army. Our data also show that most of the increase fall on the army power during April. According to the Freedom House report, Russian Federation was labeled as not-free country and didn’t have the suitable environment for diaspora media to focus on the political process. Probably depending on the nature of the host country, more focus was given to the military powers than to the political solutions since Russian Federation does not have the best environment for the political discussions. Continuing from that point different methods used by diaspora media. In order to highlight the conflict and emphasize the weakness of enemy, even fake news were used in order to create this narrative. Exaggeration and fake news aimed two target: first is to show enemy weaker than it is to increase the spirit in diaspora, second is the consequent target to show enemy in a position to use even the worst things as last resort. While the first one is targeted to influence the inner circle, the second one is targeted to influence the outer circle of local people of host country and the whole world. As a result, it becomes easier to convince outer circle if the enemy is portrayed as capable of doing what media claims. According to the description of Toivanen and Bahar, actions of Armenian diaspora in Russia Federation usually fall between the categories of on-going conflict and peace process. While diaspora advocate and campaign for Armenia or against Azerbaijan, diaspora also try to facilitate the engagement of host country in the process.

United States

In United States Armenian diaspora media, we observe one main narrative: Turkey is undemocratic state that is the enemy for democratic countries and has to be stopped. The main aim is to get the support from host country to force Turkey into recognizing the genocide. Characters include Turkey as the villain in this narrative while United States is the powerful state that can stop the villain. All other claims are formulated around the purpose of forcing Turkey to recognize Armenian Genocide. In this sense, the aim of diaspora media is the opinion forming in the society and in the policymaking level of the state. In order to highlight the picture of Turkey that is capable of doing the genocide, current problems in Turkey emphasized. Especially, problems with the ethnic minorities in Turkey have more place during this period. The reason of publishing the articles about the problems of ethnic minorities in Turkey might be caused from this purpose. Nagorno Karabakh 46 issue in the media is in the low level of this narrative. It is usually tied Azerbaijan with Turkey, emphasized the ethnic similarity and portray both in the negative way. “Every Turk’s duty is to kill at least one Armenian” is the statement to identify both Azerbaijan and Turkey with the same purpose, which targets Armenians and tries to kill them. “They can use even terrorists to follow this purpose” idea mainly mentioned in the articles to shape the opinion towards them. Similar trend is available in our data too. Beside the articles that has nothing to do with the narratives we look for, most of the articles fall under the categories that talks about the relations of diaspora and host country, show the foreign support and the articles that try to create the image of enemy/challenger/competitor. The remaining articles usually feed the low level of the main narrative in the diaspora media during March. United States Armenian diaspora media change the main narrative during April. During this month, low level of main narrative became the main narrative and main narrative became the subsidiary of that one. While Turkey was on the spot during March and Azerbaijan was the one collaborating with Turkey, now Azerbaijan became the one on the spot during April and Turkey became the supporter and provocateur of Azerbaijan. Characters of the narrative formulates around these: Azerbaijan as a villain that aims to destroy the values of the modern world with its fascist techniques as it is highly mentioned in the articles. Armenia as the first obstacle in their way to defend those values against the aggressor, Turkey as the hostile enemy that supports and use Azerbaijan in its global aim of destroying the values of modern world. During this period, articles and targets were more concrete and aim of media was to shape the public opinion rather than forming the new one. Our data shows the similar trend too. We see significant decrease in the number of articles that fall under the category of creating the image of enemy/competitor/challenger, which shows that the importance of Turkey in our new narrative also decrease and it plays the side role. We see the increase in all categories that shows the support for both Armenia and Azerbaijan, also increase in the both showing the power of Armenia and weakness of Azerbaijan. “There are several large, dominant Armenian diaspora communities in which the multi- directional transformation is hardest to characterize briefly: within each, many individuals assimilate, while others cling to some aspects of old, tested, and readily available ethnic identities, even as new diasporic ones develop alongside them. Many abandon contact with all Armenian institutions, even as some segments of the community mobilize around well-funded organizations and institutions. Some of these function locally (in one city, say), some translocally (across a whole host country), while a few key diasporic institutions operate transnationally. The United States

47 above all . . . have diaspora communities in which such institutions remain important.” (Tölölyan 2001, 9) According to the description of Toivanen and Bahar, US Armenian community falls between the categories of diaspora and becoming ethnicity of the country. Diaspora in United States mainly includes the people who came couple of generations before and became like a local people to some extent. Therefore, they are usually focused on the genocide issue rather than Nagorno Karabakh conflict. “The experience of departure, migration or even exile is a lived experience for the first generation, whereas for the second generation it is evoked, remembered and enunciated in the transnational space they are embedded in. The relationship to (ancestral) homeland is evidently different, but not necessarily meaningless when it comes to questions of peace and conflict in their parents’ homeland. . . Furthermore, second generation members, who have been more passive and “dormant transnationalists” can become activated in the aftermath of major political disturbances in their parents’ homeland.” (Toivanen and Bahar 2020, 8) We can include April clashes as the major disturbance in the parents’ homeland. This is the reason that we see change in narratives between March and April. After clashes, major disturbance in Armenia activates the generations of diaspora that doesn’t have direct relations with homeland. Therefore, big place were given to Nagorno Karabakh conflict in diaspora media after April clashes. Looking at our data, we observe that most of the increase in the number of articles falls on the foreign support, either for own or for the enemy. It is again for the fact that host country has an available environment for the political discussion and the support of the host country can actually be changed depending on the presented discourse. United States was a free country according to the Freedom House, which also supports our claim here that diaspora media had better environment to work on that direction. Therefore, Armenian diaspora media usually focused on the foreign support than the army power, different from the case in Russian Federation. We observe propaganda elements and fake or at-least unverified news in April narrative texts. Main images are ethnic and religious images. Ethnic image created with the use of Turkey, which shows the ethnic similarity of Turkey and Azerbaijan, and then moves the genocide issue to show that they are both the same “evil”. While religious image used by the help of claims about involvement of terrorist groups and emphasize on other religious characters. The wanted image is that “enemy is Turkic Muslim people, who did genocide to us and who still makes terrorist attacks in Christian world, fights with us and we should work together with host country to stop them because Armenians are not only ones in their target.”

Turkey

We observe one main narrative in Turkey and it is focused mainly on the genocide issue. Argument goes like this: Turkey is denying the accusations of genocide and following the similar policy even now against other minorities in the country, which again endanger the situation for Armenians in the country. Characters include Turkey as the denier of past and oppressor of present while ethnic minorities are the ones that suffer from that. Azerbaijan has a small role here as the supporter and enactor of such behavior of Turkey in their own cases. Policy issue is to make Turkey accept the fault and stop the current oppression. After the clashes, we observe the change in the focus of narrative from Turkey to Azerbaijan, and leaving Turkey as the supporting character in the narrative. Main aim of the media was to form a public opinion that is coherent with the opinion of the diaspora. We observe the same trend in our data too. While there is a very few number of articles have in the categories related to NK during March, NoNK categories had most of the articles. Beside the articles that includes general news, remaining articles mostly focused either in creating the image of enemy/competitor/challenger or emphasizing the importance of diaspora. Main narrative after clashes is that Azerbaijan is trying to oppress Armenians by using the violent measures. Characters include Azerbaijan as the one violating the norms, kills civilians, spread fake news about its own actions and similar. Armenia is in the position of successfully defending himself in front of the violent aggressor. Although importance of Turkey in this narrative decreases, it still plays a role of supporter for the actions of Azerbaijan. The aim of the media in this period is generally the opinion shaping of the public. We observe the similar trend in our data too. While NoNK category decreases in numbers, we observe significant increase in NK categories. Articles emphasizing the weakness of the enemy side increase along with the claims against Turkish support. This is the only deviation from previous countries because Turkey was also the main supporter of Azerbaijan in these countries too. However, the categorical change occurs since the data is from Turkey itself. While such articles mostly fall under Fse30 category in other countries, it fell mostly under ECC31 category for Turkey. There is a strong lines between the Turkey and Azerbaijan in terms of ethnic and religious similarities. Both are Muslim and both are Turkic nations. There is a highly popular phrase for this relationship in both countries saying “One nation, two states”. Although we might observe the real

30 Foreign support for enemy 31 Creating the enemy/challenger/competitor figure 49 benefits for both states from this close collaboration, we can’t undermine the emotional bonds between states which encourages better and wider relations in terms of many spheres, not limited to politics and military. Better relations between these states creates a situation of danger for Armenia which has two out of four borders blocked because of the conflict. This sense of danger again is not only in the material form but it also has an emotional connotation with the past, especially the genocide issue. “Armenians in the United States and France, for example, are responsible for instilling into the current Armenian-Azeri conflict an echo of the Armenian genocide. Ultimately, the genocide also became the central “chosen trauma” of the Armenian state. It was increasingly invoked when Turkey extended its support to Azerbaijan, another Turkic country. Richard G. Hovannisian has said that Turkish moves to support Azerbaijan in the Karabakh conflict were seen by the diaspora “as the logical continuation of a long-term policy to keep Armenia helpless and vulnerable…[that] at a convenient moment it can, perhaps, seize upon an excuse to eliminate the little that was left of the historic Armenian territories.” One analyst notes that “Many Armenians do not distinguish between Azeris and Turks and fear encirclement by Turkish/Islamic expansionism.” (Shain 2002, 127) This is one of the reasons that diaspora media felt the necessity to change their narrative, even have a deviation from other countries in the research. While it might be the conflict with Azerbaijan for Armenia, it extends beyond Azerbaijan to Turkey because of ethnic basis in the eyes of diaspora. “In many respects, the Armenian-American and Jewish-American diasporas are the carriers of kinship mythologies that do not always coincide with the central national narratives as they have been constructed by their kin state’s governments or their homeland’s people. The Armenian genocide of 1915 . . . is central to diaspora identity, but less so to the homeland community, which for the most part escaped the trauma of the event. Diaspora hard-liners are said to care less about the homeland’s present and future than about the past’s dead. Notably, no diaspora Armenians in the West are from Nagorno Karabakh . . . but the issue matters to them in light of their historical memory of losing lands and lives to Turkish nationalists.” (Shain 2002, 121) Therefore, Nagorno Karabakh conflict is not the isolated, separate conflict for the diaspora, and it has a historical background. While Azerbaijan is not part of historical background that much, it is the other state of the “one nation”. It means that Azerbaijan should also have the similar characteristics as Turkey and should be in a capacity of doing what Turkey had done to Armenians. Therefore, Nagorno Karabakh is another attempt by Turks to fight and kill Armenians as the continuation of the genocide. It puts Armenians in a self-defending position against Turks and media narrative should follow this trend.

While we observe Azerbaijan to be in spot during April, Turkey is also included as a party that is encouraging and supporting the enemy. “In confronting the kin state’s conflict, the diaspora attempts to promote its own view of the ethnic community’s identity and interests, a view which is not always congruent with the view of the homeland authorities.” (Shain 2002, 116) For this reason, instead of demand of non-support to Azerbaijan as it happened with Russia and United States, we observe blaming Turkey and not even expecting that they might change their support direction. Furthermore, we observe in our data that there is a significant increase in categories related both for the foreign support and for the military, which is different from both United States and Russian Federation diaspora media. Turkey was labelled as partly-free country by Freedom House in 2016. As a result, they had a somehow open political environment for the political discussion to take place and be influenced while also having the strong authority was given to the certain people. Therefore, it is possible to influence the political discussion and we see increase in the categories for foreign support. At the same time, the system in the host country also has a strong personal authority presence and military categories also increase.

Results

All our cases had a narrative change as a result of April clashes. Diaspora media had mostly the same issue before the clashes. This issue usually takes the position of diaspora on the abstract meanings that they attach to the homeland. As a result, diaspora communities might be more aggressive and stubborn on the conflict in homeland than the people who actually live the conflict with its pain. “Diaspora and homeland citizens often have different attitudes toward the implications such policies have for ethnic and national identity. For many homeland citizens, territory serves multiple functions: it provides sustenance, living space, security, as well as a geographical focus for national identity. If giving up a certain territory, even one of significant symbolic value, would increase security and living conditions, a homeland citizen might find the tradeoff worthwhile. By contrast, for the diaspora, while the security of the homeland is of course important as well, the territory’s identity function is often paramount. Its practical value (and, indeed, the practical value of peace with a former rival) is not directly relevant to the diaspora’s daily experience.” (Shain 2002, 134) Because of this reason, diaspora communities tend to see the abstract meanings they attach to the conflict in the homeland and prone to support the continuance of conflict if that helps to protect the territory. If lives lost, it enhances the meaning of the conflict for the diaspora. If goals achieved, it boosts the confidence and value of the identity that diaspora community feels connected. Furthermore, this situation occurs as a result of the connection of diaspora community with the homeland, whether they personally affected by the conflict, its consequences or they are the second or more generations of the immigrants and only share the same identity, not the suffer. Therefore, diaspora media had different directions depending on the countries they reside before the clashes. Although different media sources had different directions in their articles before April clashes, they all changed to somehow similar narrative after the clashes. The reason mainly was the activation of diaspora members and diaspora media because of major disturbance in the homeland. The main trend on the new narratives is similar in all cases except some small deviations during the period that was observed. It might be the reason that diaspora usually got their information from homeland and build their narratives around it therefore, it led to the similarity in all diaspora media narratives. Diaspora experienced the similar path when the conflict started too. Before the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, diaspora mainly engaged in the genocide issue with Turkey. Conflict activated the diaspora and increased their interests in the issue. “Even the two Armenian blocs, initially opposed to secessionism, supported it after 1991. . . Hence, identity based emotional identification 52 with injustice frames, followed by an attribution of opportunity to secessionism made diasporas engage in a conflict spiral.” (Koinova 2011, 343-44) April clashes played the similar role too and reminded the importance of the issue. Although it didn’t affect in a way of total policy change, it did help in emphasizing the issue further than the normal activities. While it was taken granted for many years that the only issue left is to legitimize the claimed independence, now the clashes showed that still the control over Nagorno Karabakh is not granted and might be subject to the change. Therefore, new narratives also should be focused on this direction to maximize the support for Armenia while minimizing the support for Azerbaijan in the conflict. While diaspora approached the conflict as in the phase of post-conflict reconstruction and development, April clashes turned this phase back to the on-going conflict and changed the actions of diaspora media. Though it didn’t last for the complete policy change, it did create the void for the perception at least for some period of time. Couple of different narratives used for this purpose. The first one is portray of religious war in the conflict as the conflict originated or continues right now because of the religious difference between two states. Claims that terrorist fight on the side of Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan behead captured soldiers, because it is also a way of execution that ISIS used, and others emphasizing on the religion used to create the image of religious conflict in which Christians are against Muslims. Religion is one of the most used justification methods for the parties in conflict dating back to the very long times ago. Maybe the first important and theorized religious conflict is Crusades that took place against Muslims. “The motives of both the Church and the crusader were located not in the realm of material interests, but in the sphere of religious belief. On this now-standard historiographical view, the crusades were first and foremost an artifact of the religiously derived discourses that both constituted the agents that populated Medieval Latin Christendom and that imbued those agents with historically specific needs, values, and interests.” (Latham 2011, 224) This is the motive to ignore all the material benefits you might take from the conflict and focus on the religious values that you share with one party and not with the other party. Considering this, two reasons might be said for this narrative: first is that ISIS issue was trending in world media at that times and second is that Russia and United States is considered as a Christian country. Because of these reasons, using ISIS fighting against Armenians in articles created better empathy for the local readers than some Azerbaijani soldier fights against some Armenian soldier. Second main narrative was the portray of ethnic war that conflict originated because of ethnic traits of nations or continues because of the ethnic similarities of Azerbaijanis with Turkey.

This narrative usually puts Armenians against Turks, which mainly includes Azerbaijan and Turkey acting as one actor. “If theorists of ethnic conflict suggest that culture is a part of that process of mobilization toward war, then cultural variables should be fitted into extant models of interstate conflict to provide a better approximation of the war puzzle. . . does ethnic difference breed ethnocentrism that makes it easier for elites to mobilize their ethnic kin to war against ethnic "others” ?” (Henderson 1997, 654) It doesn’t have an obvious answer but the diaspora media tried to create this image. Always interference of Turkey used in articles to justify the point. Interference included political, economic, military or other kinds of material help, and speeches, interview and other types of emotional support. Perhaps we might explain this with the help of Primordialists view of the diaspora. “Primordialists suggest the ubiquity of ethnocentrism. This view argues that the aggression of in-groups toward out-groups is rooted in a primordial urge linking group identity with certain ascriptive characteristics, often ethnicity and/or race.” (Henderson 1997, 655) In a Primordialists view, people of Azerbaijan and Turkey both share the same origin of their nation and they share the same characteristics of their nation. One of these characteristics they share is the hate against Armenians, through the historical claims diaspora media tries to present as a known fact. Therefore, there was a continuous attempt to show that Nagorno Karabakh conflict is similar with genocide issue and Turks will do the same if they get a chance. For the diaspora media, it is because of the in-group aggression of Turks that they possess in themselves against Armenians. This issue adds more power to the narrative by using the actions of Turkey and presenting it also as a trait of Azerbaijan. Again, a negative attitude towards Turkey, because of the complications with Russia and United States, creates a fertile environment to use this narratives as it was the case with religious narrative with ISIS. Although ethnic war narrative was presented in previous period, religious war is the new narrative probably taking advantage of the circumstances. Ethnic war also focused mainly on Turkey but now it includes Azerbaijan and describe both as Turks, and as an enemy for Armenia and Armenians because they both share the similar ethnicity and possess the in- group aggression against Armenians. How the narratives formulated also changed based on the political situation in the host country. According to Freedom House report, United States is a free country with aggregate score of 90, Turkey is partly-free country with aggregate score of 53 and Russia is a not free country with aggregate score of 22, all of them in 2016. (2016) We can observe the changes depending on the system as the narratives focused on the different actors. Diaspora in United States is more focused on the political solutions while Russian diaspora is more focused on the events and facts. It is

54 because of the fact that “the political environment that diasporas operate in should have a system that is open for diaspora influence.” (Toivanen and Bahar 2020, 3) It is because of the nature of the host country since it is the best way to achieve political goals through the support from government. Therefore, target of the media was usually congressmen/congresswomen and through the political system in United States. We also observed this trend in our data that Armenian diaspora media in United States usually focused on the foreign support and main increase during April happened in those categories, whether it was support for the Self or for the Other. Furthermore, some high ranking people can also be the subject of criticism because of their direct participation in sustaining the help for the enemy. However, they don’t follow the similar approach in Russia because of the low level of democracy in Russia. While US diaspora targeted congress to get support, Russian diaspora mostly mentioned Lavrov and Putin in the aim of getting support. Even not for the support, those people are the main figures in formulating the foreign policy, which also affects the conflict that diaspora interested in. We observed this pattern also in our data that most of the increase during April fall on the categories related to the military power, whether it was the power of the Self or weakness of the Other. Therefore, we see less criticism and focus on the government bodies in Russian Federation. Turkey diaspora media had something in the middle of both of these because it was a partly free country in 2016. While also targeting the officials directly, it also addressed to the parliament and took the opposition stance in the topic. It was also observed in our data too that the articles related to both foreign support and military increased after the clashes. However, diaspora had a genocide issue with Turkey too, therefore it might also affected on them to target both individuals and government bodies together.

Discussion

We expected to see the narrative change in Armenian diaspora media because of April clashes in 2016. This was because of the reason, which we believed that April clashes played a significant role in the history of conflict. Because it was the first time after ceasefire that parties summoned that much soldiers and military equipment into the frontline and were so close to the point of total war. We had a literature focusing on some separate parts of this topic, but not in together. Furthermore, this literature focused on diaspora through the whole history or in some period rather than being event-based. We also tried to emphasize on the role of diaspora in the process of conflict, which was researched very little in the field. Therefore, we aimed to have the stance of diaspora separate from the homeland. “In Putnam’s view, state leaders balance two competing spheres at once in an international negotiation; they must satisfy both domestic political constituencies and also meet the negotiating counterpart’s minimum demands. The analysis of the Armenian and Jewish cases suggests that when active diasporas exist, they cannot be viewed simply as a domestic constituency within their host state, but must also be recognized as an independent actor in the conflict resolution process.” (Shain 2002, 120) Despite the fact that diaspora has its own policy goals to be achieved, Armenian diaspora usually affected by the homeland in the issue of Nagorno Karabakh. This was the result of the absence of direct influenced people on the diaspora community and the Armenian diaspora community usually focused on the genocide issue leaving the Nagorno Karabakh conflict less dealt. We also observe the absence of younger generation in diaspora or the absence of middle grounders in diaspora that actually want to build a peace. “Both in the diaspora and at home, this younger generation, often inhabiting and expressing itself in social media, embraces forms of change that do not necessarily follow the prevailing divides. Embracing more universal values, and being less affected by war’s legacy of deep-rooted grievances or the bitterness of losing power, these individuals often appear to seek a new—and desperately needed— middle ground.” (Stremlau 2012) However, despite the very few middle grounders in the homeland, almost no middle grounder ideas were common in the diaspora media. On the contrary, diaspora media had a stricter opinion on the conflict. Although we expected that diaspora to have somehow different stance than homeland and differ depending on the host country, the results showed very similar direction in diaspora in different countries, which mostly originated from one source. It might be because of the reason that no or very few diaspora members are from Nagorno Karabakh and their relation to the conflict usually lies through the homeland. 56

We observed the narrative change in diaspora media in all three countries in spot. Although differences occurred in different cases, whether as a whole country or as a media source, all cases had a similar trend in our data. Although it might be expected that diaspora media in different countries would have different opinions on the conflict, not opposing but at least giving somehow different arguments against it, it turned out that none of them fundamentally differed from each other. Focus of media changed from daily activities into Nagorno Karabakh conflict suddenly when the April clashes happened or the days following it. It is actually normal to have such a change in daily activities because of the newsworthiness of the clashes, however not only it affected on number of articles dedicated to Nagorno Karabakh issue but also affected on how content was formulated during the clashes. It should also be noted that April 24 genocide commemoration day might have an effect on the change of narrative since we collected data from whole April. Because of this event, focus was on Turkey and more articles devoted to the history and accusation of Turkey in the case. This situation especially affected on the dataset by increasing the numbers in some of the categories, especially ECC and FSe categories. Host countries for diaspora also made effect on the change during the research since they create a context for the diaspora media to operate in. “It has been suggested that there is a triadic relationship among diasporas, the states and contexts where such groups reside, and the homeland states and the contexts where they or their forbears come from.” (Toivanen and Bahar 2020, 5) Depending on the freedom level, accessibility to political means, previous relation of homeland with host country and other factors affect the general and event-based narrative that diaspora use. All three countries that we focused had a different level of political freedom, very different background with the diaspora depending on their history and had differing political means to successfully effect on the policy making process. Two main narratives were present in our results. One main narrative was based on the religious identity and usually tried to link the enemy with ISIS. “Brutality was the basic feature of IS content; extreme cruelty was present in all their propagandistic channels. This image was targeted at opponents and potential enemies of the IS. As mentioned above, ostentatious acts of cruelty were a symbol of the revenge that awaits unbelievers in the superiority of the IS.” (Issaev and Shishkina 2019, 120) Diaspora media attempted to draw a relation with this brutality feature of ISIS and the enemy. Furthermore, the resemblance doesn’t stop there and furthers to join the Christians against Muslims because the target is far bigger than in this conflict and the conflict is only the beginning front. Since ISIS is accepted as an evil by all logical people, then any relation with them should put the collaborator in the same place as ISIS. The second main narrative is on the ethnic characteristic

57 of the enemy and negative features attributed to it. “Negative characterization of the Other is not the result of historically false statements but results from selection of true-negative actions and the omission of true-positive actions and information.” (Adwan, Tal and Wexler 2016, 208) Therefore, information provided doesn’t simply focus on the rights and wrongs done by Other. Although most of the articles focused on the true events and conveyed the true information, they also tried to ignore the true-positive information about the enemy side. One example from the creation of Other image for Turks, which was also one of the main goals of diaspora in our research too, follows like this: “Thus, when on one occasion a rural teacher described how the Turks entered Constantinople and ‘slaughtered the Greeks’, he was not simply communicating a particular historical event; he was also communicating to students a certain evaluative stance for what happened: to slaughter is not simply to kill; it is to kill in a cruel, merciless manner; it is to engage in barbaric behaviour. The evaluative stance that the teacher encouraged the children to adopt and the emotional response this promoted is one that coloured Turks as the barbaric enemy of the Greek nation.” (Spyrou 2006, 98) The narrative in our research also had the similar way in description and added much colour in defining how the violent acts done by the Other. It is not that some soldiers killed in the frontline by Azerbaijan, it is done by Azerbaijan while using the cruel methods of ISIS and with their direct participation in this massacre. It added the specific colours of brutality to the story told to the audience and didn’t simply told the facts about the events that how many soldiers died, but how they died in the hands of these people. However, it should also be noted that the change in narratives is not a continuous one. It is rather dependent on the event and formulated because of the window of opportunity became available for diaspora media. Although not researched and real case might be different, simple observation shows that narratives changed back to the previous version after the event lost its first effect. Broader research with more sources and longer period can be done to better understand the transition to new narratives and normalization to the general trend. It could also be a good alternative to use April 2015 or April 2017 and April 2016 to compare, which would help to see the changes not dependent on genocide commemoration day. Since the diaspora community becomes more active around the genocide commemoration events, it affects our data and can make it harder to see the real effects of April clashes in the diaspora media narratives. For the future researchers, there are certain points that focusing on them might help to get better results. One of them is that diaspora should be approached differently from the homeland country. It is especially important in the times of conflict in the homeland, which has a stricter

58 diaspora stance than the homeland. However, for the case in point Armenian diaspora and Armenian government has the similar approach. Nevertheless, it should be noted that it is not the deviation on the theory of “diaspora is stricter in the conflicts than the homeland”; on the contrary, it is homeland that is actually very strict in the conflict and matches their strict standpoint matches with the diaspora community. Furthermore, it should be noted that Armenian diaspora is actually pretty distant from the homeland affairs and following the direction of homeland in an effort to help the homeland. Therefore, tracking the narratives in the homeland can also illustrate how diaspora depended on the local narratives of homeland and how much they are free to construct their own narratives.

Conclusion

This thesis work made a research on the effects of April clashes on Armenian diaspora media. Nagorno Karabakh conflict has long been an issue between Azerbaijan and Armenia. We established that significant events on the Nagorno Karabakh conflict had important effects on the countries involved and April clashes might be one of them. There are number of cases that defeat or stepping back on the Nagorno Karabakh conflict led to the losing of power in these countries. In this situation, the image of the defeat in the conflict might create another weakness in one of the parties, which eventually might lead to the change of power or serious complications for them. Therefore, media is really interested in the conflict as a main image creator in the society, whether out of importance for the people or under the directions of governments. Although April clashes didn’t have any major consequence for the parties, it played a role in destroying the long-formulated ideas for parties. It proved that how fragile is the current ceasefire and how the situation can quickly turn into a total war. Looking at the official sources from both sides, we might conclude that Azerbaijan had better results at the end of clashes. It captured couple of heights and was able to hold on one of them, it crossed Ohanyan line in very short time, which they could never do it during the whole conflict. Actually, there was a myth of Ohanyan line that was similar to The Maginot Line, which Azerbaijan was never able to cross during the war and they will not be able to cross it if they attempt. Therefore, media is really interested in the event to try to use this chance to create different images for the Other and for the Self. Beside state level interest in the conflict, diaspora also have its own stance on the issue and sometimes acts as an independent actor in the conflict. In order to understand the narrative changes in diaspora media, we set a theoretical background to evaluate the changes. We set three main characteristics in narratives as policy issue, characters and policy moral. These helped us to determine the content of the articles in diaspora media during this period. Then we collected our data to analyze with the help of above-mentioned strategy. We set a coding scheme in our methodology part and categorized our data available in couple of media sources from each country through the defined period of time. We choose among the sources that were active during the conflicts to be able to gather data. Therefore, we had 12 media sources from three different countries at the end. A month prior and a month later were used to be able to see the differences and also be able to do the data collection in the short period of time available. First, we observed the changes in our dataset affected from the April clashes and then we analyzed the narrative changes in narrative texts. Comparison of the March and April dataset used

60 for this reason, except April and May for one media source because of the differing publication date. We observed similar or almost the same results in our data from different countries. It is argued that the reason for that was the absence or very few of Nagorno Karabakh population in the diaspora community and diaspora media generally relied on the information coming from the homeland. Small deviations occurred depending on the nature of the country and the previous history with the host country, and they are explained in the results section. One of these factors was the freedom level in the country, which directly affected on the possibilities of media engagement in the certain topics. Another one depended on the fact that when diaspora community moved to the host country, how well they integrated into the society and if they had a problem with the host country, which was the case with Turkey on the genocide issue. The main reason of narrative change occurred because of the activation of diaspora members on the issue of Nagorno Karabakh conflict as a result of major disturbance in the frontlines. It is considered as a major disturbance because it significantly differed from the normal course of the conflict after the ceasefire agreement between parties in 1994. However, we observed that narratives usually copied from the homeland since diaspora relation with conflict is through the homeland and no natural bond is present. Therefore, articles on the conflict during clashes usually referred to the homeland narrative and formulated their own narratives around this. Furthermore, diaspora media did not actively change the narratives and chose to stick with the narratives formulated back in homeland. Because of this reason, we observed somewhat similar narratives in diaspora media in different countries. Only differences resulted because of the environment in the host country as we mentioned in the paragraph above. In the narrative changes, we observed two main narratives effective in the aftermath of April clashes. One of them was based on the religious affiliation to present the conflict as Muslims versus Christians. This narrative used the trending ISIS image and claiming the relations with ISIS to show the negative image of the Other. It was also known because of the fact ISIS narrative used first time in the conflict. Although there were some news about the participation of Islamist groups in the conflict during war from time to time, it didn’t create the full narrative used by the diaspora media. The second narrative was based on the ethnic affiliation of Azerbaijan as Turkic country and genocide issue. While presenting the current details, it mostly referred to the ethnic traits as negative in Azerbaijan and many reference to the genocide issue. In this narrative, the close relationships between Azerbaijan and Turkey also explained purely based on the ethnic background and the possession of the similar ethnic negative traits. Both of the narratives focused on the true-negative characteristics of the Other than purely giving the wrong information. It

61 created the omission of most of the true positive characteristics in Other and highlighted the true negative characteristics as the main traits of the Other. Therefore, intention was mainly about the negative image based on the true characteristics of the Other, which makes the diaspora media narratives more powerful. Looking at the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, Armenian diaspora and its stance on the conflict not covered enough to understand its complete role in the conflict. Although diaspora usually takes the point of supporting the homeland in the conflict and helps in getting the support of the host country, diaspora also has its own stance in the conflict. Though not visible in the last years since it coincides with the homeland policy, diaspora takes stricter stance in the conflict from time to time and sometimes demand the similar stance from the homeland. Diaspora media in its turn does not function isolated from all these political goals and one of the indicators that show us the stance of the Armenian diaspora community. Looking at the stance of diaspora media in the conflict gives us the information about the stance of Armenian diaspora in the conflict. The conclusion we came at the end of this thesis work is that Armenian diaspora has similar or almost the same stance as homeland in most of the cases. If homeland changes its policy into going for the agreement and decides to give back the occupied regions, how diaspora community is going to react is not clear and probably will be more conservative on the issue. At the end, I hope this work will shade the light in the Nagorno Karabakh conflict a bit more and help us to better understand the situation in a hope to resolve the conflict very soon.

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Appendix

Appendix A. Separate numbers for each media source in Russian Federation used in the data

1. Dobroye Utro! Sum of ArticleSize Column Labels Dsp EC F Fs HN NN PAr PArm W Grand Row Labels AC A C S e K A m y E Total March 0 1 0 0 0 0 5 0 0 0 6 April 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 2 0 2 7 Grand Total 0 1 0 0 0 1 7 2 0 2 13

2. Gorcarar Sum of ArticleSize Column Labels Dsp EC F Fs HN NN PAr PArm W Grand Row Labels AC A C S e K A m y E Total March 0 7 0 0 0 0 30 1 0 0 38 April 0 8 1 0 0 1 14 4 2 0 30 Grand Total 0 15 1 0 0 1 44 5 2 0 68

3. Khachkar-Kaluga Sum of ArticleSize Column Labels Dsp EC F Fs HN NN PAr PArm W Grand Row Labels AC A C S e K A m y E Total March 0 2 0 0 0 0 4 0 0 0 6 April 0 2 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 4 Grand Total 0 4 0 0 0 0 5 0 0 1 10

4. Noev Kovcheg Sum of ArticleSize Column Labels Dsp EC F Fs HN NN PAr PArm W Grand Row Labels AC A C S e K A m y E Total April 0 12 2 2 0 1 13 1 0 2 33 May 0 5 4 5 4 1 10 1 1 0 31 Grand Total 0 17 6 7 4 2 23 2 1 2 64

5. Erkramas Sum of ArticleSize Column Labels Row Labels AC DspA ECC FS Fse HNK NNA PArm PArmy WE Grand Total March 0 46 106 66 20 6 573 31 18 49 915 April 161 114 97 275 79 18 468 113 186 246 1757 Grand Total 161 160 203 341 99 24 1041 144 204 295 2672

Appendix B. Separate numbers for each media source in United States used in the data 1. Asbarez Sum of ArticleSize Column Labels Row Labels AC DspA ECC FS Fse HNK NNA PArm PArmy WE Grand Total March 0 49 29 26 8 1 152 9 6 18 298 April 3 47 17 63 15 2 72 16 7 24 266 Grand Total 3 96 46 89 23 3 224 25 13 42 564

2. Massis Weekly Sum of ArticleSize Column Labels Row Labels AC DspA ECC FS Fse HNK NNA PArm PArmy WE Grand Total March 0 18 10 2 2 1 16 4 1 1 55 April 1 24 7 10 1 0 13 2 3 4 65 Grand Total 1 42 17 12 3 1 29 6 4 5 120

3. The Armenian Mirror Spectator Sum of ArticleSize Column Labels Row Labels AC DspA ECC FS Fse HNK NNA PArm PArmy WE Grand Total March 0 13 17 2 0 1 62 0 0 1 96 April 0 11 6 13 6 0 30 3 3 2 74 Grand Total 0 24 23 15 6 1 92 3 3 3 170

4. The Armenian Weekly Sum of ArticleSize Column Labels Row Labels AC DspA ECC FS Fse HNK NNA PArm PArmy WE Grand Total March 0 6 13 16 1 1 79 1 2 1 120 April 6 17 16 32 9 0 73 6 2 16 177 Grand Total 6 23 29 48 10 1 152 7 4 17 297

5. The California Courier Sum of ArticleSize Column Labels Dsp EC F Fs HN NN PAr PArm W Grand Row Labels AC A C S e K A m y E Total March 0 1 2 2 0 0 4 0 0 1 10 April 0 0 0 3 0 0 3 1 0 1 8 Grand Total 0 1 2 5 0 0 7 1 0 2 18 73

Appendix C. Separate numbers for each media source in Turkey used in the data

1. Agos Sum of ArticleSize Column Labels Row Labels AC DspA ECC FS Fse HNK NNA PArm PArmy WE Grand Total March 0 36 34 2 0 0 217 0 0 0 289 April 0 27 39 14 2 0 162 4 1 7 256 Grand Total 0 63 73 16 2 0 379 4 1 7 545

2. Ermenihaber Sum of ArticleSize Column Labels Row Labels AC DspA ECC FS Fse HNK NNA PArm PArmy WE Grand Total March 0 26 29 13 1 1 120 5 4 11 210 April 39 10 31 49 12 2 72 14 41 33 303 Grand Total 39 36 60 62 13 3 192 19 45 44 513