Radio War Nerd #346 — Turkish Invasion of Cyprus, Part 3: 1974 Invasion + Azerbaijan/Armenia Flareup
Recorded: September 15, 2022
We wrap up our RWN series on Turkey's 1974 invasion of Cyprus (EP #337, #339). This episode, Kissinger takes control of the Empire during the chaos of Watergate, making the world an even shittier place than ever — greenlighting the Greek junta's coup against Makarios, and Turkey's subsequent invasion, partition & occupation of Cyprus, a sovereign European nation — breaking a postwar taboo and setting a precedent for Europe's wars since...
First, we discuss the latest Azerbaijan-Armenia flareup...
(link to Pashinyan's April 2021 speech here)
At 30:39, we discuss Turkey's 1974 invasion of Cyprus...
Maps:
*Azerbaijan's latest attack on Armenia
*Turkey's first invasion of Cyprus, July 20-23, 1974
*Turkey's second invasion of Cyprus, August 13-15
*Ethnic map of Cyprus before/after Turkey's invasion/partition
Total time: 1:23:16
Comments (13)
Thank you for covering the Armenia situation. Genuienly depressing, and there doesn't seem to be a decent solution. Is there any chance you can get a guest on the situation? I'm obviously not in any position to speak on the matter, but I'm wondering if Azerbaijan genuinely has the military advantage against Armenia proper they had against the Artsakh forces. I also get there's a lot of overlap, but is there any potential at all that Azerbaijan does the classic blunder of getting overconfident and "bites off more then they can chew?" Again, this may be wishful thinking. You would hope that invading the official territory of Armenia would at the very least limit the amount of damage they can do, but who are we kidding lol. If there is any guest who can overview the potential upcoming conflict that would be great. I hope your former guest, Lika Zakaryan, is still well after the war. Not sure if she would be covering this story, but perhaps you could have her on again?
you know what's weird, is that Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (2002) had a story plot point about the Georgians exterminating the Azeris, which is funny/bizarre in retrospect
Just looked it up and you're right. What a dope. All I can think of is that in 2002, Georgia's president was trying to play both sides, which to the Bush Admin made him an enemy, whereas Azerbaijan was considered very friendly (and of course put all the US bigwigs on the boards of oil joint ventures). That was why Bush consigliere James Baker color revolutioned Shevardnadze the next year, 2003, while publicly praising Aliyev's democratic credentials on the same diplomatic tour. So all I can think of is that in Clancy's neocon world, Azerbaijan and Georgia were somehow adversaries since in their minds one was considered a team player, the other not. But the idea Georgia would ethnically cleanse Azerbaijanis...for what? Just bizarre. They're still trying to figure out how to ethnically cleanse Ossetians and Abkhazians, they'd get utterly stomped by Azerbaijan. It seems Clancy's neocon pals wanted a way to imagine a scenario under which the petrodictatorship could be cast as victims, and making Armenians the bad guys would've been too obviously fraught, so they just chose the next difficult Caucasus country over.
"there is a long list of nations let down by russia" doesn't bode well for the Donbass referendums happening soon well, even if the vote is unanimous russia is free to go "yeah sure, we'll start working on that" before going back to playing Modern Warfare 2 or whatever but yeah there's already stories of azeris mutilating female armenian soldiers and stuff like that
Thank you for the episode guys, and for the reminder of how horrible this invasion was..
I think you told the same story about the Armenian officer being killed before. Last time it was a Turk who killed the Armenian and the Nato meeting was in Hungary. The result was the same in both cases though.
Another great episode. The maps were most helpful.
Britain: "I really fucked Cyprus up good there, muhahaha." America: "Hold my beer"
I also have to say, I don’t think it’s fair to call the region of Artsakh a “breakaway” or “separatist” entity. This belies the fact that Armenians have been living there in a wide majority for thousands of years, before Azerbaijani SSR was even created. You guys (Mark & John) talk about the extensive Armenian history of the region, but to refer it as a “breakaway” region or that the war was fought by “Armenian separatists” makes it sound like the region was inherently part of Azerbaijan SSR, which isn’t the case.
While I agree with your sentiment, and I'm sure Mark and John agree, they do have to remain somewhat even in their coverage. Even though Artsakh really should be Armenian, it is for all intent and purposes a separatist region, who existed because of the military actions of another sovereign country (Armenia). They are not equivalent situations, but it would disingenuous to call the Russian backed groups in Ukraine anything except separatists, so it's only fair to give the same coverage to Artsakh (and again I feel bad saying that with how reprehensible and immoral the Azeri side was and is)
Sock it to me!
Go on google maps, look at the towns and villages in Nagorno Karabakh near the border with Iran. You will see town after town abandoned, roofs caved in, and streets overgrown, because the Armenian forces ethnically cleansed the Azerbaijanis from there in the 90s. Even the city of Fuzuli which had 18,000 by the end of the USSR was completely cleansed of Azerbaijanis by Armenian forces in the 90s. It is incorrect to portray Nagorno Karabakh’s pre-2020 borders as solely Armenian, since they greatly expanded past the historically Armenian autonomous region during the 90s war. Maybe this was previously mentioned in past episodes 🤷♂️
Armenians have lived in Artsakh for thousands of years, there is international academic consensus around this. The issue is the region was autonomous during the USSR. Afterwards, despite it having an Armenian majority and going through the voting process as a democratic means to secede from the USSR like all other former SSRs did, this was a move that didn’t sit right with Azeris and push came to shove and a war broke out. The regions surrounding Artsakh were likely to be used as bargaining chips for concessions from Azeris, but Azerbaijan instead stocked up on weapons, received the support and intelligence of the Turkish military and the 2020 war began. Fwiw, the ethnic cleansing didn’t start during the first Karabakh war. Azeris massacred the Armenians in Shushi back in 1920, destroying the whole Armenian part of the city. Today, Azeris have leveled many historic Armenian sites now in Karabakh, or worse, started dubiously claiming them to be “Caucasian Albanian”. This is a form of cultural genocide, and this is all able to occur because Aliyev’s wife holds an important position within UNESCO, and the country has been caught bribing people to look away (like at Djulfa in Nakhichevan). Armenians are losing very valuable and important historical sites which will be hard or sadly impossible to recover.