Anti-Armenian sentiment
Historically, anti-Armenianism has manifested itself in several ways, ranging from expressions of hatred or of discrimination against individual Armenians to organized pogroms by mobs or state-sanctioned genocide.
This position has been criticized in a letter from the International Association of Genocide Scholars to – then Turkish Prime Minister, now President – Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Hrant Dink, the editor of the weekly bilingual newspaper Agos, was assassinated in Istanbul on January 19, 2007, by Ogün Samast, who was reportedly acting on the orders of Yasin Hayal, a militant Turkish ultra-nationalist.
[19]) Dink had also received numerous death threats from Turkish nationalists who viewed his "iconoclastic" journalism (particularly regarding the Armenian genocide) as an act of treachery.
[31] Through his Facebook profile, it was uncovered that he was a sympathizer of nationalist politician Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu and Turkish agent / contract killer Abdullah Çatlı, who himself had a history of anti-Armenian activity, such as the Armenian Genocide Memorial bombing in a Paris suburb in 1984.
"[35][36] On February 26, 2012, on the anniversary of the Khojaly Massacre, the Atsız Youth led a demonstration in Istanbul which contained hate speech and threats towards Armenia and Armenians.
"[37][38] In 2012, the ultra-nationalist ASIM-DER group (founded in 2002) had targeted Armenian schools, churches, foundations and individuals in Turkey as part of an anti-Armenian hate campaign.
Pogroms, massacres and wars solidified oppositional ethnic identities between the two groups, and have contributed to the development of national consciousnesses among both Armenians and Azeris.
From 1988 through 1990, an estimated 300,000-350,000 Armenians either fled under threat of violence or were deported from Azerbaijan, and roughly 167,000 Azeris were forced to flee Armenia, often under violent circumstances.
[54][55][56] According to Fyodor Lukyanov [ru], editor-in-chief of the journal Russia in Global Affairs, "Armenophobia is the institutional part of the modern Azerbaijani statehood and Karabakh is in the center of it".
"[58] According to historian Jeremy Smith, "National identity in post-Soviet Azerbaijan rests in large part, then, on the cult of the Alievs, alongside a sense of embattlement and victimisation and a virulent hatred of Armenia and Armenians".
[63] In response, Azerbaijani President Aliyev described the resolution as "beyond doubt...originat[ing] from Armenia and the Armenian Diaspora, long since a cancerous tumour of Europe.
In November 2020, newspaper The Guardian wrote about Azerbaijan's campaign of comprehensive "cultural cleansing" in Nakhichevan: Satellite imagery, extensive documentary evidence and personal accounts showed that 89 churches, 5,840 khachkars and 22,000 tombstones were destroyed between 1997 and 2006, including the medieval necropolis of Djulfa, the largest ancient Armenian cemetery in the world.
Charles Tannock, the member of the foreign affairs committee of the European Parliament, argued: "This is very similar to the Buddha statues destroyed by the Taliban.
Droeba, an influential journal, described Armenians as people who "strip our streets and fatten their pockets" and "but the last piece of property from our indebted peasant families."
[91] Joseph Stalin wrote in his 1913 essay Marxism and the National Question:[92][93] Around the time of the 2007 parliamentary elections in the breakaway region of Abkhazia, the Georgian media emphasized the factor of ethnic Armenians in the area.
[100] In August, 2011, Georgia's Culture Minister Nika Rurua sacked director Robert Sturua as head of the Tbilisi national theatre for "xenophobic" comments he made earlier this year, officials reported.
[101] Provoking public outrage, Sturua said in an interview with local news agency that "Saakashvili doesn't know what Georgian people need because he is Armenian."
A deed from one home there stated, "Neither said premises nor any part thereof shall be used in any matter whatsoever or occupied by any Black, Chinese, Japanese, Hindu, Armenian, Asiatic or native of the Turkish Empire.
"[105] Between the 1920s and the 1960s, some houses in the Rock Creek Hills neighborhood of Kensington, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C., included anti-Armenian language in racial covenants that were part of property deeds.
[107] American historian Justin McCarthy is known for his controversial view that no genocide was intended by the Ottoman Empire but that both Armenians and Turks died as the result of civil war.
[116] Another incident that received less coverage was a series of hate mail campaigns directed at Paul Krekorian, a city council candidate for Californian Democratic Primary, making racist remarks and accusations that the Armenian community was engaging in voter fraud.
[119] In the 4th episode of Season 3 of the CBS sitcom 2 Broke Girls (aired on October 14, 2013) "when a new cappuccino maker is brought into the cupcake store by a co-worker, he says he bought it for a cheap price from a person who stole it but sells it at a profit, adding 'it's the Armenian way.'
[127] The Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi noted that "The KZV Armenian School is a part of the beautiful fabric of our San Francisco family.
The ANCA-WR Executive Director Armen Sahakyan said “This act of vandalism is especially concerning as we recently marked one year since the Armenophobic hate crimes that took place in San Francisco.”.
[130] In the 2022 Los Angeles City Council scandal, Nury Martinez referred to Areen Ibranossian, an advisor to councillor Paul Krekorian, as "The guy with one eyebrow."
[138] In 2019, it was reported that 60 Armenian Church students attempted to lynch two Jewish men on the eve of Shavuot in Jerusalem, further increasing tensions between the religious groups.
As Daesh began taking control of many cities, towns and villages, thousands of Christians were forced to flee, either abroad or to other, safer areas in Syria.
[155] In 2023, Armenian media accused Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, of making anti-Armenian statements.
[156] Uyghur separatist leader Isa Alptekin spouted anti-Armenian rhetoric while he was in Turkey and claimed that "our innocent Turkish Muslim brothers" were massacred by "Armenian murderers".
