THREAD 1/25
Dear Armenian friends: just wanted to clarify some things in this tweet, as I feel there were misunderstandings in the responses. To begin with, by "Turkification," I did not God forbid mean to 'normalize' or 'justify' coercion vis-a-vis conquest & acculturation. https://twitter.com/Turtlestein/status/1342479024724054017

2/25 Rather, I meant to simply note that the idea of the current Azerbaijani population being the descendants of recent nomadic migration is disingenuous for two reasons: (1) it wasn't all that "recent"; (2) they have pronounced non-Turkic ancestry that was Turkic acculturated.

3/25 While I have no doubt that Turkification anywhere in antiquity was hardly a peaceful ordeal, you can make the same argument for the endless list of acculturations which occurred around the world -- Norman conquest of the British Isles, Hellenization, Arabization, etc.

4/25 Moreover, not all acculturations are equal in character. The Arabization of the Levant was not nearly as bloody as the Hispanicization of Latin America. Likewise, the Hellenization of the Middle East & Anatolia in antiquity was much more cultural hegemony than elimination.

5/25 I can't speak to the exact characteristic of Turkification wherever it generally occurred in antiquity, but to presume by definition that it was particularly violent and/or fundementally different from the many other global acculturations throughout history seems unfounded.

6/25 Ironically, many acculturated groups historically were themselves previously acculturated several times to other hegemomies. For instance, Greeks in Anatolia were native Anatolians that were Hellenized at an earlier period, and indeed Armenization in the region occurred too.

7/25 Do people think, for instance, that under the colossal territorial expanse of Tigranes the Great -- viewed as essentially the "King David" of Armenian antiquity -- the entire population in those borders were Armenian, or that acculturations did not occur?

8/25 That Tigranes did not go to war with the Parithians, Selucids, and Romans? The way of the world, unfortunately but very realistically, is conquest and expansion. Thankfully nowadays we increasingly try to limit that, but this marked the entirety of human history.

9/25 Also, in the case of Azerbaijanis, Turkification occurred after Persianization of the population from the Sassanian Dynasty starting as far back as the 3rd Century. That's pretty darn far back in history, and acculutration to reigning hegemomies was going on as much as ever.

10/25 Of course before Persianization, there was also natural admixture from the Medians, an indigineous Iranian peoples to northern Iran. And before that eastern Transcaucasian populations such as Caucasian Albanians. You can always go back, because *all* societies are mixed.

11/25 In a parallel sense, inasmuch as Caucasian Albanians in the region were Persianized & then Turkified, in other parts such as modern-day Nagorno-Karabakh region they were Armenianized. That doesn't necessarily imply coercion either, btw.

12/25 For instance, Armenian tribes already from the beginning of the common era were migrating to the area and mixing in with local Caucasian Albanians, who had also adopted Christianity and whose church was eventually merged to the Armenian one. This was simple natural mixing.

13/25 Oftentimes, a hegemomic culture absorbs smaller & increasingly integrating/assimilating cultures. If much of Armenification was organic & gradual, it's unfair to ascribe purely nefarious dynamics to any form of Turkic acculturation whatsoever.

14/25 This is not to say Turkic nefariousness did not occur. Particularly in later centuries as modern Turkey was developing from the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, genocidal policies against Armenians, Greeks, etc. created a haste homogeneity of Turkish/Muslim hegemomy.

15/25 For the record, I've always maintained the Armenian Genocide occurred and must be accounted for, and believe me I've received endless retorting and crap for maintaining this position from Turkic followers, but I still stand by that completely.

16/25 With that said, assuming that the specific events of the late 1800s/early 1900s incriminate the wider Turkic umbrella altogether + the entirety of their history, is also unfair. Turkic groups make up populations in many countries, and are far from limited to Anatolia & AZ.

17/25 Turkic peoples spanned Central Asia, the Crimean Peninsula, Siberia, Eastern China, etc. (As it so happens, Crimean, Siberian, and Chinese Turks aka modern Uighurs were and are incredibly oppressed.) Even the Ottomans, while definitely oppressive to a degree the way that...

18/25 ...all empires historically were, were *far* from the worse (again, speaking for most of pre modern history). Ottomans controlled many Christian lands in the Balkans and surrounding regions, with most those populations maintaining their languages, cultures, & religions.

19/25 If forceful acculturation had occurred, you'd have seen something more resembling the Arab Islamic conquests & Arabization of the 7th Century, which btw, again, was not really genocidal the way the Spanish/Catholic conquests were. Also, I got the impression that...

20/25 ...many people responding to my thread assumed Turkification in Azerbaijan was targeted mainly at Armenians, which I think also once again conflates Turkic groups by making Anatolia synonymous w/ Transcaucasia vis-a-vis Turkism. In fact, most Turkified groups were....

21/25 ...not Armenians but, as mentioned, an agglomerated mixture of Caucasian Albanians, Median Iranians, and Turkic groups such as the Oghuz and later Anatolians. Armenians of course are indigineous to the region, but plenty of other groups existed there historically.

22/25 Many people made comparisons to Native Americans & the United States, and rhetorically asked: if the US existed for 1,000 years, would that somehow make the land not Native because a certain amount of time elapsed? I get the idea, but I think the comparison falls flat.

23/25 First, the US wasn't a typical gradual acculturation. It was a near entire population replacement, mostly from lethal disease but the rest from armed elimination. Your average American basically has no indigineous blood, and those who do, have very minimal admixture.

24/25 Second, I don't believe any injustice can be solved by another injustice. If we go back to "primordial" ownership, there'd be no end to modern conflicts. Romanians would tell Hungarians to go back to Mongolia, as nationalists there often do, etc. The original context of...

25/25 ...this thread was pushing back against the claim that AZs have no rights to the 7 districts based off irredentist claims, despite being supermajorities there at the outbreak of the war & even though the Armenian population was concentrated in Upper Karabakh historically.