So earlier I was in a thread about Turkish origins and told “that they aren’t from Mongolia and saying so is racist” by another Armenian and I wanna talk about that, so: a thread

This is, in no way, me trying to shame them but this is something I wanna bring up, not because of the fact that calling a Turk “mongol” is often with racial connotations, but because of what the continually attempted erasure of this truth leads to (namely, ethnopropaganda)

Per these tweets, the “Turkic people” don’t exist. It’s an umbrella term that “describes all people who speak Turkic languages”—except by definition, they’re an ethnic group & are considered that through not only factors like language; but culture, food, and thru SHARED GENES.

This means they have similar origins genetically in addition to cultural and linguistic similarities. A genotype study into the genetic background of over 500,000 Turkish residents from 3 regions showed roughly 10-15% Central Asian heritage.

This 10-15% heritage is important, because this cements that while they are predominately mixed with migrant and indigenous populations within modern Turkey, they still share a common genotype with their Central Asian ancestors (which, again are from Altai, in Western Mongolia)

(A sobering yet hilarious side note, Erdogan opened a genealogy database in 2018, 15 years after Hrant Dink’s newspaper Agos leaked that the Turkish govt. was tracking minorities. Turns out, a pretty sizeable chunk of Turks? Ethnically Armenian and Greek! Who’d’ve thought? )

We all know the origin of the Ottoman Empire and how it began with the Seljuk Turks in the 11th Century defeating the Byzantine Empire, so we know through that they also were not indigenous to the region. We also know Azeris are Turks that settled Azerbaijan in the 16th century

But why is any of this important? Why does this Twitter convo currently live rent-free in my head to the point to where I took screenshots hours later and made a whole thread about it? Simple: because it’s a sobering truth as to how pervasive & deep their ethnopropaganda runs.

To say that there is no Turkic ethnicity, that the term Turkic people is a false label, and that they are not indigenous to Mongolia allows two narratives to endure: Anatolian Turks are indigenous, and Azeris are Caucasian Albanians.

While Caucasian Albanians were real, their adaptation into Azeri history has been a historically noted tactic to completely erase or appropriate Armenian history, architecture, and presence in Nakhichevan, Artsakh and Azerbaijan overall, as well as claim Armenia as theirs.

Are we indigenous to Azerbaijan? No. But we’re indigenous to Artsakh and we lived there a full 1500 years or so before they did in any major capacity. We’re the “Caucasian Albanians.” they claim. And contrary to Turkish belief, we’re indigenous to Eastern Turkey.

Now I want to clear something up before this thread goes any further: this is NOT a call-out. I am not doing this to defame or “cancel” anyone. This is to demonstrate how seriously this narrative impacts our fight for justice and our right to exist, especially from within.

The person tweeting this is Armenian, but they’re also half-Azeri and do their best to be unbiased. I respect that. Him (aptly) pointing out that Mongol is used as a slur is fine, but it becomes concerning when they’re believe this kind of revisionism BECAUSE they’re one of us.

I don’t believe they have a nefarious agenda against Armenians, I think they genuinely and earnestly believe this. As does anyone who is Azeri or Turkish, no matter how progressive they are. This runs deep enough to the point to where even if you’re part Armenian, you buy it.

But while I believe this specific time was innocent and well-meaning to combat racism, Azeri schools teach our language under a nationalistic regime so they can move among us and destroy us. Look at that girl in the flannel SMILING as she takes part. They revel in this.

Azerbaijan isn’t stupid. They’ve learned from their brother-country, and they share a desire to see us brutalized and our lands ripped from us. They are trained from birth to hate us, kill us. And they’ve adapted the narrative to appeal to the majority and discredit Armenians.

This interaction, as innocuous as it may be, is representative of a far greater, uglier picture—one that shows one of the many faces of Azeri/Turkish revisionism. We must combat stuff like this with truth, even if it seems dumb or irrelevant because we know they’re wrong.

Our livelihood depends on it, our lands and our survival depends on it. Because constantly making us look like uneducated, racist liars with stuff like this WILL make us look like pathological liars. They know that—look how they silenced talk of our pogroms because of Khojaly.

So even if it comes from another Armenian, don’t take interactions like this at face value. Question anything that involves Turkic ancestry, Caucasian Albanians, or the longevity of Azeri/Turkish civilization in the SWANA region and provide FACTS when you do so.

You never know someone’s true intentions, especially on the internet, and not everyone is earnestly trying to bridge the gap as I believe this person is trying to. We need to take our history back at any cost. Dispelling aggressive or subtle revisionism is one of those ways.

*also while saying Mongolians are the ethnic progenitors of Turks and Azeris isn’t racist, calling them mongols can be and actively devalues our arguments against them. Stick to non-racist stuff like “cockroach” even if they’ve made Ermeni into a racial slur. Be better than them.