The ancient Greeks and Romans had many different gods who patronized people in one sphere or another. This tradition continued. Today when people talk about art they remember Apollo (Phoebus according to ancient Roman mythology), in conversations about medicine they mention Asclepius (Aesculapius) and they recall Ares (Mars) when they talk about war. Athena (Minerva) is considered to be the patroness of wisdom and Themis (Justice) patronizes justice and so on. Regarding international politics there was no such certainty except that the figure of the god Hermes (Mercury) was considered to be helping to conduct various negotiations, besides patronizing merchants, liars and cunning people.
But in the 21st century, and this can be said with confidence, there has been determined the patron god of international politics and diplomacy who has no competitors. This, of course, is the two-faced Janus, a purely Roman god the ancient Greeks did not have time to think of
We are talking here about the policy of double standards which has become one of the main components of international diplomacy and is playing an increasingly important role in the field of international relations. In order not to be unfounded, let's move on to specific examples.
Türkiye. We can safely give her the palm in the policy of “double standards.” In 1974, under the pretext of protecting the Turkish community, Ankara occupied almost 40% of the territory of independent Cyprus and created the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus there, resettling there migrants from mainland Turkey, who over time became twice as many as local Muslim Cypriots. This republic was not recognized by anyone except Turkey and the Nakhichevan autonomy of Azerbaijan. In 2004, Cyprus joined the European Union, but only the Greek part of the island is actually a member of the EU, as Turkey refuses to withdraw its troops from the northern part of the island. Thanks to the efforts of Turkey and Azerbaijan, this “republic” recently received observer status in the Organization of Turkic States.
But the same Turkey declares non-recognition of the reunification of Crimea with Russia, the legitimacy of self-determination of Donbass and Lugansk and support for the territorial integrity of Ukraine.
The same approach is used by Turkey in the Karabakh issue. Azerbaijan seceded from the USSR without holding a referendum in the Karabakh autonomy, violating the requirement of the USSR Law, according to which autonomous entities were given the right to secede from the republic and independently determine their fate. This gave the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region the right to independently decide its future fate. Thus, it can be stated that neither de jure nor de facto Nagorno-Karabakh was an “integral part” of the newly proclaimed Republic of Azerbaijan. Taking into account the massacre of Armenians in Sumgait, Baku, and other areas, large-scale aggression against Nagorno-Karabakh, war crimes involving terrorist mercenaries, the right of Karabakh Armenians to self-determination in accordance with the UN Charter, other international legal acts and norms is beyond doubt. But Turkey continues to interpret legal norms solely guided by its policy of “double standards”, becoming a de facto accomplice of the genocide of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh committed by Azerbaijan through ethnic cleansing.
This Turkish policy has manifested itself today in the Palestinian-Israeli armed conflict. While declaring the right of the Palestinians to create their own independent state, Erdogan excludes the existence of the same right among the Armenians of Artsakh.
USA, UK and EU countries. Unprecedented sanctions have been imposed on Russia in connection with the annexation of Crimea and the conflict in eastern Ukraine. But nothing has been heard about sanctions against Turkey, which actually annexed almost half of Cyprus and created a controlled puppet state there. And also occupied a significant part of the sovereign territory of Syria.
The same applies to the lack of any adequate response to Azerbaijan's aggressive wars with the support and participation of Turkey against Nagorno-Karabakh and the genocide of the Armenians of Artsakh. In violation of such fundamental norms of international law as the Principle of the non-use of force and the threat of force and the Principle of resolving international disputes by peaceful means. As a result of this war, tens of thousands of people became victims, hundreds of thousands became refugees and internally displaced persons. May I ask, where are your sanctions, your reaction, gentlemen, American and European defenders of democracy and human rights? Or must not some NATO members and their allies be held liable for acts of state terrorism?
Russia was subject to sanctions for allegedly attempting to poison A. Navalny. In November 2020, one of the leaders of the Talysh national movement, Fakhraddin Aboszoda, died in an Azerbaijani prison. Amnesty International was told that the persecution of F. Abbasov is related to his peaceful political activities. The same opinion is held regarding the death of the Talysh scientist Novruzali Mamedov in an Azerbaijani prison. In September 2023, after the military aggression of Azerbaijan, some of the current and former statesmen of Artsakh were captured and taken to Baku, but no adequate reaction followed in their defense.
When serious violations of human rights occur, the EU must go beyond the adoption of resolutions and statements, we must be able to act, said the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell. But apparently Two-Faced Janus does not allow the European, British and American authorities to even think about any measures against Azerbaijan. Although they are well aware of the hundreds of prisoners of conscience, prisoners of war and civilians in Azerbaijani prisons.
Turkey organized the transfer of Syrian militants from organizations controlled by it, which are considered terrorist in many countries and are banned, to participate in the 2020 Karabakh war on the side of Azerbaijan. This was reported by many authoritative media, including European ones. French President E. Macron indicated their presence in Azerbaijan. The head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, S. Naryshkin, even called their number -2000. According to the testimony of captured Syrian militants, their main task was to clear the captured settlements of Armenians, and for each severed head the Azerbaijani authorities promised them $100.
During the aggressive wars of 2020-2023 against Artsakh and the Republic of Armenia, the Azerbaijani military distributed online footage of the execution of local Armenians and the dismemberment of the bodies of captured military and civilians. Researchers from the international human rights organization Amnesty International analyzed 22 such videos, including two recordings of Azerbaijani soldiers cutting off the heads of Armenian prisoners. But we have not yet seen any action on the part of the European Union or Britain, we have not even heard talk about bringing to justice a country, a member of the EU’s Eastern Partnership, whose army commits serious war crimes with impunity, including using prohibited means of mass destruction. Neither within nor outside the framework of “adopting resolutions and statements.” We see and hear something else: smiles and sweet speeches from European officials at meetings with the Azerbaijani leadership, assurances about excellent dynamics and bright prospects for the development of relations with this country. And here, apparently, it could not have happened without the god Janus, who explained to those who needed it that Azerbaijan is one of the main suppliers of energy resources to Europe and an important trading partner.
Measures provided for by the international obligations of the UN member states were not applied against the criminal acts of Azerbaijan and to prevent the genocide of the Armenians of Karabakh. The UN Security Council, having considered the issue of the humanitarian catastrophe in Nagorno-Karabakh at an emergency meeting, limited itself to calls for restraint and respect for human rights, addressed to both the aggressor and his victim.
It is well known that inaction in such cases is fraught with new crimes. If the UN Security Council, the collective West, Russia, Arab and many other countries had taken decisive measures to punish Azerbaijan for criminal acts, today we would not be witnessing what is happening in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Apparently, Two-Faced Janus managed to hide this axiomatic truth well. In the Gaza Strip, thousands of civilians are dying during military operations by the Hamas group and the Israeli armed forces. Horrifying images of dead children are being circulated on the Internet. According to UNICEF, as of 12/01/2023, more than 5,300 Palestinian children were killed within 48 days. However, the United States, the European Union and Great Britain, despite everything, declare their unconditional support for Israel in carrying out a military operation, as a result of which, according to the same UNICEF, hundreds of children will be killed and injured every day.
Russia. The Kremlin recognized the right of the people of the Crimean Autonomy, Donbass and Lugansk to self-determination and reunification with Russia, although Russia, according to treaties concluded with Ukraine, recognized them as the territory of Ukraine. Russia also recognized the separation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia. In the Karabakh conflict, Moscow, actually ignoring such a fundamental principle of international law as the people’s right to self-determination, appeals only to the principle of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. Although there are no legal grounds for this, as was shown in the Turkish example of double standards.
Russia reacts very nervously to the supply of weapons to Ukraine from the United States, Europe and Turkey, but considered it quite acceptable to supply large quantities of offensive weapons to Azerbaijan, the enemy of its military ally Armenia. She has repeatedly and loudly declared violations of the rights of residents of the above-mentioned regions of Ukraine, but avoids calling the ethnic cleansing of the Armenians of Artsakh a crime committed by Azerbaijan.
The question is often asked: how can there be “double” standards? After all, these are regulatory documents created by agreement, approved by legal authorities, establishing uniform norms, rules, and requirements for the object. As applied to the problems discussed above, it contains legal norms established by the UN (often of a mandatory nature), other international organizations, and provisions of international treaties created with the aim of achieving the maximum degree of order in a certain area. But the great and powerful Two-Faced Janus suggested to many politicians how they could, based on their own interests, get out of this situation. Instead of a genuine standard, a genuine norm of international law, a genuine document, it is necessary to slip in a counterfeit, created on the basis of an existing original, but with a falsification of its text, content and meaning.
In October 2023, a group of scientists and public figures from Armenia, the USA, Russia, Germany and Norway published a “Statement on the distortions of the Alma-Ata Declaration and the consequences of legal arbitrariness” (https://shorturl.at/inCO5).
The authors of the Statement note that distortions of the Declaration, which became one of the main legal documents for the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States, are made for the purpose of political manipulation, which misleads the European and international political community. It is argued, as Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan recently stated in the European Parliament, that the republics that allegedly signed this declaration recognize the territorial integrity, sovereignty of each other, the inviolability of the existing, i.e. administrative borders of the former Soviet republics, and, consequently, the administrative borders between the republics The Soviet Union becomes state borders.
Similar references to the Alma-Ata Declaration were once made by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia S. Lavrov, the head of the European Council Charles Michel and others. When referring to the Alma-Ata Declaration, its provisions on the right of peoples to self-determination, renunciation of the use of force and the threat of force, economic and any other methods of pressure, peaceful settlement of disputes, respect for human rights and freedoms, including the rights of national minorities, conscientious implementation of obligations and other generally recognized principles and norms of international law, which Azerbaijan has flagrantly violated.
Distortions and arbitrary interpretations of the key concepts of the Declaration and statements based on them by the leaders of Armenia, the European Union and some countries, international organizations involved in the process of conflict resolution, occur against the backdrop of the death of thousands of civilians, hundreds of innocent people are listed as missing. An unknown number of people are being tortured and abused in the dungeons of hydrocarbon-rich Azerbaijan. Representatives of the military-political leadership of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic were kidnapped and brought to illegal trials. A threatening precedent is being created of equating peoples fighting for self-determination, participating in national liberation movements, with terrorist entities, on the one hand, and encouraging criminal acts (genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity) under the false cover of territorial integrity, on the other.
Meanwhile, recognition and respect for the territorial integrity of the states that signed the Alma-Ata Declaration is associated in it with the inviolability of the borders existing precisely at the time of signing the document, and not with the administrative borders of the former union republics of the USSR, about which there is no mention at all in the declaration. It is important to note that the lack of mention of the administrative boundaries of the former union republics is due to the fact that by the time this declaration was signed, the borders of some states that had already become independent as a result of the collapse of the USSR, neither de facto nor de jure, coincided with the administrative boundaries of the union republics. In the text of the declaration there are no numbers defining the territory of the states that signed these documents, with which the mentioned politicians are trying to operate. There is not a single line that the existing administrative boundaries between the republics of the Soviet Union are becoming state borders. Behind all this lies an attempt to justify Azerbaijan’s claims to the territories of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and the Republic of Armenia, which have no legal basis. Azerbaijan, it should be recalled, when leaving the USSR, grossly violated the existing laws and norms of international law. And with his Constitutional Act, he completely abandoned the legal succession from Soviet Azerbaijan, placing his territorial claims outside the legal framework.
The transformation of international norms into their forgeries allows the authors of such forgeries, pursuing their own selfish goals, to give the same type of events and actions of various subjects assessments they like, depending on the degree of benefit of the one applying such “double standards.” What is forbidden to some is permissible to others.
Unfortunately, the list of examples of “double standards” could be continued.
But important is not so much their number as the fact that this principle is becoming increasingly dominant in international politics. In honor of the great Two-Faced Janus, who, as you know, was reputed to be the god who unlocks and locks doors and passages leading to anything. It was Janus who opened the gates to the sky every day at dawn, letting the sun in. At sunset he locked the other gate behind the luminary. They say that the first month of the year is also named after him. How can politicians avoid focusing on such a serious figure?