Azerbaijan Diary: A Rogue Reporter's Adventures in an Oil-Rich, War-Torn, Post-Soviet Republic

Goltz's "diary" would be a useful tool for anyone interested in underunderstanding the facts about Azerbaijan--an exercise made easy by the current state of the media in the US. Unfortunately for those who read this book, Mr. Goltz offers an exceedingly unbalanced account. At the expense of truth and accuracy, he has chosen a mode which not only puts the textual material in line with pro-Turkish propaganda, but also scrupulously fabricates the facts. This combination makes the book entirely unworthwhile for the person seeking a better understanding of what exactly has transpired in the conflict of Azerbaijan with its neighbors.

I have read the book of T. Goltz with admiration of journalistic bravery. The author definitely deserves to be commended.

The bravery of Thomas Goltz is not just going to the war torn places personally and recording the truth under the fire, but also the pressures he might face after writing the book. It is not a secret that Armenian terrorists are well known for attacks on anybody who reveals their crimes and stops their bloody cause.

By picturing inhuman atrocities committed by Armenian neo-fascists against civilian Azerbaijani population in Karabakh, Goltz definitely stands against lies spread by Armenian propaganda machine. Hating everybody who will dispute their false fiction about "Great Armenia", these propagandists scream and yell the people who reveal their fake character. I will not get surprised if they try to discredit his book. But, as French say, "Dogs bark, but caravan goes on"...

Goltz is a reporter's reporter, covering a conflict close to his heart. He brings a distant war to your window and makes you take a long, hard look.

I have read Thomas Goltz's "Azerbaijan Diary" with mixed feelings. This fat volume describes a journalist's adventures in the oil-rich Azerbaijan, a country in the Caucasus. Everything goes smooth and even interesting and informative in the text, until and unless Goltz comments on Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict. From those points onwards, "Azerbaijan Diary" turns into "Azerbaijan Diarrhea," where truths, lies and xenophobic trash are all mixed together in a swirl of bigotry and propaganda. While, Goltz rather captivatingly describes the uneasy post-Soviet transition in Azerbaijan, his account on the strenuous relations between the Armenians and the Azerbaijanis runs as an unsophisticated conspiracy theory, lacking insight and depth. The book is full of racist remarks and clumsy attempts to re-write history. Facts in the "Diary" are misinterpreted, misrepresented, turned upside down, with causes and consequences torn apart and then reattached in an ex-post fashion. In other words, the authors makes a series of deliberate logical errors when he interprets events that happened longer time ago from the perspective of the realities, which are, in fact, the consequences of those earlier events. So, why does Goltz sympathize to violent Azerbaijani chauvinism and racism with its idea of Turkic supremacy, and whether he does? What is the undertext of the true message in the book?

Among the students of the Caucasus it is a common secret that Thomas Goltz, a.k.a. "Tommy the Turk," is a hired gun of the Azerbaijani propaganda machine, whose recent task became to cover-up horrific crimes against humanity committed by Azerbaijani chauvinist butchers, Nazi-style ethnic cleansers, and history falsifiers during the aggression of Azerbaijan against the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh in 1988-1994. It is tempting to attribute the perversions of the book to the fact that Goltz is a well-known Azerbaijani lobbyist, who dines and wines both in the Azerbaijan's embassy in Washington and in the office of Azerbaijani presidential advisor and war criminal Vafa Guluzade-co-inventor of the hoax of the so-called "Xojalli massacre" and the god-father of Azerbaijani "ethnic purification" projects. It is tempting to find Goltz's motivation in the fact he is paid by oil-dollars for his sycophantic services.

The situation with "Azerbaijan Diary," however, IS more complex and deep. In our world of political correctness and Western hypocritical sterility, aggression and endemic pathologies of human nature are getting suppressed, and increasingly so. Horror movies and violent pornography flicks cannot fully substitute the appetites of assorted pedophiles, hate-mongers, racists and sadists, majority of whom-believe or not-lives among us as rather normal-looking, law-abiding citizens and not as criminals or thugs, as many would assume. The most important thing the freaks are looking for is a spiritual, geographic and intellectual outlet to a real, not imaginary world where rape, killings, pillage, destruction and domination of one group of people upon the other are all made legitimate. They look for their ultimate fetish both on the geographic map and in historical records. Nazi Germany will not work in this respect-people of the world are taught to dislike it. President Milosevic's Yugoslavia too-discredited, de-legitimized and militarily defeated. Anti-Semitism-too old-fashioned. KKK?-no, marginalized and in some places outlawed. So, what remains? The answer is Turkey, with its smaller analogue and ethnic kin in the Caucasus-the self-styled "republic" of Azerbaijan. The book invites his readers to peep into the world where abuse is a law, to masturbate on the idea of being a Turko-Azerbaijani chauvinist, and to experience excitement from the process of creating journalistic hoaxes-like the infamous hoax with "Xojalli," apparently concocted by the authors and Guluzade to humiliate the victims of Azerbaijani violent concept of Turkic supremacy. The impunity of the Turks and the so-called Azerbaijanis-violent Asian tribal migrants responsible for conquering and disintegrating higher Christian Orthodox civilizations of Asia Minor-is simply legendary. In contrast to Nazi Germany, post-Titoian Yugoslavia/Serbia and communist Cambodia, Turkey's and Azerbaijan's experience with ethnic cleansing and genocide is a terrific success story. Not only Turkey effectively avoided punishment, this country is currently considered West's best friend in the Middle East. The record of Turkish savagery is ample: 1.6 million Armenians killed altogether in 1899-1897, 1909, 1915, 1918-1921; 400,000 Ottoman Greeks killed in 1918-1922 (with more than 1.5 million deported); 650,000 Assyrians and Chaldeans, killed in 1914-18; 3 million recently displaced Kurds; occupied and ethnically cleansed Cyprus, etc. The record of Azerbaijani butchery is also impressive, taking into account the size of this country: 30,000 killed and 300,000 ethnically cleansed Armenians in 1905 and 1918-1921, 8,700 killed and 350,000 ethnically cleansed Armenians in 1988-1994, plus the destroyed Christian civilization of the Udins. Azerbaijanis were the first people which re-introduced massacres, mass rape and concentration camps to the post-socialist world, in some part of which rampant nationalism became the only game in town. Later, the ethnic cleansers in Yugoslavia readily borrowed their designs; nor they conceal that Azerbaijanis are their teachers. However, the notion that Azerbaijan was the main and earliest laboratory for ethnic cleansing experiments is nowhere in "Azerbaijan Diary." I have visited Armenian region of Nagorno Karabakh in 1992, simultaneously with Thomas Goltz, when the region was cut off from the outside world and sieged by Azerbaijani troops. Azerbaijanis committed terrible crimes and leveled most of Karabakh to ground by indiscriminate aerial and artillery bombardments. The author only sketchy mentions the Azerbaijani neo-fascists from the "Grey Wolves" notorious brigade; the crimes against humanity perpetrated by these butchers are missing from the text. His mention of the Sumgait massacre in eastern Azerbaijan, which started the armed conflict, occupies little space in his writings. "Azerbaijan Diary" brilliantly performed its main task in the consumer market. In other words, Azerbaijan-with its psychotic and genocidal chauvinism-is becoming a spiritual homeland for the assorted spooks and freaks from all corners around the world, which have already began treating this country as their shrine. And that is an alarming development.

The book is excellent, very real and interesting. It takes to the heartof Azerbaijan's struggle for its existence. Surrounded by enemies, deceived by neighbors, this small Caucasus country stands on the crossroads of history. Thomas Goltz describes all the terrible realities of Azerbaijan's war with Armenian invaders.

I would recommend the book for everyone interested in the Caucasus region.