The city of Samarkand in Uzbekistan may be distant from Armenia, but it will shape its future, as it has in the past.
Samarkand has become the focus of the political world recently. On November 11, it hosted the ninth summit of the Organization of the Turkic States (OTS), with the participation of Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, with Turkmenistan and Hungary attending as observers.
One would ask why a European country would be present in the midst of all these Turkic nations. The answer is that Hungarians claim to be descendants of Magyar settlers, Huns and Turks — thus the brotherly ties. Perhaps that would explain Hungarian Prime Minister (and international neo-Nazi pariah) Viktor Orban’s gift to Baku when in 2012 he repatriated Azerbaijani officer Ramil Safarov, who was convicted of killing Armenian army Lt. Gurgen Margaryan in that country in 2004.
Mr. Orban also offered his country’s support to the summit, stating, “Our country supports the work of OTS and will work for the successful implementation of the Turkish vision in the next decade.”
Incidentally, if you need to know how out of touch the Armenian world is, the Armenian Catholic Patriarch Raphael Bedross XXI was in Budapest two weeks ago to present to Orban the Holy Cross Medal of Gratitude!
Kissing the Turkish overlord’s boots even further, the OTS also awarded observer status to the occupied northern Cyprus region (the unrecognized Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus), triggering an angry rebuff from the European Union.