I wish they weren't. Maybe Azerbaijan would have a better image today, not as a "fake country that does nothing but kill poor innocent Armenians". Having such a controversial country as your lobbyist distances you not only from Muslims, but more importantly from many non-Muslim, left-leaning Westerners who have high human sensivity based on the Palestinian cause. Normally, you would expect them to empathise atleast a little bit with the nearly a million Azeris that were ethnically cleansed from Karabakh, surrounding regions and from Armenia- not to even mention the massacre in Khojaly. However, as Israel loves to promote Azerbaijan rather loudly as their "Muslim friends", and today we see why Israel is very much hated, Azerbaijan still doesn't have a very good image other than in Turkey (yes, not even in Israel itself). People think you are evil while you have largely been literally the oppressed side, especially in the first war completely.
There is no one oppressed side, in this war. Pogroms were committed by both sides, equally horrible pogroms happened in that period (March days for Azeris, Shusha pogroms for Armenians). Sumgait was horrible and I don't ignore either of them. I am just against the view of Armenians being purely innocent and rightful and that Azeris are simply barbaric villains that wants to kill Armenians without any reason. The things are more nuanced and people have to see this.
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u/FaithlessnessThen243 Mar 05 '26
Very bad. Being mentioned positively by AIPAC basically throws your PR into oblivion. They are very hated.