Azerbaijan on its way of appropriating other cultures
Azerbaijan tries to assert itself through appropriating elements of other cultures. It invents an own history through taking others’ cultural heritage for its own, deputy head of the cultural heritage of folk arts department at the Ministry of Culture, Eranuhi Margaryan told Panorama.am.
This year Azerbaijan has applied to UNESCO for inclusion of several types of bread, lavash among them, in the list of intangible cultural heritage. The justification is that bread is a phenomenon that tends to be spread both in its form and content.
“The nomination was presented jointly by Turkey and Azerbaijan. It contained information about the type of thin bread, also referred to as lavash, which allegedly was popular in their territory. However, the technology and the preparation method considerably differed from the Armenian lavash. Their move was totally is in line with their adopted policy,” Margaryan noted.
Margaryan reminded that in 2014 UNESCO decided to put Armenia’s nomination “Lavash, the preparation, meaning and appearance of traditional bread as an expression of culture in Armenia” on the RepresentativelList of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, while Azerbaijan exerted every effort to make UNESCO reconsider the decision.
“During the session our neighboring state fell into hysterics raising the question that lavash belongs to them as well. They tried to block the Armenian nomination turning the UNESCO cultural platform into a stage of political confrontation. They, of course, failed. They even continued their policy of deceiving own people through disseminating false information that the Armenian nomination had been rejected due to their efforts. In 2014 the Armenian application was adopted and now the information is available on the official website of the organization,” Margaryan mentioned.
To remind, currently four cultural items are included in the list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity from Armenia. Those are lavash, Armenian national epic "David Sasoun", the art of cross stone and Musical instrument duduk and the music of duduk.
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