The Glendale Environmental Coalition stands in solidarity with the people of Artsakh and Armenia, who wish to dwell in their ancestral homeland and live in peace with the peoples around them.

For more than a century, Azerbaijan’s fossil fuel resources and infrastructure have played a key role in large-scale wars, conflicts, and disputes. Armenians’ quest to protect their homelands and their rights to self-determination have been ignored or quashed as a result. Azerbaijan’s latest attacks are linked to efforts by Turkey’s authoritarian leader to extend its economic and geopolitical control.

A carbon-based world economy is leading us to global environmental devastation. The people of Artsakh, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, and the entire world, including the United States of America, are today experiencing increased conflict, economic crises, and devastating effects of climate change, and all of these can be traced to exploitation of fossil fuels.

We condemn the leadership of Azerbaijan and Turkey for these unjust attacks. A peaceful indigenous population is threatened with major casualties as well as loss of their culture, property, lands, and livelihoods. Azerbaijan’s long-range rocket attacks on civil infrastructure could trigger environmental disaster. Azeri soldiers, mercenaries recruited by Turkey, and Azeri civilians are also suffering casualties and are sacrificing their safety, their future, and their lives under the orders of their own autocratic leaders.

If Azerbaijan and Turkey achieve their goals, they will not only wipe out the millennia-long Armenian presence in Artsakh and beyond, but will also destabilize the region and possibly the entire world, further damage the international economy, and make it much more difficult to address the global environmental and climate crisis.

GEC also wishes to express its support for the members of our local community with connections to Artsakh and Armenia. We deeply feel the distress of events that raise fears and echo the 1915 genocide. All members of our community must come together in rejecting the violence against our friends and family in Artsakh and Armenia.

The Consulate General of Armenia, located in Glendale, has recommended that those interested in making monetary donations make them through official channels such as the Armenia Fund.