Your trusted source

“We’ve lost the sense of nationhood. Our people don’t identify themselves with the nation. After all, the sense of nationhood creates the feelings of self-esteem and pride. In my opinion we can speak about a nation only when people in a society feel sympathy towards each other, when they have common self-consciousness, common feelings, and ideas. Under the current conditions, it can be witnessed that this kind of feelings has become strange for us,” Hasimli said.

According to the psychologist all of this is the result of deliberate policy of Azerbaijani authorities. The case is, that when people have common ties, when they are not split up into smaller groups, they can be a threat. Whereas now there is nothing of a kind, everyone is living by the principle of “none of my business”, while it is beneficial for the incumbent regime. It’s more difficult to control people who have common thoughts, ideas.

“It seems to me that the Azerbaijanis have already lost all the nationalistic ideas and the country is composed of numerous families, “tribes” which have some family ties,” the expert noted.

She thinks that the self-humiliation of Zaur Hasanov is one of the many episodic cases. That case could have become an example for those whose rights are ruthlessly violated that is why the authorities decided to remove the topic from the agenda and somehow resolve the conflict. However, the problem hasn’t been solved at the lower levels.

Samir Hasimli as well noted that “everything in Azerbaijan has become virtual. ” The matter doesn’t go farther than the social media.
“We don’t even have a politics. For example the recent events concerning the National Council of Democratic forces were just small movements, statements and some meetings. There is no real politics. These all is an imitation of political processes.” she said.

The psychologist also spoke about the public opinion concerning the Karabakh issues, “We associate Karabakh with war. Do our people want to fight for the lost land? The other day we all got the results of the survey, where people simply didn’t want to answer the question about the Karabakh, but eagerly agreed to answer to the question of how they are going to celebrate the New Year,” she noted.

Moreover, according to her opinion, the people didn’t have a holiday mood either. “All these facts once more prove that the society today is in a state of deep stress and depression” she added.