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The persecutions against the four Turkish intellectuals who visited Artsakh in September come to show that Turkey is unable to tolerate the independent intelligence and supports Azerbaijan, which has adopted a similar behaviour, Armenian turkologist Ruben Melkonyan said on Saturday in an interview with Panorama.am.

“Azerbaijan’s fanatic strive to blacklist the intellectuals, political figures and reporters visiting Artsakh would naturally be supported by brotherly Turkey. Such a step by Turkey can have a two-folded basis: firstly, to voice support to Azerbaijan and secondly, to crack down the independent intellectuals.

In this case, Erdogan is showing his inclinations to dictatorship against the four intellectuals, who pose a serious threat to the Turkish national through their free speeches and scientific works. They are not welcomed by the Turkish state,” the turkologist said, adding the Turkey and Azerbaijan are following each other’s faulty behavior of restricting the free speech.

According to Ruben Melkonyan, there are few sincere intellectuals with critical thinking in Turkey, with so called ‘court’ intellectuals making up the majority.

“One of the four intellectuals facing persecutions, Sait Çetinoğlu is the author of numerous books and article on the Armenian Genocide and misappropriation of the Armenian property. He is one of the scholars conducting a serious research on these topics and enjoys great popularity in Turkey.

I think Turkey will sooner or later apply a drawn up scenario against such intellectuals, either imprisoning them, or subjecting to persecutions and committing murder attempts against them. This was the case before and so is it now, as evidenced by Hrant Dink’s fate,” he concluded.