SHUSHA, Azerbaijan, July 6. The experience of modern Azerbaijan is of particular interest to the Buryat people, said Zurtan Khaltarov, founder of the “Buriyad Gürün” (“Buryat Government”) movement, Trend's correspondent reports from the event.
He made the announcement during a panel discussion on "Modern forms of colonialism: actions bringing tragedy, slavery and suffering to peoples" held as part of the international conference "Cultural and ethnic diversity: lessons from history, contemporary challenges" in Shusha.
“The experience of modern Azerbaijan is of particular interest to the Buryat national movement. Azerbaijan has demonstrated that preserving historical memory, strengthening national identity, and ensuring the effective functioning of the state are interconnected processes. Azerbaijan has created a model of sustainable state development in which culture, language, and historical memory are viewed as strategic resources of the nation,” he said.
According to him, for the Buryat people, this experience shows that cultural revival and institutional self-assertion do not contradict modernization but, on the contrary, can become its foundation, ensuring the preservation of national identity amid global political and economic changes.
"The Buryats are the largest indigenous colonized people of Siberia. We live on lands stretching from the Yenisei to the Amur. Unlike some pseudo-national Buryat organizations, which focus primarily on cultural and folkloric activities and have failed to formulate a unified political agenda on issues of historical memory and collective rights, the modern Circassian movement demonstrates a higher level of international mobilization,” he said.
Khaltarov noted that over the past decades, Circassian organizations have successfully united their diaspora and made the issue of recognizing the Circassian genocide a central element of their national identity and political agenda.
An international conference on the topic "Cultural and ethnic diversity: lessons from history, contemporary challenges" is taking place in Shusha.
The event is organized by the “Center for Cultural and Ethnic Diversity” Public Association in partnership with the “Silk Road” Public Association for Cultural and Historical Research.
Representatives from Azerbaijan, the U.S., France, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Germany, Israel, Türkiye, and Georgia are participating in the conference.
