Tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan have crossed over to Twitter.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev took to the microblogging platform to post a rant against the neighboring country.
The two countries have a history of conflict, most notably over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, a section in the western part of Azerbaijan that’s heavily populated by ethnic Armenians who declared it an independent state in 1991. War befell the region until 1994, when Azerbaijan and Armenia declared a truce.
On Tuesday, Aliyev added fuel to the fire via Twitter, posting 29 different comments that disparaged his country’s western neighbors.
“Armenia as a country is of no value,” tweeted Aliyev. “It is actually a colony, an outpost run from abroad, a territory artificially created on ancient Azerbaijani lands.”
The president also accused Armenia, the first nation to adopt Christianity as its official religion (in 301 AD), of being Islamophobic. Although the Azerbaijani constitution does not declare a national religion, the majority of the country’s citizens are Muslim.
As noted by Jessica Phelan of the Global Post, the tweets are actually fragments from a speech Aliyev gave on Nov. 16 at an anniversary meeting of the new Azerbaijan Party. Portions of the speech were then distilled and tweeted out to Aliyev’s more than 31,000 Twitter followers four days later.
Below is a compilation of some of the more incendiary tweets made by the president.
Photo via @presidentaz/Twitter
