Epress.am News from Armenia
Intensified in recent years, Georgian Russophiles entertain a variety of phobias, which often conflict with one another, writes columnist Tengiz Ablotiya in Gruzya Online (“Georgia Online”).
“One of the fears is that the West, in the face of Catholics, Satanists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and other agents at work behind the scenes of the world, dreams to turn original Georgia into an appendage of the decaying West, which is a huge gay pride parade for the whole of Western civilization.
“They are also intimidated by an Armenian threat: that the Armenians are conquering Georgia’s coastal lands, they prowl the country’s supreme governing structures, they have seized lucrative establishments, they purchase Georgian fruits and vegetables in large quantities, and in no time they will open a Akhalkalaki–Batumi corridor and it’s goodbye, Georgia.
“But the most popular is the story spun of a Turkish threat, which arose in the early 90s. Allegedly, the Turks will gradually seize the commanding heights of Georgia’s economy; but the worst thing is that today or tomorrow they will tear off Adjara. In addition, arguments are raised that allegedly Turks everywhere (I wonder where?) state that Batumi is their city and that soon they will return it to themselves.
“If you listen to them, then today in Batumi, mosques are being built at every turn, Wahhabism is in full bloom in the mountainous regions of the autonomous republic, and most of the economically active population in Batumi are Turks,… and they ruthlessly exploit and humiliate the unfortunate Georgians whose rights have been violated,” writes Ablotia.
In fact, notes the columnist, all these horror stories that contradict each other are nonsense. “Georgia cannot simultaneously be forced into Europeanization, Armenianization and Turkification — either one or the other, or a third,” he writes.