Tomorrow may come today: Türkiye reminded Armenia of nuclear threat Metsamor NPP must be shut down

Will you stop threatening the world with nuclear terrorism? Türkiye's Igdir Journalists Community leader Aydin Deniz recently asked the international community a question along the same lines. It concerned the closing of the ill-fated Armenian nuclear power plant in Metsamor, the well-known nuclear mine in the Caucasus. Turkish provinces of Kars and Igdir recently even held exercises to prevent the consequences of a possible leak of radiation from the Metsamor NPP.

Aydin Deniz also called on Türkiye and Azerbaijan to act jointly and demanded to close the dangerous nuclear facility, where a catastrophe could happen almost any time. Armenia was terribly angered, and they began to cry out as if they were children to an insulting remark from adults.

The very name "Metsamor" already sounds like an apocalyptic anthem, and it is perhaps the clearest symbol of the traditional Armenian profanation of action - to simply turn a blind eye to something that poses a serious, even global threat, promising, however, to take action. And don't move a muscle... Until, as they say, the pigs begin to fly.

But the catastrophe is at the door, and the blast can be massive. So Armenia, and even the whole Caucasus, will be razed to the ground. But in Armenia, apparently, they deliberately decided to delay this issue because of some presumptuous and extremely stupid confidence that the country is a land "chosen by God" and nothing will ever happen to it. The facts, however, testify to the contrary. Which prompted Aydin Deniz, the head of Türkiye's Igdir Journalist Community, to raise the issue again.

The journalist stated directly that Metsamor NPP "poses a great threat first of all for Türkiye and Azerbaijan and then for Russia, Georgia, Iran, and Central Asian countries. "So why, in spite of all this, does Armenia continue to use this nuclear power plant?", Deniz appeals to the world community. He also stressed that a number of specialists and international organizations working in the field of nuclear energy have long recognized Metsamor NPP as the most dangerous nuclear power plant in the world, which has almost no safety elements. Deniz reminds that since its construction, the plant has experienced many accidents plus the devastating Spitak earthquake of 1988. Given all this, the journalist suggests that Azerbaijan and Türkiye should work together to "put pressure on Armenia."

Deniz is not the first to call on the public to demand the closure of the Armenian nuclear power plant. Türkiye, according to many politicians and experts of the country, should not allow the repetition of the tragedy, such as that which took the lives of up to 40,000 people because of the accident at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant. This was stated in February this year in the Turkish Parliament by Yashar Karadag, a deputy from the opposition Nationalist Movement Party (NMP).

Noting that he represents Igdir borderline province in the Turkish parliament, the deputy called to immediately stop the operation of the Metsamor plant, drawing attention to the fact that the zone on both sides of the border is seismically dangerous and the earth crust shocks are constantly occurring, and last winter the earthquake on the border between Armenia and Georgia reached about 5.3 points and was felt in the Turkish provinces of Igdir, Kars, Ardahan, and Aghri.

Karadag stressed that every earthquake in the South Caucasus threatens serious consequences for the Metsamor nuclear power plant, located just 16 kilometers from the Turkish border. "The Armenian nuclear power plant was built decades ago on the basis of outdated technologies and is the most dangerous of 443 nuclear power plants in the world," a Turkish politician says. Any accident there will automatically raise the background radiation level in Igdir, Van, Aghri, and Erzurum, and will lead to the growth of oncological diseases, he warns.

The alarm is more than justified. It is not for nothing that the EU, IAEA, and other international organizations in different years, after expert evaluations called to close Metsamor because of the deterioration of the reactors, which do not meet international safety standards for over thirty years. But Armenia always stopped this issue with assurances that Russian nuclear specialists skillfully prolong the life of power units by reconstructing and modernizing them. But in fact, it looks something like this: they are trying to sheathe the reactor that is spreading all over the base with a new case, fastening it with special staples and believing that this will help. But it will only help for a while and not for long. Simply because the reactor's operating time has long expired, and the project was supposed to operate it for no more than twenty years. Fact that after that time, someone very clever would decide to continue using the reactor that slowly tatters, in the USSR, no one could even dream of it. All the attempts to rehabilitate Metsamor invented by Russian Rosatom, which has been in charge of nuclear power plant maintenance for years, are temporary and rather ineffective measures. At least because, as the Turkish deputy declared, the most dangerous thing in Metsamor NPP is not only the outdated construction but also the persistent unwillingness of the Armenian authorities to understand and admit that, if there is an earthquake (and they are extremely destructive in this region), the tragedy of Spitak located quite near Metsamor, would seem trivial against the background of a new catastrophe.

The fact that exercises related to a possible leak of radioactive material from the Metsamor nuclear power plant in the Turkish provinces of Kars and Igdir, which border Armenia, regularly take place, shows that everything is very serious. The training plan includes providing first aid to residents of border villages after an earthquake of magnitude 7.

Dr. Esme Ozdashli of Mehmet Akif Ersoy University takes a similarly radical stance on the Armenian NPP. She also points to the opinion of authoritative experts of the IAEA, insisting on closing Metsamor because of numerous accidents at the plant, outdated reactors, bearing a serious threat and, of course, huge risk because of the location of the plant in an earthquake-prone area. Dr. Ozdashli cites the following fact: although the plant is located about 100 km away from Spitak, the reactor was badly damaged during the earthquake and stopped in 1989 because of "seismic vulnerability". At that time, the uranium in the first reactor was virtually unprotected.

Although leading scientists and environmental volunteers of Armenia stated at the time that the nuclear power plant posed a great threat to both human health and the environment, Metsamor-2 was restored for economic reasons within the framework of an agreement signed with Russia in 1994, and it was restarted without any safety measures.

Well, today, as expected, the fair warning of the Turkish side about the special danger of Metsamor NPP, despite the indisputable facts, was perceived in Armenia as an insult, and the exercise was called "false alarm".

As the Armenian media described his speech, "a certain Turkish citizen Aydin Deniz consciously seeks to provoke unrest in the Transcaspian Turkic states with fake information." The authors of the articles do it in a very recognizable way, in the best traditions of the Armenian lobby, immediately raising the issue to the political and ethnic plane. They accentuate that "Ankara authorities through the named gentleman broaden the Metsamor issue to the almost global level and significance" and raise the issue of freezing the NPP to the "status of a precondition for Türkiye to restore diplomatic relations with Armenia". That is, according to Armenians, the problem of the Nuclear Power Plant has no global level. Then what sense does this problem have, gentlemen, if a catastrophe can affect a vast region of Eurasia? Isn't it a global level?

Referring to the safety problems of the rather old Metsamor NPP, it will be possible to constantly keep the political authorities of Armenia under strong pressure and artificially generate the problem as an actual occasion legitimizing any hostile actions against Yerevan - up to military intervention, the Armenian analysts argue.

"On the other hand, the demands to shut the station down can also serve as a good way for Türkiye to evade its own obligations within the framework of the process of normalization of relations with Yerevan", these are the conclusions of cunning authors of Armenian media, which quite brightly demonstrate the public attitude towards the problem. Apparently, it does not care about anything, as well as the official Yerevan.

Another Armenian logical deadlock is where the country, again and again, seeks to manipulate any issue, applying classic populism. Clearly proving that Yerevan is not going to do anything for good. Once again, the Metsamor issue has been driven into a deadlock.

Journalist Deniz is right: only together can we overcome this problem from the outside. We should also listen to Dr. Esme Ozdashli, who says the lobbying activities of Türkiye and Azerbaijan in the international arena to close the Metsamor NPP must be carried out jointly. At the same time cooperation between the two countries on this problem should be intensified, and not only at the level of states, but also by using stable public diplomacy and attracting the attention of the international public and environmental organizations. It is necessary to inform the world that the threat of Metsamor extends not only to Türkiye and Azerbaijan but also to many other countries, because any accident, which may occur at the nuclear power plant, as in the case of Chornobyl, will have a radioactive effect on almost the entire continent.