UNESCO: "Kocheri" isn't Armenian dance
By Amina Nazarli
UNESCO did not recognize Kocheri as an Armenian folklore dance, which received a negative assessment from the organization based on five criteria.
The tenth session of the UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage held in Namibia disapproved the nomination by Armenian delegation, which was claiming on the Azerbaijani traditional group dance.
The committee, however, decided to return the nominated file to the Armenian side, upholding the evaluation body’s decision.
Azerbaijan in a guard of its history protested this move, producing necessary documents to the organization.
Kocheri is a kind of ancient Azerbaijani dance “Yalli”, which is depicted on the rock carvings in Gobustan dating to 10,000-8,000 years BC.
The famous “Divani luget” dictionary of 1072-1074 by eminent Turkish philologist Mahmud Kashgari, includes the word “kocheri”, meaning “koch-goch” (male ram), and the word “kochmek”, meaning "to move from one place to another".
Armenia occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory in late 1990s in an unneighborly way, hence targeting the ancient culture and traditions of the Azerbaijani people.
Before Armenia made several attempts to grab Kocheri dance, but was a failure due to Azerbaijan's grounded facts. The Copyright Agency prevented an attempt in 2011 when an Armenian representative tried to introduce the dance as "Armenian" during Eurovision Song Contest. The Agency launched an investigation and submitted to the World Intellectual Property Organization a detailed reference based on historical data and etymology of the “kochari” word.
Throughout the years Armenians continue to steal, appropriate and present Azerbaijani music, folklore and other samples of the Intangible Cultural Heritage as their own.
Many times, the people tried to appropriate Azerbaijani songs “Sari Gelin” “Susen Sunbul”, dances “Yalli,” “Uzundere,” “Vagzali,” as well as ancient musical instruments like tar, balaban, zurna and even works by prominent Azerbaijani composers such as Uzeyir Hajibeyli, Kara Karayev and Fikret Amirov.
Forgetting about historical belonging Armenians even introduce some samples of rich Azerbaijani cuisine such as dolma, pakhlava and lavash as their own.
Azerbaijan has many times prevented such unpleasant cases, defeating them on the legal platform.
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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on
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