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By Elmar Chakhtakhtinski

One of the latest "breaking news" in Azerbaijani media has been the article titled "Was Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mother Azeri?" posted on RFE/RL English service site (http://www.rferl.org/content/Was_Leonardo_Da_Vincis_Mother_Azeri/1887794.html).

Picked up by both pro-government and whatever few independent news outlets remain under the fiercely despotic regime in Azerbaijan, and with "twits" and Facebook links running wild, the Azeri public seems to be excited with the prospect of possibly the greatest artist of all times turning to be Azeri! At least on the mother's side that is.

Here is the sad irony in this: in 2003 Armenians claimed that Da Vinci "had Armenian roots". The Russian NTV news site still has the link to their "Da Vinci was Armenian" story (in Russian: http://www.ntv.ru/novosti/34120/)

At that point many laughed at the "news" as a typical product of Armenian nationalists' claims to everything great and ancient in the world, regardless of how absurd it may sound. Something along the lines "Suliko drevnyaya armyanskaya jenjina" ("Suliko is an ancient Armenian woman", here claiming the heroine of a popular Georgian folk song).

Now, Azeri "patriots", after their glorious victory over Armenia in Eurovision and turning the tide in "dolma wars", finally liberated Da Vinci from Armenian occupation.

Who cares that Azeri territories in and around Karabakh are still under an Armenian control, and the Azeri capital Baku itself is invaded by an anti-national oil dictatorship looting the nation's wealth and opressing it's people? What matters is that Da Vinci was Azeri, not Armenian!

Let's make no mistake, it is important to counter Armenian claims on Azerbaijani cultural and historical heritage, but do Azeris have to copy Armenian nationalists in every nonsense obsession of theirs?

Maybe, rather than focusing on the ethnicity of Da Vinci's mother, it would have been a much better use of energy, time and passion to ensure that the government in Baku is really "Azeri", in a sense that it serves Azerbaijani people and not the interests of a corrupt autocratic regime.

Perhaps, even if Da Vinci's mother was really from Azerbaijan, seeing the current shameful cleptocracy ruling that country, the great artist would have been much saddened by what has become of his native land and the number of pseudo-patriots and sweet-talkers it has produced.