France blames Azerbaijan for trouble in New Caledonia and there's a legit reason for it

Some background that Politico won't tell you: New Caledonia is a French colony integral part of France in the South Pacific. The French never gave it up because it has the world's largest nickel mine it's an integral part of France. There has long been a policy of encouraging white people to move there to dilute the native population allow them to enjoy the climate as well. Recently France revised the island's colonial diktat constitution in a naked power grab attempt to be raceblind, allowing recent immigrants to vote in local elections. The native population is naturally outraged too barbaric to understand.

How in the heck does Azerbaijan fit into this? France has always been a supporter of Armenia. This must be because of righteous outrage about the Armenian genocide, right? Not really. Remember how the Sykes-Picot Agreement promised what is now Syria and Lebanon to the French after WW1? It also promised a huge chunk of southeastern Anatolia to them. The plan was that they would set up a puppet state here. In typical imperialist divide and rule fashion, the Armenians were supposed to be their enforcers.

They ran into a couple of problems though. First was the whole genocide thing. I wish it wasn't a winning strategy but sometimes it is. There weren't enough Armenians left to carry out the plan. Second, the French had the best army in the world in 1918 but it didn't mean they had a lot of guys who wanted to keep fighting for some distant colony. The few guys they did send out were defeated by the resurgent Turkish nationalists under Mustafa Kemal. It's hard to win against a guy who's such a chad that he said to a subordinate at Gallipolli "I didn't order you to fight. I ordered you to die."

As a legacy of this there's a large and influential Armenian diaspora community in France. They're still kind of mad about the whole genocide thing. Mad at Turkey but also Azerbaijan because, if you'll allow me to grossly oversimplify things, Azerbaijan is basically half Turkish/half Iranian and they (and the Kurds) are accused of participating in the genocide. Did they? I dunno, researching genocides is pretty depressing so I usually avoid it.

So that's how the native indigenous Kanaks of New Caledonia have common cause with people living on inland mountains on the other side of the world.