today is a conventional date of the beginning of the 1915’s Armenian genocide in Turkey. Armenians all over the world commemorate the victims. Some of survivors are still alive. Almost all Armenians in the west are ancestors of survivors. Many of us have some relative who survived. My grandfather is also from the family of survivors from Van.
I never liked the date, in particularly, because I felt a link between the date and the victim psychology among the nation. This psychology of the victim was also stimulated and greeted in USSR, as a way to make Armenians more loyal to the empire, and make them sure that they won’t be able to survive without the big brother.
Today is of course, non working day in Armenia, however I came to work, to deal with problems caused by power outage. I was passing through the building and made this photo. This is an A4 b/w print of the We are our mountains monument in Artsakh, and photo of Monte Melkonian, hero of so called NK war. This is what regular radio engineer have printed to hung over it’s table. And though it may seem “militaristic” to hung a photo of a man in uniform, I believe, it’s not really.
(Monte was a very interesting person. when almost all of the Martakert district was lost, and Azerbaidjani army had much more power, he was able to take it back. He had no tanks, but to the end of war he had ~40 tanks under his control, all captured from the Azerbaijani army. He did not tolerate marauding and never allowed that.)
Why is this? Because something have changed. Armenians do not perceive themselves as victims to the such extent as in the past. The important part of an Armenian identity today is that Armenians were able to defend themselves in Artsakh, the population was not eliminated, ethnic cleansings conveyed by Azerbaidjan in late eighties and early nineties failed, at least in most of Artsakh.
They were able to prevent the next genocide. That is why Artsakh is extremely important for any Armenian. That’s a symbol of a victory, probably the most important victory throughout the last ~1000 years.
And what is very sad, that Artsakh has no many chances to be recognized by the International community, and interests of Turkey, which keeps Armenia in blockade, and Azerbaijan, which has oil, are more important to the big players.
It looks like almost any major force is interested to make Artsakh controllable by aggressive, non democratic, militaristic, not tolerant Azerbaijan, which recently again tried to use violence to, as they say, “reestablish territorial integrity”, and in reality, to clean up remaining parts of Artsakh from Armenians. Or, may be make them citizens of the country which conveyed ethnic cleansings, and destroyed every Armenian heritage they were able to.
#1915 #genocide #armenian-genocide #armenian_genocide #armenia #turkey #azerbaijan #artsakh #nkpeace #monte_melkonian #we_our_mountains