Armenian Conversation

Before leaving Yerevan to head back to Georgia, I got into an interesting conversation with the young woman who helped us get settled at the hotel that we stayed at while in Yerevan. Her named turned out to be Lusy. She is planning on going to the University of Yerevan this fall I believe to further her study in English and to learn Spanish (Ella quire hablar espanol!). She asked me why did I decide to come to Armenia...

This required a complicated answer. She had a good reason to wonder though. Very few Americans ever travel to Armenia, let alone know where Armenia is. Most Americans would generally want to travel to a more European setting such as Spain, France, the UK, Germany, and others. To be honest, before coming to Turkey, I was planning on spending most of my travel time in the Aegean (Greece and Turkey). I did however the exact opposite and focused my attention more in Eastern Turkey. I told her though that I had the privilege to study at Bogazici University in Istanbul for the Spring and Summer semesters, and while living in Turkey, I have learned a lot about the history of Turkey. The history of Turkey and Armenia is one of the same, but the two countries interpret this shared history so differently from one another. I have heard the Turkish side many times, but the Armenian point of view was hidden to me. That is one reason as to why I wanted to travel to Armenia. I wanted to get their input on historical events. The other reason was, I didn't know anything about Armenia except for its location, the capital is Yerevan, their border is closed with Turkey and Azerbaijan and stuff I heard from Turks. Therefore, I felt that there was a need to cure my ignorance and become more aware of Armenia by getting a crash course experiece. The third and final reason is because I was on an adventure and in order for an adventure to be exciting you need to travel into the unknown once in a while (which I must say, traveling without a guide book of the region and improvising was exciting!).

I was going to ask her about the Armenian Genocide but she got to the punch before I did. She asked me what I thought about. This is a subject I always avoid giving my opinion on. I have never had much oppurtunity to research it in full. My only source has been Wikipedia's page on it, but that can't be trusted since it is missing a lot of source citations last time I checked. However from what I do know, it was either genocide or ethnic cleansing. However, I do remember studying the Young Turk movement in my freshmen year at ISU. From what I know, the three leaders of the young Turks, were nationalistic, and racist military men and their ideology described the Young Turk movement fully as a nationalistic movement aimed at glorifying Turks and increasing their status over all others through the use of military force. However, when I was trying to stay politically correct, I felt like I was just regurgitating what Obama said in Ankara a month earlier. That was when I said, "screw it, it probably was a genocide, and Armenia has been continually screwed over ever since." Can't appease everyone, so I will just stick with the truth.

She went a little further with my thoughts but she wasn't as spiteful as I was expecting. There were two things though that she wanted though. The first was for diplomatic relationships between Armenia and Turkey to be restored. She was concerned as too why these two countries who have so much shared history, ethnicity, and culture can be enemies. That was moving to hear. The second thing she felt that needed to happen though was the returning of land that was taken by the Turks that were inhabited by Armenians. Two good examples of this is the abandoned city of Ani and Van. However, the people who live there now had nothing to do with the Armenian Genocide and it would be kind of wrong to just remove them from their homes. However, the Armenians lost so much in the early 20th Century that if there was any justice in this world, they should get something back. However, the present generation of Turks never committed the acts of genocide. However there should be some kind of reparations. Hell, just opening the border again would do so much for the Armenian economy, along with the Economy of several Turkish areas like Kars, and Van. However this is incredibly hipocritical coming from an American because we don't call what we did to the Native Americans a genocide (which it was).

We started talking about Armenian culture and how it was very close to Greek and Turkish culture. In fact they had the same kebabs (which were still delicious). Tabla (Backgammon) is the board game of choice just like the other places mentioned. Also during the times of the Ottoman Empire, all three groups lived in peace with each other and intermingled amongst the groups. They are practically all family but they all have stupid feuds between each other because of nationalist feelings. However we both greatly wanted Turkey and Armenia to open up to each other again. Can't we all just get along!?

We also then started talking about the difference between students in Armenia vs. America. This is another case of where I have to discredit those rancid, tasteless American Pie movies. She had a stereotype of American students built around our popular teenager movies which are completely over the top! Thankfully she understood.

Unfortunately, the minibus that would take us to Tbilisi arrived. I gave her my full name with an email address to reach me. She just gave me her name because her family didn't have a computer. She told me though that she was expecting her family to get her one as soon as she enters school. I told that we should keep in touch, because I would like to continue our enlightening conversation.