Armenia: An Ancient People with a History Marked by Tragedy

This piece was originally published in Nate’s weekly newsletter Takes & Typos October 17

Barev dzez (Hello in Armenian),

This week’s newsletter is coming on Tuesday because I was in transit back from Yerevan on Sunday. On the whole, our visit to Armenia was wonderful. The food, the history, and the brandy didn’t disappoint. Travel within the country is affordable, English is widely spoken, and if you can somehow make the trip you should. This week’s newsletter is a recap of my learning from the trip. It’s ¼ travelog and ¾ me reflecting on Armenia’s deep history and complicated present.

Last Thursday afternoon, I stood in a monastery two hours north of Yerevan, the Armenian capital. Our guide, Nina, was describing how the Mongols had burned all the books in the library as they swept through in the thirteenth century. As I listened, my brain started to collapse on itself contemplating the amount of history before us.

Yerevan pre-dates Rome and Armenians are ancient people, among the oldest continuous civilizations on earth, and everyday Armenians have a grasp of their collective history that I find beyond admirable.

We initially went to Georgia last fall because it was a cheap flight from here in Abu Dhabi. But this is now our third trip to the Caucuses. I caught a little bit of guff and some pointed questions at immigration about the prior Azerbaijan stamp in my passport and by entering Armenia, I believe I'm now banned from ever re-entering Azerbaijan. This is my first time being banned from a country, so I’m not quite sure how it all works.

We've dug into the history of the region in our successive trips. Armenia, like its neighboring states, is located at a geopolitical crossroads, trapped between great powers. Archaeological sites in Armenia date back as far as the Paleolithic Era (200,000 years ago). The Armenian Kingdom, then called Urartu, dates back to the Iron Age (861 BCE) and at various points they've found themselves under Roman, Mongol, Persian, Ottoman/Turkish, and Russian/Soviet occupation or rule.

A map of "Armenia" in the Ararat Distillery in Yerevan that includes the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh; ethnic Armenians were forced out of the region by the Azeri military in September

The size and shape of what we call Armenia today are artifacts of those outsiders. As such, the territorial claims of recent Armenian history are broader than the land of the modern republic. Their strong sense of collective history, galvanized by the genocide of 1.5 million people in 1915, informs the way they talk about their country and their complicated relationship with their neighbors, in particular the modern states of Turkey and Azerbaijan.

The Tragedy of the Twentieth Century - From time to time nation's face existential questions. Armenia faced a pair in the twentieth century:

What happens when your desired political reality or collective national memory does not match the political or territorial reality on the ground?
What happens when you find yourself under the dominion of a greater military power and the global community ignores your calls for aid?

Nations facing these dilemmas can either accept the new reality, as the world is ostensibly encouraging Palestinians to do or they can forge—usually through violence—a different reality, as Israel did in the twentieth century and Azerbaijan did this fall in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh.

While traveling in the country, we heard repeated references to "Western Armenia"— the territory, larger than the current state of Armenia, lost to the modern state of Turkey, largely as a result of the 1915 genocide. This land claim includes Mount Ararat, a national symbol for the country, and purported to be the mountain on which Noah disembarked after the Old Testament flood. Boundary making by Russia and Turkey Post-World War I nullified claims to Western Armenia. Imagine if Canada committed genocide in the Dakotas and kept Mount Rushmore. You can’t even fathom it.

The Monastery at Sevan Lake, built in 874

We also heard references to “Historical Armenia”—considered to be the territory within and bordering the country where the plurality of the populace are ethnic Armenians. This includes Western Armenia, parts of Georgia, and ethnic enclaves in neighboring Azerbaijan. Notably, up until the middle of last month, ethnic Armenians made up the majority of the population in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. However, those claims were largely extinguished by Azeri military forces, creating over 100,000 refugees.

What happened in September in Nagorno-Karabakh was the end of a conflict that’s simmered on & off since the fall of the Soviet Union. Ian Bremmer summarized recent events in his GZERO Newsletter:

On Sept. 19, Azerbaijan launched a ground and artillery offensive to take full control of Nagorno-Karabakh after what it claimed were terrorist attacks on Azeri civilians by Karabakh Armenians. Moscow, occupied by its own war and chafed at Yerevan’s growing alignment with the West, did not intervene on behalf of the ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. Neither did Yerevan. Within 24 hours, the overwhelmingly superior Azerbaijani military had killed more than 200, injured 400, and forced the local Armenian authorities to surrender, leaving Azerbaijan in effective control of the territory.

Yerevan

*The menu at Dolmama, an Armenian restaurant that Anthony Bourdain visited in an episode of Parts Unknown, features "Historical Armenia," including Nagorno-Karabakh and Azeri territory.*

It feels like Armenia has come to grips with the loss of its western territory. But it is still noticeably (and understandably) grappling with the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh, where they feel ethnic Armenians were abandoned by the West, Russia (Armenia's purported ally), and the government in Yerevan led by PM Nikol Pashinyan.

When looking at Aremina’s past & present, there are corollaries to both sides in the conflict currently raging in Palestine. The modern state of Israel was created in the aftermath of the genocide in Europe, modeled on the Aremenian Genocide. And the Palestinian people, like the Armenians, find themselves at the mercy of a foe with superior military force, bent on extinguishing their land claims (more on that in next week’s newsletter).