Haaretz (English edition) article by Ofri Ilani: Will the ice melt on Ararat?
Will the ice melt on Ararat?
By Ofri Ilani
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1077148.html
YEREVAN, Armenia - After the waters of the flood abated from the face of the earth and Noah's family emerged from the ark, he and his sons remained at the foot of Mount Ararat. There, tradition has it, they were fruitful and multiplied, reestablishing the human race. Based on this tradition, until just 200 years ago, scholars believed that mankind's origins lay here in Armenia, the land of Ararat. It was only in the 19th century that this theory was abandoned and the cradle of humankind "migrated" to Africa.
In contemporary Armenia, a small country in the Caucasus that was formed after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the biblical story of Noah's Ark has become a national myth. Mount Ararat, soaring above the capital Yerevan, is the symbol most identified with Armenia. Indeed its name appears on signs throughout the city and also on the labels of the famed Ararat brandy, which was Josef Stalin's favorite drink and remains one of the country's few export products. Advertisement
However, the residents of Yerevan can only gaze from a distance today at the snow-capped peak of Ararat, because it is located in Turkish territory, beyond the border. And thus, to the Armenians' chagrin, the mountain that symbolizes their homeland has become a symbol of the unfulfilled realization of the dream of Armenian liberty. In fact, Armenians cannot even visit the mountain. Armenia and Turkey are still arguing, mostly over Turkey's refusal to acknowledge the Armenian genocide in 1915; as a result, the border between the two is closed.
"This mountain, Ararat - I've come back here to see it. But it is also the source of my sadness," says Rosanna Avnian, a young Armenian woman, who works in a hotel in the center of Yerevan. She spent the past 10 years in Argentina and Israel, before returning to Armenia. Avnian is not Jewish, but her brother married an Israeli woman and settled in Tel Aviv - which is why she also came to Tel Aviv and even studied Hebrew. "How very much you Jews have achieved with the return to your land," she says. "I, too, know that one day Ararat will once again be ours."
In several respects, "Armenia resembles Israel," sums up Dr. Richard Kirakossian, an Armenian-American, who is now teaching at a research institute in Yerevan.
"Israel's identity is based on the trauma of the Holocaust, which is the main factor that unifies the nation. Like Israel, Armenia is in a conflict with several of its neighbors, but the main danger threatening it is the corruption that is destroying the country from within. If the regional balance between Russia and the West is upset, [the country] is liable to become a military offshoot of Russia on the Turkish border. And just as bad: It is liable to sink into total triviality and simply become of no interest to anyone in the world."
In recent months, however, new winds have been blowing in the southern Balkans: For the first time since the 1990s, there are signs of a thaw in Armenian-Turkish relations. In September the Turkish president visited Yerevan and contacts are being made between the countries, mediated by the United States and the European Union. On March 29, senior officials in Brussels announced that after U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to Ankara this week, Turkey might open the border with Armenia. Armenia, however, is demanding that Turkey acknowledge the genocide and its responsibility for it. Such an acknowledgment is apparently not likely in the near future, since Ankara still responds aggressively to the smallest suggestion by even an American or European politician that alludes to the possibility of recognition of the genocide. Nonetheless, there is the hope that Obama's state visit might lead to some sort of compromise that would allow for the opening of the border.
In any case, the conflict with Turkey is not the only one that weighs heavily on Armenia: The border with Azerbaijan, on the eastern side of Armenia, is also closed. The Armenians and the Azeris fought each other between 1988 and 1994 in a bloody war that was waged in part by Russian and Ukrainian mercenaries who served on both sides.
The root of this conflict is the struggle for the Nagorno-Karabakh region - an enclave populated by Armenians, located deep within the territory of Azerbaijan. The war, in which tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians were killed, ended 15 years ago, and the Armenian army is now in control of the disputed area. Karabakh is a small territory with slightly more than 100,000 inhabitants. Most Armenians have never visited there, unless they served in the army, but the struggle for control of the area, which began even before the state was declared, has shaped Armenia's image as an angry fortress-like country, one that exists to a large extent thanks to the support of Russia, its principal ally.
The Armenians, one of the most ancient nations in the world, were under foreign rule for 600 years, beginning in the 14th century. They have often been subjected to oppression and brutality, which reached a hideous peak in the mass killings of the Armenian people during and after World War I. Armenia's independence, which was declared in 1991, has been described as one of the most moving outcomes of the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Eighteen years later, the country's economic situation is bleak. More than 1 million Armenians have left during the past two decades - about one third of the current population. What remains is a poor, corrupt and rather forgotten country.
"I'm sad because no one in the world knows the slightest bit about Armenia," says Elvira, a student of history at Yerevan University. "We are a people with such a rich heritage, that has produced composers, writers and chess players. But now, especially, when we have an independent country, you mention 'Armenians' to people and in the best case, they think about the holocaust. Russians are also familiar with the brandy."
Communist ambience
Yerevan, with about 1 million inhabitants today, was planned by architect Alexander Tamanian as a modern communist utopia, built around a number of concentric circles. The central feature is the monumental Lenin Plaza, which has become the Plaza of the Republic - one of the most striking examples of neoclassical Stalinist architecture remaining in the countries of the former Soviet Union.
In recent years, stores selling international brands have begun to appear on the main boulevards, but even these have not succeeded in blurring the city's Soviet character. Also contributing to the communist ambience are the old Lada and Volga cars that still cruise the roads, virtually ignoring traffic lights and pedestrian crossings. But, like black jewels set here and there among the shabby cars are shiny jeeps and luxury vehicles. Most of them belong to the crime gangs and the families of the "oligarchs" who control the country's economy. Anyone who has seen the abject poverty of its villages will find it hard to believe that a shaky economy like that of Armenia can support such a large number of fancy cars. But the inhabitants are already inured to the idea that their country is controlled by a few economic "empires" that have close ties to the government.
"It's forbidden to speak against the oligarchs. It's preferable not even to utter their names," says Elvira. Indeed, when she mentions the name of one of them, she glances at the taxi driver to see how he reacts.
"Every oligarch has a business empire and a lot of people who work for him. Each empire has jeeps with a different license-plate number; when you see the number you know that it is impossible to do anything to them. Sometimes you see 14-year-old children driving those cars, because their father is close to somebody powerful. At a time when most soldiers are being sent to Nagorno-Karabakh, their children serve close to home. The government is in their hands."
"People have changed a lot," says Rosanna Avnian. She and her family left the country when the Soviet Union fell apart, along with hundreds of thousands of other Armenians who fled from the economic collapse spurred by the war. For various reasons, she returned to Armenia last year, and now says she has found a country totally different from the one she remembered.
"People have become tougher because of the situation the country is in. There are those who got rich overnight, while most people are working for $200 a month. To find work you need connections. The Armenians who live abroad are investing a lot of money in the country but this isn't reaching everyone here."
In the past year, the widespread poverty has been exacerbated by harsh political oppression of opponents to the ruling party, including eight citizens who demonstrated against the prime minister and were shot by the police. "I've despaired of politics," Rosanna says.
Outside the thin stratum of the regime's elite and the wealthy, many Armenians are now nostalgic for the Soviet era.
Elvira: "Economically, it was better for most people. People are saying: 'Though we weren't independent, we lived better.'"
Persian visitors
Since access to Armenia is possible only via Georgia or Iran, Western tourists are hardly seen in Yerevan; indeed, in general, tourists come mainly from the latter. During the Nowruz (Persian New Year) holiday, which just ended, Farsi is heard in the parks and museums where Persian families stroll in vacation clothes. At Pizza Shah on Mashtots Prospect, the main street of Yerevan, young Armenians drink brandy from opaque glasses and hum along to the sounds of contemporary Iranian pop music.
Relations between Armenia and Iran have improved greatly in recent years: Iran has funded the renovation of a large mosque in the city center, adorned with pictures of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
"Armenia is so isolated that it can't be selective about its allies," Elvira explains.
Will the easing of relations with Turkey change Armenia's situation? Presumably, such a change would diminish the Armenians' feeling of living under siege. However, Western diplomats who are involved in resolving the conflict fear that this mentality is already deeply imprinted on the country's culture and society. Recently a huge defense ministry building was dedicated in Yerevan, which has earned the nickname "the Armenian Pentagon." The country's leaders are also becoming increasingly nationalist, from one election to the next.
"The Armenians are very nationalist," says a diplomat, who preferred to remain anonymous. "Many have become accustomed to life in closed borders and aren't very interested in change."
By Ofri Ilani
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1077148.html
YEREVAN, Armenia - After the waters of the flood abated from the face of the earth and Noah's family emerged from the ark, he and his sons remained at the foot of Mount Ararat. There, tradition has it, they were fruitful and multiplied, reestablishing the human race. Based on this tradition, until just 200 years ago, scholars believed that mankind's origins lay here in Armenia, the land of Ararat. It was only in the 19th century that this theory was abandoned and the cradle of humankind "migrated" to Africa.
In contemporary Armenia, a small country in the Caucasus that was formed after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the biblical story of Noah's Ark has become a national myth. Mount Ararat, soaring above the capital Yerevan, is the symbol most identified with Armenia. Indeed its name appears on signs throughout the city and also on the labels of the famed Ararat brandy, which was Josef Stalin's favorite drink and remains one of the country's few export products. Advertisement
However, the residents of Yerevan can only gaze from a distance today at the snow-capped peak of Ararat, because it is located in Turkish territory, beyond the border. And thus, to the Armenians' chagrin, the mountain that symbolizes their homeland has become a symbol of the unfulfilled realization of the dream of Armenian liberty. In fact, Armenians cannot even visit the mountain. Armenia and Turkey are still arguing, mostly over Turkey's refusal to acknowledge the Armenian genocide in 1915; as a result, the border between the two is closed.
"This mountain, Ararat - I've come back here to see it. But it is also the source of my sadness," says Rosanna Avnian, a young Armenian woman, who works in a hotel in the center of Yerevan. She spent the past 10 years in Argentina and Israel, before returning to Armenia. Avnian is not Jewish, but her brother married an Israeli woman and settled in Tel Aviv - which is why she also came to Tel Aviv and even studied Hebrew. "How very much you Jews have achieved with the return to your land," she says. "I, too, know that one day Ararat will once again be ours."
In several respects, "Armenia resembles Israel," sums up Dr. Richard Kirakossian, an Armenian-American, who is now teaching at a research institute in Yerevan.
"Israel's identity is based on the trauma of the Holocaust, which is the main factor that unifies the nation. Like Israel, Armenia is in a conflict with several of its neighbors, but the main danger threatening it is the corruption that is destroying the country from within. If the regional balance between Russia and the West is upset, [the country] is liable to become a military offshoot of Russia on the Turkish border. And just as bad: It is liable to sink into total triviality and simply become of no interest to anyone in the world."
In recent months, however, new winds have been blowing in the southern Balkans: For the first time since the 1990s, there are signs of a thaw in Armenian-Turkish relations. In September the Turkish president visited Yerevan and contacts are being made between the countries, mediated by the United States and the European Union. On March 29, senior officials in Brussels announced that after U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to Ankara this week, Turkey might open the border with Armenia. Armenia, however, is demanding that Turkey acknowledge the genocide and its responsibility for it. Such an acknowledgment is apparently not likely in the near future, since Ankara still responds aggressively to the smallest suggestion by even an American or European politician that alludes to the possibility of recognition of the genocide. Nonetheless, there is the hope that Obama's state visit might lead to some sort of compromise that would allow for the opening of the border.
In any case, the conflict with Turkey is not the only one that weighs heavily on Armenia: The border with Azerbaijan, on the eastern side of Armenia, is also closed. The Armenians and the Azeris fought each other between 1988 and 1994 in a bloody war that was waged in part by Russian and Ukrainian mercenaries who served on both sides.
The root of this conflict is the struggle for the Nagorno-Karabakh region - an enclave populated by Armenians, located deep within the territory of Azerbaijan. The war, in which tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians were killed, ended 15 years ago, and the Armenian army is now in control of the disputed area. Karabakh is a small territory with slightly more than 100,000 inhabitants. Most Armenians have never visited there, unless they served in the army, but the struggle for control of the area, which began even before the state was declared, has shaped Armenia's image as an angry fortress-like country, one that exists to a large extent thanks to the support of Russia, its principal ally.
The Armenians, one of the most ancient nations in the world, were under foreign rule for 600 years, beginning in the 14th century. They have often been subjected to oppression and brutality, which reached a hideous peak in the mass killings of the Armenian people during and after World War I. Armenia's independence, which was declared in 1991, has been described as one of the most moving outcomes of the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Eighteen years later, the country's economic situation is bleak. More than 1 million Armenians have left during the past two decades - about one third of the current population. What remains is a poor, corrupt and rather forgotten country.
"I'm sad because no one in the world knows the slightest bit about Armenia," says Elvira, a student of history at Yerevan University. "We are a people with such a rich heritage, that has produced composers, writers and chess players. But now, especially, when we have an independent country, you mention 'Armenians' to people and in the best case, they think about the holocaust. Russians are also familiar with the brandy."
Communist ambience
Yerevan, with about 1 million inhabitants today, was planned by architect Alexander Tamanian as a modern communist utopia, built around a number of concentric circles. The central feature is the monumental Lenin Plaza, which has become the Plaza of the Republic - one of the most striking examples of neoclassical Stalinist architecture remaining in the countries of the former Soviet Union.
In recent years, stores selling international brands have begun to appear on the main boulevards, but even these have not succeeded in blurring the city's Soviet character. Also contributing to the communist ambience are the old Lada and Volga cars that still cruise the roads, virtually ignoring traffic lights and pedestrian crossings. But, like black jewels set here and there among the shabby cars are shiny jeeps and luxury vehicles. Most of them belong to the crime gangs and the families of the "oligarchs" who control the country's economy. Anyone who has seen the abject poverty of its villages will find it hard to believe that a shaky economy like that of Armenia can support such a large number of fancy cars. But the inhabitants are already inured to the idea that their country is controlled by a few economic "empires" that have close ties to the government.
"It's forbidden to speak against the oligarchs. It's preferable not even to utter their names," says Elvira. Indeed, when she mentions the name of one of them, she glances at the taxi driver to see how he reacts.
"Every oligarch has a business empire and a lot of people who work for him. Each empire has jeeps with a different license-plate number; when you see the number you know that it is impossible to do anything to them. Sometimes you see 14-year-old children driving those cars, because their father is close to somebody powerful. At a time when most soldiers are being sent to Nagorno-Karabakh, their children serve close to home. The government is in their hands."
"People have changed a lot," says Rosanna Avnian. She and her family left the country when the Soviet Union fell apart, along with hundreds of thousands of other Armenians who fled from the economic collapse spurred by the war. For various reasons, she returned to Armenia last year, and now says she has found a country totally different from the one she remembered.
"People have become tougher because of the situation the country is in. There are those who got rich overnight, while most people are working for $200 a month. To find work you need connections. The Armenians who live abroad are investing a lot of money in the country but this isn't reaching everyone here."
In the past year, the widespread poverty has been exacerbated by harsh political oppression of opponents to the ruling party, including eight citizens who demonstrated against the prime minister and were shot by the police. "I've despaired of politics," Rosanna says.
Outside the thin stratum of the regime's elite and the wealthy, many Armenians are now nostalgic for the Soviet era.
Elvira: "Economically, it was better for most people. People are saying: 'Though we weren't independent, we lived better.'"
Persian visitors
Since access to Armenia is possible only via Georgia or Iran, Western tourists are hardly seen in Yerevan; indeed, in general, tourists come mainly from the latter. During the Nowruz (Persian New Year) holiday, which just ended, Farsi is heard in the parks and museums where Persian families stroll in vacation clothes. At Pizza Shah on Mashtots Prospect, the main street of Yerevan, young Armenians drink brandy from opaque glasses and hum along to the sounds of contemporary Iranian pop music.
Relations between Armenia and Iran have improved greatly in recent years: Iran has funded the renovation of a large mosque in the city center, adorned with pictures of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
"Armenia is so isolated that it can't be selective about its allies," Elvira explains.
Will the easing of relations with Turkey change Armenia's situation? Presumably, such a change would diminish the Armenians' feeling of living under siege. However, Western diplomats who are involved in resolving the conflict fear that this mentality is already deeply imprinted on the country's culture and society. Recently a huge defense ministry building was dedicated in Yerevan, which has earned the nickname "the Armenian Pentagon." The country's leaders are also becoming increasingly nationalist, from one election to the next.
"The Armenians are very nationalist," says a diplomat, who preferred to remain anonymous. "Many have become accustomed to life in closed borders and aren't very interested in change."
Tags: Armenia, Haaretz, Yerevan
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