Magarian, Patrick
Context Research Presentation
Topic connecting to reading: Armenia losing their region called “Artsakh” to Azerbaijan.
Word Count: 424 including In-text citations
*Disclaimer* Some of the information I know regarding this topic is from what I have directly heard from my family that lives in Armenia/Artsakh and the stories they have shared to me about their experiences being forced to fight in the past few months.
In 1915, the Ottoman Turks raped, murdered, and burned down cities in what is known as “The Armenian Genocide”. 1.5 million Armenians were killed. In 2020, as Turkey is trying to regain control of that region again, they are backing other governments, including Azerbaijan. Armenia has conflict with those countries because we are a Christian nation and the others are not. They want to take over all of Armenia and convert it to align with their regime. Turkey is backing Azerbaijan and they are doing a lot of the same things as what happened 105 years ago. However, now they are also taking over our churches and changing them to mosques. This is very clearly systematic and an attempt at wiping out our people and culture. It is known as “Pan-Turkism”. According to author David Babayan, Pan-Turkism is, “unification of all Turkic peoples or Turkic world in a single state, under the leadership of Turkey.” He goes on to say, “the Armenian people paid the highest price for the ideology of Pan-Turkism” (The Artsakh Problem and the Ideology of Pan-Turkism, Pg 78).
One reason why this idea of Pan-Turkism is so scary is because the “president” of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is really more of a dictator. In an article written in the New Yorker following Turkey’s 2017 “election”, Dexter Filkins (a journalist famous for his coverage of the war in Iraq/Afghanistan) said, “Erdogan declared himself the winner of a nationwide referendum that all but brings Turkish democracy to an end…effectively making him [Erdogan] a dictator” (Turkey’s Vote Makes Erdogan Effectively a Dictator, The New Yorker).
As I mentioned earlier, this is an attempt at eliminating our culture. Cultures are lost in the world for so many reasons, violence and war are not the only reasons. In Kincaid’s A Small Place, the difference between perception of a land by natives and tourists are discussed. “The Antigua that I knew…is not the Antigua you, a tourist, would see now”, says Kincaid (A Small Place, Pg 23). In this reading she explains how Antigua is a poor country and its residents cannot afford to go on vacation like those from other countries. Because of this, they lose their own culture and become known from the outsider perspective us tourists have. We view places like Antigua as vacation destinations and do not understand or embrace any of their traditions, food, music, dance, etc. They have lost their culture due to tourism and lack of money. Armenia is losing their culture due to violence and loss of land.
Bibliography:
Babayan, David. “The Artsakh Problem and the Ideology of Pan-Turkism.” Aug. 2011.
Filkins, Dexter. “Turkey’s Vote Makes Erdogan Effectively a Dictator.” The New Yorker, 17 Apr. 2017, www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/turkeys-vote-makes-erdogan-effectively-a-dictator.
Kevorkian, Raymond. The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History. I.B. Tauris, 2011.
Kincaid, Jamaica. A Small Place. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000.
I enjoyed reading your post! It is cool that you were able to bring insight from your families real life that live out of country. It is sad to see that their culture and their people are going through this. They are taking their whole lives and what they know away and it is sad to hear.