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SYRIA CONFLICT: A CENTURY AFTER THE 'GENOCIDE', ARMENIANS FLEE WAR AND RETURN TO LAND OF THEIR ANCESTORS
Thousands of refugees with Armenian roots are returning, hoping
to start a new life in the shadow of Mount Ararat. 100 years after
the Armenian 'genocide', Andrew Connelly, in, speaks to some of the
diaspora who have come home
ANDREW CONNELLY
YEREVAN
Monday 13 April 2015
In his flat on the outskirts of the Armenian capital, Yerevan, Hovig
Ashjian squints through a microscope as he plucks a minuscule shard
of diamond and gently sets it into a silver ring. Originally from
Aleppo, the jeweller moved to Armenia when fighting between militants
and government forces intensified.
"I came here with nothing," he recalled. "One day I saw the tanks
outside my home and people shouting so I said to my wife: 'Come on,
better run'."
They raced to the airport in a drive that was normally 25 minutes
but took three hours as they navigated the myriad roadblocks. They
were just in time to catch what proved to be the last direct plane
from Aleppo to Yerevan.
Mr Ashjian is one of around 15,000 Syrians of Armenian descent the
United Nations estimates have sought refuge in the country since the
Syrian conflict erupted in 2011.
At the end of next week, on 24 April, Armenia - a landlocked former
Soviet nation of three million in the South Caucasus region bordering
Iran and Turkey - will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 1915
massacres by the Ottoman Empire of Armenians living in what is now
eastern Turkey. Armenia and some other countries consider those events,
during the First World War, a genocide that led to the deaths of 1.5
million of their people, although Turkey denies this and disputes the
numbers killed. Those not slaughtered escaped, or were marched into
the deserts and beyond, and survivors built sizeable communities in
Syria, Lebanon and across the Middle East.
Yerevan, with a population of one million, is often called "the Pink
city" due to the abundance of rose-coloured volcanic rock used in many
of its buildings, adding a flash of colour to the sea of ramshackle
Soviet-era apartment blocks.
The crowning glory of the city's skyline is the snowy peaks of Mount
Ararat, believed by Christians to be the final resting place of
Noah's Ark. Its name is omnipresent in Armenia, from football teams
to cigarette brands and brandy companies, and is a rallying cry to
the global diaspora - made all the more potent by the fact that it
is located just inside Turkey, whose border with Armenia has been
closed for three decades.
As Mr Ashjian speaks, jets can be heard sporadically whooshing
overhead. Russia maintains 3,000 troops at a base in Armenia's second
city, Gyumri, and also provides Armenia's air defences. "It's like
being back in Syria. Sometimes we wonder if they are coming for us!"
says Mr Ashjian with a wry smile. The planes used by the Syrian
regime of Bashar al-Assad, sometimes to bomb its people, are mostly
Russian built.
Around 15,000 Syrians of Armenian descent are estimated to have sought
refuge in the Armenia since the Syrian conflict erupted in 2011(EPA)
Not that everything in Armenia is happy for the refugees from Syria who
have arrived. Finding work is difficult in a country with unemployment
at 21 per cent; the average wage is just £200 a month.
Even aside from the cultural contrasts, there are language problems
for the new arrivals: many diaspora communities speak Western Armenian,
a dialect spoken by their ancestors in the Ottoman Empire.
Although it is fundamentally the same language deep down, it is as
if Britons were welcoming visitors from Shakespearean England.
For Mr Ashjian, however, it is a cautious but hopeful beginning of a
new chapter in his family's life. "It's very different because we are
in our land, the land of our ancestors," he said. "We drew pictures
of Mount Ararat in school but now we can see it with our eyes. Yes,
now it is in Turkey, but it's a more beautiful view from our side."
Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their forebears were killed in a
1915-16 genocide by Turkey's former Ottoman Empire; Turkey has the
figure at 500,000 (AFP/Getty)
Beneath Yerevan's stylish Northern Avenue, in a chilly converted
garage of block of flats mainly populated by Syrian-Armenians,
Ani Balkhian runs the Aleppo NGO. Founded by women from the city,
it assists refugees with housing, employment, children's education
and language classes. They keep regular contact with Armenians still
living precariously in Syria.
Ms Balkhian and her colleagues recently raised funds for families
in Kessab, an ethnic Armenian town in north-western Syria that was
attacked by al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadists in March last year.
Villagers were kidnapped, churches set alight and cemeteries
desecrated. Kessab was previously the scene of a massacre by Ottoman
forces in 1915 and there is a widespread view amongst Armenians that
last year's incursion had the assistance, if not direct involvement,
of Turkish authorities - claims vigorously denied by Turkey.
"Armenians were happy in Syria," she said. "Now everything has
changed. The culture of killing is inside the people now, so how can
you go back, how can you send your children there? We used to dream
that someday we would go to our homeland of Armenia, but then we were
forced to come here. It's like a second genocide for us."
Like all those who fled, Ms Balkhian had to leave most possessions
behind. Her home and her family's textile factories in rebel-controlled
areas were looted, she said, and belongings she tried to ship out have
been stuck at the Syrian port of Tartus for six months. One item she
managed to rescue and transport, a bookcase of carved walnut wood,
dominates her office yet stands bereft of books - emblematic of her
vanished life back in Syria.
Armenian Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan 'meets the Kardashians',
who are Armenian, in Yerevan this month (AP)
Even so, refugees have begun to transform Yerevan's cultural life. Its
cuisine has been infused with lamajoun (Arabic-style flatbread pizza),
and sweet-smelling smoke clouds around pavement cafes as Yerevanites
have taken to smoking nargile water pipes. On a Saturday night in
an underground cocktail bar, Aleppo-born singer Rena Derkhorenian
and her all-Syrian band Shiver blast out jazz and soul rhythms to a
writhing crowd.
Ms Derkhorenian thinks the displacement is a chance to build something
new. "Syrian-Armenians and the locals still need to integrate more
but this was our chance to come here and make something of this
land called Armenia," she said. "A hundred years have passed and now
we need to think differently. This is the time to start something,
especially when we have all the diaspora coming. We need to make room
for each other... and we need to stay."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-conflict-a-century-after-the-genocide-armenians-flee-war-and-return-to-land-of-their-ancestors-10173968.html
Thousands of refugees with Armenian roots are returning, hoping
to start a new life in the shadow of Mount Ararat. 100 years after
the Armenian 'genocide', Andrew Connelly, in, speaks to some of the
diaspora who have come home
ANDREW CONNELLY
YEREVAN
Monday 13 April 2015
In his flat on the outskirts of the Armenian capital, Yerevan, Hovig
Ashjian squints through a microscope as he plucks a minuscule shard
of diamond and gently sets it into a silver ring. Originally from
Aleppo, the jeweller moved to Armenia when fighting between militants
and government forces intensified.
"I came here with nothing," he recalled. "One day I saw the tanks
outside my home and people shouting so I said to my wife: 'Come on,
better run'."
They raced to the airport in a drive that was normally 25 minutes
but took three hours as they navigated the myriad roadblocks. They
were just in time to catch what proved to be the last direct plane
from Aleppo to Yerevan.
Mr Ashjian is one of around 15,000 Syrians of Armenian descent the
United Nations estimates have sought refuge in the country since the
Syrian conflict erupted in 2011.
At the end of next week, on 24 April, Armenia - a landlocked former
Soviet nation of three million in the South Caucasus region bordering
Iran and Turkey - will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 1915
massacres by the Ottoman Empire of Armenians living in what is now
eastern Turkey. Armenia and some other countries consider those events,
during the First World War, a genocide that led to the deaths of 1.5
million of their people, although Turkey denies this and disputes the
numbers killed. Those not slaughtered escaped, or were marched into
the deserts and beyond, and survivors built sizeable communities in
Syria, Lebanon and across the Middle East.
Yerevan, with a population of one million, is often called "the Pink
city" due to the abundance of rose-coloured volcanic rock used in many
of its buildings, adding a flash of colour to the sea of ramshackle
Soviet-era apartment blocks.
The crowning glory of the city's skyline is the snowy peaks of Mount
Ararat, believed by Christians to be the final resting place of
Noah's Ark. Its name is omnipresent in Armenia, from football teams
to cigarette brands and brandy companies, and is a rallying cry to
the global diaspora - made all the more potent by the fact that it
is located just inside Turkey, whose border with Armenia has been
closed for three decades.
As Mr Ashjian speaks, jets can be heard sporadically whooshing
overhead. Russia maintains 3,000 troops at a base in Armenia's second
city, Gyumri, and also provides Armenia's air defences. "It's like
being back in Syria. Sometimes we wonder if they are coming for us!"
says Mr Ashjian with a wry smile. The planes used by the Syrian
regime of Bashar al-Assad, sometimes to bomb its people, are mostly
Russian built.
Around 15,000 Syrians of Armenian descent are estimated to have sought
refuge in the Armenia since the Syrian conflict erupted in 2011(EPA)
Not that everything in Armenia is happy for the refugees from Syria who
have arrived. Finding work is difficult in a country with unemployment
at 21 per cent; the average wage is just £200 a month.
Even aside from the cultural contrasts, there are language problems
for the new arrivals: many diaspora communities speak Western Armenian,
a dialect spoken by their ancestors in the Ottoman Empire.
Although it is fundamentally the same language deep down, it is as
if Britons were welcoming visitors from Shakespearean England.
For Mr Ashjian, however, it is a cautious but hopeful beginning of a
new chapter in his family's life. "It's very different because we are
in our land, the land of our ancestors," he said. "We drew pictures
of Mount Ararat in school but now we can see it with our eyes. Yes,
now it is in Turkey, but it's a more beautiful view from our side."
Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their forebears were killed in a
1915-16 genocide by Turkey's former Ottoman Empire; Turkey has the
figure at 500,000 (AFP/Getty)
Beneath Yerevan's stylish Northern Avenue, in a chilly converted
garage of block of flats mainly populated by Syrian-Armenians,
Ani Balkhian runs the Aleppo NGO. Founded by women from the city,
it assists refugees with housing, employment, children's education
and language classes. They keep regular contact with Armenians still
living precariously in Syria.
Ms Balkhian and her colleagues recently raised funds for families
in Kessab, an ethnic Armenian town in north-western Syria that was
attacked by al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadists in March last year.
Villagers were kidnapped, churches set alight and cemeteries
desecrated. Kessab was previously the scene of a massacre by Ottoman
forces in 1915 and there is a widespread view amongst Armenians that
last year's incursion had the assistance, if not direct involvement,
of Turkish authorities - claims vigorously denied by Turkey.
"Armenians were happy in Syria," she said. "Now everything has
changed. The culture of killing is inside the people now, so how can
you go back, how can you send your children there? We used to dream
that someday we would go to our homeland of Armenia, but then we were
forced to come here. It's like a second genocide for us."
Like all those who fled, Ms Balkhian had to leave most possessions
behind. Her home and her family's textile factories in rebel-controlled
areas were looted, she said, and belongings she tried to ship out have
been stuck at the Syrian port of Tartus for six months. One item she
managed to rescue and transport, a bookcase of carved walnut wood,
dominates her office yet stands bereft of books - emblematic of her
vanished life back in Syria.
Armenian Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan 'meets the Kardashians',
who are Armenian, in Yerevan this month (AP)
Even so, refugees have begun to transform Yerevan's cultural life. Its
cuisine has been infused with lamajoun (Arabic-style flatbread pizza),
and sweet-smelling smoke clouds around pavement cafes as Yerevanites
have taken to smoking nargile water pipes. On a Saturday night in
an underground cocktail bar, Aleppo-born singer Rena Derkhorenian
and her all-Syrian band Shiver blast out jazz and soul rhythms to a
writhing crowd.
Ms Derkhorenian thinks the displacement is a chance to build something
new. "Syrian-Armenians and the locals still need to integrate more
but this was our chance to come here and make something of this
land called Armenia," she said. "A hundred years have passed and now
we need to think differently. This is the time to start something,
especially when we have all the diaspora coming. We need to make room
for each other... and we need to stay."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-conflict-a-century-after-the-genocide-armenians-flee-war-and-return-to-land-of-their-ancestors-10173968.html