“The preservation of Armenian identity divorced from the land is a losing battle”

-Dear Mr. Karapetyan, I welcome your thoughts here in the pages of “Hetq”. I would like to know what your opinion is regarding the fact that the government of the RoA, via its foreign policy, has all but given up on defending the rights of western Armenians. What importance does the Armenian Assembly of West Armenia play in this regard?

-There exists a national council of Western Armenians of which I am a member. The Assembly is another structure that employs the ideas generated by our council and which is more oriented towards publicity. In other words, the Assembly isn’t geared to taking specific action. As regards to the National Council of Western Armenia, of which I’m a member, what we find to be of great importance is the issue of concealed or disguised Armenians. It would be incorrect to call them Muslim converts. In the region of Manazkert and Arjesh, I have many relations from my grandfather’s side of the family that are Muslim “converts”. All together there are about 200 of these so-called converts. But they are nor Muslims. I stay in touch with them by phone and periodic visitations. I must confess that these folks possess such a strong national characteristic and personality that it would be hard to find the same on the streets of I must confess that these folks possess such a strong national characteristic and personality that it would be hard to find the same on the streets of Yerevan. Their safety is of prime importance to me, For example, Archbishop Sepouh, the Primate of the Armenian Church of Lori was present at one of our lectures. He made a very insightful statement that goes to the heart of the matter. He asked, “The question still exists, who is more Armenian? That Armenian who lives on the historic homeland in some village near Moush and who speaks either Kurdish or Turkish or the Armenian who resides in the United States or Russia and who also doesn’t speak Armenian?” There are hundreds of thousands of Armenians who have been totally alienated but who are still regarded as the flock of the Armenian Church. Most do not attend Armenian churches. Statistics show that in the 1960’s only 20% of Armenians in the city of Marseille ever attended church. They even held their marriages in non-Armenian churches and this was mostly because of the fees the church demanded for such religious ceremonies. I’ve been to Beirut and Aleppo several times. In Aleppo the marriage fee of the church is $1,000 and $3,000 in Beirut. These are the fees new couples have to pay the church to receive a sanctioned marriage. Here in Armenia, the old civil marriage state agency (ZAGS) no longer operates and as a rule marriages are registered by the church. I’ve met Armenian guys in their mid to late 30’s in Beirut who are still waiting to get married. They tell me they can’t afford to pay these fees and that they’re saving up for the big day. We state that the nation is growing old. If the spiritual structure of a nation, based on its narrow interests, helps in the growing old process, I can’t imagine a greater evil for our people. This is a tragedy. I’ve always said that the Armenian Apostolic Church is a self-consuming structure. Go to the four corners of the world where Armenians have built churches over the centuries and you’ll see that most remain empty today because the flock has become alienated and dissolved into the mainstream. Newly established Armenian communities outside of Armenia may see churches built by the newcomers, but that’s because it’s done by the first generation that still speak the language and have an attachment to the Armenian identity. Their children, though, don’t step foot in these churches and its understandable. A child who attends 12 years of public school in the U.S. grows apart from all this. We’ve seen such a large exodus of Armenians from the RoA over the past 20 years and I can bet you that it’s only one family out of one thousand that sends their kids to an Armenian school; arguing that public school is free. But it’s not only that. The parents have to justify the fact that their kids go to a non-Armenian school and thus they argue, “We don’t know the language here but at least our kids won’t wind up like us.” In the end, the national threads are cut at every possible connection. Take the following example. Fresno, in California, is an old Armenian community where many residents of the Sassoun region wound up. These were people who fought in the rebellions against the Ottoman forces and marauding Kurds; they were inextricably linked to the homeland and to their national identity. Today, you will be hard-pressed to find one descendant of these original inhabitants who can speak Armenian. What was the point? It only goes to prove that you can’t preserve the culture divorced from the land. It’s just a matter of two or three generations.

-Does the Armenian Patriarchate in Istanbul have statistics as to the number of Armenian churches that were in operation up till 1915 in the Ottoman Empire and how many remain intact, whatever their condition, today?

-In 1912, at the behest of the Ottoman authorities, the Bolis Patriarchate conducted a study of all the Armenian villages in the six Armenian villayets and the churches they contained. These documents were in Ottoman Turkish and were translated by Turkologist Aram Safrastyan in 1964-1965 and were published in the monthly “Etchmiadzin”. The only villa yet that was missing was Van for some strange reason. But the rest are there; all the churches, region by region. One can count the number of churches in the list; except for the Van Villayet. This manuscript was located in the Matenadaran but went missing. It disappeared. But there has to be another original somewhere in the Ottoman Turkish archives. We have many other source materials regarding churches operating in Van. All it takes is some cross-referencing and we can come up with a reliable figure. As to the current situation of these churches – the number intact, semi-intact, in ruins or totally non-existent – this requires field work on location. In those parts of western Armenia where we have traveled, not more than 5% of the monuments are left standing, and even these are quite unstable. Those even semi-intact are in a perilous state and can crumble any day; the dome can come crashing done. What we are doing is compiling a list of sites where at least the base is visible; so that we can take measurements. The remaining 95% is in a state where just the base is visible. Oftentimes this isn’t even visible. We often make measurements of monuments that no longer exist. How? A local Turk or Kurd would often tell us that this field used to be the site of an Armenian cemetery or another monument. “You see that school over there? It once was the site of an Armenian church,” they’d tell us. You go over to take a closer look and not one stone remains. We use GPS devices to take such measurements. We have larger lists of non-existent sites than expositing ones. The monuments still intact, to a degree, are disappearing as we speak. Take the Armenian village of Timari Tzakdar, now populated by Kurds. At first the locals told us, “No, no, there is nothing here. No church, no cemetery.” About 30 minutes later, after conversing with the Kurds and sue to the diplomatic talents of our translator, they opened up to us and said, “Two years ago the army came here and destroyed the remains of an Armenian church. There were some fragments of stone crosses and cemetery stones. They warned us not to utter a word about all this to any tourists, especially those from Armenia. We are taking a big risk just telling you about this.” This was in 2006. So it turns out that the Turkish government found out in 2004 that some Armenian cultural fragments still existed. The army was sent in to destroy these last traces. It’s a government program of eradication. At our own expense and with limited personal means we are attempting to map out monuments over a very large area. There are some 7,000 communities in western Armenia alone. This is a monumental task in itself. To put this into perspective, there are 1,000 residential communities in the RoA. From 1920 onwards, the government started to document and register monuments in the country. Believe it or not, but to date not one of the eleven regions (marzes) of the RoA has been completely documented. The reason hasn’t been because the scope of the work is too vast. Rather it is a question of approach and the lack of importance given such work. We shouldn’t be counting pennies when it comes to such invaluable work of national significance. P.S. For more information on the activities of Mr. Karapetyan and his team, go to: Research on Armenian Architecture.