VICKEN CHETERIAN

The end result is not very different from other books written on the topic, since the days of Vahakn Dadrian, Richard Hovannisian, Taner Akçam, Stefan Ihrig, and of course the monumental work of Raymond Kévorkian, and many others.

The Armenian communities in those countries are largely orphan communities. They were communities that had lost their land, and large part of their material culture such as monasteries, schools, libraries, and archives. They were also orphan communities in a literary sense, as an important segment of those communities had arrived in Syria or Lebanon and orphans.

The Kurdish de facto authorities in northeast Syria organized from June 4-6 the “International Forum on ISIS” inviting some 200 international guests to Qamishli. More than the fate of the defeat Islamic State, it is the future of the Kurdish autonomy that is the real challenge.

Gorky, in Venice, is a unique exhibit. To have so many of his works, few of which survived the numerous disasters during his lifetime, is in itself an event.

Teach for Armenia represents a dissenting set of values, and marks a departure from the generation of capitalist grab: the movement away from the capital to serve in impoverished towns and villages, and to volunteer – that is to give your time not for profit but for a social cause.

When I asked Jasem Mahmudyan whether he had been to Iraq to visit the Yazidi holly sites in Lalesh, he answered in negative. The tragic events in Sinjar had shaken the entire Yazidi community, and some families had found temporary refuge in Armenia, but they had eventually continued to European destinations. From the village of Alakyaz, Iraq seemed very far away indeed.

Why did a Turkish intellectual was suddenly interested in Armenian (revolutionary) history? The other side of the question (that I ask in my book Open Wounds) is: why was the Armenian history reduced to silence for so long? “The Genocide of the Armenians destroyed this memory, the historic experience of Hunchags and Tashnags from todays political experience,” told me Akin.

The Armenian government can learn from the lessons of Georgia and elsewhere. For three decades, neoliberal policies did not bring happiness. To imagine solving Armenia’s problems by attracting foreign investments will fail.

The fact that Salome Zurabishvili belongs to the Georgian diaspora is another positive factor. In a post-Soviet country where all foreign born could be suspected of being spies, where minorities are treated as second class, where concepts such as “the nation” or “the citizen” have a very narrow definition, to have a foreign born president who speaks Georgian with heavy accent is again positive.