It’s Time to Wake Up and Smell the Sourj (Winter 07)

by Allen Yekikan

Every morning I wake up at around six am. I make a cup of tea and begin to read my daily news. I dedicate about two hours a day to Armenian news. I read my daily Asbarez newspaper, and then I move onto the online news: Azg Daily, Hetq, Armenianow, and Armenialiberty. When I am done reading the Armenian news, I read the Azeri and Turkish news on their English websites. I have been doing this for a year now. Sometimes I read something inspiring and hopeful; once or twice I have read something worthy of praise. However, more often than not I read something which disappoints me.

You might ask why I am so disappointed. After all, isn’t Armenia experiencing double digit economic growth? Haven’t the streets in Yerevan been repaved, and electricity and water fully restored? Aren’t Armenia and Artsakh free and independent of Soviet Authoritarianism? I mean, this is what we want to believe isn’t it? Finally, our 3000 year old Nation is finally on the right track—isn’t it? Unfortunately no it is not. Armenia and the Armenian people have strayed far from the right path. We have learned nothing from history and the harsh lessons it has taught us. We continuously make the same mistakes.

There are about three million Armenian’s living in our Transcaucasian homeland today and about five million living as exiles spread throughout the four corners of the world. We are an international people. Our cosmopolitan background has given us an incredible understanding of how the world operates. Therefore there is no system of government or economics foreign to our people. The Byzantine Empire of the ninth century was governed by Armenian Emperors, bureaucrats, and generals. Armenians in the Russian and Ottoman Empires of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries held positions of stature in governing circles. Egypt has had an Armenian prime minister. The President of the Soviet Union was at one time an Armenian. Today Armenians in America are rising to the ranks of city governance, state senators, assemblymen and congressmen. Why is it that we cannot govern our own state? Do we not have an understanding of economics, science, or civics? I say NO, that is not the reason.

Some of the richest and brightest people on earth are Armenian. Kirk Krikorian is arguably one of the most powerful and successful businessmen in his industry. The MRI, a breakthrough in healthcare, was invented by an Armenian. The Soviet republic of Armenia was considered the silicon valley of the Soviet Union. Our people have always been successful engineers, doctors, chemists, lawyers, academics, and among other things administrators wherever they have lived. We have become rich, successful, and powerful in Islamic monarchies, Totalitarian dictatorships, and Capitalist democracies. Armenians as a people have flourished regardless of circumstance.

So if we as a people have always been able to pull ourselves from the bootstraps and rise to success under any circumstances, why is the December issue of AGBU magazine painting a drastically different picture? Why is Armenia labeled the “Potato Democracy,” where votes can be bought with potatoes because the people are poor and starving? Why are struggling people being evicted from their homes without just compensation? Why is a small minority of the country in control of the government, legal system, and economy, while the majority struggles with barely enough to survive? Why are Yerevan and a few other choice locations the only developed cities in Armenia? And why is Armenia signing away its national security to become a Russian satellite in Transcaucasia? Armenia is not a democracy that’s why! Justice, education, healthcare, and opportunity only exist for the privileged few who have spent the last decade and a half squandering our independence for the benefit of their bank accounts.

This is the reality. We all know it. Sometimes we acknowledge it and make a smug comment about the tyranny of the oligarchic state of the Nation, but most of the time we ignore it, deny it, or worst of all—try to rationalize it. The challenge of youth is ascribed to our problems. We pretend this is the first time we have attempted to build a state, and that it will get better as time goes on. Well it is not the first time Armenians have attempted statehood, and it sure enough is not getting better.

We have had some form of an independent state five times throughout history. The life span of our kingdoms and states have varied anywhere from two to four hundred years. We are by no means new to the game. We just don’t learn from our mistake that’s all.

Eighteen years ago our nation was given another opportunity for independence and statehood. The disintegration of the Soviet Empire which began in the late 1980’s created one of those moments that you read about in history books 400 years later. A great power collapsed and left a power vacuum in its wake. In 1991 the Armenian people filled the streets of Armenia and Artsakh, raised the tricolor flag and democratically voted for independence. The entire world watched our struggle for freedom and democracy with fascination, understanding and support.

For over a week straight the American people were shown footage and images of a struggling people as they fought for survival during the wake of political and economic collapse. Bree Walker and CBS brought the Armenian Cause to the homes of every American man, woman and child. The American people supported us as we fought to defend our ancestral homeland of Artsakh. They sent food, aid, doctors, and engineers to help alleviate the catastrophes of natural disaster and economic collapse. The world was with us when we proclaimed independence. We were not alone. The governments of the western world supported our cause, and more importantly we had a deeply established, privileged and motivated Diaspora that had recovered from genocide and forced exile. We were in one of the best historic situations imaginable. The Jewish people did not even have what we did when they were struggling for Israel. So what went wrong?

For over seventy years we in the Diaspora have preached the national duty of repatriation, while our brothers and sisters in Soviet Armenia preached—sometimes secretly, and at times openly—a similar duty toward the fatherland and the Nation. We sat around campfires, behind dinner tables, on stages, in front of classrooms, in dark alleys and secret hideouts discussing our moral responsibility to the nation. Those in Soviet Armenia protested for unification with Artsakh, Nakhichevan, and Javakh. While those in the Diaspora pledged, that when the opportunity arouse, they would use their privileged status, resources and knowledge to make a better home for our people. Unfortunately, when the time came, we failed to act.

Over a million Armenians fled the republic in its first years of independence. They continue to leave their homeland to this day. The Diaspora as a whole, besides the efforts of a select few, does nothing but rather closes its eyes, opens its checkbooks and sends a few million dollars a year to their Hayrenik. When the situation suits us—and this is not often—we begin to complain of corruption, poverty, and lack of democracy. For the majority of the time, however, we continue to deny reality, pretend that Armenia is on a path to success and that we are fulfilling our national responsibility.

We all dream of a comfortable life in which our children have nothing to worry about and are given everything we never had. Is it so difficult to imagine that we could have such a life in Armenia? Not so long ago a group of men in Pennsylvania imagined a similar life where they could live a free and equal life of prosperity. When they were given the opportunity they took it. You and I live in the byproduct of their efforts. Is there something different between the Armenians and the founding fathers? Yes. We just haven’t woken up to reality that if we don’t act NOW, our sixth attempt at statehood will also fail. This time, however, it won’t be because of the Romans, Greeks, Persians, Mongols, Turks, or Russians. It will be because we failed to do what was required of our generation.

WAKE UP!!!!