Voices on Karabakh

I made several attempts to write this reflection. Of course, first, a paralysis set in. Finally, when I could say something, I felt that it would be too trivial in the face of the horrors unfolding before us. But I did regain the confidence in my voice largely through conversations in and outside of class with young students for whom the history we were studying had come alive in all too familiar and ominous ways and for many of whom this war was/is a profoundly intimate and personal matter.

My initial attempts to jot something down were more academic and less personal. Perhaps this is because my scholarly work and my academic and professional life have tended to be safer spaces for me where I can safeguard my fairly well-hidden (although now exposed) introvert tendencies and pursue my high regard for privacy – both mine and those of others. Of course, the war has made the separation difficult – if not impossible. Nevertheless, I was unprepared for the collision that took place about two weeks ago and prompted me to rethink the theme of this reflection, a much more personal one that all the same emerges out of an encounter precipitated by the war. I want to use the personal here, however, to reflect on the broader themes rather than remain on the “me.”

Earlier this month, during a webinar event, “Karabakh in Crisis,” I had organized on behalf of the UCI Center for Armenian Studies, I became the target of hate speech as an attendee launched a barrage of misogynist and sexually violent messages, all directed at me and visible only to three others. I reported the case, which is currently under investigation, and I am writing about it now to bring attention to hate excreted by war. Whether inter-communal or intra-communal – in the form of misogynist hate speech over Zoom, vandalism of Armenian schools and churches in San Francisco or Shushi or a Turkish restaurant in Beverly Hills, violent attacks on Armenian protesters in the streets of Lyon – it is hate that has been unleashed or re-released.  It may be asymmetrical, just as the war was, just as the atrocities of the war were, and just as the “statement” that ended it is. Pointing out “asymmetrical hate,” however, will not get us far, especially when our disagreements within the diaspora and the homeland with the war’s end have sown so much conflict that they have led some to resort to reckless calls for the death of a prime minister on social media. How quickly we seem to have spiraled from the zenith of unity to the pit of discord. Armenia’s fairly infant and promising democracy deserves better and needs not only all of us but the best of us.

Dr. Houri Berberian is Professor of History, Meghrouni Family Presidential Chair in Armenian Studies, and Director of the Center for Armenian Studies at the University of California, Irvine.

The period most harrowing to recall for Armenians in Turkey may, surprisingly, be “the ASALA period” (c. 1975-1985). On top of this bloody decade, the military regime that emerged in the wake of the infamous coup September 12, 1980 institutionalized “genocide denialism” as a critical tool for legitimizing military intervention. This move imposed another psychological burden on many Armenians in Turkey.

I first realized this while researching Priest Manuel Yergatian, who was imprisoned and tortured for eight years after the coup under the pretext that he maintained ties with ASALA. My Armenian interlocutors hesitated—and even some totally refused—to discuss this period, which they had all suffered through and during which they witnessed what happened to Yergatian. The only reason for this purposeful reluctance was simply a desire not to remember. And they were unwilling to recall those days because of the marginalization and isolation they endured. In one of his letters from prison, Yergatian most bemoaned “being forgotten in the jail.”

While listening, in the 2010s, to these sorrowful memories, I supposed that everything has changed. Indeed, a not-insignificant portion of Turkish society has altered its view regarding non-dominant groups, and this change has rendered possible unprecedented forms of solidarity with these communities. There should, therefore, be no way to the kind of isolation that Yergatian and other Armenians had experienced in the 1980s. However, I should bitterly admit, after living through the first month of Azerbaijan’s aggressive, Turkey-backed campaign against Karabakh, that I was largely mistaken. I am unsure about the extent to which the political atmosphere today compares to that of the 1980s, but a similarly frightening silence is dominant in Turkey.

However, as privileged individuals not destined to live with the burden of history in all senses, we are historically indebted. As citizens of a belligerent country in this war with a heavy burden of not facing history, we bear an ethical responsibility on our shoulders. Instead of opting to evade this obligation by merely borrowing the vocabulary of our Armenian friends and employing the null “both sides” discourse, we must raise our voices. We are responsible for showing solidarity so that no one may feel abandoned amid these warmongering regimes and this devastating frenzy and in order to prove our sincerity when we say, “never again.” We must reinforce our peace-seeking rhetoric with our conscious understanding of these responsibilities.

Emre Can Daglioglu is a PhD candidate in History at Stanford University.

It’s said that one of the first casualties of war is the truth, but war is also a great killer of complexity. There is nothing else to think but to protect our land and to support our valiant soldiers. My normal process of thought tries to see things from as many angles as possible, but that serves no purpose in the blunt and brutal activity we are presently engaged in. As Prime Minister Pashinyan has said, there is only victory or defeat. And defeat is unthinkable.

Why is it unthinkable? It is unthinkable that we are once again going to lose land that our ancestors have lived in for so long, and this is what I find so remarkable about our nation. We were divided long ago into an Eastern and Western culture, but we identify as one people. What is unthinkable is that our country of Armenia would be flanked by the ghost of Western Armenia on the west, and the possibility of a ghost of Eastern Armenia on the east. This is a nightmare.

Our grandparents were exiled from their towns and villages and it is unthinkable that we will allow a present generation to suffer the same fate. Anyone who has been to Artsakh – as I have – will know the strong-spirit and unique personality of our brothers and sisters there. It pains me tremendously to imagine that a generation born far away from the grueling war of the early nineties will now understand that not only are they themselves the children of war, but now their children will also have this dark stain on their souls.

One of the oddest things about visiting Armenia is how everyone refers to the people of Azerbaijan as ‘Turks’ and I used to believe that this was stretching things. The Karabakh War was against a different people, and I used to think that we liberated this land from the jaws of our Azerbaijani enemy. But now I understand that this really is a war against the Turks.

‘Turks’ not as nation or state, but ‘Turks’ as a concept of people who hate us so inexplicably, and have been allowed to literally hate us to death. What a crazy thought! Here we are, 105 years after the catastrophic genocide of our nation and these people are still determined to banish us off the face of the earth. Seriously, what have we done to them? Did we make a big case about what happened to Nakhchivan after the fall of the Soviet Union? We were prepared to give them that land without a fight, even though we had ancestral roots there. Why isn’t there some modicum of generosity with this land we wish to keep? Is it really that important to them?

No, what has become important is their need to hate us, and this is not a complex emotion. It bears little examination and needs only one clear response. I think William Saroyan said it best. ‘Have no shame in being kindly and gentle, but if the time comes in the time of your life to kill, kill and have no regret.’ This the ugly and awful truth we have arrived at.

Atom Egoyan is a stage and film director, writer, and producer.

Fifteen years ago, on the ninetieth anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, I essentially sacrificed my Foreign Service career by allowing, in talks in academic settings, that there had indeed been a genocide of the Armenians. That might not have been note-worthy had I not been serving as the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Armenia at the time, and had it not been the policy of the United States – as it still is – to deny it, in deference to our NATO ally Turkey.

Late last year both Houses of Congress voted to affirm the truth of what really was a genocide not only of the Armenians, but also of other Christians. Today I am appealing to the American public not only to recognize the historical reality that was apparent to Teddy Roosevelt and our grandparents, but to understand that a second Armenian Genocide may be unfolding in the South Caucasus this fall. The dictatorial regime of Ilham Aliyev, son of former KGB chief Heydar Aliyev, has launched a revanchist and potentially genocidal war against the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-majority enclave stranded by Stalin’s nationalities policy within the borders of Soviet Azerbaijan. While the Armenians of Karabakh are determined to preserve their de facto freedom, which they won in a terrible war in the early 1990s, they are vastly out-gunned and in danger of being slaughtered by the Azeris, who are being supported by Turkey and Jihadi mercenaries brought in from Syria.

The three OSCE Minsk Group co-chair countries, France, Russia and the United States, have appealed for a cessation of hostilities, so far to no avail. Washington, perhaps understandably under the circumstances but still regrettably, has remained almost invisible on the sidelines, despite (or because of?) NATO ally Turkey’s involvement, which reportedly includes F-16s and Turkish Army officers.

It had long been the consensus of the Participating States of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) that the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh should be resolved peacefully, but in more than twenty years of negotiations, little progress has been made. The conflict revolves around the competing principles of self-determination and territorial integrity. It is easy to blame the mediators, the Minsk Group co-chairs, but fault actually lies in the uncompromising positions of the two sides. The intense fighting should stop, and the world should do all it can to prevent this war from continuing or spreading. Unless we are ready to countenance a repetition of the Armenian Genocide, it is incumbent on the civilized world to call a halt to this barbarity. Armenian Lives Matter (and so do the lives of their Azeri neighbors).

John Marshall Evans was U.S. Ambassador to Armenia from 2004-2006.

Diana Muir Appelbaum published the article “Turkey, Past and Future: Islamic Supremacy Alive and Well in Ankara” in 2013. I read this in August 2020 and said to a group of friends that the president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was pursuing an expansion of the borders of his country.

In a wide narrative arc, Appelbaum explained everything from the treatment of the dhimmis to the invasion of Cyprus. In her piece, one could find prescient hints of what was going to happen to Hagia Sophia, which Erdoğan converted into a mosque last June. One is left with the feeling that the analysis serves as a predictor of Turkish policy, I warned. In the time-honored tradition of past and present dictators and autocrats, Erdoğan means what he says, I cautioned.

Three months ago, I ventured so far as to say, he is after a land grab, gambling on a massive redrawing of maps. That causes me a lot of concern; but history also teaches that those gambles often backfire.

This was the key passage in Appelbaum’s 2013 essay: “Since its foundation in 1923, Turkey has repeatedly enacted in policy, military conquest, and law the supersessionist conviction that as Muslims and Turks, the citizens of the republic were endowed with special rights to expand their territory by any means available, forcibly assimilate conquered peoples, eliminate non-Muslim populations, and erase pre-Muslim history.”

Based on these premises, we may draw the following observations:

• The Turkish regime does not disguise the racism inherent in its imperialist project because it does not have to. This historical moment is propitious for Erdoğan’s neo-Ottoman plans: democracies and the values upon which they are founded have become mere formalities devoid of any substance. Major democracies and international organizations, including the UN and the EU, reacted with the utmost indifference to the abundance of proof that Turkey shipped terrorists its army had trained in Syria to fight against Armenians in Artsakh, supporting Azerbaijan. NATO recently congratulated Turkey, its member with the second largest army, for its efforts in fighting terrorism.
• Azerbaijan is Turkey’s proxy in these plans. It has now become a de facto Turkish colony: its war effort is conducted by the Turkish government.
• This war is not about Artsakh, a 1,700 square-mile mountainous enclave. The war is part of a larger imperial design, the ultimate goal of which is, not in the very long term, the disappearance of Armenia itself.
• The Armenian Genocide was foundational for Turkey. Not only does Turkey not recognize it, but Erdoğan has begun to boast about it. Extermination is a legitimate policy tool for Turkey, something it has attempted with Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians and, more recently, Kurds.
• Armenia, with a population of barely 3 million, has lost more than 1,000 young soldiers in a month. That is the equivalent of 100,000 in a country with a population of 300 million, like the U.S. That, and the wanton destruction, is aimed at making Armenia unviable as an independent state. A much weakened Armenia could hardly withstand successive wars like this one.
• Armenia is on its own, as the passivity of the international community – including Russia – attests.
• Humans are inherently loath to entertain the possibility of catastrophe, for hope is what drives life. Yet time and again, history shows that catastrophes happen both in our private life as well as on a larger scale: Constantinople did fall in 1453; the 1915 Genocide did happen, as did two world wars and the Holocaust. At the moment, the only thing standing in the way of a second Armenian Genocide are the armies of Armenia and Artsakh. Armenia is on its own

A month ago, one of our students asked why everything about Armenian life is on such a grand scale, dramatic, severe, heightened to the most intense degree. This extremism manifests itself in different domains, even in the language, with the most austere terms of endearment: ցավդ տանեմ, մեռնեմ ջանիդ, տատին մատաղ լինի, քոռանամ… A month ago, I would have argued that this was the articulation of the existential angst that has defined the trajectory of Armenian history. A month ago, I would have said that even though these terms of endearment are used by Armenians everywhere, this world view may be more specific to a diaspora still coming to terms with the trauma of its birth(s); still entrenched in the discourse of genocide justice; inhabiting a world of extremes – the victim, the witness, the survivor, the martyr, the fedayee, the guilty thriver; a diaspora physically and psychologically stripped of the possibility of normalcy because of the inability to find grounding on a lost homeland, to find expression in a dispossessed language, to find belongingness without gnawing guilt eating it up from the inside.

A month ago, I would have lectured my student that in Armenia things are somewhat different. There is no question that Armenia has had its own share of trauma in the last 30 years – earthquake, economic and energy collapse, war, poverty, corruption. But I would still argue that in Armenia, one is not born with the burden of proving or validating one’s Armenianness. Most importantly, one is not born or bred in victimhood and resistance, trapped in the yearning for recognition or acceptance; one is not systematically traumatized in the transmission of unrecognized trauma. There, one is too busy leading a difficult normal life to think about being Armenian. Indeed, this is the very reason for the mixture of shock, relief, and disappointment that many diasporans feel when they visit or repatriate. It is a normal place with normal people, lacking the symbolic luster into which many diasporans have been socialized.

But, a month ago, in Armenia, I observed the changing dynamics during war. Turkey’s involvement and the absorption of the Karabakh conflict within the discourse and trauma of Genocide has threatened that very sense of normalcy and transformed the entire nation into an existential mindset. I witnessed the normal Armenians of my childhood morph into a template that I am more familiar with in the diaspora. I observed the current suffering of war being processed through the lens of the recycled traumas of genocide, pogroms, and previous wars, which have all been forced into the present. Last month’s “normal people” hardened with every personal loss, every new list of the perished, every hospital bombed, every hate-filled statement, and the silence of the international community. The Armenianness they had taken for granted is, all of a sudden, thrust to the forefront of their existence. The worldly, outward looking new generation is turning inward, taking comfort and solace in hyper nationalistic and maximalist slogans.

They can no longer afford to be normal.

Dr. Shushan Karapetian is Director of the USC Dornsife Institute of Armenian Studies.

About ten years ago, a woman making a three point turn in my driveway, accidentally put the gear on drive instead of reverse and crashed into my parked car. I heard the loud boom, ran outside, and was overcome with the loudest screams I have heard in my life. The woman was wailing at the top of her lungs. I thought that maybe a child was hurt in the car, but that wasn’t the case. Her friend, now safely standing outside beside her, explained that the driver had recently arrived as a refugee from the war in Iraq and the crash may have triggered a PTSD response.

There was no consoling her. Eventually, after taking some forced drinks of water, she mentioned that she had registered the car that day and refused to talk further. This woman, a descendant of Armenian genocide survivors, a survivor of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, looking toward her future in her shiny used Integra, was violently reminded of her past by a minor car accident.

She still lives on my street. Every time I see her I remember her wailing scream. I remember Iraq. We exchange pleasantries.

Recent and intergenerational trauma live on my small street in South Glendale. Iraq lives on my street, Syria lives on my street, Iran lives on my street, Artsakh and Armenia live on my street, Mexico lives on my street, Vietnam, Thailand, Palestine, live on my street. Violent geo-political histories produced the makeup of my street.

America is full of these streets, replete with trauma and love, past and present. Wars, in their many forms, might happen far away, but their consequences are here. They make up the foundations of our society, whether we like it or not.

Studies of diplomacy, humanitarianism, diaspora, and immigration are often contemplated in the abstract. You can’t hear the wails when you read. You can’t hear the wails in the halls of important buildings where politicians and diplomats impact peoples’ fates, whether through action or inaction. The wails are there, nonetheless.

In relatively peaceful times, it’s easier to process diaspora and its manifestations in the conceptual or abstract. The simultaneity of the past and present that makes up diasporic consciousness is lived subconsciously, and while it in many ways has defined us, it hasn’t always been a glaring presence.The 45 day war and its aftermath shattered this relative calm.

The brutality of this war, the blatant and continuous human rights violations by the Azeris, Turks, and mercenaries, the threat of erasure, the loss of sacred lands, and the massive displacement of the people of Artsakh, have made the presence of Artsakh and Armenia in our lives ever present. The soldiers and civilians of Artsakh, the “tatik-papik” sculpture, the Cathedral of Ghazanchetsots, Dadivank Monastery, majestic Tigranakert, and other historic and cultural spaces are now more than symbols of resilience but are real people and places. The past and the present collided and awakened a stark reality. This reality engendered the rapid and unprecedented mobilization of a relatively unorganized diaspora and a reevaluation of the state of Armenian institutions both in and outside the homeland.

Sustaining this mobilization is a challenge we now face and must embrace.

In the Diaspora, we feel guilt for not being in Armenia during these trying times but guilt, in and of itself, is futile and, as a driving force for mobilization, might unfortunately wane over time.

Since the start of the war, every time I read, hear, watch, think about Armenia, Artsakh, our people, our soldiers, and our lands, I hear the deafening wail of my Iraqi-Armenian-American neighbor.

Because no one else does, we must hear those deafening wails and transform guilt into agency. Our voices, pockets, expertise, and streets must be used strategically, not to apologize for where we currently live, but to help Armenia assure the future of those currently displaced and to prevent future displacement.

I hope we’ve started.

Dr. Lilit Keshishyan is a lecturer in The Writing Program at USC and a Project Director at the USC Institute of Armenian Studies.

I clearly remember when Armenian forces took control of Shushi in May 1992. It was a moment of euphoria in the Armenian world and a turning point in the Nagorno Karabakh (Artsakh) war. As I write this, 28 years later, Azerbaijani forces are a few kilometres away from Shushi, trying to recapture it after a massive month-long military campaign which has caused thousands of casualties.

I followed the debates on Karabakh quite closely between the 1994 ceasefire and the year 2000. There was a very clear logic: the lands under Armenian military control outside of Artsakh proper – except the Lachin corridor – were “bargaining chips” to be “traded” for a peace settlement that assured the status and security of Karabakh (the use of the name “Artsakh” was not that common back then).

In the 2000s this logic changed. The Azerbaijani territories outside of Karabakh started to be considered as historic Armenian regions, as liberated territories and lands to be settled on. Maps changed from showing Armenia, NK and the Azerbaijani territories as separate entities, to showing one continuous territory or country with different regions. Even souvenirs – from fridge magnets to posters – reflected the new discourse.

We created an illusion of peace, and came to believe in it… And illusions don’t last, as we found out on 27 September 2020.

The illusion made us deaf; we did not hear the loud noises of war. It made us blind; we did not see the drones being amassed. It diluted our analytical skills; we did not appreciate the shifting geopolitical climate around us. It led us to believe that we had solved the “Karabakh Issue” and made us ambivalent to diplomatic solutions. In short, we did not manage to turn the military gains of the early 1990s to diplomatic gains leading to lasting peace.

Anyone who follows public debates in Armenia would know that all sorts of issues are discussed, sometimes vehemently, from the economy to politics, from education to social problems. However, meaningful discussion on the settlement of the Karabakh conflict has been in general absent for about two decades. There was a consensus that the war has been won, Artsakh is independent, and any further discussion is unnecessary or even taboo. Why discuss an issue that has been “solved”? Except, it was not. Bravado makes us feel good but it is not reality. It does not help us learn lessons.

Lack of debate, on any issue, leads to complacency. Perhaps it is too soon to speak of debates, much less of a “hawks” vs “doves” debate (assuming there are any “doves” left in the Armenian world), when we are in the middle of an existential war for Karabakh. Azerbaijani and Turkish aggression has to be stopped. Otherwise, for the first time in history, Karabakh will be depopulated, ethnically cleansed, of all Armenians. We cannot accept that and must fight against it at all cost. However, if and when the guns fall (relatively) silent, we must engage in a rigorous and honest public debate about Karabakh and about a lasting solution. Armenia and Artsakh will not be able to build a prosperous future without a durable peace agreement.

We cannot afford to create another illusion.

I feel no hunger, but for some reason, I constantly feel thirsty. I just seem to be unable to get rid of that sense of dry mouth.
I remind myself to eat, but I cannot taste the food.
I look at the watch and tell myself I have 15 minutes to grieve and then I have a class.
I thank COVID for the lockdown because on Zoom students won’t see what my face and eyes really look like. I can fake calmness for them. To an extent.
I can’t teach but I can be there for them, to bear witness to their grief, to walk them gently through their anger, hurt, confusion…
And then I quietly grieve again.
And then I take care of myself so that I can be there for my students again. I remind myself to breathe, to eat, to drink.
I go to bed hoping for a dreamless night and wake up feeling just as tired.
My daily to-do list has two points: 1. Take care of myself; 2. Take care of at least one Armenian in pain…

Don’t ask me how I am. Don’t ask me to think, to analyse, to reflect. Just grieve with me. Grieve for the lives lost, for an entire generation lost to hope, faith. My beloved Independence Generation, the dreamers, the makers of the Velvet Revolution… Somehow I have to bring them back from the brink. They feel betrayed by their own government, betrayed by the international community.

Grieve for Armenia with me. We have a nation to heal. This is the first stage, the darkest stage.

There is no military solution, they said. All of those leaders of world powers, all of those international institutions… Oh but there is. It was just imposed on us. How do I explain this to students? How do I explain this to myself? To my friends and colleagues?

Don’t ask me what is right, what is fair.
Just grieve with me for a moment, for my country, for my people.

For over one month, Nagorno-Karabakh has been at war. A humanitarian catastrophe, the war represents the complete breakdown of the 26-year Karabakh peace process.

Why should the world care? What is at stake in Karabakh? The war represents a troubling confluence of the imperial ambitions of Turkish President Reçep Tayyip Erdogan with the more localized revanchism of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. The coinciding interests of both men also overlapped with a period of intense socio-economic uncertainty in their respective countries from both the COVID-19 pandemic and the fall in oil prices.

The ongoing Karabakh war is the latest episode of Erdogan’s aggressive drive to extend his influence far beyond Turkish borders. Libya, Syria, and the eastern Mediterranean are among his other fronts. His bold bid for the Caucasus is particularly alarming for Russia. Ankara’s overt foray into this strategically vital part of the post-Soviet space constitutes a major national security threat for Moscow. Likewise, Iran prefers stability in the Caucasus to Turkey’s menacing behavior in Karabakh. Ankara’s decision to import Syrian and Libyan jihadist fighters into the conflict zone, right on the doorstep of Moscow and Tehran, severely heightens the sense of alarm.

The war is also the result of a consistent 17-year effort to actively undermine the Karabakh peace process by Aliyev. Instead of investing his country’s oil revenues in improving the socioeconomic conditions of his people, he has opted for a massive military buildup with the intent of retaking Karabakh by force. Such a “feat” would guarantee the continuation of the Aliyev family’s dictatorship over Azerbaijan for decades to come. Aliyev has accompanied his spending spree by actively promoting an official campaign of hateful national chauvinism against Armenians. Ominously, as the OSCE mediators advised the conflicting sides to prepare their people for peace, Aliyev consistently prepared his people for war. Sadly, for nearly two decades, the world ignored this brazen bellicosity from Baku.

At this critical hour, it is absolutely imperative that the international community respond immediately. Moreover, it is necessary for Armenia to take urgent steps to intensify its diplomacy, especially in its immediate neighborhood with Moscow and Tehran. If the Ankara-Baku war aim of conquering and ethnically cleansing Karabakh is permitted, their victory will effectively legitimize the notion of “might makes right” in international politics. It will show the world that war and jingoism, not diplomacy and compromise, serve as a legitimate means for conflict resolution. It was a lesson that Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan warmly embraced in the interwar period as they goose-stepped through Czechoslovakia, Ethiopia, and China, respectively. Therefore, the actions of Ankara and Baku present a very serious challenge to the international system, as was established after the Second World War. The world community must make clear, in no uncertain terms, that the use of force is totally unacceptable. If left unchecked now in Karabakh, it will set a dangerous and catastrophic precedent, both within the post-Soviet space and throughout the world.

Is the international community willing to leave this challenge unanswered?

Pietro A. Shakarian is a PhD Candidate in History at The Ohio State University.

Over the last few months, I have been witness to horrors that make sense only if I first accept that the existence of my kind is in a state of emergency (yet again). Vandalism and arson attacks against the Gregory Armenian Apostolic Church and Krouzian-Zekarian-Vasbouragan Armenian school in San Francisco, California from July to September, 2020; calls in the streets of Lyon, France by Turks and Azeris for Armenians to come out; ongoing anti-Armenian sentiment in Turkey by Turkish citizens and promoted by the Turkish state, which has worsened since the beginning of the resurgence of the war in Nagorno-Karabakh on September 27, 2020; and the active force of unimagining Armenian life in Artsakh have made me, for the first time perhaps in my life, feel Armenian.

It might be strange to say that I feel Armenian now, for the first time in my life. Growing up Armenian in Los Angeles, California as someone who was different from what I associated with Armenianness as well as what Armenians often associated with themselves, I spent much of my youth trying to distance myself from anything Armenian in order to preserve a sense of me that was not entirely taken up by an ethnic and national sensibility. I have never been fond of nationalism. My research and my writing have been invested in uncovering its horrors. I have attempted to capture that other, exclusionary and hateful, side of euphoric belonging through the investigation of nationalist sentiment in the Republic of Armenia. Nationalism is a formation of unity – singularity – which produces tensions around multiplicity. Beyond the problems that nationalism as a sentiment produces, I have also often thought of the very project of national pride to be tenuous, as an ontological farce of arbitrary birth: how can there be pride in being born to one family, to one nation, to one language, to one place when that was only an accident of existence? And doesn’t such a sense of pride produce a logic of exceptionalism – that if I am proud of “who” I am, then there is something exceptional about that thing in distinction to other ways of being?

A struggle for justice speaks and acts for and with all the oppressed and marginalized of the world no matter what ethnicity, religion, race, nationality, geopolitical location, gender, sex, caste, and so on. The struggle to make non-existent any people, any group, any language, any humanist belief and tradition, or any way of life is also a violence against justice everywhere and for everyone. As I watch these events unfold – the violence in both rhetorical and material form that Azerbaijan (with the help of Turkey and Israel as well as the silence of much of the world) has taken up as well as the determination with which Armenians have committed to protecting their lands and their people – I feel something other than nationalism. I see a demand for the right to exist. I see a demand for the necessity of difference.

To feel Armenian feels like wanting to remain a me without being ended. To feel Armenian is to become conscious of being a person whose existence in the eyes of external forces is a non-existence, something to be done away with. “They are trying to wipe out my people” is a thought-feeling that I hear reverberate through the many ghosts of my kind’s (and other kinds’) histories and through me, a thought-feeling that now interpellates me into becoming Armenian and insisting on existence.

Dr. Tamar Shirinian is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.