THE SURVIVAL OF ASIAN EUROPE
Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabagh, de facto Armenia. The only thing most Americans know about Armenia is that it’s where Kim Kardashian’s family comes from. Me, the only thing I know about Kim Kardashian is that she’s one of those PR Celebrities famous for being famous. What exactly she’s popular for I haven’t a clue.
My friend Skye, of course, knows not only about Armenia, but this part of it seized from Azerbaijan in 1992. Yet even he was concerned. “Stay safe!” he cautioned.
Yes, this was a war zone until recently, but the greatest danger I face here is imbibing too much Armenian brandy – after all, Winston Churchill considered it the best brandy in the world.
Actually, the scary part is getting here – driving a ridiculously dangerous mountain road with no guard rails known as the Lachin Corridor (see map) connecting Stepanakert to Armenia proper. It’s even more fun at night in rain and heavy fog. They’ve built a new airport and promise to start flights as soon as they believe the Azerbaijanis won’t shoot the planes down.
Once you’re here, though, it’s a big surprise. This place is booming, with construction cranes at work all over, new hotels and restaurants, folks brimming with optimism, not a soldier in sight, streets so safe kids play at night with no worries. I have a good internet connection and a cold Kotayk beer.
It’s great being here – and a perfect place to talk about the survival of Asian Europe.
We all know of Western Europe, and of Eastern Europe – but how about Asian Europe, European countries in Asia? There are four. I’m not counting Russia, which has most of its cities and population in Europe while possessing Siberia. (See Note at the end describing the Europe-Asia continental boundary.)
There’s Cyprus (TTP, April 2010), tucked underneath Turkey in the Eastern Med. Northern Cyprus is a part of Turkey. The European (Greek Christian) part, the Republic of Cyprus, is run by a Communist, Demetrius Christofias, who is bankrupting the place, and not coincidentally became last week (7/05) the current President of the European Union.
Just a little to the east on the Asian mainland is Israel (TTP, July 2008), an island of Europe in an Arab Sea.
The heroic country of Georgia (TTP, May 2005) lies on the Asian side of the Caucasus watershed, but there’s no doubt it’s European and one of the world’s oldest Christian nations.
The only nation to adopt Christianity any earlier is Georgia’s neighbor, Armenia. Both are, however, far older than the Christian religion.
Georgia is as old as Greek Mythology, the land of Colchis where Jason and the Argonauts sailed to find the Golden Fleece. (There really was a golden fleece – click on the “Georgia” link to learn how.)
The ancient Greeks called the Colchians Kartveloi, as they traced their ancestry to a founding chieftain Kartlos who lived around 1200 BC. With the adoption of Christianity in 337 AD by King Mirian III, Kartlos was revealed to be the great-grandson of Japeth, one of the sons of Noah.
To this day, Georgians call themselves Kartvelebi (Kartvelians) and their country Sakartvelo (Land of Kartlos). During the Middle Ages, however, people in the West began calling the place Georgia and the people Georgians after their adoption of St. George as their patron saint.
Armenia is directly south of Georgia, a region of mountain uplands dominated by Mount Ararat of Old Testament fame (Gen 8:4. Ararat is entirely in Turkey today). Out of the welter of Bronze Age tribes emerged the Kingdom of Urartu around 1000 BC (“Urartu” being a version of “Ararat”). In 782 BC, Urartun King Argeshti I founded a citadel named Erebuni – the capital of today’s Armenia, Yerevan.
By the late 500s, Urartu had become a “satrapy” or client state of Persia, which the Persians called Armina. It broke free and established the Kingdom of Armenia after Alexander the Great defeated Persia at the Battle of Gaugemela in 331. The kingdom grew into an Armenian Empire, reaching its greatest expansion under Tigranes the Great (140-55 BC), ruling an enormous area from the Caspian to the Mediterranean:
After Tigranes, however, Armenia was carved up and fought over by Rome and Persia. The struggle lasted centuries, until King Tiridates III was baptized by the founder of the Armenian Apostolic Church, St. Gregory the Illuminator, in 301 AD and declared Christianity to be the state religion of Armenia. It was the first nation to do so.
Tiridates thought his conversion would guarantee Byzantium’s protection from the Persians, but it didn’t work. (Byzantium or the Eastern Roman Empire didn’t adopt Christianity until 380). Once again, Armenia was divided – western Armenia became a province of Byzantium, eastern Armenia a province of Persia.
What held Armenians together was their church, which the Zoroastrian Persians could not extinguish. What helped enormously was the invention of the Armenian alphabet by a monk, St. Mesrob Mashtots (362-440), and his translation of the Bible into written Armenian. Armenian literature (which had only existed orally) now flourished, strengthening the bonds between all Armenians.
This enabled them to resist the latest conquerors in the neighborhood, the Arabs waving their banner of Islam in the mid-600s. The Moslem Caliph in Baghdad was finally forced to recognize Armenia as an independent buffer state between the Arab and Byzantine Empires in 885.
An Armenian Golden Age ensued – followed by centuries of invasions and disaster: the Byzantines in the early 1000s, the Seljuk Turks in the late 1000s, the Mongols in mid-1200s, the Timurids (Tamerlane and his successors) in the 1300s.
Then came still more Moslems, the Ottoman Turks and Saffavid Persians who divided up Armenia between them in the 1500s. All the while, Armenians doggedly stuck to their religion, language, and culture despite the endless persecution for refusing to adopt Islam.
For a way out of the Turk-Persian Moslem trap, they sought help from an expanding Christian giant in the north – Russia.
It was a bargain with the devil. After wars with Persia, Russia annexed eastern or Persian Armenia in the 1830s, and after a war with the Turks in the 1870s annexed a portion of western Armenia. While intellectuals were bought off by Moscow, most Armenians were treated like Russians treated Jews. By the 1890s, Armenian revolutionary nationalism emerged opposing Russian chauvinism.
But as World War I loomed, Czar Nicholas II realized he needed Armenian help against the Ottomans aligned with Germany. He abandoned Russification and promised liberty for all Armenia – east (Russian) and west (Ottoman) – resulting in 150,000 Armenians fighting in the Russian Army’s Caucasus campaign.
Meanwhile, the Ottoman Empire had been taken over by a fascist oligarchy known as the “Young Turks.” At the onset of the Great War, their Minister of War Ismail Enver sent the Ottoman Third Army to seize Russia’s Baku oil fields (now in Azerbaijan on the Caspian Sea) in November 1914. 90% of it was wiped out by Russian-Armenian Caucasian forces.
Ismail Enver and the Young Turks needed a scapegoat. They blamed the horrific disaster on a “traitorous” Christian people populating eastern Turkey who had sided with their fellow Christian Russians causing Turkish defeat: the Armenians.
By April of 1915, the Armenian Genocide was underway. Over two million Armenians were living in Turkey. They were rounded up and shipped in cattle cars (guess where Hitler got the idea) to concentration camps run under a program of purposeful starvation.
Historian Arnold Toynbee, assigned by the British Foreign Office after the war to investigate, determined a death toll of between 600 and 800,000 starved or slaughtered by the Young Turks. Other scholars believe it may be twice that many, at least over a million.
(After the war, the new government of Turkey tried the Young Turks as war criminals. The primary leaders known as “the Three Pashas,” Mehmed Talat, Ahmed Cemal, and Ismail Enver, were found guilty in abstentia. By 1922, all three were dead.)
The Genocide occurred in Turkish-controlled western Armenia. In Russian-controlled eastern Armenia, the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia provided an opportunity for freedom, resulting in the declaration of the independent state of The Democratic Republic of Armenia in May 1918.
The August 1920 Treaty of Sevres between the Allies and Turkey recognized the Republic of Armenia with borders drawn by US President Woodrow Wilson giving to it all of Eastern/Russian Armenia and most of Western/Ottoman Armenia as well, including a large access to the Black Sea.
Turkey’s new leader, Mustafa Kemal (later given the honorific Ataturk) promptly went to Moscow to make a deal with Lenin.
In November 1920, they divided Armenia between them (sound familiar by now?), with Lenin providing enough arms for Kemal’s forces to seize western Armenia, and sending the Soviet 11th Red Army to seize eastern Armenia. In December, 1920, the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed as a constituent of the USSR.
The Soviets had already seized Georgia and Azerbaijan. Stalin then embarked on his policy, as Commisar of Nationalities, to create as much division within the conquered non-Russian colonies (“Soviet Republics”) as possible.
With Armenia, he carved out Nagorno-Karabagh as an “Autonomous Oblast” entirely within Azerbaijan and separated (by the Lachin Corridor) from Armenia itself.
And on the other side of now-Soviet Armenia, he proceeded to carve off another piece of it bordering Persia (Iran today), calling it the Nakhchivan ASSR (Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic) belonging to Soviet Azerbaijan.
Look at the first map above. Note how crazy-like-a-fox Stalin’s borders are. These are the borders today. Azerbaijan and its Nakhchivan “exclave” are separated by a part of Armenia — called the Meghri Strip — that has a border with Iran.
Stalin’s design was to set peoples within the Soviet Empire at each other’s throats – and he succeeded so well they still are, over 20 years after the end of the Soviet Union.
So we come to what I call the Wages of Grudges – and to my claim that the future is more important than the past.
There’s no better to learn these lessons of history than Armenia.
As the Soviet Union began its decline into dissolution, mass protests began here in Stepanakert in February 1988, demanding Karabagh be a part of Armenia. In 1992 after the death of the USSR, Armenia and Azerbaijan – free and independent at last – promptly declared war on each other over Karabagh, with thousands killed and hundreds of thousands of refugees on both sides.
Azerbaijan got its butt kicked. Instead of being smart and making a deal when it had the chance – giving Armenian-populated Karabagh to Armenia in exchange for the virtually-unpopulated Meghri Strip (southernmost Armenia a few miles wide along the Aras River border with Iran) which would join Azerbaijan with Nakhchivan – it went to war.
Yet Armenia was the sorest of winners. Armenia’s first president (1991-1998), Lev Ter-Petrossian made a solid effort for a peaceful settlement with Azerbaijan – and was hated so much for it he resigned.
Hatred for him was whipped up by a Russia-loving Communist who had been elected leader of Nagorno-Karabagh in 1994 – Robert Kocharian. When Ter-Petrossian resigned, Kocharian got himself elected President of Armenia.
Kocharian ran the country until 2008, when he was succeeded by his chief of staff and now current president, Serzh Sargsian.
So let’s look at the state of play here. On the positive side, it is truly impressive what Armenia has accomplished since independence. The Armenian people are wonderfully friendly. There is no doubt this is a Christian country with a European culture.
Nagorno-Karabagh has been expanded into a region of now-former Azerbaijani territory called Artsakh (the yellow area surrounding Karabagh in the top map above).
Artsakh has now become the name of choice for the whole area. “Nagorno” is a Russian word meaning “upper,” while “Karabagh” is a Persian word meaning “dark garden” for all its heavily forested mountains. “Artsakh,” (after Armenian King Artaxias, r. 190-159 BC) has been ethnically and historically Armenian for over two millennia.
On the negative side are those Wages of Grudges. History weighs heavily on Armenian shoulders, like a huge soaking wet blanket. Armenians can’t get over their grudges. They can’t get along with their neighbors. The border with Turkey is closed. The border with Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan is closed. The hatred Armenians have for Turks and Azeris seems bottomless.
They have a Christian neighbor, Georgia – but ask them about Georgians and out comes a litany of complaints and historical resentments.
Need we remind ourselves that Armenia is landlocked ? Its only access to the ocean is the Black Sea coast of Georgia’s (well, Turkey’s also but don’t even think about it).
You’d think that Armenians would have the biggest grudge against the Russians, who sold them out to Turkey in the 20s, screwed them with Karabagh, and kept them in Communist tyranny for 70 years – but no.
They have this dependency relationship like a battered wife has towards her abusive husband.
Their no-neighbors-as-friends policy has left them with making a dangerous exception: Iran. Armenia is now deep in bed with Iran, whose mullahs are only too happy to make Armenia dependent upon Iranian gas and exports.
The Iran-Armenian Gas Pipeline was inaugurated in 2007 by Robert Kocharian and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (they’re best buddies) and paid for by Russia’s Gazprom.
As friendly and nice as they are, it’s nigh impossible to get an Armenian to grasp that the future is more important than the past.
The past – history – is important, it’s the foundation of a people’s culture and identity. But it is not as important as the future.
The past is gone, it’s over, and no matter how much we pine for it, we can never live there ever again. For the rest of our lives, starting with this very moment, the future is where we will live – and where our children and all our descendants will live.
To build a promising future, the grievances of history have to be let go. There isn’t a Turk alive who had anything whatever to do with the Armenian Genocide. You can’t apologize for something you didn’t do (and tribal guilt is simply primitive).
But if Armenians insist on continuing to have their Moslem Turk and Azeri neighbors as enemies, the very least they could do would be to embrace Georgia as a fellow Christian neighbor.
And more – embrace their European identity. Robert Kocharian and Serzh Sargsian are dead set against it – because their Russian paymasters are. Armenia will not join the EU and NATO, Kocharian has declared, for that would “create problems in our relations with Russia.”
Meanwhile, Turkey is prospering while becoming more Islamist by the day. Azerbaijan is soon to be an oil powerhouse. Georgia is happy to cooperate in pipelining Azeri oil and gas from the Caspian to the Black Sea, and via Turkey to the Med.
Note how the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline snakes around to avoid Armenia. You couldn’t find a better graphic of how grudges ruin your future.
And, oh yes – gas and Persian products are not the only thing Iran is exporting into Armenia. People. Moslems. Imams building mosques. Grudges are also enabling Armenia to risk the Islamification of their ancient Christian patrimony.
That patrimony is enormous. It is uniquely valuable in the history of the West and of Christianity. It’s easy to look up Armenia’s history as one of tragedies and disasters giving cause for grudges and grievances – if one chooses to. It’s a great way to be mired in the mud of the past.
Another way is to look upon that history as an incredible triumph.
The history I have traced here is only a hint of a glimpse of barest outline. Along its way are peoples and kingdoms and empires in the hundreds tossed aside by history, who no longer exist. Armenia does – after 3,000 years, Armenia still exists while all those other peoples and cultures don’t.
And it has remained Christian despite the best efforts of hordes of Moslems surrounding it for over 12 centuries to destroy it, despite the best efforts of seven decades of Communism to destroy it. It is absolutely inspirational.
Our current White House occupant, President Zero, hasn’t a clue about any of this. He doesn’t care, any more than he cares about Christendom in general. But I can assure you that his successor will.
That he will work to create an alliance between the four nations of Asian Europe. Work to persuade Armenia to abandon the grudges of the past for a future of mutual cooperation for mutual benefit. Committed to the survival and flourishing of Asian Europe.
And even broker a deal to exchange the Meghri Strip going to Azerbaijan for the Armenian-populated part of Nagorno Karabagh going to Armenia.
For me, I hope that Armenia’s glorious past may be a prelude to a glorious future.
* Note on the Europe-Asia Boundary. The continental dividing line between Europe and Asia has always been contentious among geographers, as parts of it are artificial. The continental divide starts with the watershed separating European Russia from Siberian/Asian Russia – the long range of the Ural Mountains running in the north from the Arctic Ocean pretty much straight south until they peter out in steppes north of the Caspian.
To keep the boundary going, the Ural River is used, which flows out of the end of the Urals and south into the Caspian Sea. From there, an imaginary line is drawn down the middle of the Caspian and makes a sharp dog-leg west in the middle to reach the eastern terminus of the Caucasus Mountains.
The main ridge of the Caucasus is a genuine watershed running all the way to the Black Sea. Then the boundary becomes imaginary again, bisecting the Black Sea to the Bosphorus, and running through the Bosphorus-Marmara Sea-Dardanelles/Hellespont channel connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean’s Aegean Sea.
The boundary becomes imaginary once more at that point, running off the west coast of Turkey, then in a straight line to the Isthmus of Suez separating Africa from Asia.
I wish I could find a map accurately depicting all of this, but it eludes me. You can easily trace it, however, on Google Maps or Google Earth.