Your Namak for Friday, December 17
Armenia and Turkey move to normalize ties, Pashinyan and Aliyev meet in Brussels and Armenian soldier killed in border attack.
Hi there, here’s your weekly briefing of Armenian news in English, curated, reported and fact-checked by journalists Astrig Agopian and Maral Tavitian.
Armenia and Turkey Move to Normalize Ties
Armenia and Turkey have pledged to appoint special envoys in a renewed effort to normalize bilateral relations. Vahan Hunanyan, spokesperson for Armenia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a statement that Yerevan is ready to restore diplomatic ties with Ankara “without preconditions.” Although many Armenian officials have long favored opening the closed border, the effort stalled as a result of Turkey’s substantial military support of Azerbaijan in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War.
Pashinyan and Aliyev Meet in Brussels
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan met with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on two occasions during the European Union’s Eastern Partnership Summit in Brussels. On December 14, in a trilateral meeting that included President of the European Council Charles Michel, the heads of state discussed unblocking regional transportation routes and launching a formal border demarcation process. The following day, French President Emmanuel Macron invited the two leaders to a more informal evening meeting, after which Macron stated, “We will never abandon the Armenians.”
Soldier Killed in Border Incursion
On December 10, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces launched an attack on military positions in Armenia’s eastern Gegharkunik region, fatally wounding one Armenian serviceman and injuring eight others. In a statement, the Armenian Ministry of Defense said six of the wounded soldiers were in grave condition.
Five Repatriated POWs Criminally Charged
Five prisoners of war repatriated to Armenia on December 4 have been criminally charged with “violation of combat duty regulations,” pursuant to Article 365 of the Criminal Code. The soldiers had been captured on November 16 during an Azerbaijani incursion in the southeast Armenian region of Syunik. During a question-and-answer session at the National Assembly on November 17, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said, “It is time for us to properly investigate each case of captivity.”
Shahen Araboghlian: Meet the Lebanese-Armenian Wikipedian working to modernize Western Armenian
“The constitution in Armenia says that the official language is Armenian. It does not say Eastern or Western.”
You can often find Shahen Araboghlian at Mirzoyan Library in Yerevan, sipping tea and enjoying the café’s jazzy playlists. The 22-year-old talks and moves fast, always brimming with ideas and cogent insights.
Shahen was born and raised in a tight-knit Armenian community in Beirut, Lebanon, where he lived until this year. He was immersed in Armenian on a daily basis –– from school to music classes and dance lessons.
“My daily life was Armenian,” Shahen says. “I was also exposed to Lebanese culture too, but mostly when I started university.”
Shahen studied international relations at the Lebanese American University and completed an exchange program at Sciences Po in Paris. He did not intend to move to Armenia so young, but always had the idea in the back of his mind. The Beirut port explosion and Lebanon’s economic collapse accelerated his decision.
Growing up in a country crippled by domestic instability and corruption, he learned not to take even basic necessities for granted.
“Most of my friends would disagree with me, but frankly I have never been such a fan of Lebanon,” Shahen says. “You’re expected to be happy no matter what is going on, but I do not like this bullshitty resilience kind of narrative.”
He says he never intended to stay in his home country long-term, and came to Armenia this summer for a brief reprieve from the worsening conditions in Lebanon. What he initially planned as a three-week vacation turned into a decision to remain indefinitely.
Shahen is working remotely to complete his master’s program in multimedia journalism at the Lebanese American University. His research focuses on journalism as a communicative tool, with a concentration on media coverage of conflicts.
“My work revolves around studying the phenomenon of journalism, how it works, why people write stuff, how they write it, comparing media systems around the world.” Shahen says.
Long before Shahen grasped war as a concept, he was interested in reading about it. He has always been intrigued by how journalists explain conflicts to readers, and how media influences long-term resolution efforts.
“I always wanted to understand why people write the things they write in conflict situations,” Shahen says. “It was also of course due to my identity both as Armenian and Lebanese.”
Shahen’s interest in the humanities extends beyond his research in journalism. One of his passion projects is cultivating and modernizing Western Armenian, an ancient language now classified as “endangered” by UNESCO.
Western Armenian is Shahen’s native language –– one he grew up speaking with family and friends, and using almost exclusively in the classroom until university. He realized later in life that not every Armenian possessed his command of Western Armenian, nor his appreciation of its complexities and nuances. For many, the language was relegated to the home.
“Often in the diaspora, the first language is the language of the country, and Armenian we have ‘kitchenized’ it,” Shahen says. “It’s a family intimate language, and just to talk about daily life and Armenian things like the genocide or Komitas. For me it was different, it spans all topics.”
Shahen was in high school when Wikipedia Armenia introduced a Western Armenian counterpart to its existing website in Eastern Armenian, the official language of Armenia. The founders of the website organized a two-week bootcamp in Beirut sponsored by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, teaching coding to Armenian students and recruiting them to contribute to the site.
Shahen began volunteering as an editor for Western Armenian Wikipedia in 2015. Five years later, the managing team invited him on as a page administrator. He now oversees 50 volunteer editors every month, who translate articles, write original pieces and conduct fact-checking.
“If we use Armenian for only Armenian things it’s bound to die, because it’s what we already do and it’s not working,” Shahen says. “So one of the goals with Wikipedia is to translate topics about anything, about the modern world, like climate change, gender, the stuff from everyday life that even Armenians are more comfortable discussing in English or French or Russian.”
The group publishes nearly 50 articles every month on a variety of subjects. During the pandemic, Shahen spent time refining his own skills as a translator, translating four of Maya Angelou’s beloved poems into Western Armenian.
In addition to expanding the scope of topics covered in Western Armenian, Shahen believes it is necessary to institutionalize the language. He says the Armenian government missed a golden opportunity to do so following the influx of Syrian-Armenian refugees who settled in Armenia during the Syrian Civil War.
“The constitution in Armenia says that the official language is Armenian. It does not say Eastern or Western,” Shahen says.
Shahen believes that Western Armenian should be taught in schools in Armenia, as a way of bringing the language into the modern lexicon and connecting descendants of genocide survivors with their linguistic roots.
“It’s such a beautiful language, and a spiced-up language,” Shahen says. “It’s also very flexible so it would be a pity for it not to modernize.”
To watch: ‘Thinking out loud,’ war and life in the aftermath. A movie from Armenia, a video about the many impacts of war on the lives of everyday Armenians.
To listen: Kyass Qiss, a beautiful new song by musicians Arthur Khachents and Apo Sahagian, written in the unique Armenian dialect of the Hadrut region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
To watch: 127 soldiers’ funerals –– a military musician’s story, an interview with a young man who long dreamed of joining the general staff’s band. When the 44-Day War began, his role as a military musician took a very different turn than what he expected.
That’s it for today, see you in the new year!
Questions? Story ideas? An urge to say barev/parev? You can send us a secure email at namaknews@protonmail.com.