{"id":628,"date":"2014-08-13T11:36:02","date_gmt":"2014-08-13T11:36:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=628"},"modified":"2014-08-14T11:42:53","modified_gmt":"2014-08-14T11:42:53","slug":"the-enemy-six-feet-under","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=628","title":{"rendered":"The enemy, six feet under"},"content":{"rendered":"

By MAXIM EDWARDS
\nopenDemocracy.net<\/em><\/p>\n

\"'It<\/a>
‘It could have been painted yesterday’ – Mayor of Zorakert Hovhannes Sukiasyan at the Muslim cemetery, on the shore of Lake Arpi. (Photo courtesy of the author)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Hovhannes Sukiasyan, mayor of Zorakert, bared his gold teeth and squinted at a gravestone overlooking frozen Lake Arpi. Running his fingers over the coils of the Arabic inscription he stood back to admire the handiwork of another century. \u2018It’s probably stood there for over a hundred years… but it looks as though it were painted yesterday.\u2019 Reaching this Muslim cemetery in Zorakert, in the extreme north-west of Armenia, took a four-hour journey from the capital, Yerevan, along poor, frosted roads. In late 1988, the descendants of those buried here began to flee the village for neighbouring Azerbaijan, as Nagorno-Karabakh slid into war. In 2014, Zorakert (named Baliqli until 1991) has some 190 inhabitants, all of them ethnic Armenians.
\n
\nFirst for culture, first for poverty<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is the mountainous Shirak Province, described by its governor in January as Armenia’s first province for culture, as well as its first for poverty. On the walls of local houses, the words Vadjarvum e (For Sale), are a common sight, the same as in many Armenian villages. Shirak’s fortunes never really improved after a devastating 1988 earthquake, with high unemployment and emigration blighting the region. The small lip of Armenia around Lake Arpi is particularly isolated. Where the Armenian, Turkish and Georgian borders meet, some 15km from Zorakert, one can theoretically travel visa-free if walking anti-clockwise but be arrested \u2013 if not shot \u2013 walking clockwise into Turkey.<\/p>\n

I had come to Zorakert with an Armenian friend to find out more about Armenians’ attitude to these monuments, carrying memories of a people who now have a state that is technically still at war with Armenia. The reality of this varies from village to village, with vandalism and neglect in some areas, and immaculate attention in others.<\/p>\n

Zorakert’s cemetery is particularly beautiful. Brightly painted Arabic calligraphy adorns the older stones cut from distinctive Armenian red tufa. Those from the Soviet period bear bright red stars (with or without crescent moons) and Bayati, poems of loss, in the Azerbaijani language. Square holes in the top of newer stones once held pictures of the dead, presumably removed by the living to keep as mementoes.<\/p>\n

Many local residents around Lake Arpi are migrants, ethnic Armenians from Georgia’s Samtskhe-Javakheti province to the north. They arrived in 1989 and 1990 to find mostly empty houses, knowing none of their former residents. We weave our way through the gravestones and acquaint ourselves with the inhabitants of old Baliqli \u2013 an abacus and book are carved for the grave of a teacher or student, a tractor for a farmer, and even scissors and a sewing machine for women. I stop to admire that of a Mr Alaverdiev (1907-1972), showing a huge green mosque beneath a starry sky. The mountains of the nearby Turkish border enclose the lake on three sides. Such gravestones show that traditions must have lingered on here, in the land of the hammer and the chisel.<\/p>\n

In the shadow of Julfa<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are probably hundreds of Muslim cemeteries and monuments scattered across Armenia in various states of decay. The modern Armenian attitude to them is overshadowed by the vanished Khachkars (cross-stones) of the medieval cemetery of Julfa in Nakhichevan, modern-day Azerbaijan, systematically destroyed between 2003 and 2009, to international condemnation. Whatever has happened to these monuments, stress many Armenians, it pales in comparison to the fate of Armenian churches and cemeteries across eastern Turkey and modern Azerbaijan. Official Azerbaijani propaganda\u2019 wrote Vicken Cheterian, \u2018is unchanged since Soviet times \u2013 Armenian Churches and tombstones in Azerbaijan are not Armenian, but \u2018Caucasian Albanian,\u2019 and therefore Azerbaijani. \u2018What is puzzling is that Azerbaijani soldiers pulverise their own historic heritage with heavy hammers.\u2019<\/p>\n

With frozen feet we walk through the village to its ruined mosque, closed under Soviet rule, and converted into a warehouse. The four stone-built walls are open to the elements, the faded Arabic inscriptions and a Mihrab still visible. In an obscure gesture, local Armenians occasionally light candles in its walls. Sukiasyan, himself a native of the village of Tsalkha in Samtskhe-Javakheti, has served as mayor of this village since 1992. He never met his predecessor, who fled to Azerbaijan. As long as Hovhannes is mayor, nobody will touch Zorakert\u2019s mosque. Except, that is, for the Iranians. A few months ago, he recalls over lunch, a caller from Iran asked him about the village\u2019s ruined mosque, and expressed interest in rebuilding it, \u2018as some kind of museum.\u2019 Not that the mayor minds: \u2018We still have churches over there, so why not?\u2019<\/p>\n

Yet to call Zorakert\u2019s oldest graves Azerbaijani would invite confusion. Ethnic identity was infinitely more fluid, and people identifying as Karapapakhs, Turks and Persians among others, lived alongside Armenians in this corner of what would become the modern Republic of Armenia. To identify as \u2018Persian\u2019 could have signified Shiite Islam; and in the 1926 Soviet census for the village, 178 people called themselves ‘Osmanli Turks’, or ‘Ottoman.’ To make sense of what Tsarist-era administrators had sometimes termed ‘various Turkic-speaking peoples,\u2019 Soviet officials simply renamed all these groups ‘Azerbaijani.’ Karapapakhs, for example, numbered some 6,311 people in the South Caucasus in 1926. By the time of the next census, the designation had disappeared. In 1989, these Azerbaijanis still comprised 73% (down from 81% in 1979) of the Amasia Region of the Armenian SSR, which includes Lake Arpi. They would then flee to Azerbaijan, a foreign land, which happened to bear their name.<\/p>\n

Though he hints that not all residents may share his views, Sukiasyan\u2019s approach to conservation was informed by hearing of the survival of some Armenian monuments in his ancestral village in eastern Turkey. Treating the graveyard with courtesy is therefore paramount. \u2018It\u2019s just how I was brought up\u2019 he adds, matter of factly. In 1989, a small group of Armenians arrived in the village, drunk, at night, and vandalised several gravestones, though their motives \u2013 or whether they had had any \u2013 were unclear. \u2018Hooligans, vandals\u2026 you have them everywhere\u2019 sighs the mayor; \u2018after all, you don\u2019t build prisons for just anyone.\u2019<\/p>\n

Mourning by proxy<\/strong><\/p>\n

For Hranoush Kharatyan, veteran ethnographer and former government adviser on minority affairs, our conversation on the subject must begin \u2013 and end \u2013 with the destruction of the cemetery in Julfa. Having researched the subject in over 30 villages, she notes that Armenians\u2019 attitude to Muslim \u2013 and therefore \u2018Azerbaijani\u2019 \u2013 monuments is tied into the chronology of the Karabakh War. The death of a local boy at the front; news of the destruction of an Armenian monument, or the trauma of ethnic Armenian refugees returning from Azerbaijan, says Kharatyan, all contributed to vandalism. Accordingly, treatment of cemeteries varied widely. For example, in the Yegheghis region, Armenian village elders immediately demanded the restoration of vandalised cemeteries.<\/p>\n

Kharatyan was intrigued by the village of Mastara, most of whose inhabitants descend from refugees who settled after the Armenian Genocide. Mastara\u2019s Muslim cemetery stands intact \u2013 and not far from a statue of Soghomon Tehlirian; a potent symbol as the centenary of the Armenian Genocide approaches. Though there may be no love lost between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, Kharatyan is adamant that public opinion in Armenia looks upon the vandalism of cemeteries, with disdain, if not disgust. Many of Armenia\u2019s religious monuments (including mosques), added Kharatyan, had been destroyed in the first decades of Soviet rule, long before the Karabakh War. \u2018The Armenian government\u2019s attitude towards preserving historic monuments \u2013 whether Muslim or Christian – has been shameful,\u2019 remarked one researcher.<\/p>\n

The living, have found ways to care for their dead. Informal agreements between Armenians who fled Azerbaijan, and Azeris who fled Armenia, guarantee mutual protection of cemeteries. Armenians and Azerbaijanis working in Russia have sometimes made those promises in person, reinforced by photo and video evidence that their loved ones\u2019 graves remain intact. Sukiasyan knows of no such agreement regarding Zorakert \u2013 probably as none of its Armenian residents today are refugees from Azerbaijan. Online, some Azerbaijanis reminisce about A\u011fbaba Mahali \u2013 as they call the Lake Arpi area \u2013 in song and in YouTube videos.<\/p>\n

Hovhannes suspects that some local Azerbaijanis now live in ethnic Azeri villages, in southern Georgia. \u2018In 2003 or 2004,\u2019 he recalls, \u2018a mechanic from our village drove with his bus to Marneuli [in southern Georgia] on business [\u2026] and this Azeri guy \u2013 apparently from Armenia – approaches him in the market, looks at the bus, and claims that it\u2019s his.\u2019 Some also moved to Samtskhe-Javakheti, adds Hovhannes. Perhaps, he laughs, near his parents in Tsalkha.<\/p>\n

A 2012 report by the Heinrich B\u00f6ll Foundation drew on the example of villages \u2013 Kerkendj in Azerbaijan, and Dzyunashokh (formerly Kyzyl-Shafag) in Armenia. The Azerbaijani cemetery in Dzyunashokh \u2013 though no longer \u2018functioning\u2019 \u2013 \u2018serves as a reminder to local [Armenian] villagers of the cemetery they lost in Kerkendj, of the historical process which forced them to leave it, and of Kerkendj itself.\u2019 As Kharatyan looks at photographs of the Muslim cemetery in Zorakert, she notes that the designs of older headstones are reminiscent of Armenian Khachkars. She doubts that such communities had highly skilled artisans. They must, she presumes, have employed Armenian craftsmen.<\/p>\n

Only the past keeps changing<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018God gave you a tongue, so tell me why there had to be war?\u2019 asks the mayor of Zorakert. In a rough translation, Zorakert\u2019s former name \u2018Baliqli,\u2019 means \u2018fishy\u2019. It is a fact that Sukiasyan finds grimly ironic; he points out that Lake Arpi\u2019s water level is decreasing. These days, the best fish are found in mountain streams to the west of the lake, though access is restricted by border guards. Since the dairy factory closed down in nearby Paghakn, there has been scant employment too. There is all the potential for tourism here, sighs Hovhannes, but no money, no resolve \u2013 and no road.<\/p>\n

At the mayor\u2019s suggestion, I left Lake Arpi via the nearby village of Ardenis, known as G\u00f6ll\u00fc until 1991. Behind a low stone wall lies a large Azerbaijani cemetery, open to the elements \u2013 and the villagers\u2019 cattle. The headstones here appear older \u2013 and more numerous \u2013 than those in Zorakert. A significant number of them have been either destroyed, seemingly vandalised. Mergel Garibyan has been Mayor of Ardenis for six years; and understands the need to protect the cemetery. Yet good intentions rest better on a full stomach; and there is little money for the project. As in Zorakert, most residents of Ardenis are Armenians who relocated from Samtskhe-Javakheti. I note that pictures of the deceased have been removed from the gravestones. Was it due to cattle, wonders an Armenian friend, or perhaps subsidence? Garibyan isn\u2019t entirely sure why the gravestones lie shattered. Neither \u2013 for all my desire to draw conclusions \u2013 am I.<\/p>\n

In an old Radio Yerevan anecdote a listener asks, \u2018Is it possible to foretell the future?\u2019 To which the radio host replies, \u2018We can predict the future with complete accuracy, it is only the past that keeps changing.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By MAXIM EDWARDS openDemocracy.net Hovhannes Sukiasyan, mayor of Zorakert, bared his gold teeth and squinted at a gravestone overlooking frozen Lake Arpi. Running his fingers [more >>>]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":629,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-conflicts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=628"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":630,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628\/revisions\/630"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}