Vanessa Kachadurian-Armenian Independence Day May 28th

We had a great day today, not only was it over 90 years ago that Armenia declared itself independant of it's Ottoman rulers of 600 years but our school had a flag raising ceremony. It was a project we had worked on for 1 year and are very proud of it, we have a monument with 3 flag poles - 1 for the USA flag, 1 for the California flag and the other for the flag of the Republic of Armenia.
"A Red stripe born from the blood,
A piece of Blue carved from the sky,
Orange shine of ripe stacks in the fields
and over six centuries of darkness
a Tricolor flag..."
Antranig Tzarougian


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Armenia
http://www.jdemirdjian.com/Armenians/independence.htm
May 28, 1918
Armenians, Rejoice and celebrate
For whatever is your opinion,
You were not there
nor did you live that moment
Independent Armenia was born by the blood of his children, it was not given to us, we earned it

Independence
After the Bolsheviks came to power in Russia, in a period of month and a half, half a million Russian soldiers leave their position and retreat disorderly, leaving the battle front to a small Armenian military group. Encouraged by this, the Turkish army starts concentrating its forces on the Western borders of Armenia. The leaders of Dashnag party, recognizing the problem under the slogan of "The fatherland is in danger" started creating an Armenian army.
The Armenian-Turkish war starts in January of 1918.

Events leading to May 28, 1918
Non stop lines of refugees, from Alexantrapol to Tbilisi, Northern Caucasus and Russia. Also on the roads leading from Ikdir to Etchmiadzine, Yerevan, Ashdarag and Nor Bayazed.
Turkish armies on the fields of Shirag, the valleys of Lori, at the base of Mount Arakatz and on the shores of the river Arax, all directed towards Yerevan.
Internal enemies, Tatars and Kurds, like wolfs packs, interrupting the flow of the soldiers to the front.
External enemies, politicians sitting in Tbilisi, Bakou, Batoum, Moscow and Constantinople. All trying to dismember and tear apart the surviving pieces of Armenia.
Tired, defeated and hopeless Armenian troops retreating for months now.
Total carnage and devastation prevailed everywhere.
All the roads are closed, completely cut off from the world, left to its own fate, a helpless Armenia, without a government or help. Surviving Armenians on their last breath.
This is the Armenian May in 1918 and just like the murderous April of 1915. Only a miracle can save Armenia and its people.



The Miracle
At that critical hour, alarms start blasting from Araradian fields. "Everything and Everyone to the Battle front" - the announcement of the governing council of city of Yerevan, chaired by Aram Manoogian, starts spreading among the people as a challenge. "Everything" changes, retreat transforms into attack, defeat becomes victory, and the miracle happens.

The Battlefront
The Turkish army starts attacking, hoping to finish the Armenian issue once and for all with one last stroke. By May 23rd they take Hamamlou, Gharakilise, Pash Abaran, Sartarabad and Sourmalou on the banks of the river Arax.


The Armenian response
On may 21, ignoring the retreat, colonel Daniel Beg Piroumian gets behind the Turkish army in Sartarabad and starts hitting them from the sides. The surprised Turkish army gets disorganized and scared.
This heroic act encourages the Commander of the Araradian front, General Movses Siligian on may 23rd to order the attack on Sartarabad. People and army, rush the enemy.
On the Arakats front, General Tro's army counter attacks and after fierce battles Armenians take back Pash Abaran and start advancing towards the fields of Shirag.
The Armenian soldiers, gathered in Tilichan, go on the offensive on May 26 under the command of General Thomas Nazarbegian on the Gharakilise front, stop the enemy and take control of the war.
On May 28, Armenian forces are victorious everywhere and the Turkish army is in defeated retreat.
Encouraged from these victories, General Siligian orders "towards guns, towards Alexantrapol." Upon this famous challenge, "Everybody" gets ready to take back the lands from the Turks.

The Victories of May end unfinished.
In Tbilisi, The Armenian National Committee unaware of the victories and trying to save what is left signs an armistice with the Turkish representatives and orders General Nazarpegian to cease all military action, stopping the Armenian army on its tracks. Instead of the soldiers marching into Alexantrapol, it is the politicians that go there to sign the ceasefire agreement.
The new Armenia is established on may 30th 1918 when the Armenian national committee in Tbilisi declares Armenia independent. Socialist Republic was the form of Government. Hovannes Kachazouni is assigned as prime minister, who creates the first Armenian government.
The Armenian government and the legislature are transferred from Tbilisi to Yerevan in July 1918. Quoting the Prime Minister "Under Rain, Chaos and catastrophic conditions" the new government starts its work.

Vanessa Kachadurian- Project to recreate western Armenia

Ancient town of Palu

http://www.reporter.am/go/article/2011-05-20-project-seeks-to-recreate-western-armenia-online
Berlin, Germany - The Houshamadyan website, whose aim is to reconstruct and preserve the memory, daily life and social environment of the Ottoman Armenians through research, has now been operating for several months.
The owner and operator of the website is the Houshamadyan Association, founded and officially registered in Berlin, Germany, in 2010.
The association's research encompasses all aspects of the history of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, including social history, the history of daily life, local microhistory, dialects, music, literature, material culture and so on.
For this, the following are of special importance: the collection and preservation of culturally valuable artefacts of all kinds produced by the Ottoman Armenians such as musical recordings of historical value, old photographs, pictures, old film footage and so on. Similarly important are documents bearing on Ottoman Armenian history such as printed books, periodical publications and archival material, or papers in individual collections such as correspondence, unpublished notes, official documents, autobiographical details etc. The project is also documenting oral history by recording interviews and related materials.
The association is convinced that the internet is the most practical, influential and immediate means of carrying out the wide scope of work required to reconstruct the Ottoman Armenian memory. More than this, it is the project's aim to create a collaborative website to which each individual visitor will have the ability to make comments or input the things that are in his possession - photographs, books, memoirs, information etc - so that it's pages may be enriched collaboratively.
The first place chosen by Houshamadyan was the district of Palu, with its town and surrounding villages. Various articles may be seen on the website about Palu's local history, interethnic relations, geography, agricultural activities, social structure, local songs and dances and so forth.
The pages of the website are in the process of being gradually enriched. In the next few weeks articles about other Armenian-populated places in the Ottoman Empire will be put in the public domain.
The website address is: www.houshamadyan.org

Vanessa Kachadurian Jerusalem Armenian story finally being told

Writer Haig Krikorian

Jerusalem Armenian story finally being told
by Arthur Hagopian

Published: Saturday May 14, 2011

Jerusalem - It is a crying shame that a truly comprehensive and scholarly gratifying history of the annals of the Armenians of Jerusalem has yet to be penned.

Armenians have been living in Jerusalem continuously for over two thousand years, even before their conversion to Christianity.

That's a lot of history, by any reckoning.

Not that this demonstrably vital colony of artists, craftsmen, and other creative spirits - the list is endless but runs the whole gamut of human experience - lacks the necessary skill or expertise to do it, scattered though most of its members may be around the four corners of the world.

The reasons behind this omission are not mere inertia on the part of Armenian scribes. The lamentable fact is that the ancestors of Jerusalem's Armenians gave record-keeping a pedestrian glance, leaving their progeny with precious little reliable records or resources to tap.

And let us not forget that the whole Middle East region has been so enmeshed in periodic patches of political upheaval over the centuries, the foremost preoccupation of the city's Armenian denizens has always been to win the struggle for survival.

But all is not lost.

As we look through the glass of history, darkly, though we perceive dark clouds of unknowing, we can also sporadically discern some bright lights of promise, personified in a minuscule pride of historians, like Ormanian and Savalaniantz.

Their books have almost become objects of veneration, preserving for posterity as they do segments of the story of the Armenians of Jerusalem.

Several years ago, Jerusalem-born scholar Kevork Hintlian attempted to fill part of the gap in the history of his people with a well-researched, slim but titillating volume, "The History of the Armenians in the Holy Land."

It is unfortunate that this book remains generally undervalued and unappreciated - it deserves better. Hintlian has been urged repeatedly to expand it, extend its range. Hopefully, he will get around to it sometime soon.

In sharp contrast to Hintlian's 80-page tome, US-based Haig Krikorian has just celebrated the culmination of a ten-year labor of love with a massive 800-page endeavor, entitled "Lives and Times of the Armenian Patriarchs of Jerusalem."

Krikorian's book is a timely treasure, foraging into the profound, almost inaccessible niches and caves of disparate archives to encapsulate for perpetuity the vicissitudes of the Armenian church in Jerusalem.

The Armenian nation owns this patient plodder an incalculable debt of gratitude for rescuing from obscurity the epic tale of the panoply of Armenian church leaders, with a detailed chronicle that covers over a millennium and a half of the lives of the Armenian patriarchs of Jerusalem.

Krikorian has the good fortune of being a close friend of the current incumbent, Patriarch Torkom Manoogian, and that, coupled with his unflinching support for the Armenian Patriarchate, opened several doors for him and accorded him unprecedented access to existing records and private papers.

Despite the heavy lifting, I could not put the book down. Krikorian's fluid writing style, his meticulous choice of diction and paraphrase and the lack of any literary mannerism of ostentation makes reading his book a delight.

And there is plenty to tell his readers. Some of the facts he has uncovered have probably never been revealed before. How many Armenians are aware that Abraham (638-669), regarded by many as the first Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem, had trekked all the way to Mecca, to plead with the Prophet Mohammed for protection for his flock?

[While it is almost impossible to determine the exact number of Armenian Patriarchs in Jerusalem, various sources place the number between 75 to 100].

Krikorian has taken great pains to trace the origins of the Armenian presence in the Holy Land, and in particular in Jerusalem, and as you read you come to realize that the story of the Armenians of Jerusalem is actually the story of their church, embodied in the Patriarchate of St James, with its grand cathedral, and that their history is linked inevitably to their entity as Christians.

While recapping his chronicle, with a great eye for detail, the writer also delves into the deeds and misdeeds of priestly members of the Brotherhood of St James, an interlude that no doubt is bound to raise eyebrows: not many Armenians will be happy to see the dirty wash of their spiritual leaders aired in public.

Krikorian is not interested in a whitewash. He emphasizes that the Armenian church survived the ravages of time despite the relentless threat of internal strife and corruption at the hands of unconscionable clergymen who pitted their ambitions ahead that of the good of the church.

Inevitably, there is the sorry episode of the 25 manuscripts purloined in the late 1940's and the battle to get them back. Not all 25 were retrieved. Three still remain unaccounted for, languishing perhaps in the safe of some millionaire collector. Whether he or she would know or appreciate half the value of so precious a possession, nobody will know.

Nor does Krikorian shy away from pointing the finger at the attempts by other Christian denominations, particularly the Greeks and Latins, to expropriate Armenian properties and subjugate the Armenian church.

At some point down the timeline of history, Armenians are said to have built over 500 monasteries in and around Jerusalem. Many of these have been lost now - either destroyed or taken over, either through wars or subterfuge, and sometimes by sheer chicanery or incompetence.

Ironically, while fellow Christians persecuted the Armenians, their non-Christian overlords, particularly the Moslems, seem to have viewed them with special favor, granting them rights and privileges they enjoy to this day. Krikorian points out that this was no doubt politically motivated, as a counter to their enemies with their Byzantine sympathies and loyalties.

Krikorian, a former student at the theological seminary of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, takes us through a travelogue that spans the Byzantine, Arab, Crusader, Maneluke, Turk, British and Jordanian administrations, and down to the present era of the Israeli and Palestinian conflict.

Throughout this epoch, pockmarked by frequent violence and endemic corruption, the Armenians continued to survive and thrive, honing their skills at diplomatic and politician maneuvering, alongside the arts and crafts.

It is their presence that gives Jerusalem its unique flavor and contributes to the city's claim to be the center of the world.





(c) 2011 Armenian Reporter
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Vanessa Kachadurian - Turkish Government to restore ancient Armenian church

http://www.sfexaminer.com/news/2011/05/turkey-conserve-armenian-cathedral-church?category=18
Turkey has launched a project to conserve an ancient Armenian cathedral and a church in what is seen as a gesture of reconciliation toward neighboring Armenia.
Turkey and Armenia have been locked in a bitter dispute for decades over the mass killings of Armenians in Turkey in the last years of the Ottoman Empire, and efforts to normalize relations have been dealt a setback by the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan is a close Muslim ally of Turkey's government in Ankara.
Turkey, however, says it is committed to improving ties with Armenia, and has already restored the 10th century Akdamar church, perched on a rocky island in Lake Van in eastern Turkey. It has also allowed once-yearly worship at the site as a gesture to Armenia and its own ethnic Armenian minority.
Culture Minister Ertugrul Gunay said Tuesday the new project was being launched in partnership with the World Monuments Fund to conserve the remains of the cathedral and the Church of the Holy Savior in Ani, 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the eastern city of Kars.
Ani was one of the world's great cities in the 10th century, according to the New-York based fund. Today it stands abandoned, and the remnants of its celebrated buildings are in a precarious state. The site, in an earthquake-prone area, has been listed on the World Monuments Watch, beginning in 1996.
"Ani, which is of global significance, presents particularly complicated challenges," Gunay said. "We hope that giving new life to the remains of once-splendid buildings, such as the Ani Cathedral and church, will bring new economic opportunities to the region."
Gunay did not say whether Turkey would also allow prayers at Ani once the restoration is complete.
Armenians say up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, which they call the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey disputes this, saying the death toll has been inflated and those killed were victims of civil war and unrest as the Ottoman Empire collapsed.