DR. SPURKIAN’S NEW YEAR’S WISH LIST FOR ARMENIANS

Well, it’s that time of the year where people wait in ridiculously long lines at check out counters at malls to buy presents or at post-offices to mail letters, cards and packages to loved ones in an ever-shrinking world. As is the case with many people I decided to make a wish list and see if any of those wishes would be realized in the coming year. That being said I have to mention that not being on Santa’s `nice’ list, I have very low expectations that any of my wishes will come through, however on the plus side getting my wish list out there in an ever-expanding cyberspace I hope that some people might pick them up and try to realize some of the thoughts and wishes.


A WISH LIST FOR ARMENIAN (DIS)ORGANIZATIONS IN THE DIASPORAS

First of all Armenian organizations have to realize that they are NOT as important to Armenia as they think they are. Certainly in larger context most of the Armenian organizations operating in all over the world have some usefulness but they are all stuck in a conundrum: How to be of help to Armenia while keeping their power base in the diasporas? Well unfortunately a solution of that conundrum is far from the ability of anyone to solve (even Santa’s) and hence it is better not to dwell on it. Of course if there were to be a solution to that duality, then the simple answer would be that diasporic organizations need to get their act together first, adapt themselves to changing times and realize that the environment that they are working in is not the same as the Caucasus in late 19th century, Egypt in the early 20th century, Middle East in the 1950s-70, nor is it the United States in the 1970s and early 80s. It seems that Armenian life outside of Armenia is stuck in a time capsule and most of the ‘leadership’ of the diasporic communities look to the past - rather than the now and the future - for answers.

The realignment of space-time continuum of the raison d’être of the organization is only the first wish that I have in my mind. Thus an even more important wish is that people who are in charge of these organizations stop thinking of these organizations as vessels to achieve their own goals (those goals being personal ones or their own vision of life). It’s unfortunate but true that in many cases the work of an organization is put on a back-burner in exchange for visibility of those who are doing the job. This wish is quite challenging to Santa because in most cases those people who are in charge of various organizations are usually inept in doing anything else. Don’t the masses realize that those who claim to lead them are usually individuals who cannot operate outside of the Armenian realm and subsequently their worldview remains confined to the narrow horizon of their own world. On the other hand of the spectrum there are leaders who have been successful individually and have financial independence (or super-independence) and they suddenly realize that having money automatically buys them intellect and that they could lead the various organizations - and through them the `nation’ - to a better status.

Going to a more ‘manageable’ wish for the diasporic organizations is for them to realize that they are organizations in the diasporas and as such they need to take care of diasporas first. Of course this wish would render half the organizations useless but the truth of the matter remains that the organizations - with all their shortcomings, vanities and superiority complexes - have, in the last 15 years or so, neglected the communities that they claim they lead. It is true an Armenia-centered strategy should remain in the hearts and minds of Armenian but the challenge of ‘holding two watermelons with one hand’ (or 3 watermelons with both hands) will only make a mess since all the watermelons will fall and create very slippery floors on which the communities will not be able to walk. For this wish it is important for diasporans to realize that Armenia can survive on its own - after all it has done so in the past - while the diasporas need constant nourishment, care and attention to strengthen their chances for continuity.

As a follow up to the above wishes, I wish that the diasporan media stops recycling old concepts and terminologies and starts critically addressing the problems that Armenians face. While the constant repetition that things are ok and would eventually make people believe that things really ARE ok, but it won’t MAKE things ok. The inability of most organizations and communities to adapt to changing circumstances will only make the disappearance of the diasporas a reality in a shorter period of time.

Finally, diasporans, stop thinking that you know what is best for Armenia. There are as many opinions of what constitutes a ‘true Armenianness’ as there are organizations. However, there is no single organizations which has a messianic mission and the last time I checked with the gods (through official email inquiries) I was notified that none of the Armenian organizations were given authority to claim that they know the ultimate `truth’. So stop acting with a sense of self-importance and start really engaging the communities you work in to make things better for them and by extension eventually helping the state.


A WISH LIST FOR THE ‘LEADERSHIP’ IN ARMENIA

Stop thinking about yourselves and start doing what a political leadership should be doing - taking care of the state and its citizens. Achieving power and keeping it should not be self-serving and it needs to be used to make things better (however that is defined). Realize that the country does not consist of just the capital city nor of the dozen or so villages in border areas. There are over 900 villages which need to be nurtured and developed to make the country a reliable place. In order to achieve that, the first step for Armenia’s leadership is to stop making more money. The business of politics is politics not business. It is logical to assume that one cannot run a business and a country simultaneously (remember the watermelon analogy mentioned above).

As important as the first wish, it is important that the political leadership realizes that relying on outside help - be that the diasporas, Russia, or the West - will not get them anywhere. It clearly hasn’t helped in the past two centuries or so, yet politicians keep talking about the importance of outside (f)actors in making Armenia `stronger.’ The last 15 years have shown that the more Armenia relies on outside entities, the longer will it take to rely on itself. No one cares about Armenia except Armenians and no one would like to see a strong Armenia except for the Armenians.

A very important wish that I would like Santa to give to Armenia’s leadership is for them to realize that politics and power achieved at the top level - presidency, defense and foreign ministries, etc - is not real power. Never, in the past several presidential and parliamentary elections, has any candidate tried to listen to the people and what they want. This has created a situation where the `elite’ has treated the populace in a way where they told them `If we need your opinion, we’ll give it to you.’ Of course the remedy of this situation is when citizens of Armenia take ownership of their country and truly have power to elect their representatives, but alas the sad fact remains that elections in Armenia are all about the ability to buy votes. As I write this I realize that relying on Santa to achieve this wish list might be a tad difficult since Santa could be easily bought off by the politicians in Armenia and the wish list could be altered for their own benefits.

A WISH LIST FOR ME
Being the egocentric entities as humans are, I figured out I could slip my own wishes in the package of wishes mentioned above. I wish, when I write about the issues that concern Armenians, to hear from more people about their own opinion about these issues. While ideally I wish most of the response are not in the nature of questioning my sanity or analyzing my family background to see if I am an Armenian or not (of course in a more colorful language than I can use in this forum), I believe such interaction would help people think collectively and question `conventional wisdom’ with the hope of achieving `enlightenment.’

Leaving "Home" (August 2004)

As I write these final paragraphs I am struck with a feeling that I am about to leave home. I never had that feeling before. Maybe I didn’t know my ‘home’ well enough to experience separation anxiety. What has changed since the last time I was here to make me feel more at home? Definitely one thing is that I have given directions to some locals when they were lost (but of course being typical men they never admitted that they were lost, just that they were trying to get to a certain destination). One other reason is that my absence for a long time from Armenia made it possible for me to assess and reassess the ties that I might have with this quasi-third world, overly commercialized and car-overflowing country. Of course the fact that I have been able to look at the Diaspora from a different perspective and realize to what extent it has become self-absorbed and involved in petty politics also played an important factor in creating a stronger bond with Armenia.

Having said all these, I find myself more and more in the role of a character in the American science fiction series “The X-files”, where the character always repeats the motto ‘I want to believe.’ The analogy is about my skepticism that things have changed for the better. I do want to believe that the country has changed to the better over the past several years and in many ways it has. However being the pessimist self-hating Diaporan that I am, I keep choosing to observe only the worst in every development. Being a cynic thus is not always helpful and it makes it impossible for me to feel at home either in Armenia or the Diaspora. But after all, who am I? I’m just a person. What does a single person matter in the larger existence of a nation? Perhaps nothing. I just hope that over the past several weeks I have been able to share some of my experiences with some readers, who, according to them, shared similar experiences as well as with other readers who basically thought that I’m a nut case and deserved to be executed for betraying ‘national secrets.’

I already hear the cheers of those who were bored to tears when reading these series, but I also could imagine seeing the faces of those people who wrote to share their own experiences with me. For those whom I’ve entertained I say thank you for reading; for those who I’ve insulted, I apologize for them not being able to have an open mind to try to look at things from different perspectives.

Sleepless in Yerevan (August 2004)

No I don’t have insomnia, neither am I suffering from jetlag, it just happens that I am more operational during the early hours of the morning (between 3 and 6 am). Of course there are several reasons for this. The first is that the Internet in Yerevan is faster during those times since less people are online. The second reason is that nights in Yerevan are cooler and it’s more pleasurable to work during those times when there are less cars driving around honking their horns and making a mess out of my nerves.

I would be a liar - who hasn’t lied before anyway! - if I say that checking e-mail and working at night are the only reason why I enjoy the nights of Yerevan. There’s something amazing about Yerevan nightlife. The cafis are of course one unfortunate feature of that but also whoever has taken a stroll in the streets of Yerevan during late night feels that there is something charming about the city at night. It’s not that the night covers the inequalities of people, it’s that when one is walking in the streets of Yerevan looking at other passers by, one gets a feeling of belongingness. This feelings is not based on any identity or socio-economic status - although political hotshots are always there to disturb the peace with their police escorts which pull aside everyone in their path, car or pedestrian.

Has anyone wondered why Armenian ‘politicians’ - be it in Armenia or Diaspora (in the Diaspora they are called party members) - have to act so seriously? Now come on, nobody ever said that to be a viable and trustworthy politician (those two words are sort of contradictory in nature) one needs to be serious. Perhaps it’s a macho thing where to overstate one’s machoness, a serious look could do the trick. That’s one of the reason I could never get along with Armenian politicians since I always manage to be not serious and that of course is a major no - no for a politician. Of course one other issue making my job much easier is that no politician wants to be associated with me as well, since I’m not enough Armenian for them!

Many Nations, Various Sub-Cultures (August 2004)

The rich cultural life of Yerevan always allows at least several options for entertainment. Here I want to mention two of my own favorite venues. The first is an Armenian stage actor/director who usually comes up with a new show every other year or so. Over the past several years, I have managed to attend three of his works. The shows usually deal with political, economic and social issues of the country in a heavily comedy-coated method. The sad thing is that most people attending the play do not seem to realize the messages that the actor manages to send by criticizing the existing social and political ‘order.’ I attended his last play, which dealt with the exiting political tension in the country, and after the play when I was talking with friends and acquaintances about their impressions of the show I was surprised that they all shared my view that the play was sad. This was both a surprising and expected reaction. Surprising: since the play was meant to be a comedy, expected: since it’s impossible to look at the actors’ interpretation of the injustices in society and not feel sad about it.

The second entertainment outlet that I was personally attracted to was a music band, which has incorporated traditional Armenian musical instruments with modern ones, and the end result became a hybrid Armenian music. Of course if one puts the concept of ‘hybrid’ with Armenian music the first objection would be that it is a distortion of the ‘purity’ of Armenian culture. The reason that I personally loved this type of music is that it was an example of evolution of art rather than its stagnation. To be able to take elements of other cultures and to incorporate it successfully into one’s own is the best method to develop and progress artistically and culturally.

Which brings me to another issue that I’ve been bombarded with over the past week. It just happens that the Armenian government has gone through the huge undertaking of organizing cultural events in Yerevan, during which representatives of various artistic groups from all over the Armenian dispersion presented various songs, dances and other artistic talents. So far so good, the problem - if one could call it that - from my perspective is the motto used for these festivities. It is titled ‘One nation, one culture.’ Let us evaluate this sentence for a moment.

The concept of nation I could live with. After all, in my research and studies - there I go again boasting about my academic credentials - I have dealt with the concept of Armenian nationhood. Without a doubt there is a unity on the national level, but at the same time the ‘oneness’ is not absolute. One good example of this is the thorny issue of the Armenian Genocide and relations with Turkey. For overwhelming Armenians living in the Diaspora, their identity is largely defined by the Genocide, in other words they are Armenians because the Genocide happened and they seek recognition for it. On the other hand for Armenians living in Armenia their ‘Armenianess’ is not a factor of the great tragedy of the Armenian nation. On the contrary Armenians in Armenia never even need to define their national identity since they already live in Armenia and the land defines one’s identity whether or not one chooses to. The second major difference between the Diaporan nation and Armenia nation is their concept or view of Armenia’s relations with Turkey and specifically about the opening of the border with the country’s western neighbor. Since I’m neither an economist nor a politician I’ll just pass along what I’ve heard about this issue in Armenia and in the Diaspora. In Armenia people are usually (but not necessarily overwhelmingly) for opening the border with Turkey. This opinion has more of an economic basis since in the minds of most people, such an event would make it possible for transportation costs to decrease tremendously. Of course on the other hand is the concern that the Armenian market could be flooded with cheap Turkish product and the country’s economy would be destroyed - as if having several oligarchs monopolizing the economy is not devastating. On the other hand the Diaporan mentality is that relations with Turkey should be preconditioned with the latter’s recognition of the Genocide. Now I’m not the judge on which opinion is the correct one, but one thing is for sure, and that is the fact that to determine how a country should be ran is up to its citizens. I’m almost sure that if Diasporans do come and live in Armenia - and with that I mean really live in Armenia and not in gated communities or in cocoons - they might change their opinion about this issue.

Going back to the motto ‘one nation, one culture’ and analyzing the second part of it, I could say the following. If by culture it is meant artistic culture, i.e. dancing singing, and reciting poems, then to a large extent Armenians living in the various dispersions and in Armenia do share a common culture. However culture is also mentality, education and her/his-tory (I hope one of my acquaintances would allow me to borrow this innovation). I doubt that in the last three issues Armenians have a commonality. Well to be honest the history is common up until 90 years ago after which most of the communities diverted and branched out with their own histories. No Armenian in Syria thinks the same way as one in Lebanon (let alone Iran or Egypt). Actually Armenians living in the US are themselves so much factionalized in terms of mentality and ghettoization that they have created sub-cultures which thrive in the melting-pot of the US. So to talk about one culture for Armenians is almost like talking about colonizing Mars - not being a believer in conspiracy theories, I still believe that we (we=humankind) haven’t reached there yet.

Organizing a pan-Armenian artistic festival is an excellent opportunity to bring people to Armenia and help the economy, but at the same time it is also helpful for these people to get to know each other’s cultures and learn to break the taboos that exist about each other.

The Pen Mightier than the Sword? (August 2004)

For a die-hard militant nationalist the above statement would sound like an intellectual jargon-frankly up until a couple of weeks ago it had the same connotation for me as well. The reason it changed for me was because after writing about the condition of the people I saw during the “poverty tour”, I received some responses and some of the writers even asked for ways to help the inhabitants of the ‘dumps’. Of course I also received e-mails from people who had nothing but ‘complimentary’ words addressed to me but I guess one has to take the good and the bad in such situations.

A Couple of days after the first time we took the poverty tour, I paid another visit back to the place where we went to, this time accompanied with several other people who were in the process of helping the poverty stricken in Armenia (I intentionally don’t call these people charitable workers since it’s not charity that they do, rather they help the needy to help themselves). As a result of all the visits we took, and following an article published in a Western based news service, some of the officials were also alarmed and they promised to send some doctors to check on the situation of those inhabitants who were claiming to have Tuberculosis in the building (later it turned out that they WERE diagnosed with TB. That’s the way the media operates in Armenia; local journalists are mostly after gossips and hence not taken seriously by the authorities, but with western-based media outlets it’s a different story. To keep a well-tarnished image in front of the world, the government usually is more responsive to inquiries and stories brought to them by these journalists and ‘promise’ to handle the issues.

The bottom line is that raising awareness about issues that Armenia faces today, is far more important than beautifying the streets of Yerevan. More importantly this awareness has to reach the people who don’t live in the country and their only view of the country is the capital city with its ongoing face-lifts. Of course for unrepentant Diasporan optimists, any attribution to the uneven social and economic development in the country is nothing but the babbling of a self-hating Armenian.

Just a week after taking the poverty tour of Yerevan I accompanied several people to go to a community housing, which is funded by a European charity organization and it helps families with more than five children to move into houses with better living conditions. Of course like most (and I mean most and not all) charity organizations the work that has been done has been done half-hearted and without oversight-at least that’s what I gathered from my observations. This made me think about the lyrics of a song used by a British pop-singer where he says “charity is a coat you wear twice a year” mostly to feel good about oneself and if it happens that other people benefit from it as well even the better. The ironic thing about the location of this new assistance housing is that it is situated right across the ‘highway’ from another housing development that is actually either for Diasporans with a lot of money and come to ‘live’ in Armenia or just people who are interested in living in a gated community - I’m not sure gated from what? Perhaps to be ‘protected’ from the dangerous unemployed people.

To end my ‘poverty guide’ it’s worth mentioning that regardless of what happens with the people living below the poverty line, the situation is not unique at all. Although Armenia is not a third world country - actually Yerevan is the one which is not, whereas regions outside of the capital are borderline third world regions - it is no better than the rest of the countries of the world where wealth disparities are also common. Perhaps the emotional aspect of being a Diasporan Armenian is what aggravates the situation. For instance for those Diasporan Armenian who do come to visit Armenia and see beggars, or hear about thieves or murderers their first reaction is that ‘no, this can’t happen since Armenians are good people.’ Of course this is a normal reaction coming form people who mostly live in closed communities - dare I say ghettos? - and who have idealized the concept of Armenia or Armenians. Armenians are emotional people and do tend to romanticize everything and bend the truth beyond recognition to fit everything into their own worldview - once again not a typical Armenian characteristics, rather the reaction of many nations which are small and find themselves to be at the margins of current world debates.