Society

Recently, I asked one of the officials of Karabagh, who is also an MP of the National Assembly of Karabagh, what was to become of the Karabagh conflict: “Everything is over”, he said very briskly. “Even the Turks know that it’s over”.

He was obviously talking about the war and the positive effects it had on our nation. But I was neither asking about the war nor the strategic importance it played for us. I wanted to know if whether or not there would be peace and any development in the country. Also, I wanted to know if people would be living in a battlefield if there was no establishment of peace.

When talking about peace, you start dealing with the impossibility of making sacrifices. “Don’t worry about it,” said one man in response to the question about peace. He and his family had suffered a lot and he gave this answer with enthusiasm. “We’re still here,” he adds. He told me a story depicting one of the episodes of war where both sides suffered losses-eight dead and three wounded.

It’s okay if the man doesn’t have the basic conditions for living. It’s okay if he barely takes care of himself and his son’s three children with the small subsidy he receives from the government and by begging. The important thing is to live with the fact that you may die a hero.

One thing keeps on getting repeated by different levels of society in Karabagh. They say that Karabagh has already ceded by declaring ceasefire. This means that we have already agreed to peace by depriving ourselves from “eternal war”. Why do we continue talking about returning the lands anyway?

Generally, the people of Karabagh needed to be the ones demanding peace, but it seems as if peace is just a political term for them and the people using that word are the ones who are suspected of being cowards, weak, and also, traitors. It turns out that if you want peace, then you want to return the lands by fighting in a war.

As you take a trip around Karabagh, you notice that the people are not living, but rather, they are waiting for something to happen and it doesn’t matter whether it is something good or bad. They are simply waiting, just like a man in his prime waits until he finds a suitable job so he can buy a house, a car and then get married. But as soon as he has the house and the car, he comes to the conclusion that he doesn’t want to get married. This is one case. The other one is that the man doesn’t find a job and he remains unemployed, and since he is already old enough to be on his own, his parents force him to get married so that there will be someone by his side to help him get out of the depression and the psychological stress.

While going around Karabagh you see that people are waiting for some kind of status. Status, looked at as a political term, is more significant than the word peace. This can be understood by the fact that when people living in Karabagh say peace, they refer to the life they have seen before 1988, also known as the Autonomous Region of Mountainous Karabagh. Having a status is far from becoming a reality in Karabagh. Besides that, it does not correspond to the de facto situation in Karabagh.

When you ask ordinary citizens from the city or the village about the well-being of Karabagh, you never get one reply. “Either we join Armenia, or we stay independent”. This answer is also political. This and other types of answers are ones that are talked about in wide political discussions.

When you ask the citizens which part of the answer they prefer, the villagers prefer joining Armenia while people living in the city prefer staying independent. Ordinary people want to join Armenia, while for officials who have a good status, being independent is something like egoism. This is self-explanatory. There is a huge difference in status when you compare someone who works as a head of the administrative department of some ministry in Karabagh and someone who is head of the department of one of Armenia’s regional districts.

Perhaps the importance of having some status is the reason why Karabagh is constructing a building for the National Assembly in the heart of Stepanakert instead of using its minimum resources for providing humanitarian aid. One time, in response to the question about the construction of villas, former Prime Minister of Karabagh Robert Kocharyan said that the construction of villas gives hope to the people. This means that if commanders of the army and other officials start building villas then the people can live happily. Now everyone can say that the National Assembly construction instills hope in people. It does instill hope, but not for living, but rather, for obtaining a status.

A businessman complains that he can’t find any worker due to the unemployment. “There is nothing to be surprised about,” he said in response to my question that followed. “Everyone here receives help from Armenia, Russia or other places and they only want to work as government officials.” Judging from this response, we can say that working is also a status, and not a means of earning money.

Upon coming back from Karabagh with my impressions, the next morning all the newspapers were writing about the chaotic situation in Javakhk. Javakhk’s political parties were demanding autonomy for some reasons and those reasons were similar to the ones given in 1988 for Karabagh. One of the reasons included the social/economic situation of the Armenians living in Javakhk. “Either death or freedom”, I thought and imagined how the political parties and the people driving the Jeeps were making their way through the ruined villages and the uncultivated lands of Javakhk.