Until now, I am trying to find reasons for saying “yes” to the new Constitution ever since the first day that the constitutional amendments began. Just the fact that our country is taking a huge step towards Europe by passing the constitutional amendments is a good enough reason, but is that step really worth it when in reality we are taking steps in different directions?
The not so famous student union of the famous political party organizes demonstrations on Baghramyan street, demanding the English embassy not to start leading negotiations regarding Turkey’s admittance into the European Union, but at the same time, we are talking about taking peaceful steps towards Europe and also by passing constitutional amendments. Europe wants to reach the Middle East, meaning, it comes knocking on our door but we say: “Stay where you are, we are on our way.”
If we were living in normal conditions (by normal I mean our mystical mentality), we had to leave everything and dream about Turkey’s admittance into the European Union because it had to be clear that all of our issues could be solved in the framework of the European mentality and legislation. For example, we no longer had to worry about the fact that our historic monuments are being destructed because Europe will not allow for that to happen.
We also wouldn’t need to “play around” with the issue of opening and closing the border because Europe does not allow countries to have closed borders. We would have the right to emigrate to the lands where our ancestors have lived, just like the citizens of Holland and Germany have the right to emigrate to other countries and, also, live there. As for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide, I think and I am almost sure that Europe will not admit Turkey into the union if Turkey doesn’t come face to face with the past. But we are against Turkey being accepted into the union because the abovementioned issues do not really interest us. The elimination of our historic monuments is not really a big deal, if of course, we leave this issue out of the Armenian-Turkish traditional relations context. They are just destructing the monument, who cares? Didn’t we destruct enough monuments during the Soviet Union? How about today? Aren’t we destroying ancient Yerevan by creating a brand new 2787 year old capital city?
Opening the border is not really a big issue either. We can live, develop and prosper without that too and at the same time, put down our neighboring country behind that closed border. That will give our producer the opportunity to do away with the low quality product and make a little effort to make a good advertisement (I don’t mean rise in quality) when there is a lack in competitiveness. The outlook for immigrating to our ancestral lands just like emigrating to Holland or Germany doesn’t really encourage us because Karabagh and the remaining seven lands prove that geography for us is limited to just being located on the world map. If we were to live in those lands, now we would be living in Zangelan or Jebrayil, not to mention have homes in Karabagh.
Finally, the most important issue is the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. I am certain that Turkey will have to recognize the Armenian Genocide on the road towards the European Union and Europe will take on the responsibility of dealing with the compensation. Just like the government goes along with the “Rule of Law” political party and “compensates” the residents’ deposits, the European Union will redeem our debts and give loans and grants and cover up by paying the price of the blood shed by our ancestors. This is not important. After recognizing the Armenian Genocide, Armenian society will feel the need to start a revolution in order to change everything around.
I don’t want to sound like a fortune teller, but the abovementioned will happen in the next ten years and the revolution will knock on our doors unexpectedly because the patriot will fight to the last drop so that this small country does not move towards the European Union.
Without going further, I must say that at the present we are living in a century before this one with our mentality, in a time when we were not a state, when we were living between two empires, when we were becoming a bourgeoisie and paying what we had to the teachers in order for them to discipline the Armenian children. The most direct course to take for Armenian upbringing is to instill the spirit to strive towards the foreign world.
Now, in the 21st century, when the computer does not obey our commands such as “go and get me a glass of water”, the 2787 year old capital city’s municipality persuades the schools to organize a writing contest entitled “Knowledge instead of War”, which as you may have guessed, is dedicated to the 1600th anniversary of the Armenian alphabet. As far as I can remember reading in history books written by Khorenatsi and other historians, St. Mesrop Mashtots had not struggled to create the Armenian alphabet quickly, but rather, he was researching different libraries and was not trying to invent a weapon in the form of a “pen”. He was trying to create symbols and their main purpose was not to go against fighting in a war. In addition, throughout history, it has been proven that the pen was not foreseen as a weapon, not for someone to take the pen and make a political decision. Mesrop Mashtots’s goal was simply to translate the Bible. If you recall, that is exactly what happened: the first words written in Armenian were words from the Bible.
The necessity of having an alphabet had to do with the necessity of translating the Bible and the necessity of being Christian. That was going to pave our path towards the Western Christian world. This is a road which we haven’t paved for the past 1600 long and hard years.