Are we Europeans? To what extent do we conform to the ancient world with our mentality, value system and way of thinking? How comfortable will we feel in the European family? These questions always worried many of us and have started to be more often discussed during the recent period. Unlike the new Eastern European members of the EU, the membership of which is out of doubt, creates more uncertainty regarding Armenians. But this is not surprising at all. Having been historically located in the middle of Europe and Asia, Armenia during various periods has carried the influence of the elements from Assyrian, Babylonian, Iranian, Hellenistic, Byzantine, Arabic, Turkish and Russian civilizations. Thus Armenia accepted both European and Asian elements of culture. As a result, in our value system, behavior, culture and lifestyle contradictive hues are combined. This “mixture” is expressed in almost all the issues. As it was once mentioned “Asian food, such as kebab and khash is served on tables decorated in European styles.” Are we eventually more European or Asian? The most part of Armenians prefers the first option in spite of the fact that the foreigners are more inclined to consider us Asians. Tevan Poghosyan, director of the International Center of Human Development, delivered quite noteworthy information during one of the recent discussions. As a result of their research it turned out that the number of Armenians, who consider themselves Europeans, essentially yields the figures of the research conducted several years ago. And all this is said in the background of activation of cooperation with European structures. What does this mean? It’s hard to say whether this is disappointment from Europe or misunderstanding of the European structures. Of course there are reasons for disappointment. Recently one of the TV companies hosted a talk show on European integration. One of our politicians participating in the discussion pronounced an opinion that the government was attempting to disfigure the European values by analogizing the European integration with the expansion of sectarianism, homosexuality, drug addiction and immorality. These values really play an immense role in the understanding of Europe and European values. For example, in a separate chapter on the behavior of the Armenian youth on the European values and European integration they display the level of tolerance in the issue of human rights. It turns out that Armenians are more tolerant to gender relations. 68.6% are ready to admit the equality of men and women. However, it is not quite so the issue of sexual minorities is not admitted in such a manner. 7 out of 10 think that the homosexuals shouldn’t have equal rights with the majority. The attitude to religious minorities is not tolerant either. In this regard it is natural if the European values are analogized with the above-mentioned phenomena it affects both the fact of being European and the wish of European integration. The low level of awareness also plays certain role.
What we know about Europe
In fact we know really little. Because of objective and subjective reasons we are interested only in our inner political issues. For example, in Armenia few people were interested when chairman of the EU was elected. Even among the NA MPs there will be people, who don’t know the difference between the EU and the European Parliament. The European structures mostly interest us during elections and the approaches they adopt after the elections. And economically we are interested in the EU as long as we are doing trade with them and have trade relationships with the European states. And we almost don’t speak about the cultural events of Europe. Our people are mostly interested in the “people’s singer” project. In the abovementioned research there was a question “to what extent are you aware of European values, mentality and lifestyle?” Only 9.5% of the respondents responded “very well.” 17.2% said that they know “very little.” And 73.3% said that they have average knowledge about the European values. Besides that only 7% of the modern youth of Armenia thinks that Armenians with their culture and mentality are close to Europeans. Over 70% thinks that we are unique and are not similar to any other nation or civilization.
Let it be European integration
However, regardless of anything Armenians wish to integrate with Europe. The research showed that over 70% of youth supports the intention of Armenia to become an EU member. Thus, the positive outcome of the European integration – the rule of law, integral judicial system, fight against corruption and economic benefits, are signified more by us than the other values of Europe, which do not conform to our mentality. Almost 60% of the respondents of the polls agreed with the following allegation: “I don’t see any point in contradicting the Armenian and European cultures. We may integrate with Europe by maintaining our customs and cultural values.” Thus, there are grounds for certain optimism.
Europe differs from the entire world with the human rights high level protection and rule of law. Based on these values Europe tends to closer cooperation in Europe through tolerance, mutual respect, consensus and cooperation”.
Jose Manuel Barroso, head of the European Commission
“The cooperation with Europe is the Armenian people’s conscious choice and is in the interests of the Armenian people. It is the conscious choice of our people; it is a choice that has a history of many centuries. The connection of Armenians with Europe has a history of many centuries, starting from the times when the geography was different and our people participated in the process of building the values that now are called European values. ”
Edward Nalbandyan, RA foreign affairs minister