In March of this year demonstrations started against the government in Syria. Experts are drawing some parallels and Lybia as in both cases the rebels were armed. Armenians are interested in the developments in Syria and neighboring countries not only from the prospective of receiving information and news. According to different sources, in Syria there is an Armenian community with 60-80,000 people. The policy of Armenians in Syria, according to member of the community of writers of Syria, doctor of history sciences Nora Arisyan, is pro-governmental. However, in consideration of the external pressure on Syria (even the Arabian league has suspended its membership), the domestic political tension, the future of the Armenian community in Syria is still unknown. Candidate of history sciences and freelance journalist Gevorg Yazyrchyan says that he thinks the development of the political situation in Syria is against the Armenian factor too.
– Gevorg, the number of the victims resulted from the clashes between the rebels and army is exceeding 3000. The situation is getting tense day by day. The Armenians of Syria have preferred not only being neutral, but also not hiding their support to the incumbent president.
– There have been 3000 victims among civilians. Among the law-enforcers there are 1700 victims, as well as wounded people. The western media under the control of Zionists are keeping silence about it. Yes, the Armenians of Syria are supporting the government. I think that the best position would be abstaining from being involved in political processes, being neutral, even though sometimes there are situations when they can do nothing but act in favor of the incumbent authorities.
– It seems there are no reasons not to be with the authorities as Armenians have been traditionally safe in Syria as we have churches, Armenian language is taught at schools, they have jobs and good standing…
– During the past 40 years Hafez Al-Assad, and later his son Bashar have implemented a tolerant policy toward religious and national minorities, especially Christians. By the way, they have related very well to Armenians. This is the only religious minority in the country, which is allowed to teach their language at their schools. In 1967, when Al-Assad was not on power yet, all schools were nationalized, and the education would be exclusively in Arabic, and plus one foreign language. In Syria the religion science is an arbitrary subject for teaching, and for Muslims the Koran, and for the Christians – the Holy Bible. The religious leader of the community in Aleppo and a group of prominent Armenians could succeed a compromise, according to which Armenians were allowed to teach Armenian as a language of religion. In Armenian school they could teach the Armenian language four hours a week, and teach religion in Armenian language two hours a week. In other words, in Armenian schools children are taught to subjects in Armenian six hours a week. The authorities know this but they keep silence.
– Does this mean that they do not expect danger from the Armenians of Syria?
– Absolutely not. The Armenians learnt from the war in 1958 in Lebanon that the best thing is keeping a positive neutral position, which means that they should be armed but they should not support any party. In Syria the opposition is diverse – starting from armed extremists and ending up with people who are well educated and have graduated from good western universities. The latter are neutral to the Armenians and other national minorities despite the nationalist Muslims, who openly say that if they get the power they will abuse the rights of Christian national minorities, which includes Armenians as well. I do not even exclude the possibility of massacres. The official policy toward the Armenians in Syria is also conditioned with the relations between Syria and Turkey. Two years ago Syria and Turkey were in very good relations, but there were pressures on part of the Armenian communities at that time. And the vice versa – when the relations between Syria and Turkey become tense, the Armenian community receives an opportunity to publish books about the Armenian Genocide committed by Ottoman Empire.
– It doesn’t matter how well the authorities relate to the Armenian community, the situation is tense anyway. Eventually the lives of people are endangered. It is clear that in such situation the first thing people do is emigration.
– The first thing people are thinking about is leaving from the country, even temporarily. The closest country is Lebanon. However, if the crisis lasts long, people will emigrate from Syria not temporarily but forever.
– This had to be a good reason for our authorities to foster the “Come home” project and show that it is real. However, the reality is the fact that the Armenians of Syria are going to third countries as they cannot come to Armenia because nobody is waiting for them here.
– Yes, it is like that now. Thousands of Syrian Armenians have applied for Armenian citizenship. Unfortunately, our authorities are not ready to use this opportunity and organize the return of at least several thousand Syrians to Armenia.
– We have the precedent of the Iraqi Armenians as well. They tried to come to Armenia as soon as the war started there. Some people came to Armenia and migrated to third countries immediately. The next problem is that the Syrian crisis is a serious threat to our region. Syria and Iran are allies. By weakening Syria, the Western countries, Turkey and the surrounding countries have the goal to weaken Iran too.
– There are facts that the Turkish special services are providing arms and training the extremists in Syria. The policy of Syria and Iran are against the penetration of Turkey. Turkey does not hide its intention to implement a neo-osmanism policy in the region. This means that the Americans have compromised the Middle East to Turkey so that this country coordinates the Arabic and Islamic movements against their authorities. I think that in Syria the scenario of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya will not take place. The authorities have understood what is happening and the alliance of Syria and Iran will resist the pressure on part of Turkey, Israel and Western countries. The most dangerous thing is that in 20-25 years we will speak about the Armenian communities in Middle East with past tense.
– The Diaspora is not an eternal institute as it dissolves through the time. We see it clearly. It is hard to understand the lessons our state learns because everything is being done to make the people emigrate from the country and not to host those who would like to come back to the fatherland.
-Generally, one of the goals of the so-called Arabic Spring is to demolish the Christian factor from the Middle and Far East. I do not agree with the slogan “Diaspora is our richness” as I think it is foolish and a bad behavior to attract Diaspora representatives. Our biggest richness is Armenia and the Armenians that live there. The Diaspora is a flower that has been cut from the roots, and what we can do maximum is to put this flower in water to make the life longer. If the authorities really care about the country, they just think about populating the area of 42.000 square meters that is under their control. They are not populating these areas with Armenians, but the vice versa is happening. For example, the Armenian Department of Visas and Passports does not synchronize and coordinate its activities with the ministry of Diaspora, this ministry does not coordinate its work with the ministry of culture, etc. The state is a hard mechanism, and if one part of that mechanism does not work, the system may go out of order. The president and minister of Diaspora are announcing that Armenia is the home of all Armenians, but this department of passports and visas is saying that those Diaspora Armenians, who have stayed here for more than at least one minute, have to pay 50,000 drams penalty. It’s a contradiction as we live in our home and have to pay penalty for that. They say that this is what is written in the law and we should apply to the president. In Israel when somebody from their Diaspora comes back home, they meet him/her directly in the airport and take care of them by step-by-step making them citizens of Israel.
-The Diaspora Armenians can feel compensated because the same thing is for Armenians.
– This is very painful thing too. It is understandable that this negligence to Diaspora Armenians is not done on purpose. In our country generally there is not respect to the human being.
-The biggest example of respecting the citizens of own country has been shown by Israel when they exchanged one soldiers with more than a thousand Palestinians. But in our country they kill the soldiers, and when the mothers go to complain for their children, the “brave” policemen apply pressure on those poor women too…
– Yes, we are out of the game. Armenia is indifferent instead of using the fact of the relations between Syria and Turkey and taking a part from that situation. It seems that these processes are not happening near its border. Our foreign policy is free of initiatives and is having losses all the time. Turkey is implementing an active policy in all directions – in the direction of Islam, Europe, America, NATO, Balkans, Caucasus, Central Asia as they are trying to take a part from everywhere, unlike us. Recently Azerbaijan was elected a member of the UN security council. Our people do not accept it as a great loss. They say it is better because Azerbaijan may become more contradictable. If such a bad loss would happen in any normal country, the minister of foreign affair would either resign or be fired. I hope that the West, Israel, Turkey and their allies will understand that they are playing dangerous games with Iran and Syria and will stop intimidating in the domestic affairs of these two countries. Otherwise a tragic and very bad war will start in the region, the results of which will be felt everywhere in the world. Syria and Iran are not Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya. It would be good of them to understand this truth.