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Guest Contributor

Guest Contributor

Guest contributions to the Armenian Weekly are informative articles or press releases written and submitted by members of the community.

9 Comments

  1. Thank-you for your article on this a most important topic – the Armenian quest for recognition of the genocide by the world and reparations .. especially wonerful is your description of the “nene”
    in Hopa, a part of the Hamshentsi Armenians… God Bless You Raffi Yaboujian- Did you know there is a street in Yerevan named “Raffi Street”? It is in a section of town called “Bangla Desh near Malatia section of Yerevan ….Connie Koumjian(sisterrose427@yahoo.com)

  2. Beautiful…Beautiful
    Soulful…hearty phrases
    I can add more…
    More and more…

    I repeat…”Keghezig”…Beautiful
    Once you read the real passionate love
    in Raffi’s heart and how He wrote
    with his eyes
    with his soul
    You want to read more
    more and more…

    I felt as if I was with him
    with his beloveds from every site
    United to see with their both eyes…
    what treasures they lost
    Hopping to gain their lands again…

    I say when …?!?! and when…!?!?
    That will happen in which century
    only the mount Ararat knows
    The arriving wind from the west
    in their dreams can guess…

    only the time one day
    will speak
    will tell…
    we are back in our lost lands
    we stand here…!

    Sylva-MD-Poetry
    written instantly
    August 25, 2013

  3. The tragedy of the lost Armenian lands in Anatolia (in Kharpert, Ani, etc) is that fewer and fewer traces of the previous Armenian culture are still there. Not one house remains in Kharpert, in many villages the ruins of churches and crushed gravestones are all that attest to the 3000 year presence of Armenians in this part of the world. The genocide continues with the continuous erasing of Armenian history by the present day Turkish government. According to signs at the site, Ani was built by “a king”, but not an Armenian King. The ruined churches you come across are now part of the “Ottoman heritage”… not Armenian! Any Armenian who manages to visit this part of our world will most likely be heartbroken by the desecration, but you may also be surprised by the attitude of the Kurds living there now. If you can speak Kurdish, it may even be possible to meet “lost grandmothers” who were taken into Turkish homes during and soon after the genocide, and who have hidden their past in a dark, forgotten corner of their minds.

  4. WHAT A BEAUTIFUL, TOUCHING, PENETRATING, WONDERFUL ARTICLE…THANK YOU FOR SHARING THIS WITH US…LOVED IT IMMENSELY. AT 82 AND NOT WELL, IT’S THOUGHTFUL, CARING, PEOPLE LIKE YOU THAT KEEPS ALL OF US INVOLVED SO THAT WE NEVER FORGET…YOU AND OTHERS KEEP OUR HOPES ALIVE. :))))))))))))))

  5. 20 years since I was in Armenia.. I was a lucky member of the very first US Peace Corps group (over 40 of us) to arrive in Yerevan, Dec , 1992… and begin our volunteer work in education and business. We were fortunate, though COLD in winter,as our gas supply trains were damaged as they came through Georgia. I didn’t want to go to Turkey on “vacation” with other volunteers. Maybe now I will get up the nerve!.lso

  6. My experience of these large Armenia-based Armenia to Turkey tour groups is that they are just hasty and superficial commercial tourism. I recommend that nobody who wants to properly see and experience the Armenian sites in Eastern Turkey should be in one of those groups. They also break numerous laws in Turkey (such as not having proper vehicle insurance) but are allowed to continue because the Turkish government, for political reasons, finds it advantageous to allow them to continue. That alone should arouse suspicions. However, for me, what is particularly disappointing is the lie-filled propaganda that some of the tours tell their participants (not all of them do it – Volodya’s AniTour, whose groups are mostly smaller in scale, seemed OK). I hope Raffi Yaboujian’s group was not a victim of that sort of ugliness, being perhaps told that the little mosque in Erzurum’s castle was actually a converted Armenian church. Try to point out the ludicrousness of that lie and you will get threats of violence (and even death threats) from the group leaders.

  7. I traveled to present day Armenia back in ’89 and ’97 with Land and Culture. It was a great experience and I am grateful that I had the opportunity. I’m so glad that you were able to go to western Armenia. Congratulations to you. It would be nice to see some of your favorite pictures as well!

  8. Hello! I am 82 years old, I do not have College degrees, but I do have life experiance, becaose I born in Istanbul, you knows what I mine, My educations was on street, and I was a genoside survived son. We Armenians are very integent, that is our Nations problems. If we have 10 smart and eteligent person and 100 ustuped, we be world lieaders and we newer lost our lands which we lived more than 2000 years. Now our new born Armenia is 20 years old unexperiansed yung boy. We must be help hime, by support hime as much we can. Firtstable me must honereble tax payer, like we do in USA. Sorry no more space.have a nice days.

  9. I have traveled to Historic (Western) Armenia three times to visit my father’s village of Sis in Shabin Karahissar and to my mother’s village of Goteh in the Provence of Erzerum. We went in 1993, 2005, & 2012. Whatever villages we went to Turks & Kurds would tell us that their Grandmother was Armenian. Their is no Mongol look in the faces of the Turks. They are so intermixed with all the Christian people they so conquered from 1064 when the Seljuk Turks invaded our Historic lands. Then came the Mongol Turks in the 12th century and after the Ottoman Turks whom all devastated the area and with forcible assimilation. For those whom want to see the villages where their parents came from should make the trip there and to record their parents history so we don’t forget what the Turks did to civilization and to our people.

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