Special for the Armenian Weekly
It was day one on my eighth journey to Western Armenia. My wife, Joyce, and I were sitting in a tea-house in the town of Shadakh (Çatak) with a diverse group that included a Kurdish reporter, a budding human rights attorney, and Dilan, a PhD candidate serving ably as translator. Dilan received a message that someone would like to meet with us and we were soon joined by Ali Sulmaz.
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It’s very important and very touchy subject and issue for generation to come.
Thank God we came so far. God bless all of you and your missions for justice.
An insightful commentary on a number of fronts. I flag two here: 1) The notion of ‘incremental change’ is worth opening up to greater discussion. This is a tricky subject, as the author rightly points out, but it one that can no longer be ignored. 2) Armenian identity, in this context, becomes pretty complex… certainly our orthodox notions of what classifies as ‘Armenian’ must be opened up and problematized.
Overall, this piece is quite thought-provoking. Frankly i’m surprised there haven’t been more entries in this comments section.
What does “problematized” mean?
My paternal side haplogroup is G-PF3304 as yours. i can follow my family tree till about 1750. we belong to a group of north Georgia which are actually turkomen but are in unnamed part of islam. more free and more shamanic. i think that u can not fill a DNA group in to a nation thing.. we are all from somewhere caucasus we changed got different names and we are still changing ..
i deeply love caucasus music .. the georgian even though i was never there .. i feel it inside deep somewhere .. i cant say much about the Genocide, but understand your will and power to know more about what happend. i had a grandaunt which was a child at that years and she was telling us stories about it. what i understood from her stories was that someday some man came and told them that his neighbor is actually an enemy. so they started to kill eachother.. sad but it happend. i know also people who learned after years that they were actually something different..
take care best wishes