An Armenian Primer

The Republic of Armenia is located in the southern Caucasus, a region in southwest Asia between the Black and Caspian Seas. It is bordered by Turkey, Iran, Azerbaijan, and Georgia.

At 11,500 square miles, Armenia is slightly smaller than the state of Maryland. Its topography is mountainous, with highland plateaus and fertile river plains. There is little forest. Summers are hot and dry, and winters are cold. The area is prone to earthquakes.

Modern Armenia is the eastern remnant of an ancient kingdom that once extended to the shores of three seas. At its center was Mount Ararat, the snowcapped 17,000' inactive volcano on which Noah's Ark is said to have landed. For thousands of years Armenians have considered Ararat a sacred national symbol. Although its spectacular peak dominates modern Armenia's western horizon, Ararat is now in Turkish territory and inaccessible from Armenia itself.

Ararat and Little Ararat (Massis and Pokr Massis in Armenian) are the two snowy mountaintops visible in the banner at the top of this page.

Armenians are Indo-Europeans, an ancient migratory race that spread into Europe and southwest Asia during the prehistoric era. Greeks and Iranians are also Indo-European. The proto-Armenians who settled the plateau around Mount Ararat 3,000 years ago developed a distinct cultural identity maintained to this day.

There are about six million Armenians in the world. Nearly half live in Armenia itself. Diasporan communities can be found throughout the Middle East, Europe, and North America. In the United States, California, Michigan, and Massachusetts host large communities.

Some well-known 20th century Armenians include pop icon Cher, tennis ace Andre Aghassi, writer William Saroyan, California governor George Dukmejian, basketball coach Jerry Tarpinian, Notre Dame football coach Ara Parseghian, and financier Kirk Kerkorian, among others.

The Republic of Armenia also has a population of 200,000 Yezidi Kurds with their own distinct culture and religion.

The people of Armenia speak Armenian, a unique language. It is part of the very broad Indo-European family of languages that includes Greek and English, but it is unlike any of them. Armenian has western (Turkish) and eastern (Russian) dialects. The Armenian alphabet was invented by a monk in 405 AD and is also unique. The majority of Armenia's citizens now also speak Russian or English.

The name "Armenia" is actually Greek in origin. Armenians call themselves "Hay" or "Hye" (pronounced "high"), their country "Hayastan", and their language "Hayren". The term is derived from Hayk, the name of a legendary Armenian hero.

Most Armenian last names end in "ian" or "yan", e.g. Hovsepian or Kanayan. As in many other cultures, the prefix simply indicates the name's association with some ancestral family characteristic like lineage, occupation, or place of origin. More here.

Most religious Armenians belong to the Armenian Apostolic Church, a Christian religion resembling but distinct from the Eastern Orthodox church. A much smaller number are Catholic or Protestant.

Ancient Armenians worshipped pantheonic gods and practiced Zoroastrianism. However, Armenia was exposed to Christianity very early in its history, officially adopting the religion by 314 AD -- first nation in the world to do so.

Except for Georgia, Armenia's geographic neighbors are all Islamic.

Ancient Armenia was a regional power, achieving its geographic zenith in the first century BC. But for most of the last 2500 years Armenia has been dominated by a succession of foreign invaders: Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Persians, Arabs, and Mongols, among others. Since this region is located at the intersection of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, the great empires of history have always viewed Armenia as an important strategic buffer. Armenians survived centuries of foreign domination because of a remarkable ability to preserve a strong cultural identity while adapting to changing circumstances.

Exposure to many different cultures greatly influenced Armenia. Mesopotamia had a particularly strong influence on early Armenian art, as did the Greeks, Romans and Byzantines in later years. Armenians were master stone masons who built sophisticated structures out of Armenia's rocky soil long before such buildings were common in Europe. The Bible was translated into Armenian in the fifth century, and Armenian printing presses were in widespread use by the mid-sixteenth century.

In the middle ages Armenia developed close ties with Europe and was well-known to the Crusaders. The Silk Road traversed medieval Armenia. Armenian monasteries were established in Jerusalem, Venice and Vienna. Armenian culture reached its highest levels during the medieval era. Armenians were respected scholars and merchants, traveling widely throughout the known world. Interestingly, an Armenian was among the first settlers of the Jamestown colony in Virginia.

Ottoman Turkey had the greatest impact on the course of Armenian history. For six hundred years the Islamic Ottomans were a global superpower that dominated the Caucasus, Middle East, North Africa and southeastern Europe. They were relatively enlightened rulers, allowing Christian and Jewish subjects to practice their religions, maintain independent communities, and even occupy important posts in the Ottoman hierarchy. Armenians often flourished during this period.

By the end of the nineteenth century, however, the Ottoman empire was collapsing, and Armenian history entered its most fateful period. In 1895 the corrupt Ottoman ruler Sultan Abdul Hamid II began scapegoating ethnic minorities, seizing property and implementing discriminatory taxes. Events eventually turned violent, culminating in regional pogroms that killed 300,000 Armenians as well as Greeks, Assyrians, and other minorities. This set the stage for the first state-planned genocide of the twentieth century.

The Armenian Genocide refers to a period between 1915 and 1923, when up to 1.5 million Ottoman Armenians died as a result of ethnic cleansing and extermination acts organized by the Turkish government. 

The Genocide was carried out on the orders of the so-called Young Turks, a group of secular nationalists who overthrew the Ottoman Sultan in 1908.

Armenians initially welcomed the change in leadership, but once in power the Young Turks came to view Armenians as an obstacle to their goal of a racially and culturally pure Greater Turkey. By this time many Armenians were also living under the rule of Turkey's longtime enemy Russia, which was pushing southward to fill the political vacuum left by the Ottoman decline. The Armenians' divided loyalties and growing nationalism during a time of Turkish xenophobia and regional instability led to accusations of ethnic treachery. After Turkey went to war against Russia, Britain, and France as a German ally in World War I, paranoia and racism exploded into genocide.

Genocidal acts happened throughout Turkey. Many Armenians were killed outright. Many more died during mass expulsions from Turkey's eastern provinces. Armenian property was confiscated, villages burned, and cultural artifacts destroyed. Several western nations, including the United States and Great Britain, protested the violence, but to no avail. In eight years Turkey's Armenian population was reduced from two million to 200,000, and almost all evidence of Armenian life in the country was wiped out.

Armenians commemorate this tragedy on April 24 because on that day in 1915, 300 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in the Ottoman capital of Istanbul (Constantinople) were arrested and executed - an event widely viewed as the beginning of the Genocide.

The Turkish government has rejected the term genocide in connection with the events of 1915-1923. Turkey acknowledges the widespread violence inflicted on Armenian civilians, but insists it was the unintended consequence of a war that victimized both sides. This position is rejected by the majority of western and a growing number of Turkish scholars, who note that the role of the Turkish government in planning and coordinating the Genocide has been exhaustively documented. From the International Association of Genocide Scholars: 

Resolution: That this assembly of the Association of Genocide Scholars in its conference held in Montreal, June 11-13, 1997, reaffirms that the mass murder of Armenians in Turkey in 1915 is a case of genocide which conforms to the statutes of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. It further condemns the denial of the Armenian Genocide by the Turkish government and its official and unofficial agents and supporters.

In a radical departure from its 80-year tradition of reflexive denial, the Turkish government recently called for a multinational historical investigation into the events of 1915-1923. Many observers feel this gesture was made to placate human rights critics in anticipation of Turkey's bid to join the European Union.

The Genocide came to an end when the destitute eastern remnants of the Armenian homeland, after a brief period of independence, were absorbed into the newly-formed Soviet Union as a semi-autonomous republic.

Life under the Soviets was a mixed experience for the Armenian people. The Soviets provided a critical security umbrella that allowed Armenia to pull back from the brink of extinction. Education, transportation and communication improved. The country became more urban and the economy industrialized. Armenian peasants were slowly transformed into an upwardly mobile working class. Many Armenians rose to prominence under the Soviets, including aircraft pioneer Artem Mikoyan, composer Aram Khatchaturian, and chess champion Gary Kasparov.

But the Soviets also ruthlessly suppressed Armenian nationalism and persecuted church leaders. They divided and weakened Armenia even further, placing some historically Armenian territories under the rule of its hostile Turkic neighbor Azerbaijan. Secret police, deportation, and gulags were used to control the population. Corruption was rampant. Contact between Armenia and the outside world was difficult. During the Soviet era, many in the Diaspora thought they would never see their homeland again.

After the death of Stalin in 1953, conditions relaxed somewhat and an Armenian identity movement was rekindled. Foreigners began visiting again. In 1988, a devastating earthquake struck northern Armenia, killing thousands. Many people from around the world helped with the recovery.

Armenia remains a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

In the late 1980's the Soviet bloc began to crumble, and in 1991 Armenia declared independence. The new democratic republic was quickly recognized by the United Nations, the United States, and the European Union. 

The Republic of Armenia immediately faced several daunting challenges: creating a government, earthquake recovery, economic and legal reform, national security, energy development and environmental cleanup, to name a few. But the most immediate problem was the developing crisis in neighboring Azerbaijan, where an overwhelming majority in the historically Armenian region of Nagorno Karabakh (Artsakh in Armenian - map) voted for independence after seventy years of Soviet-imposed Azeri rule. 

The situation quickly escalated into a civil war between Karabakh's Christian Armenians and the Islamic Azeris. The Republic of Armenia, whose border lies just a few miles west of Karabakh, was drawn into the conflict shortly after it began. After much bloody fighting Azeri forces withdrew, leaving Karabakh and some adjacent Azeri territory under Armenian control. However, Armenia has not annexed the region, which has since declared itself the independent Nagorno Karabakh Republic (NKR). 

In retaliation, Azerbaijan and its ally Turkey imposed a blockade on Armenia that devastated the Armenian economy and caused great hardship. Despite repeated international mediation efforts, the situation remains unchanged as of 2009. All goods coming into resource-poor Armenia must now pass through Georgia or Iran. 

Other obstacles to Armenia's progress include a declining population, entrenched corruption, bureaucratic inefficiency, a high poverty rate, and extensive Soviet-era ecological damage.

On the plus side, the people of Armenia are well-educated and highly westernized. Its market economy is recovering and features a significant high-technology component. The Armenian government, while often controversial, is the most stable and democratic in the Caucasus. Diaspora Armenians provide considerable financial, intellectual and logistical support. Armenia is a member of the World Trade Organization, and was recently granted Permanent Normal Trade Relations status by the United States. The Republic has excellent relations with the US, Europe, Russia, and Iran, and is widely viewed as a pro-western bridge to the Middle East and Central Asia.