Armenian 'Khachkars': symbols of tragedy and defiance.

"I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia. See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia."--William Saroyan

**********

When the Taliban in Afghanistan was destroying the figure of the Buddha, all human-kind cried bloody murder. But why, when Azerbaijan destroys Armenian relics and uses them for building materials, does the world stand silent?"

"It's a 'cultural genocide,'" says Dr. Armen Haghnazarian from Research of Armenian Architecture (RAA), which for the last 30 years has been documenting the remains of Armenian churches and calling for a stop to their destruction in neighboring Azerbaijan, Turkey and Georgia.(*1)

Here on the borders of the conflict with Islam is a part of life for the Christian Armenians; it goes all the way back to the days when they stood between pagan Rome and Zoroastrian Persia Though the Armenian nation officially declared itself Christian in 301, 30 years before Constantine did the same, they trace their Christian roots to the Apostles Bartholomew and Thaddeus who were martyred here and gave the name to the Armenian Apostolic church.

This once-glorious empire stretched from the Caspian to the Black Sea and included much of present-day Turkey and Iran. Today it is the smallest of the Caucasian nations, roughly the size of Maryland. It borders Islamic Turkey, Iran, and Azerbaijan, and to the north Orthodox Georgia - leaving many of its important religious monuments in the care of its Muslim neighbours

For a thousand years the rolling hills around the town of Jugha in Azerbaijan's territory held a prospect of massive pink, red and grey Cross Stones, or "Khachkars." These are a sacred Armenian art form of sculptured crosses set into the face of massive stone blocks and surrounded by an array of symbolism and arabesque ornamentation. What had always been viewed as Jugha's garden of Khachkars were slowly plucked over time till fewer than a couple of thousand of the large stones remained. Then, in 1998, Armenians from the Iranian side of the border watched in horror as bulldozers arrived and began knocking down the remaining vestiges of their past.

RAA's repeated complaints to UNESCO brought a mere mention in their yearly report and a pause in the demolition. But it was too little and too late; the demolition soon resumed and today all that is left are the scattered fragments of a thousand-year-old art.

Why? According to Dr. Armen Haghnazarian, the Azerbaijan plan is a simple one. After dispersing the Armenian people, their intentions are to completely bury their presence, thus erasing any future claims to the land.

"City of a thousand churches"

It is no surprise that this 3,000-year-old civilization that sits under the shadows of Mount Ararat, where Noah's ark is believed to have come to rest, would ultimately turn to the bounty of stone that surrounds it in order to express itself.

The Armenians built their religious edifices out of the pink volcanic tufa that has the unique properties to harden over time. Their walls were built thick, able to withstand the many conflicts of this tumultuous region, but the old architects never had in mind that they would be going up against bulldozers, rocket fire and dynamite.

The historical Armenian capital of Ani, once known as the "city of a thousand churches," located today within the borders of modern Turkey, is a literal ghost town of crumbling churches, of which only about ten remain standing. Armenians claim that the sad state of churches in Ani is a result of neglect, vandalism and in some cases intentional destruction, but archeologist Dr. Beyhan Karamagarale from the University of Ankara, who has been digging at Ani for the past 15 years, says the poor state of Ani churches is due to the natural causes of time, war, and pointing the finger back at the Armenians, she claims recent destruction has been the result of the rumble of explosions coming from the Armenian quarry that stands a literal stone's throw away across the bordering Apax river.

Just a short drive southwest of Ani is the monastery of five churches known as Khizkonk. Only one church remains standing, a mere shell of its former self. Samvel Karapetian from RAA (www.raa.am) shows a recent photograph of the site and points to the massive holes through the wall of the round church. "Rocket fire," he says. The same image presented before Dr. Karamagarale leaves her without an explanation; but she adds that Khizkonk was in a military zone and adamantly defends Turkish soldiers who she claims would never intentionally destroy churches.

According to Samvel Karapetian, it was only about 40 years ago that Turkey began the policy of knocking down its Armenian history. For decades after the genocide in 1915, Armenian churches stood vacant, an eerie reminder of the ancient Armenian civilization known for great builders and cultivators of the land. It was not till the 1960s, when the new generation of the survivors began calling for Turkish retribution, that Ankara responded by erasing the evidence.

Genocide

The Armenian slaughter, often called the "Forgotten Genocide," started up during the First World War, as fear began to spread that the nation's large Armenian population would side with enemy Russia and sabotage the war effort. The order was given to round up Armenian males; they were never seen or heard from again. The remaining women, children and elderly were ordered to take what they could carry and sent out on a gruelling march into the Syrian desert. In the process, hundreds of thousands of Armenians, perhaps as many as a million and a half, died from starvation, thirst, and attacks from Kurdish bandits going after their gold and their young girls. The accounts of survivors speak of many who could no longer bear the suffering and drowned themselves in the Euphrates, some taking their children with them.

Nearly a century later, Turkey still denies that the Armenian expulsion was a genocide, though it had cleared Turkey's Eastern half of its Armenian population. At that time in history Turkey was mockingly called the "Sick Man of Europe." Today its voice is strong and influential, and this has kept the international community from officially recognizing the Armenian Genocide. Only a small list of nations has done so, including France, Russia, Lebanon, Italy and, in 1996, Canada.

"We had to break into our own houses...."

In the year 2000 RAA began a fact-finding mission into Turkey to document the remains of its historical architecture. "We had to break into our own houses and run out like thieves," says Samvel Karapetian about the secret purpose of their visit. Inside their bags they concealed old photo graphs of churches, taken before 1913. They re-shot some of these same churches. The before-and-after images placed side by side are shocking.

A pre-genocide photo at Bagrevand shows a massive 7th century church which is today no more than a vacant lot darkened by mounds of black dust from the mortar. Not even a single stone remains. "We are very aware that in many cases villagers destroy old structures for their own use; so we made a careful inspection of the surrounding homes," says Mr. Karapetian, "but we found no signs of the church, proving it was destroyed by the government and the stones were then disposed of."

The missing Khachhars

For nearly 2000 years Khachkars have followed the Armenian presence; 40,000 are scattered across modern Armenia. They turn up almost anywhere, in barren fields, along the roadside, on mountain paths, in surrounding monasteries, inside the walls of churches, and in the cemeteries.

"We were particularly interested in knowing if we could find Khachkars inside Turkey," says Samvel Karapetian. They found them, but only inside Kurdish homes where they were used as common building stones; yet in a sense these had been rescued from Turkish bulldozers and sledgehammers.

"One turned up in a village right under our feet as a bridge over a narrow stream. We dusted it off and staring back at us was a 10th-century Khachkar."

Mountainous Karabakh

The enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as Mountainous Karabakh, located on Armenia's eastern border, is today an undefined entity that has its own government, elected officials, stamps, flag and even its own national anthem; but in the eyes of the international community it stands unrecognized and is under the control of the Armenian government. This obscure situation is another result of the chaos that came out of the fall of the Soviet Union.

Until 1991 Karabakh was under the control of Azerbaijan, a decision made by Stalin back in the 1920s when Karabakh's population was 95% Armenian. As the Soviet Union crumbled, Karabakh declared its independence, but Azerbaijan, which had just successfully freed itself from Moscow control, did not quite see the same and responded with a Sarajevo-style siege of the capital. After four years of fighting and 30,000 lives lost, a ceasefire was declared and borders were drawn in sand.

Today the situation is calm except around the border where sniper fire still rings out. It has been a decade since the ceasefire and with no peace agreement the conflict remains; and in the hearts of the people of both nations war still rages.

On a hill overlooking the capital, Stepanakert, is the massive two-headed statue "Papik-Tatik" or "Grandfather-Grandmother" that has since become a symbol of the conflict. "Their bodies are deep into the earth like the roots of the people of Karabakh," asserts a woman out by the landmark. "To lift us out of our land is physically impossible."

"The destruction of our monuments in Karabakh is a different story than in Turkey. Here we are present and they could not demolish before our own eyes" says Slava Sarkissyan, Karabakh's Minister of Historical Monuments. "But they still did," he says, pointing to the rows of photographs at the exhibit inside the Stepanakert museum documenting historical Armenian lands within Azerbaijan control where the fate of many of their churches are unknown.

The Armenians are not the only ones who claim the land as historically their own. The Azeri, a Turkish-speaking people, trace their heritage to the old Caucasian Albanians, an ancient Christian people who also inhabited the area. This has led to some of the most shocking accusations by Armenians, who say the Azerbaijan government has been intentionally erasing ancient Armenian inscriptions over old bridges and churches and claiming them to be Albanian.

"The Khachkars in the Karvajar district that they couldn't forge, they broke up and used in their buildings and as gravel in road construction," angrily claims Slava Sarkissyan.

This accusation is echoed by the RAA, which claims that the old churches in Karvajar district were turned into quarries, and bits and pieces can now be found inside the walls of public buildings like the school in the town of Tzar. RAA's careful study of the structure found numerous church stones inside its walls and 133 Khachkar fragments. Thirty-seven of these fragments had been inscribed, including a famed 13th-century Khachkar that once read, "In the year of Armenian dating 1289. I, Grigor, the son of Hassan, brave and victorious army commander, and the great Prince of Akan, Handaberd, Sot, Shoghgah and many other provinces, erected this cross in my village, which is called Tzar, for my beloved father, fatherland and as an award for the bravery." Of this historical 700-year-old treasure only a small fragment, SHOGHG, remains visible inside the frame of the school window.

Today, in both Azerbaijan and Turkey, the destruction tames on. RAA offices have just recently received reports from military patrols along the Azerbaijan border that bulldozers have arrived and are starting to bring down the medieval fortress of St. Sargis Monastery--the new Jugha. Samvel Karapetian has already packed his bags, binoculars, camera and bulletproof vest. From a secure position behind sandbags, he will document the remains and whatever destruction is taking place, but he sighs, because he wonders, if after all the evidence is put forward, anyone will listen. And if so--will anything be done about it?

Footnotes;

(*1) Armenia's southern neighbour, Iran, part of President Bush's axis of evil, has been considered helpful in the restoration of Armenian architecture within its borders.

Chuck Todaro is an Armenian American journalist and photographer based in Scarsdale NY. He has a particular interest in Eastern Eurpe and the Caucasus region.