Armenian Syrians. From one war to another

While walking along the streets of Yerevan, one cannot help but notice Middle Eastern smells coming from the new restaurants and bars. Photo: Magdalena Chodownik

Armenia is a small country of three million people, but it is estimated that around eight million Armenians live abroad. One of them is Izabelle Khloyan, whose ancestors lived in Western Armenia (today’s Turkey) and fled the territory during the massacres of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks. Her family found safe asylum in Aleppo, Syria, just like many other Western Armenians. They lived there until the war broke out. In 2013, Izabelle and her two sons decided to move to Yerevan. Today, she works in what is unofficially known as “the best shawarma in Yerevan”. Just as the new Middle Eastern flavours have been welcomed and adapted in Caucasian Armenia, so has Izabelle’s family – her words and memories are full of nostalgia when she recalls her life in Syria: “I miss my home and my social life there – my family, my friends, and the way we lived in our community. Now, they are spread all over the world,” she admits. “I wish I can go back to Syria, but I know it is unrealistic. The situation is not going to change anytime soon. But I hope there will be peace one day.”

Differences

Izabelle’s sons decided to leave when the war was already in full swing. They were about to face compulsory conscription to the army. The family did not want them to join the military forces. Therefore, leaving the country was the only option they had to keep themselves away from the frontlines. Izabelle joined them shortly after. It took them some time to adapt to their new environment. “Now, we live here. My sons are here. There is no sense of going back,” she tells me. “All we need is to go back to Aleppo to sell the house we still own there. And buy a new one in Yerevan.”

Caucasian and Middle Eastern Armenians, despite their common features, religion and history, have been for generations under very different influences related to the very different places they have lived. While Caucasian Armenians were experiencing life under the Soviet Union – learning Russian and incorporating Soviet customs – those living in the Middle East communed with completely different cultures and habits. Therefore, when they began coming to Yerevan, both sides were forced to learn about each other.

Over 20,000 Armenians from Syria suddenly appeared in the country. “They were warmly welcomed, but everyone had to get used to them,” says Anna Kamay, who helped the new arrivals to settle in Armenia. “Even their language was not the same as the one we use here, in Armenia. They had to face a lot of challenges, in addition to what they had already experienced.”

Most of the newcomers came with Syrian passports – they did not have Armenian documents. While women, kids and the elderly applied for Armenian documents, most young men decided not to. “They would be obligated to go to the Armenian army,” Kamay adds. “And they did not want to serve. This is what they were fleeing from in Syria.”

However, a few of them, mostly farmers, went to live in Nagorno Karabakh, the disputed territory between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which has been the centre of a war for over 30 years, seeing new outbreaks this autumn. Some of those who settled in the unrecognised territory inhabited by Armenians would argue that “Syria was not and is not their war, but the war for the lands of Nagorno-Karabakh is.” They expressed a willingness to protect the borders of their motherland and this included the small mountainous parastate; especially since several of them lived in a very sensitive but strategic place – the Lachin corridor (the corridor that connects Nagorno-Karabakh, officially within the borders of Azerbaijan, with the Azerbaijani enclave, Nakhchivan).

Several years have passed since Armenians from Syria started to arrive. Many asylum seekers continued their journey onwards – to Europe or even beyond. Some decided to return to Syria, especially in the regions of Latakia or Kessab, where the Armenian diaspora is still doing relatively well. The Armenian community never rebelled against Assad. Under his and his father’s rule, Catholic Armenians were treated fairly well in Syria. But they were also a part of the regime’s propaganda that needed to show how tolerant and open it was. Latakia, however, is known as “the bastion of Assad” – the city and its neighbourhood today is under control, but safe. In the end, out of all those who arrived from Syria, only about half (around 10,000 people) stayed.

Pride and patriotism

A few years later, when the conflict-weary Armenians from Syria settled in Armenia, finding peace and safety, another war escalated. Heavy fighting began on the border with Azerbaijan and, what is claimed by the other side to be Armenian land, Nagorno Karabakh. Everything since then has been about war. The mobilisation of men into the army began. Armenian politicians started playing the old card recalling the darkest pages of the nation’s history – the massacres in Western Armenia – claiming that Azerbaijan, along with allied Turkey, are seeking ethnic cleansing.

Many men, with pride and patriotism, went to war to defend the borders of their Armenian homes. They reached for guns and rode to the front lines. Evacuated civilians, mostly women and children, went in the opposite direction, to the neighbouring and allied Armenia. They stayed in hotels they came across along their way. That is where their paths were crossing with that of the soldiers. Those who stayed by their homes were hiding in cellars and bunkers, trying to escape the bombing.

Life in Nagorno-Karabakh has come to a standstill. There was only one restaurant in Stepanakert, Samra, run by an Armenian family from Syria that tried to withstand the conflict. The owners, Hovik and his wife, sent their children to Armenia and stayed to support the army by baking bread for the soldiers, by feeding people who stayed. While everything closed down due to the bombings, this is the longest open restaurant in Stepanakert. Its kitchen closes only sometimes and only during the heaviest bombings on the Nagorno Karabakh’s capital.

The war mobilised not only those Armenians who already lived in the Caucasus. Many of them from all over the world came to defend their homeland – from France and Lebanon, for example, where many descendants of the West Armenia massacre survivors also live. One of them was Tony, an Armenian-Lebanese, who has always dreamt of visiting his mother’s land. He arrived to Nagorno Karabakh to join the army as a volunteer.

“The Armenian genocide will not be déjà vu,” he said, also claiming that what Azerbaijan, with its ally Turkey is planning, is to kill Armenians. The national memory and the numerous tragedies they experience seem to connect successive generations in the struggle. And this memory, nurtured for decades, created a cross-geographic bond.

Vazgen der-Davidian is an antiquarian. He comes to the market in Yerevan with his stand to sell findings he came across in the Middle East and on the territory of the former Western Armenia. He, like many others, arrived in Armenia from Aleppo, when the war in Syria broke out. “All I sell here is my own collection. I know I am selling it for less than what it is worth, but I am happy anyway.” he explains to me. “Here is a bracelet from the Urartian Kingdom. Our Western Armenia”, he adds sentimentally.

Magdelena Chodownik is a freelance journalist, photographer and producer.

Armenia, refugees, Syrians