Friday, March 2, 2007

a place that used to exist in Armenia


This is the stubbiest stub I've yet been stuck with -- the Tachir district of the old Armenian region known as Gugark, Gugarq or Gogarene, which hasn't existed for about 1200 years now. The area that was the Gugark is now located in Turkey, Georgia and Armenia, but it seems that the Tachir is district is still roughly in the Area of Armenia right around its border with those other two countries.
As Armenians know and most Turks furiously deny, there was a genocide during WWI of 600,000 - 1.5 million Armenians by Turks who feared they would ally with the Russians against them, after the Turkish government had teamed up with the Germans. People were slaughtered in various hideous waves and whole communities wiped out; now there aren't so many Armenians in Eastern Turkey anymore. Everyone else agrees this happened, but many Turks are very nationalistic, it's more powerful a force than religion there. And to admit there was a genocide would be to put a dark cloud over Modern Turkey, whose founding father Ataturk was an officer in WWI and part of the movement that came to power at that time -- the Young Turks. That's what they really called themselves, it wasn't just a Rod Stewart song from the 80s.

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