Armenia

Berd, Tavoush Region, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online 2006

Writing for the Hetq Online, the publication’s Editor-in-Chief, Edik Baghdasarian, continues to tell the story of some of the most vulnerable inhabitants of the almost god-forsaken town of Berd in Armenia’s north eastern Tavoush region. Edik and I had visited the town in 2004 and returned last month to see what changes had occured in their lives.

Not much has changed over the last two years in the life of Arthur Avalyan, who occupies one of the wooden shacks in the Janjanots district in the center of Berd. The poverty his family lives in is not as flagrant as it used to be for a simple reason – three of his eight children are in the Army and, thus, the spending for food has decreased.

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The family’s 20-square-meter shack is furnished with four metallic beds, one broken wardrobe, a furnace, and an old Soviet-made TV set that doesn’t work.

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People who live in these shacks have no running water or toilets. There is no toilet outside either. They bring water from a spring a hundred meters away. As for the toilet – they manage however they can.

Coincidently, blogging on this site a few weeks before Edik and I made our return journey to Berd, Nessuna also posted her impressions of the town. Really, if the suburbs and main residential districts are very depressed and totally different from the very center of Yerevan, the regions of Armenia, and especially towns such as Berd, can best be described as economically devastated.

The town of Berd has water three days a week and there are no street lights so you need to always have a flashlight in order to find your way in darkness. Basic things that I took for granted in Yerevan seemed almost a luxury here. And then there was the mud.

Because it was everywhere, any attempt to escape it seemed futile. The next best thing to avoiding it was ignoring it altogether.

Which kind of leads us on to an article by Anna Sargsyan also on this week’s Hetq Online. While life for many in Armenia remains tough, government connected businessmen and state officials are having a whale of a time in downtown Yerevan. The supposed “construction boom,” however, seems to have passed by everywhere else in the country and is generally accompanied by corruption and violations of the law. It also represents the anarchy that defines the Armenian version of “urban planning.”

According to the new plan, any construction in Yerevan must be done in territory earmarked for the city itself. In other words, the plan outlines Yerevan’s development only within the 22,000 hectares of its administrative territory. The new high-rise buildings in construction seem to reflect this part of the plan and the direction in which the capital is developing is upwards. The architectural style and whether or not they conform to standards in engineering is all decided by one person - the investor. The new motto going around is “the investor is always right”, and that is the logic behind the construction, and reconstruction, of the new Yerevan.

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Modern builders are trying to design their own milieu. But this is being done at the expense of another environment. A new class of investor-builders has begun to emerge. For this social group, architecture is attractive because it provides the opportunity for lucrative business. Thus, it has become very important to construct buildings which will bring quick profit, in prestigious parts of the capital, especially the city center. This is why central Yerevan is now crowded with new residential buildings.

The influence of business on architecture is most obvious in the examples of Hyusisayin (Northern) and Glkhavor (Main) Avenues.

Construction in both of these cases began before the new master plan was finalized.

Levon Vardanyan evaluated Hyusisayin Avenue as follows: “It became simply a collection of residential buildings. The width of the street and structures’ height do not conform - it is too narrow, but the buildings are very tall. The first floors are all built for public utilities, but why add so many residential floors? Because they are to be sold, and so the city center is being needlessly crowded with buildings. There is also the issue of underground urbanization. Even two underground floors are deemed too little. Every new building constructed in the city center must also use up underground space.”

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The shortcomings of new buildings usually surface later, when the time comes to serve the public. This service includes organizing transport routes, leisure areas and public safety.

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Today a number of residential buildings are being constructed on Glkhavor Avenue although a complete plan has yet to be developed. Investors do not want to fall behind the times. And construction plans are made to suit the current situation. This has been the case in the past. Needless haste and the willingness to cut corners for greater profit endanger not only Yerevan’s architectural design but also the physical safety of its residents. Neglecting certain architectural norms could result in a major tragedy, especially for a city in a seismic zone, like Yerevan. Living in the center of the capital today is not just uncomfortable today, it is also dangerous.

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This modern construction suggests that the center of Yerevan is being subjected to radical changes. None of the constructors knows what the end result will be.

150 years ago, Ivan Chopin, the President of the Government of Profits and Court Assets for the “Armenian Province” of Czarist Russia, described Yerevan in this way, “The gardens facing the houses do not have trees in proper rows, nor are there decent streets on which to walk. The only thing on the landlord’s mind is how to make more money. No thought has been given to comfort or to a suitable promenade.”

Yerevan is the same today.

There’s plenty more on this week’s Hetq Online, but to end this brief roundup it’s worth pointing readers to an article by Hasmik Hovhannisyan on one interesting woman in the Yezidi village of Alagyaz in Armenia’s Aragatsotn Region. I blogged a little about Beritan a week or so ago, but now her story can be told in more detail. Although many Yezidi in Armenia want to downplay or even deny their ethnic connection to the [Moslem] Kurds, others such as Beritan do not.

When Beritan speaks about “our leader” Abdullah Ocalan, her melancholic eyes, absent from this world, shine. She calls me a comrade. Everyone in this village calls us comrade.

Alagyaz is the biggest Yezidi village in Aragatsotn Marz. But the villagers say they are Kurds by nationality and Yezidi by religion. They do not leave me any room to doubt; the villagers speak Kurmanji, a Kurdish dialect and watch a Kurdish TV channel called Roj TV, and almost everyone has posters or pictures of Ocalan.

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In the Kurdish office, there are several copies of Mezopotamiya , an Armenian-language Kurdish newspaper lying onh the table. There are books on Kurdish culture, folklore, and history as well. Beritan’s mobile phone caught my eye; it had a picture of Ojalan on the screen.

There are other freedom fighters aon the wall,. besides the posters of Ojalan and the young guy. They are mostly men with moustaches, with only two women here among them. One of them is very beautiful.This afternoon Beritan told me about her as well. Her name is Via Soran; she also burnt herself alive, Beritan said, in a sign of protest again Ocalan’s arrest.

“And our comrade Zilan (another woman) tied a bomb to her belly and, pretending to be a pregnant woman, went among the Turkish soldiers and blew herself up. She in 1996, when the Turks wanted to execute our leader.”

All this and more, including a few other photos from Bambir’s midnight rock concert, in the English edition of this week’s Hetq Online.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 15th, 2006 at 2:30 pm and is filed under Caucasus, Media, Armenia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.