Hey everybody, I'm Scott.
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Now we go to Dr. Ara Sanijan.
He is associate professor in Armenian and Middle Eastern history at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and the director of the university's Armenian Research Center.
And we're also joined on the phone by my friend Dennis Marburger, who's a good friend of the show and a supporter of antiwar.com.
And he is actually an associate or a former associate of Dr. Sanijan's predecessor, Dr. Dennis Papazian, and actually knows a thing or two about the subject at hand, unlike myself.
So thank you, Dennis, for joining us.
And welcome to the show, Dr. Ara Sanijan.
How are you?
Hello.
All right.
Very happy to have you here.
Now, here's all I know.
And that is that today at the Raw Story, rawstory.com, 10,000 people are rallying against the Armenian government.
Apparently, this revolutionary upsurge in the old world is not limited to the land between Morocco and China.
It's now moving north.
So I guess, first of all, tell us what you know about that, Dr. Sanijan, and then we'll go from there.
I don't think that we should link the two together.
Although what is happening in the Arab world is basically encouraging the opposition in Armenia, which has always been there, and especially has been quite vigorous since the last elections, the presidential election, which happened in the year 2008.
And basically, the demonstration was to mark the third anniversary when the government-backed interior security forces and army troops actually dispersed the demonstrations, were refusing to accept the declared results of the election.
And that has resulted in 10 people being killed, eight protesters and two people from the security forces.
And three years have passed in Armenia, and the opposition has claimed, and its claims have roughly been backed by the Council of Europe, that the government has not really been serious in actually investigating the matter, which probably think that the government is trying to do a cover-up because it was responsible for it.
So that was actually why the demonstration was for, and I don't really think it was really, really tied to what happened in the Arab world.
However, they have gotten encouraged by the toppling of two long-time leaders in the Arab world, and actually the leader of the demonstrations in a previous demonstration said the time for Mubarakization of Armenia's president has also come.
So that's the only link that I see.
Well, they're taking advantage of the opportunity with protests going on all over the world, and people keeping an eye out for who's next.
They certainly, you know, succeeded in getting my attention this morning, for example, with this.
Not necessarily, because actually the opposition in Armenia actually receives permission under certain conditions by the government to hold protests.
And such kind of rallies of this magnitude usually happen from time to time in Armenia.
And why now they have revived?
I think because of the weather factor.
Armenia has a continental climate, and so the winters are usually very cold.
So coming mid-February, early March, and in Armenia they officially count the beginning of the spring from the 1st of March, the warmer weather really encourages more protesters to go to the streets.
Those who call for protests actually know that they will have a larger number of people attending if it's in the spring.
And because it happened to be the anniversary of the 2008 killing, so that was really the reason why they held the meeting to go.
They adjourned, they gave the government some kind of list of demands, and they're going to reassemble again on the 17th of March.
Scott?
Yeah, Dennis, why don't you go ahead and jump in here.
Thanks, Dr. Sanjian Parev, ISPFS.
Oh, thank you.
You're welcome.
So I asked him, hello, how are you in Armenia?
So, Dr., I think that the audience might find it interesting to maybe get a little bit of a context.
Armenia, unlike these other nations, is not Muslim, of course, but is Christian.
And the Christian aspect of the Armenian people is a key factor in the history of the country, of the nation.
We have also had our own diaspora, if you will.
As you know, of course, there was the genocide.
Back in the fifth century, there were the Barnes-Nance wars fighting for religious freedom against the, I guess it was the first war ever fought strictly for religious freedom against the Persian Shah and Shah back in that day.
And then more recently, during the close of the Soviet Union, the Armenian Republic actually played a leading role in that after the earthquake with all the protests and demands for openness.
And then, of course, fighting against the Azeris and what they have done, the terrible things they have done to the people of Nagorno-Karabakh and the other areas.
And I wondered if you could maybe put Armenia's position in that region of the world in some context for the listeners, sir.
Well, the major immediate external problem Armenia has, and that has been since 1988, is the dispute with Azerbaijan over the status of the region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
That's a region which was formerly part of Soviet Azerbaijan, but enjoyed autonomous status within Azerbaijan under Soviet rule.
From 1988, under the promises given by Gorbachev for reform, the people over there really reasserted their claim that their autonomous region should be part of Armenia rather than Azerbaijan.
Of course, Azerbaijanis have not accepted that, and this has actually led into a conflict between 1991 and 1994.
All right.
Now, I'm sorry, gentlemen, I have to interrupt, and we have to hold it right here and go out to this break.
It's Dr. Ara Sanijan from the University of Michigan and my friend, Dennis Marburger, on Antiwar Radio.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
We're talking with Dr. Ara Sanijan.
He is Associate Professor in Armenian and Middle Eastern History at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and the Director of the University's Armenian Research Center.
And also my friend, Dennis Marburger, who is an Armenian American, is on the show kind of co-hosting and co-interviewing our guests, because I don't know the first thing about Armenia, although I'm fascinated by y'all's conversation.
So if you'd like, Dr. Sanijan, I believe you were in the middle of your response to Dennis's first statement there.
I was talking about Armenia's major external problem, which is its continuing dispute with Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is almost entirely Armenian populated.
All right.
Actually, I do know a little bit about that.
That's the territory that's completely surrounded due to some, you know, dispute in the borders years ago by foreign territories, sort of like, you know, West Berlin inside East Germany kind of situation.
Well, yes.
Under Soviet times, the borders of the autonomous region were not contiguous with Armenia.
But of course, during the 1991-1994 war, Armenians were quite successful.
And now they control not only the almost all the area of Nagorno-Karabakh, but a lot of surrounding territory, which makes it now adjacent to Armenia de facto, if not de jure.
And of course, since 1994, when the ceasefire was negotiated, there has not been a major, any real substantial progress in the negotiations.
And there is always the fear that war may escalate again at any moment, because there is no durable solution.
So that really puts really a lot of pressure on Armenia.
And by the way, not only on the government, but also on the opposition, because actually both of them do support the claims of the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh.
But what the actual problem is, is much more domestic, is the fact that since the collapse of the Soviet order, Armenia's economic system has practically been hijacked by a group of, you know, what the Russians and the Armenians call oligarchs.
And essentially, democracy, as we understand it, or the idea of democracy that we aspire to, is gradually diminishing by the day in Armenia, like in many other post-Soviet countries.
And, you know, and this is felt very much in the way the economy is run, in the way the media is run, etc.
And there is a large level of discontent within the country.
So the opposition nowadays is trying to tap in that kind of discontent.
And actually what they want are a new political system in which there will be fair elections, and they hope that these kind of fair elections will lead to into a much fairer social and economic system.
This is overall what the demand of the opposition is.
Well, and it's interesting too, Dr. Sanjan and Scott, as you kind of played this, the idea that the doctor mentioned about the oligarchs, of course, we notice a similar thing here in this country and in many areas around the world, where there are politically powerful special interests allied with certain financial interests that attempt to use the state as their tool to get greater wealth and greater power over everyone else.
So it seems to be a global phenomenon, though, here in America, we have, I think, a greater remnant of freedom and a little bit longer tradition of at least thinking about it and talking about that sort of thing, which is helpful.
Well, if we compare America and Armenia, I think there are a couple of things where America has the advantage.
America has a much better judicial system.
In Armenia, I think that's really, really the weak point where basically you cannot rely on the judiciary to defend your own rights.
And on the other hand, for example, if you compare the media, we can say that the print media in Armenia, the newspapers are relatively free.
The government really controls through various non-political and economic means also what we call the electronic media, the television.
But because Armenia is a relatively poor country, most of the people get their news from television stations.
And actually, the government tries to minimize to almost zero the whole idea of, you know, producing a showing critical kind of news and analysis on TV stations.
However, Armenia is also in recent couple of years, especially is showing a relatively huge expansion in the use of the Internet.
Now, there is a lot of competition in Armenia's telecommunications sector.
There are three companies now.
Two of them are owned by Russian companies and one of them is owned by a French company.
And basically, they are really in too much competition.
And prices for the Internet and even for cell phones and the other things have really come down.
I think in Armenia, we can say that almost everybody now has a cell phone.
It has had a tremendous kind of a spread.
And over the last year, Internet connections have now really are going up very much.
Now, how much will this really change?
I don't know.
But ultimately, at the moment, still electronic Internet sites, etc., are a way in which there's relatively much fear.
The government is not regulating that much.
It's not putting that much pressure.
But that may play some kind of role.
But we should also say, as I said, that the print media in Armenia has been relatively free.
It's the television stations that are basically controlled one way or another by the ruling oligarchs.
Well, that's very interesting that you present that.
And also, Scott, isn't that intriguing, how the marketplace and technological innovation and the driving down of the cost of being able to communicate over the Internet and things reaches everywhere, doesn't it?
Yeah, absolutely.
As long as there's open entry into the market, prices will fall.
Yes.
And also, the other thing is that which really makes Armenia and other post-Soviet, and let's say called the post-communist countries, different from the Arab world, is that you have a higher level of education bequeathed from the Soviet or communist educational system.
So overall, that kind of an issue, you have a society which is much better educated than in the Arab world.
And of course, parents do understand the need for education, and they really do a lot of sacrifice for their children to have good education.
So that is one way which we have to take into consideration when we are studying the post-Soviet or the post-communist space and comparing it with other parts of the developing world.
You know, and another area that I think is interesting to contemplate again and to look at is the, again, the relationship of Armenia with some of its neighbors.
You know, the Armenians and the Arabs have something they do share, including, and I think Scott was just talking about this a while ago, the horrible circumstances or experiences they had under the misrule of the Turkish Empire at various stages.
And lately, and more recently, at the time of the breakup of the Soviet Union and also the earthquake that struck Armenia and then the conflict with Azerbaijan, the Turks and the Azeris both have moved, as I recall, to blockade Armenia.
As I understand, is that blockade still on?
Yes.
And Armenia, though, it does have relatively good relations with Iran and with Russia, and I think there's a lot of historical context to that.
Yes.
And one of the things that I find fascinating about this is we often hear, and Scott, who does such wonderful work, ever have a chance to listen to Scott's program on anti-war radio, which is fantastic, the length and breadth of what he does.
All right, quick, quick.
We're running out of time.
Thanks.
Okay.
But the other part of it would be the relationship with Iran and Russia is so important to Armenia and some of the crocodile tears you hear from the neocons about human rights and all that.
They sometimes will give the Armenians short shrift and they don't like those good relations, which are so important for the country and for their survival.
All right.
Well, I'm sorry we have to leave it there, but I thank you both very much for your time.
It's Dr. Ara Sarajan from the University of Michigan, the director of the Armenian Research Center, and my friend, Dennis Marburger.
Thank you both.
