Our Trip

Day 9 - May 6

On this day we visited Tatev Monastery. We had to travel there with two mini busses as the streets were not accessible for the large bus, despite Gagik's driving skills. Even the drivers of the mini busses had to take care as parts of the streets consisted mainly of large holes which could easily make such a bus get stuck for a while.

Rules for Sunday service

View from the monastery yard

For lunch we had a picnic. However, on the originally chosen place, a small plateau close to the street above the monastery where we would have had a beautiful view into the valley, it was too windy. Therefore we moved to a small café where they had little "huts" so that we could not only eat our meals in more comfort there but also were able to order tea and coffee afterwards.

In one of the "huts"

On our way back we stopped at "Satan's Bridge", a dangerously looking chasm of the Vorotan river, which however was well fenced off. There was also a little pool with thermal water, but that was dirty and could not be used.

Dangerous...

Until recently one could bathe in here!

In the afternoon we started our trip to Nagorno Karabakh - with the large bus again. On our way to the border we came past a cave village. People had still been living in the caves in the 19th century and later used them as shelters during the Karabakh war.

Here one leaves Armenia for Karabakh

The recent history of the region of Karabakh has been influenced mainly by the arbitrariness of the Soviet regime. In 1920 the Soviets annexed the states of Armenia and Azerbaijan which had been independent for a short time and which had fought bitterly over Karabakh. The population of Karabakh consisted mainly of Armenians, even though many Azeris (a shiite Turk people who, like the Turks of Turkey, had moved there from the Altai mountains during the middle ages) settled in the plains of Karabakh while the mountain area remained almost entirely in Armenian hands. However, as Stalin was interested in peace with Turkey and maybe also hoped to persuade the ruling Young Turks into communism he was ready to give a lot of land to Azerbaijan which of course was no loss for the Soviet Union. Turkey had originally demanded to give the entire southern part of Armenia to Azerbaijan, but Stalin did not want to go that far. He was aware of the Young Turks' vision of a Pan-Turkish state which would have included almost all of the Soviet Union's southern republics. Therefore he gave Nakhchivan (with 70% Armenians, nowadays 5%) at the border of Turkey and the entire Karabakh region (including Nagorno Karabakh with 95% Armenians) to Azerbaijan, but left a narrow corridor between these two regions with Armenia. Nakhchivan and Nagorno Karabakh became Autonomous Regions while the Karabakh plain was absorbed into Azerbaijan, so that the Nagorno part would be separated from Armenia. In the following years those regions were purposefully populated with Azeris. The Armenians were not directly expelled, but a kind of "cultural cleansing" took place. In the schools only Azeri and Russian were taught. Most of the Armenian cultural monuments were either destroyed or buried. As the Armenians as a people could not be wiped out, at least it should happen with their culture and their language.

With the fall of the Soviet Union by the end of the eighties the conflict started again. There was violence on both sides. In February 1988 a massacre took place in the Azeri town of Sumgait, near the capital Baku, in which many Armenians died. The survivors either fled or were expelled from Azerbaijan. Following this the Azeris living in Armenia were also expelled. After both countries declared their independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the Autonomous Region Nagorno Karabakh declared its will to belong to Armenia instead of Azerbaijan. According to Soviet law it had the right to do that, but the Azeri government refused to accept, and so a brutal war started. Even though Azerbaijan was supported by Turkey and other Islamic states while the Armenians only got support from more or less well trained and armed voluteers from the Armenian diaspora, like for example the former terrorist and political activist Monte Melkonian, the Armenians gained more and more ground. They conquered the town of Shushi which is situated on a mountain above the capital Stepanakert and from which the Azeri troops kept shooting rockets and cluster bombs on Stepanakert. In 1994 a ceasefire was declared. Following this the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic was founded which has not yet been recognized by any state in the world (including Armenia, by the way), but according to observation by the OSCE is regarded as one of the best functioning democracies in the entire region - namely better than Azerbaijan. Also in other ways this region is being taken good care of - by its inhabitants as well as by the Armenian diaspora. Despite all these efforts the fate of the region is still unknown and one has to get worried about what will happen to its people. When the earthquake happened in Armenia in 1988 and thousands of people (among them many children) died the Azeris celebrated on the streets - and what can you expect from a people who does such things? One can only guess what would happen if they ever got hold of Karabakh again!

After a short stop in Shushi we travelled to Stepanakert where we stayed at the Armenia Hotel.

Inside the cathedral

Ruin of a mosque in Shushi

The war monument is being cleaned - by soldiers of course!

View on Stepanakert

The Armenia Hotel (left) directly beside the Parliament (right)

In the dining hall

Our room

View from our room

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©2009 Hermann-Peter Steinmüller & Dr. Barbara Strohmenger
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