The Inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List is an Additional Guarantee for Ani

Siranush Ghazanchyan

 

Ani, the medieval Armenian capital, has been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The decision was made at the 40th session of the World Heritage Committee in Turkey.

“What’s important for Armenia is that the site’s inclusion in the list provides certain guarantees for its preservation,” Vahram Kazhoyan, Secretary General of Armenian National Commission for UNESCO, told reporters in Yerevan on July 20, 2016. He said that this becomes more important given the strained relations between Armenia and Turkey.

The Tigran Honents Church of Ani Becomes "Georgian Chalcedonian"

The National Park-Museum of Sculpture of Gyumri expressed concern over the Tigran Honents Church of Ani and stated that the policy of Turkey about the falsification of historical facts and incomplete reconstruction of the mentioned church thrusts a wedge into the culture and friendship of neighboring countries. In order to combat the distortion of history, a petition was started at the website change.org.

Ani Ruins Reveal Hidden Secrets from Below

The underground secrets of the historic Ani ruins, an ancient, 5,000-year-old Armenian city located on the Turkish-Armenian border in the eastern province of Kars, have been revealed. (*)
While speaking at the recent “International Ani-Kars Symposium,” history researcher Sezai Yazıcı said secret water channels, undiscovered monk cells, meditation rooms, huge corridors, intricate tunnels, unbelievable traps and corners that make one lose their sense of direction were just some of the unknown underground structures located at the ancient site.
Yazıcı said a number of experts, academics and researchers attended the Kars symposium, which was held at Kars’ Kafkas University from August 14 to 16. At the symposium, Yazıcı’s presentation, entitled “Underground Secrets of Ani,” drew a lot of attention since no previous publications on the underground structures had been mentioned before.

The Armenian Obsession with Churches

Raffi Bedrossyan

 



When someone visits Armenia for the first time, the tour itinerary invariably includes a multitude of churches and monasteries. Modern Armenia is the land of churches.

Historic Armenia in Anatolia was also a land of churches, with nearly 4000 churches and monasteries. The Van Lake region alone had over 300 churches. The ancient City of Ani, dubbed the City of 1001 Churches, contained 40 churches.

We are proud of our churches, awed at their architectural beauty and intricate construction techniques, amazed at their settings perched on inaccessible mountaintops.

An Urgent Problem Whose Urgency is Fading

Edmond Y. Azadian

 

An A.R.F. political thinker named E. Agnouni has encapsulated the Armenian people’s propensity to emigrate away from their native land by a perfectly rhyming sentence in Armenian: «Հայը ամէն տեղ է փնտռում ապաստան, բացի այն տեղից որը կոչւում է Հայաստան» (“Hayeh Amen tegh eh penderoom apastan, batsi ayn teghits voreh kochvoom eh Hayastan,” The Armenian is seeking a haven in all places but the place called Armenia.)

Hidden Truths or Lies

Raffi Bedrosyan

 

In a matter of years beginning in 1915, an entire people was wiped out from its homeland of several thousand years. But how can you wipe out the remnants—its creations, assets, traces, its very existence—from the collective memory of those who remained in that country, or, for that matter, from the collective memory of the rest of the world? This has been an immense challenge for successive Turkish governments, a mission that was mostly successful for almost four generations. And yet, here and there the lies or the hidden truths kept coming out with increasing frequency, especially in recent years.

The Last Temptation of Ani: Backdrop for Models

The online Armenian independent journal Ianyan (www.ianyanmag.com) has featured an article about a curious yet highly controversial new use of the famous ruins of Ani in Western Armenia (currently Eastern Turkey), very close to the border with the Republic of Armenia. While posing among the ruins could be tolerable, posing inside a church becomes simply another chapter in the endless saga of desacralization whose penultimate chapter was written a few months ago. As the readers may recall, days after the Armenian mass at the restored church of Aghtamar on the lake Van (September 2010), a group of Turkish right-wing nationalists had not better idea than having a Muslim prayer around the ruins of Ani. Needless to say that, either for a Muslim prayer or for a photo spread in Ani, some kind of government permit must be secured first.