#SaveKessab, #Save Aleppo, and Kim Kardashian: Syria’s Rashomon Effect

Elyse Semerdjian



A historic Christian Armenian town situated just a mile from the Turkish border in northwest Syria, Kessab is now among the war’s many casualties. On the morning of 21 March, the town was seized by opposition fighters from three Islamic militant groups: Jabhat al-Nusra, Sham al-Islam, and Ansar al-Sham. For Armenians around the world, the event conjured memories of past traumas as one of two remaining Armenian areas that survived the Armenian Genocide of 1915 was depopulated. The last remaining Armenian village in Turkey, Vakıflı, located across the border, is now a safe haven for some of Kessab’s former residents. Three weeks after the capture of Kessab, the event continues to take on a life of its own as various factions in the conflict seek to instrumentalize the tragedy to construct their own versions of reality, a phenomenon that could be called Syria’s Rashomon effect.

"Let's say that Adam and Eve were Armenian too. So what?"

H.A. Translated by Vartan Matiossian   How do we present ourselves to the world when whatever or whoever we want to be recognized for is laying in the past or belongs to another culture? Do we have an "Armenian brand"? What phenomenon does make Armenia presentable to the world today? On September 15, 2011, Vazrik Bazil, German-Armenian expert in public relations and doctor in philosophy, answered to these questions in a public discussion in Yerevan. "Armenians appear to the world today not as creators, but as a nation that uses what has been created by other and, at the same time, has taken the way of 'self-museification,''' he said. According to Bazil, Armenians are users, but not creators, since "we use what others have created, but where is our creation that makes a difference? It does not mean that the old goes to waste and the new becomes sacred. We should be able to present the old in a new approach, a new ideology. For example, it is possible to present the odes of Gregory of Narek and his Book of Tragedy through jazz."