ANA Blog

Just before bedtime each night, as I watch my twin babies read their first-grade Armenian homework, I am regularly elevated to an extraordinary place of purewonder. With the recitation of each new paragraph, I am summarily entranced with the poetic nuance and rhythmic symmetry of their strange words. I also experience this same level of intoxicating suspension each time I watch my kids dance with their fast little feetin perfect timing to the Armenian wedding musicthat fills the banquet hall.

I grew up in Ohio, Virginia and North Carolina, the son of a Presbyterian statesman just like Woodrow Wilson’s father who once served as stated clerk of the Southern Presbyterian Church. In all three of these political swing-states most people are hard working and intelligent, but they know very little about Armenia or the rich Armenian traditions within which my children are being raised. To my Odar friends, the Armenian world is exotic and strange. “Wow, that’s almost like poetry!” my good friend Chris Broaddrick exclaimed the first time he heard the Armenian language spoken on a YouTube video. Chris was shocked to learn that what he had heard was not “poetry” but, political commentary posted on the Armenian news channel CivilNet.

Witnessing my friend’s intellectual wonder and authentic response to his first encounter with the Armenian language is not an isolated event in my experience bridging the gap between these two worlds that my Armenian American children inhabit. Repeatedly, each new time that I introduce my friends and family of origin to the beauty and wonder of the Armenian experience I get the same reaction.

I do not mean to suggest, however, that the Armenian world I have adopted is all sunshine, rainbows and candy. On the contrary, it is a very complex,cross-cultural space filled with contradictions and inner-family, sectarian conflicts just like those found in any other ethnic minority community. But, the benefits and beauty of the uniquely historical Armenian experience far outweigh the negativities and outright lies that some Armenian haters seem to relish in when attacking Armenians, in general, to gain political points back home.

If anything, the Armenian People—especially the great mass of those most recently dispersed throughout the globe since independence in 1991—are innocent to the crafty and nefarious political operations and professional PR techniques employed by their enemies. And for me, this is the most demanding part of embracing the Armenian cause: how to find the appropriate words in English to train and to educate brilliant Armenian minds that, are, for the first time inspired and ready toemploy sophisticated political means to achieve their heartfelt objectives.

After witnessing the media blackout and the deceptively blind eye the diplomatic world turned to the Armenian people of Artsakh in the 2020 war of aggression by Turkey and Azerbaijan, I had to ask myself the simple question: “What will it take to prevent any and all future challenges to the eternal welfare of Armenia and Artsakh?”

After watching my beloved, bi-lingual children struggling to master the functional articulation and manifold grammatical distinctions of two, structurally different languages simultaneously, I am encouraged by the probability that a new generation of Armenian Spyurk is already acquiring the sophistication and mastery of western PR and political processes that will position them to prevent regional, geopolitical challenges to Armenia and Artsakh in the future.

The key, of course, is to harness the unity and resolve most recently achievedby the Armenian Diaspora in RESPONSE to the 2020 war of Turkish aggression, and to transform it into sophisticated measures,a plan and a single message that will PREVENT all future challenges to the Armenian People.