Armenian Georgian Relations

[Armenian]

In recent history, Armenians and Georgians have been on opposite sides of the fence, politically and sociologically. The primary problem with Georgia is that the nation is not homogeneous, they have many distinct ethnicities living within its borders, with Turkic tribes being most prominent amongst them.

The multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-faith national reality has always been a problem for the Georgians because they have not been able to formulate a cohesive national character, one that is a representative of all peoples who live within Georgia. Moreover, unlike Armenians, Georgians tend to hate and distrust Russians for various reasons. Furthermore, Georgians have deep rooted historic animosities against Armenians as well. Armenians have always been baffled by this because Armenians have contributed greatly to Georgian culture.

The "Bagratuni" Georgian kingdom that rose to prominence within the thirteenth century A.D. by defeating numerous Turkic armies was of Armenian decent and its military leadership and troop strength was comprised of many Armenians. Armenian Christian monks evangelized Georgian tribes and, thereafter, administered their church for several centuries. Armenians founded or directly influenced the national script of Georgians and also heavily influenced their national architecture. Many prominent Georgians, including their present president, are of Armenian decent. The Armenian population of Tbilisi, during the nineteenth century outnumbered Georgians, exceeding fifty percent.

Despite the above, Georgians have portrayed hostile attitudes towards Armenians. Within the late ninetieth and early twentieth centuries, at a time when Armenians were desperately struggling against Turks for their survival, Georgians often allied themselves with Turks against Armenians. The Georgian military even attacked northern Armenia in 1918, but was defeated by Armenian troops under the leadership of Drastamat Kanayan. Even today, the volatile situation within Armenian populated region of Javakhq is a blaring example of how explosive Georgian-Armenian relations are.

Consequently, there is not much respect towards Georgian politics and society on the behalf of nationalist Armenians. What's more, with strong Turkic, American and J-e-w-ish influences within Georgia today, I do not see Georgians looking favorably toward Russians within the foreseeable future. Armenia has always been Russia's only natural ally within the southern Caucasus. Recent history can corroborate my statement.

Most Armenians, including myself, don't have any problems with the Georgian people or its national culture. Our problems with them is their constant pro-Turkish policies and their ongoing betrayal of their neighbor to their south. Moreover, my biggest disappointment in Armeno-Georgian relations is that although Armenians and Georgians have great potential in working together within the Caucasus, due to Georgia's intimate involvement with Washington, Tel Aviv, and Ankara - this potential has not been realized.

[Armenian]

Re: Armenian Georgian Relations

The Georgia's blatant aggression against Armenia in 1918 is rarely discussed within Armenian society today. Note that the aggression came at a time when Armenia was barely alive, struggling to get on its feet. They, as a nation, are a bunch of filthy cowards on par with Turks, if not worst. I look forward to the day when the Armenian Republic will number Javakhq and Batumi as its districts.

THE ARMENIAN-GEORGIAN WAR OF 41918

Armenian-Georgian relations figure hardly at all in public
discussion. Yet in their enduringly fraught character they have been
and to this day remain important to the fashioning of Armenian
nationhood and are also significant for the future stability of the
Armenian state and the region as a whole. Varik Virapian's `The
Armenian-Georgian War of 1918' (250pp, Yerevan, 2003) provides
therefore a valuable introduction to the subject starting from the war
that exploded between the two states immediately upon their formation
in that same year.

As with Armenian-Azeri and Armenian-Turkish relations, disputes over
territory were a main cause for the hostilities between Armenia and
Georgia with the latter laying claim to regions such as Lori and
Akhalkalak both of which were populated overwhelmingly by Armenians.
Georgian ambition to annex these territories flouted pre-independence
agreements made by the major nationalist forces in the Caucuses - the
Armenians, Georgians and Azerbaijanis - to mark out new state borders
in accord with demographic facts and the wishes of the majority
populations inhabiting disputed territory. Georgia had its reasons for
disregarding such agreements.

Besides seeking an expansion of territory Georgian ambitions were
driven by another equally important domestic consideration.
Historically the Georgian elite had rallied its forces against
Armenian economic supremacy in Georgia. Following independence it
seized the opportunity to destroy bastions of Armenian power,
resorting to whatever means it could. In this enterprise the Georgian
state had every interest in weakening its Armenian neighbour that it
regarded not only as a contestant over territory, but as a possible
defender of Armenian elites in Georgia and a contender in the struggle
for hegemony over the Caucuses.

In the looming war the Georgian state had a decided advantage. The
ruling Menshevik Party provided it with an experienced and well-oiled
political machine that received critical support from German
imperialism that had made of Georgia a semi-colony. Here it is perhaps
worth noting that though all post 1918 territorial disputes in the
Caucuses were generated by the clash of locally rooted nationalist
forces, these were exacerbated by European powers who acted the role
of chess players manipulating and moving their chosen regional allies
in accord with these allies' intrinsic powers but to a design of their
own ambitions.

Throughout the disputed regions and Georgia as a whole, the Georgian
authorities moved fast to secure advantageous positions. They
systematically tightened the political and military noose round
Armenian populated regions. They set deadlines for the removal of
Armenian national organisations from Tbilisi and demanded the
immediate disarmament of Armenian military contingents that were based
on what they regarded as their sovereign territory. Simultaneously
they launched a political and economic assault on all Armenians in
Georgia - with raids on Armenian properties, confiscations of goods,
unprecedented tax levies and other arbitrary demands. In Lori and
Akhalkalak Georgian forces having disarmed local Armenian units began
to plunder the population, confiscating crops, foodstuffs and
property. Thus was set the basis for the Armenian-Georgian war of
1918.

Armenia was ill equipped to wage war. Virapian's quotes from many
founders of the Armenian republic pointing to the new state's economic
and social dislocation and its political and military isolation,
surrounded as it was by two other hostile neighbours, Turkey and
Azerbaijan who also had appetite for territory populated by Armenians.
Reminiscent of Armenian politics today, Armenian disadvantage was
compounded by the refusal of Diaspora capital and its educated elite
to come to its assistance. Armenian military operations were further
hindered by lack of political and military centralisation, huge
logistical and communication problems and increasing indecision by the
Armenian government as well as by hostile Turkish and British
manipulation.

Armenian-Georgian tensions finally exploded into open war in December
of 1918. Full-scale military clashes followed attempts by Georgian
forces to repress an Armenian uprising in Lori protesting against
Georgian misrule and abuse. Taking the form of a popular peoples' war,
Armenian forces initially registered significant gains particularly
under the leadership of General Dro. Rapidly however their fortunes
dipped. Armenian positions were undermined by Georgian control of sea,
road and rail routes essential for Armenian supplies and
reinforcements. Georgia also received significant direct and indirect
support from Turkish and Azeri forces. In disputed regions where
political and military control changed hands regularly Georgia was not
averse to Turkish conquests hoping these would drive out Armenian
populations fearful of renewed Turkish slaughter. Once they retook
possession of these areas, in an indirect form of ethnic cleansing,
they proceeded to erect barriers to returning Armenian refuges thus
beginning a hoped for demographic transformation of Lori and
Akhalkalak.

The conclusion to the war and the final anti-democratic settlement
expressed accurately both the balance of forces and the predatory
ambitions of the Georgian elites. Armenia, against its will, against
the wishes of the local population and against previously agreed
principles of dividing territory according to the democratic wishes of
national majorities was forced to concede the larger part of disputed
areas.

Though Virapian's account is in many places over-detailed he
nevertheless supplies a shocking record of Georgian chauvinist assault
on the half million-strong Armenian community within its borders. This
community was treated as a criminal entity, thousands were arrested,
their property was confiscated and they were beaten, humiliated,
isolated and transformed into pariahs. So the basis was set for the
neutralisation and assimilation of Armenian communities in Georgia.
During the Soviet era this process continued by other means.

There is in Virapian's account a significant gap. He does not explain
why Georgian nationalism proved to be so decisive and why Armenian
strategy and tactics so prevaricating, based on wishful thinking and
expectations of British or other European assistance. Independence for
the Georgian nationalists presented them with the political power with
which to take on and defeat their main internal competitor, the
Armenian economic class. So brimming with confidence they set out to
secure for themselves the lion's share of Caucasian territory that
would give them the best geo-political and economic foundations for
their state. In contrast, the Armenian elites lacked all these
qualities. They had in fact opposed the formation of an independent
Armenian state. They preferred instead a confederation of Caucasian
nations that would secure them rights to function freely throughout
the Caucuses and particularly in Tibilisi and Baku that for them were
pastures more profitable than Yerevan. Independence for the Armenian
elite was a set back, a hoped for temporary inconvenience to be put
right by imperialism. So the Armenian elite floundered while vainly
waiting for imperialist charity.

Virabian's book also prompts thought about another important problem
of history that today receives little or no attention. In its own way
the experience of the Armenian-Georgian war demands consideration of
received opinion that the individual nation state is necessarily the
most appropriate form for national freedom. In the Caucasus
nation-state formation led to repeated wars, to the persistence and
even aggravation of wartime miseries, illness, hunger, starvation and
to a further dislocation of local economic life. During the Soviet era
dominant elites hoping to build homogenous nation-states resorted to
quiet ethnic cleansing, national repressions, cultural assimilation
and isolation of `foreign communities' that had in fact inhabited the
region for centuries. The seeds were sown for yet more hatred and yet
more war. In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union new elites
exploited old hatreds to wage war for new privileges, war in which
once more the common people suffered whilst a tiny minority built
mansions. Whether there are alternatives more amenable to harmonious,
democratic inter-national coexistence requires further consideration,
and here too the Armenian experience offers a rich legacy.

Source: http://groong.usc.edu/tcc/tcc-20060508.html

[Armenian]

Re: Armenian Georgian Relations

Georgia President Eduard Shevardnadze, left, congratulates Turkish President Suleyman Demirel after presenting him with the Georgian order of Golden Fleece in Tbilisi, on Friday. Suleyman Demirel arrived in Georgia on Friday for two days of meetings with his Georgia counterpart in a summit expected to focus on Russia's war in Chechnya and a key oil pipeline that would bypass Russia. Sunday, January 16, 2000, AP/PTI

Georgian Ex-President Says Armenia Should Respect Azerbaijan

Eduard Shevarnadze, the Georgian Ex-President, who worked together with Azerbaijan’s All-Nation Leader heydar Aliyev for many years, urges Armenia to respect Azerbaijan, since it is the most powerful state in South Caucasus, Trend reports referring to the National AzTV Channel. According to Mr. Shevarnadze, just owing to the political will of Heydar Aliyev, Azerbaijan has taken the leading position in the region. “ Armenia should respect Azerbaijan, otherwise it may lost its independence. I think that Armenians will realize the necessity to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The delay in this issue may represent even more heavy results than the present-day ones, as Azerbaijan has left behind both Armenia and Georgia by economic, military and defence, and other indicators,” stated Mr. Shevranadze. “Heydar Aliyev was a unique person. He founded the independent state on an empty place. The existing Azerbaijani leader is a wise man too. Heydar Aliyev did not make a mistake when he chose him as his successor,” concluded the Georgian Ex-President.

Link: http://news.trendaz.com/cgi-bin/read...923956&lang=EN

[Armenian]

Re: Armenian Georgian Relations

Georgia for Armenians?

The word “multinational” is often applied to Georgia, where the number of different nationalities reaches 120 and makes up 18 percent of Georgia’s 5,450,000 population. But trends show that it is becoming more homogeneous; in 1989, 32 percent of the population was non-Georgian. Although their numbers are in decline, Armenians are Georgia’s largest minority, at 8.1 percent. (Russians make 6.3 percent; Azeris, 5.7. Other groups include xxxs and Greeks. Source: World Fact Book.) Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania’s mother is Armenian and many Armenians claim that the Georgian president is in fact Armenian, from a family that had been “Sahakian”, but adopted the “shvili” suffix like many other immigrants. (Saakashvili has not publicly commented on the claim.).

According to official data there are 248,929 Armenians in Georgia. Armenians, however, say that the number reaches 400,000 and that 160,000 live in Javakhk with 120,000 Armenians in Tbilisi. About 50-60,000 are said to live in Abkhazia. Once strong and influential, today Armenians feel unsure about their future in Georgia. In 1991 Zviad Gamsakhurdia, the first president of independent Georgia, sparked separatism toward national minorities in the republic with his “hosts and guests” doctrine. Posters in the country hailed “Georgia for Georgians.” Gamsakhurdia, whose policy mainly concentrated on cleansing the country from “non-Georgians”, was ousted in 1993.

Gamsakhurdia’s presidential term, though short, was significant for the Armenian community. Many left during the period, when they felt the sting of ethnic prejudice and its effect on chances to thrive in a society predisposed against outsiders. More than a decade later, the legacy of discrimination still influences Armenian life in Georgia. The biggest concern Armenians have in Georgia is assimilation. They say the best chance to have success in Georgia is to change the Armenian surname suffix to “shvili” or “dze.” An Armenian student of the State University in Tbilisi says she was told she should change her name before applying for her PhD diploma.

“The truth is that even after succeeding in getting a PhD, there is no chance to get a well-paying job with an Armenian name,” the student says. If Armenians now feel like second-class citizens, it has not always been so. According to an 1821 census, Armenians far outnumbered Georgians in the capital at that time. In Tbilisi, Armenians will show many architectural pearls constructed by prominent Armenian architects of the last centuries. Mansions built by influential Armenians of long ago are among the most attractive buildings in Tbilisi. In the 18th and 19th centuries, rich Armenian merchants, xxxelers and oil industrialists invested heavily in business and helped build cultural centers and schools. Today in “Old Tbilisi”, the Caravanserais, the popular trade centers of the 18th and 19th centuries owned by Armenians are being renovated – turned into modern salons, boutiques, restaurants. And the gentrification is also removing traces of the district’s Armenian past, as signs that once said “Bari Galust” (welcome) are being covered over by new, non-ethnic, facades.

[...]

Source: http://www.agbu.org/agbunews/display.asp?A_ID=154

[Armenian]

Re: Armenian Georgian Relations

Armenian Lobby: its Academia and Georgia

Written by Vasili Rukhadze, Tuesday, 29 May 2007

One can write an extensive book about the influence and power of the Armenian lobby in the West and, for that matter, in the world. It is made up of many well established, well connected and very rich ethnic Armenians coming out of a large diaspora, or Spyruk, (roughly 5-6 million) spread throughout the United States, Canada, Russia, France, Great Britain and other European countries. In many cases, these expatriates have lived abroad for generations. Below are a couple recent examples of the lobby’s strength. One example was the Armenian National Committee of America pressuring the US House of Representatives to adopt an amendment in June 2006. The amendment would block US aid to finance the South Caucasus Railway (Baku-Tbilisi-Akhalkalaki-Kars), bypassing Armenia. In October 2006, the US Senate adopted a similar resolution, which forced President Bush to sign, in December 2006, the Export-Import Bank Reauthorization Act. The act banned the US Ex-Im (Export-Import) Bank from financing the construction of the Baku-Akhalkalaki-Kars railway.

Another example, in October 2006, occurred when the lower chamber of the French parliament adopted a controversial bill that made a crime to deny that Turks committed genocide against Armenians during World War I in 1915. This law also was pressured by Armenian lobby in France. The goals of the lobby are clear and widely known: to defend the interests of the Armenian state in the Western world and to prepare ground and eventually create a “Historic, Greater Armenia” stretching from Black Sea to Caspian Sea in Caucasus at the expense of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. To this end, a large segment of Armenian academia (both abroad and in Armenia) plays a vital role. It actively influences foreign academia and wider masses about the legacy of Armenian people, its culture and history. It tries to prove the “wretchedness” and “shallowness “of those peoples and cultures in the Caucasus which are perceived as main obstacles on the way of a “Greater Armenia”. This article is just about this issue and it would have never been written if not for the ever-increasing waves of “academic” falsehoods, insults and humiliations packaged as “academic scholarship” by their authors. It is not about one single article, book or a writer. It is about a wider phenomenon, becoming more and more dangerous not only for “victim” cultures and peoples, but for Armenians themselves.

These “academic works” flood scientific conference halls, magazines, newspapers, multitude of websites and bookstores, in USA, Canada, Europe, and Russia. All these publications are of very high polygraphic quality apparently sponsored by rich Armenian diaspora organizations. They quickly and easily find wide audiences, touching spheres as varied as history, geopolitics, ethnography, archeology, linguistics, architecture, different areas of art. Their content varies from being bias to pure absurdity, distorting facts to the point of rewriting whole chapters of history.

In this whole campaign Georgia has been exceptionally heavily targeted by multiple Armenian “scholars”.

It is beyond the scope of this article to mention particular names of hostile Armenian academic works and their authors (it would take multitude of pages anyway). It is not even necessary, because anyone who wishes can check any Armenian authored article, essay, presentation, book or just website about Georgia, published in many foreign languages-they all have one same underlining content: they belittle Georgia, Georgian people, culture and history in order to glorify Armenian one. In these various “works” ancient Georgian language is declared as a branch of Armenian language, actually created by old Armenian scholars. Unique Georgian architectural monuments: churches, castles, medieval palaces, still standing in Georgia, are systematically described as the heritage of Armenian culture (some pathologically radical groups go as far as to secretly remove original stones with Georgian scripts on them from ancient Georgian temples and change them with Armenian ones, to prove buildings’ “authenticity” as Armenian). Multiple samples of historical Georgian music, songs, temple frescos, clothing, dishes, arms, types of martial arts and many others are constantly and unquestionably listed as the products of Armenian culture in the works of various Armenian scholars. Great Georgian kings, statesmen, writers, musicians, poets and philosophers are repeatedly and wrongly announced as ethnic Armenians, in order to glorify the potential of Armenian people while belittling that of Georgian people’s.

All above mentioned efforts of Armenian academia would sound very funny, especially when representatives of other cultures in France, Greece, Ukraine, Egypt and many others complain that their most notable historic figures: statesmen, thinkers, artists are also being declared as ethnic Armenians. But all these are well beyond being merely funny because their works deliver a message of poisonous hatred portraying Georgians as culturally and intellectually inferiors to Armenians. Georgian ethnos continually is being described as an oppressor nation who settled on today’s Georgian lands later than Armenians and other ethnic groups and still is oppressing local population. In their works Georgia is often described as an artificial conglomerate, put together by Georgian “occupiers”. These works are so many that any foreign scholar who seeks to study historical (and modern) Caucasus and Georgia in particular, can’t avoid encountering with these absurd, bias materials. Needless to say, a novice researcher feels immediate contempt against, “oppressor” Georgians, “stealing” cultural heritage and history from Armenian people.

Armenian academia sees Georgia’s Armenian populated region Javakheti as potentially undivided part of a “Greater Armenia”. This latter should include some other parts of Georgia as well, they say, along with Georgian capital Tbilisi that they consider as historically Armenian city (no matter that ethnic Armenians barely make up 4% of the city’s total population). But it is naďve to think that all this academic bias, steadily turning into mass hatred, is only about Javakheti or any other piece of land. It more resembles very well known ethnic hatred, when group of people or whole nation is hated for being just who they are. This overwhelming and unexplainable hatred against particular Georgians or whole Georgian people is spilling over from various books, articles, top or second ranking websites, from ordinary Armenians or academicians, expressing their feelings nakedly or thinly veiled in the dirty rag of “academic scholarship”.

Those few who dared to pick up a pen to denounce all these were insulted, threatened and abused by various secretive and never disclosed affiliates.

It is not entirely clear why Georgia and Georgians deserved such hatred. In its long and turbulent history Georgia many times saved the very existence of Armenian people, helping them with military power or opening its doors to tens of thousands of Armenians to settle within Georgia, when their lives were threatened by mighty and vicious empires in the South. The pages of the history are filled with the fascinating examples of friendship between these two peoples, working and fighting together for survival against common enemies. Did this feeling entirely disappear? Armenian academia decided that it is so.

Unfortunately, Georgian academia has been very passive in responding to these “academic attacks”. How much longer can Georgian academia afford to be idle? It is vital to answer this question because Georgians run a risk that in about 20-30 years they will lose the theoretical-academic ground to claim their Georgian heritage and Georgian culture. The pace of Armenian “academic’ onslaught is very fast. Georgian heritage intensively is being renamed. Georgians do not need to answer the bias with bias, lies with lies and hatred with hatred, but they definitely need to start making the world hear their voice about their academic truth.

Source: http://www.abkhazia.com/content/view/118/2/

[Armenian]

Re: Armenian Georgian Relations

Only 4% of Georgians consider Armenia as friendly state

According to the gallup poll in Georgia carried out by “Georgian Consulting Group” organization, Azerbaijan and Ukraine occupy the first places among friends of Georgia.

The list of friendly countries is the following:

1-2. Azerbaijan and Ukraine with 12% each.
3-4. The United States and Estonia with 10% each.
5. Turkey –8%.
6. Germany –6%.
7. Armenia –4%.
8-9. Poland, Kazakhstan with 3% each.
10. Turkmenistan –2%.

(Note: the four percent who had a "friendly" view towards Armenians were most probably Georgians of Armenian decent)

All other countries totally gathered 20 percent of votes of respondents. Totally 50 states were named among friendly nations for Georgia. Only 1 percent of those surveyed considered Russia as a friendly state. 56 percent of respondents placed Russia in the list of unkind countries towards Georgia and 31 percent stated that Georgia does not have enemy-states at all. 13 percent of respondents abstained from giving an answer. Totally 1123 citizens participated in the poll, Gruzia-Online reports.

Source: http://www.panarmenian.net/news/eng/?nid=22466

[Կարմիր Բ]

Re: Armenian Georgian Relations

Georgia has so many autonomous regions. We must find a way towards the Black sea through their territoy, but it is too hard, not because we can't win militarily, but because of the USA factor and the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline which they would rigorously defend. But if we find a way through the Black Sea, Armenia's geopolitical imporance will rise dramatically. We will be able to export Iranian oil towards Europe and we will get rid of our heavy reliance on Russia.

[Ari]

Re: Armenian Georgian Relations

how many armenians live in georgia and they hate us so much

i never knew this if anything we should be friends cos where both orthodox

[skhara]

Re: Armenian Georgian Relations

That article is so full of sh*t.

[Selpak]

Re: Armenian Georgian Relations

how many armenians live in georgia and they hate us so much

Answer is in Turkey.