YES, I’M A VIRUS FOR ARMENIANS
Nursun Erel

The New Anatolian, Turkey
Dec 13 2006

>From reading the last few days of The New Anatolian, you may have
noticed that I was recently in Yerevan.

So what kind of impressions did I get from my 10-day visit to our
neighbor?

Let me honestly share a few with you.

An Armenian non-governmental group, the Caucasus Center, invited me
there; their aim for this project was discussing stereotypes in both
societies. The British Embassy in Yerevan was among the supporters
of the project.

So how did it go?

Well, it was perfect for proving the existence of certain stereotypes
in Armenia (also in Turkey I believe), so it really reached its goal.

One example came on the second day of my program in Yerevan. I was
supposed to meet with the journalism school students at Yerevan State
University. But the long-planned meeting was surprisingly cancelled
at the last moment by the university rector, Aram Simonyan. Sources
told me that the rector gave a strange reason for the cancellation:
"The Turkish journalist could spread some virus to the students."

But somehow the students of the Yerevan State University didn’t share
their rector’s view, so they came to my hotel. We had a lot to say to
each other, but while we were talking, all of a sudden they started
to get strange telephone calls, and one by one they had to leave,
apologizing and saying, "We have a problem at the university." Later
I was told that the strange calls came from their professors asking
them to leave the meeting and return to the university.

But if I could have talked to them more on that day, in fact I’d have
been critical of the Turkish press. I would have given some examples of
stereotypes trafficked in even by well-known columnists. How they make
errors, and how they apologized later. I’d tell them about my peculiar
experience investigating Ataturk’s old speeches in the archives of
the Turkish Parliament too.

I can hear you asking, "Why don’t you tell those stories here?"

No.

First, because I don’t want to infect your beautiful minds with my
infectious opinions, with a virus called "tactlessness."

Secondly, I’m sorry that right now I’m very preoccupied desperately
struggling to correct how my words were twisted by an Armenian weekly
called Pan Armenian.

And thirdly, isn’t it easier to have such prejudices towards each
other?

So we don’t have to remove any of our stereotypes.

Let’s keep them in our minds.

I promise that I also won’t say anything to my Turkish friends about
Orhan Pamuk’s image in Armenia, that none of his books has been
translated into Armenian. I won’t tell them that during my first
three days in Yerevan, no one so much as mentioned the name of Pamuk,
our recent Nobel winner. So let the Turks believe that he’s a hero in
Armenia because of his controversial remarks words about the Armenian
"genocide."

Yup, it’s very easy to live like a virus, with all our stereotypes,
don’t you agree?