Alex Sakalis (AS): When the Gezi Park protests started in Istanbul a lot of solidarity movements sprung up in Greece – in Athens, Thessaloniki etc. It was unusual to see such a thing in Greece - there were these banners that said, “Let’s not divide based on meaningless ethnic and religious characteristics, let’s unite based on class solidarity” and people saying “I stand with Turkey”. Were there any similar Gezi solidarity movements in Armenia?
Babken Der-Grigorian (Babken): There were few, if any, solidarity actions but there was solidarity among the activists. When Gezi Park happened in 2013 it reflected something that had happened in Armenia a year prior. In 2011 and 2012 there was a much smaller park in Armenia they had wanted to turn it into shopping or boutiques. And activists had spent 96 days sitting in, blocking trucks, and resisting police in the snow.
Buket Turkmen (Buket): This was limited to one city?
Babken: Yes. The struggle in Mashtots Park was one of the first victories of our social movements in Yerevan, and to this day holds a very important, symbolic meaning among activists. So when Gezi Park happened, there was that sort of understanding. Everyone was like, "Oh, it’s just like Mashtots Park." And there's that sort of understanding that, "Well of course they would do what they’re doing because we did what we did and we won."
Buket: Maybe the difference of Gezi Park was that it spread to a national scale. We didn’t expect this. It began with an occupation of a park, but afterwards it became something else. Activists from different ideologies united in Gezi Park and it became a movement against the government. And when it spread to other cities and regions of Turkey, it changed its character in these cities; in some cities it became a very nationalist resistence for instance. So there was a risk in Gezi Park - and I don’t know whether you had this risk in Yerevan – there was this risk of it becoming this nationalist, Kemalist resistance. That’s why there were lots of people with flags and Ataturk posters. And Kurdish people were reacting against this.
Babken: Well this is the dichotomy that always already exists in society. The risk exists that it’ll just fall into the polarisation of, ‘well if you’re against the government you must be a Kemalist.’
And that did exist in Armenia in that, when something anti-government happens there are attempts by the old, now-discredited opposition or the ultra-nationalist elements, of trying to co-opt it. What was really beautiful in the Electric Yerevan movement was that people took on this symbolism of traditional Armenian music and heritage in a non-ultra-nationalistic way. The national anthem was sung in the mornings, where the line “I did not sleep at nights” was sung extra loud, in a way emphasizing the commonality of activists on the street and the struggles from a romantic past. Traditional patriotic songs were sung at night with people passing around photocopies of lyrics to songs like “Sardarabad”. And this was done without turning ultra-nationalist. In a way it took that away from them so that those elements were no longer ultra nationalist.
