Serge Avedikian, titled his last film Return to Sölöz. He often returned to Sölöz, that is to say the village of his grandparents, near Istanbul. He is today the witness who can explain to us this European reality, Turkey, Armenia today. These Armenians in France for so long, and who are so French and deeply Armenian, remarkable. Armenia with Azerbaijan, well, it’s a bit complicated.
franceinfo: How do you see all of this in relation to Europe? Because you are French?
Serge Avedikian: Yes, I am even Parisian. I am a francophone in love with the French language and the French culture which I learned in Yerevan, Armenia, at the first French school. So I see this situation in a way that is both very interior and at the same time quite lucid. Turkey, I’ve always loved going there because I feel a bit at home in Cela, my grandfather’s village, near the city of Bursa, south of Istanbul. And that gave this second film which is called Return to Sölözmy attachment to the mosaic culture of Turkey, is very strong.
I consider that the Greeks, the Assyro-Chaldeans, the Armenians, the Jews were very present in the history of the Ottoman Empire and remain so in a certain way, but in a somewhat underground way, because Turkish nationalism took over. Geopolitically, things happen that are not strange, but a little popular when there is destabilization, like an earthquake, if I may say so, in this region which is the South Caucasus, the east of Europe as we know. I think the cards are being dealt all the time.
But behind all that too, isn’t there, I would say on the European side, the fact of never wanting to understand that we have to dialogue, whether with one or the other?
That is to say that from the moment when Europe, the European Union in any case, plays the arbiter a little, a little what the Americans have spent their time doing, it is on the American model. In any case, they try to play the policeman a little, morals of a territory and a policy that they do not know.
We see the result today in the Balkans because everyone wanted to get involved in the 90s and today is it a disaster?
And moreover, I have the impression that the former Yugoslavia is coming back to the table today precisely because the splits that were made with Kosovo, Sarajevo, Srebrenica, after so many tragic conflicts, this is still not resolved. It is not resolved because there is nothing clear in the proposals. In a way, it’s just, we separate people, so we’re quiet. And what you say is very true, is that the dialogue is really missing. That is to say, we don’t listen, we don’t hear.
Turkey, you who are in love with Turkey, it must be said that when you are in Istanbul, how not to fall in love with it. How do you see this Turkey facing Europe in the future?
Listen, I’ve been hoping for a long time that it would be vis-à-vis the Armenian genocide, that its recognition could be a topical moment to calm things down, to start with new businesses and in a good way. term. Humanly, I mean. But it doesn’t come, because I think all of Turkey’s contemporary history has been based on post-World War I lies, and the West has something to do with that, by the way.
We let Atatürk do it, we let people split up again, we let the Christians go, brought in the Muslims from the Balkans. I mean all these scars, all these scars won’t happen overnight. It leaves traces. And today, these traces are not erased either.
And God knows we have a chance no one wants to take. Today in Strasbourg, since 1949, the Council of Europe: 47 member states, Europeans and other member states and among its member states there are Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey. And no one takes this chance on the fly, thinking we have an assembly to talk to each other, and unfortunately they talk to each other very little.
But I simply think that it is a sharing of interests that is appropriate in these assemblies, rather than an equitable sharing of what would be the history of one people or another, and of the links between these peoples. These peoples are linked by their history. These peoples speak each other’s language, these people know each other’s religion, each other’s music, and we spend our time separating them. Finally, they also spend their time separating, because it is the balance of power that counts, because these peoples, themselves and their country, are under influence.