On a sunny October weekend in Armenia’s capital of Yerevan, the streets are crammed full of people. Weaving snakes of locals and backpacked tourists make their way through the smiling crowds. It’s not an unusual sight. Armenians have spent a lot of time on the streets this year.
This spring a month of anti-government demonstrations culminated in a revolution as opposition leader Nikol Pashinyatn was elected Prime Minister – ending two decades of Republican Party rule. The roads were packed back then too. Students, businessmen, taxi drivers, mothers, pensioners – all were demanding change.
And again, just three weeks ago, a crowd of more than 50,000 surrounded the National Assembly within minutes of a call-to-protest from Pashinyan, who accused opposition parties of conspiring a counterrevolution.
The atmosphere is different this weekend, however. The furious energy has turned celebratory as Yerevan marks its 2800th birthday. Young children perform traditional music as pensioners observe from the city’s copious benches. A crowd of a few thousand gather in front of one of the several pop-up stages across the city. On Northern Avenue – Yerevan’s flagship shopping street which hosts designer outlets including Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger – a group of youngsters form a small circle to start their own impromptu party to the beat of their friend’s drum.
Mustached men in casual dress stamp their feet next to a French man on a unicycle. Teenage girls giggle as they paint the faces of locals and tourists. The tri-colored flag is ubiquitous. No one is safe from the red, orange, and blue on this day.
One of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited cities, Yerevan was founded as Erebuni in 782BC.
Upon its foundation, it was given its own carved birth certificate by King Argishti I of Urartu who wrote “I built this inaccessible fortress and named it Erebuni for the power of Biaina country and to the horror of enemy countries. The land was deserted, there was nothing built. I did powerful feats here, and 6,600 soldiers were resettled from Khale and Tsupane countries here by me.”
2800 years later and the powerful feats are still happening. Certainly in the case of Ashot Khanoyan who celebrates the city’s anniversary by using his teeth to pull twelve vehicles 150 meters through the closed-off streets. It’s not quite as good as a few years ago, the 32-year-old says afterward as he smokes a cigarette. In 2005, he pulled a 440-ton train and claims to have never visited the dentist.
A city of 1.2 million, the Yerevan of 2018 boasts dozens of water fountains, streets lined with trees, and an excess of cafe and restaurant options.
There is also a different atmosphere than during city-wide celebrations of previous years, says Anahit Sahakyan, owner of popular craft cafe Ilik. “I always hated the big events here, the concerts or New Year,” she says. “They were so artificial. It was unbearable, you couldn’t feel any love, the music was terrible, the whole mood of the people was just apathy.”
“But today I took my son and we walked around the city. It was peaceful, there were smiles. I can see belief in people’s eyes, I didn’t feel the apathy of before.”
She puts this down to the empowerment many Armenians have felt since their successful revolution, which came to a head after an attempted power-grab by the former President, Serzh Sargsyan.
And this positivity around a new Armenia isn’t limited to just the locals. Armenians – who have been dispersed across the globe since being driven out of the Ottoman Empire in 1915 – are regularly repatriating to their ancestral homeland from the likes of Syria, Iran, the United States, Lebanon, France, and Russia.
Vartan Marashlyan, director of Repat Armenia – an NGO set up six years ago to assist those returning – says the number of Armenians inquiring about repatriation since the spring has increased by around 100%.
“It’s been a substantial increase in numbers. There are still a lot of issues and economic restraints, but the mood has definitely changed,” he says. “There are positive expectations across society and before there had been a pretty gloomy mood for a couple of decades.”
Most repatriates contribute to the thriving restaurant and cafe culture across Yerevan, while others bring ideas to the IT, agriculture, and education sectors.
“Due to the historical reasons Armenia is a pretty mono-cultural country and the repatriates, starting in the 1920s, they actually brought a lot of flavor to the country,” Marashlyan adds.
“Today repatriates become pioneers because they come in with new ideas, new concepts, they better understand how the world outside work. They’re playing a very important role in the new Armenia.”
Thus this city, in its 2800th year, is becoming a society of merged cultures, united by heritage and bolstered by the discovery that substantial change can actually be achieved by the people.
With that knowledge running through the veins of almost every Yerevan resident, it is hard to disagree with the words of United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres who, in September, called Armenia one of the “winds of hope” in a time of global chaos and confusion.
