In a faraway corner of the world, in a land Armenians call Artsakh and which you may know as Karabakh (“black garden”), a church was bombed last week — and then bombed again. It was Azeri forces that attacked the Holy Savior Cathedral in the city of Shushi, amid a spiraling armed conflict between the two sides.
And not just between those two sides. Scattered among these ancient mountains are the debris of Syrian mercenaries, Israeli drones, Turkish helicopters and Russian bombs, all exploding out into an unpredictable regional war.
Yet for us Armenians, an attack like the one on the Holy Savior Cathedral isn’t just a matter of urgent current affairs. No, the swirling dust kicked up by violence against a Christian house of worship can take back even the most modern-minded Armenian more than a century — to the year 1915.
That was the year that the Ottoman Turkish government began the systematic deportation, attempted conversion and ultimate killing of a million and a half Christian Armenians.
Further details and source: New-York Post