An anti-Dashnak said, “How was it that after 1918, when Armenians had the Turks on the run, chasing them out of Armenia, from Aparan, Sardarabat, and elsewhere, that by 1920 the Dashnaks signed the Treaty of Alexandropol, giving the Turks the right to overlook Armenia’s railway system, and to prevent Armenians from returning to Armenia? The Dashnaks never should have signed that treaty. It was the Soviets, disapproving of the Alexandropol treaty, who signed the Treaty of Kars, which wasn’t all that great but was definitely better than Alexandropol…”

Such continues the conversations being heard daily in Yerevan, all connected to the possible opening of the border with Turkey, and its positives and negatives.

“We’re not ready for it, the border opening,” a Dashnak said. “Between globalization and a government that propagandizes rabiz and pop music, culturally speaking we’d go under in a second if the border opens.”

A note about Bishop Nerses Bozabalian, who died recently after being beaten by intruders at his apartment in Holy Echmiadzin, as told by three elderly women in the courtyard at St. Gayane church, where the hogihangist took place:

“Bishop Bozabalian was going to be elected Catholicos,” one of the women said. “He had passed the first round of voting, and we all thought he was going to be elected. Then ministers and others started mixing into things, and the result was, Bozabalian wasn’t Catholicos.”

Another commented, “He was a man of the church, an honest man. It’s obvious there were those who thought he wasn’t the right man for the job, as he wouldn’t have agreed with a lot of what’s going on these days.”

Continuing, the third woman said, “Why haven’t they found the guilty? Who were the guilty? Nothing is even being announced, possible suspects, nothing. And it’s disgusting to me, that hoodlums were able to get to a bishop’s apartment right on the grounds of Holy Echmiadzin. Remember the old walls around the vank, which they decided to tear down in 2001? Do you think they would have gotten to his apartment if that old wall had been there, with guards at the gate, like in the old days? No way.”