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| Artsrun Pivazyan, Maria Yeghiazaryan and Armen Ohanyan. Photo credit: Miran Manukyan. |
Varduhi Balyan 01.03.2017
Hrant Dink Foundation's Turkey-Armenia fellowship program sponsored by the EU encourages the professionals from the neighboring country to form cross-border cooperation networks since 2014. Armen Ohanyan (Hayastantsi), Maria Yeghiazaryan and Artsrun Pivazyan, who came to neighboring Turkey for new experiences thanks to the fellowship program, shared their experiences.
While Ohanyan, Yeghiazaryan and Pivazyan talk about their exciting projects, we see that another bridge between Turkey and Armenian is being built. Armen Ohanyan started to work in Can Publishing and says, "I have come out of my ashen nest and come to your burning house" Armen Hayastantsi greets the people of Turkey; he found the answer to the question "Where is our home?", which was written in Armenian on a wall in Kurtulus, in the book titled "The Armenian Within".
"An act of defiance"
Signing his books as Armen Hayastantsi, Armen Ohanyan says that this pen name has nothing to do with nationalism: "I am a writer. I was born in Yerevan. In literary circles, I am known by my pen name Armen Hayastantsi ("Armen of Armenia"). It may sound like a nationalist name at first, but the people who know me and my writing are aware that I have nothing to do with nationalism. I can say that this pen name is like an act of defiance with a tinge of humor. 'Hayastantsi' doesn't refer to a national identity. It only indicates that I live in Armenia and I am an Armenian citizen. I might have been a Yazidi with Armenian citizenship. . . .






