Bright Garden Voices

Garden Chat #15 featured Giorgi Rizhvadze, a Georgian civil society activist, who joined Diego to talk about the recent protests in Georgia around the controversial "foreign agent" bill, the state of the local civil society, as well as the potential impact of new law on Armenian and Azerbaijani civil societies.

Our meeting #16 featured Uli Nasibova and Maria Zakaryan, whose family histories include the enclaves of Yukhari Askipara and Artsvashen respectively. Uli and Maria shared their family stories and their opinions about the ongoing delimitation process.

Our tenth meeting was a special meeting in honor of the late Georgi (Georgy) Vanyan. On October 15th, 2021, Georgi left us after losing a battle with Covid-19. He passed away in Georgia, the same country where some of his initiatives came to life. Since the 1990s, Georgi had advocated for peaceful relations between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, setting in motion various initiatives. He envisioned a South Caucasus where all the peoples in the region would coexist peacefully and in mutual prosperity. We were joined by Georgi’s friends and acquaintances to discuss his work and legacy: Yuri Manvelyan, Zam Abassanova, Edita Badasyan and Haji Hajiyev.

Our thirteenth Garden Chat featured Elnura Hüseynova, an Azerbaijani poet and literary historian. She joined our volunteer Narek Aleksanyan for a conversation about her new article on Sayat-Nova in Azerbaijani national memory and historiography.

Our 12th Garden Chat featured Thomas de Waal, a veteran journalist and writer specializing on South Caucasus and Eastern Europe. In the interview with our volunteer Marat Grigoryan, de Waal talked about his work and the developments in Nagorno-Karabakh and between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the fall of 2023.

Our tenth Garden Chat featured Mirkamran Huseynli, a PhD fellow at Vytautas Magnus University. In the interview with our co-director Arnold Alahverdian, Huseynli talked about Azerbaijani history textbooks and nationalism, the common notions of alterity (otherness) in the Azerbaijani society and how Armenians fit into that picture. Recorded on July 11th, 2023.

Oğul Tuna joined Andrea for a chat about his research and views regarding Armenians and Azerbaijanis, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Oğul Tuna is a PhD student at UC Irvine. Born in Adana, he studied international relations in Istanbul, Turkey, and Lille, France, before moving to California. He has researched the parallel lives of the Armenian and Azerbaijani Bolsheviks, Stepan Shahumyan and Nariman Narimanov in order to understand the interplay between nationalism and socialism in the South Caucasus between 1905 and 1925.

Our third Tət-à-Tեt #3 Raffi Chilingirian is a talented duduk player residing in Beirut, who joined Uli Nasibova in Los Angeles for a conversation about the duduk and about similar and shared musical styles, instruments, and traditions among Armenians, Azerbaijanis, and other peoples in the region. Raffi started the conversation with a masterful and touching performance of Sari Aghjik / Sarı Gəlin.

Our second Roundtable was an engaging discussion with Javid Agha, who answered the questions of our audience about society, politics, identity, history and minorities, with a few questions on Udis and Caucasian Albanians as well.

Garo Paylan is a former Turkish-Armenian MP and a founding member of HDP (People’s Democratic Party) in Turkey. He is an outspoken voice about politics, human rights and civil society in regards to Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Paylan joined us for our first Roundtable, a virtual space dedicated to audience interaction special guests.

Our second Tət-à-Tեt features Collectif Medz Bazar, a band with musicians of Armenian, Turkish, American and French descent based in Paris. With their multicultural background, their music not only expresses a lot of these different influences but also spreads a message of fraternity between peoples. In this interview, our collaborator Deniz Aslan interviewed them to ask them about their history, goals, backstages and the messages of Vodki, and what's next in store for them.

Our meeting #15, "LGBTQ+ people and the war", featured queer activists from Azerbaijan and Armenia, Aykhan Osmanli and Kelly Hovhannisyan. They discussed the pressing issues LGBTQ+ people face in both countries, the impact of the armed conflict on queer people and the possibility of cross-border solidarity.

The illustration in the photo was made by Lili Nazarov for feministpeacecollective.com

In Part 2 of the meeting between Ülviyyə Nasibova and Arnold Alahverdian, Uli first describes her experiences having taken part in Imagine Dialogue, a dialogue initiative which includes programs involving Azerbaijanis and Armenians and recounts her time studying Caucasian Albanians back in 2004, when this was not yet a popular topic among Azerbaijanis.

Our first Tәt-à-Tեt, featuring Uli Nasibova and Arnold Alahverdian, took place on October 2021.

Originally from Azerbaijan, Uli is the owner of Uli's Gelato in LA. In Part 1 of this interview, she shares her families' experiences through the first war, her daily life with Armenians in LA, and views on the conflict.

Rich Elmoyan and Javid Agha (Cavid Ağa) discussed social media and their activity on it, the pros and cons of online platforms for mass interaction, and the responsibility that comes with having a large following.

Rauf shares with our volunteer Emmanuel Chacatrjan his experiences and opinions as a refugee from Lachin about the ongoing crisis in Karabakh.

Prof. Anna Ohanyan and Shujaat Ahmadzada join us to discuss the new reality on the ground after Azerbaijan's military operation on Nagorno-Karabakh.

Sheila Paylan and Sevinj Samadzade discuss gender perspectives on the current crisis in Karabakh.

This week’s chat was with Timur Nersesov, an Armenian originally from Baku, who shared his personal experiences and thoughts of Baku as a child and on the recent conflict that erupted in Nagorno-Karabakh. He was interviewed by our collaborator Leyla Eminli.

For our 8th meeting we were joined by clinical psychologists Rovshan Suleymanov and Arthur Tonoyan to discuss the status of mental health in Armenia and Azerbaijan and how the war and the conflict between both countries has affected the local populations.  }

Bright Garden Voices (Պայծառ Պարտեզի Ձայներ - ParlaqBağ Səsləri - Голоса из Светлого Сада) is a grassroots initiative which provides a platform for constructive dialogue between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. We host online meetings and events where guests from both sides share their experiences and ideas related to the Azerbaijani and Armenian conflict and issues surrounding it. Each meeting also includes audience member participation. The meetings are recorded and made available online. Bright Garden Voices is not affiliated with nor funded by any organization or government, and does not purport to represent any state or group.  

You can also find us on: 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrightGardenVoices

Twitter: https://twitter.com/brightgardenv

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightgardenvoices

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightgardenvoices

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bright-garden-voices

Our fifth meeting "Deportations & Pogroms" had four refugees from Armenia and Azerbaijan and guests. Anna, Farid, Stanislav and Zaur shared their experiences when they and their families had to flee their homes, their opinions about the conflict and hopes for the future.  

Anna Arutyunova is a cancer researcher at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and is pursuing her graduate degree. She was born in the US to an Armenian family, originally from Baku, Azerbaijan. In order to escape the January 1990 pogroms, her family initially fled to Armenia. In 1992 her family obtained refugee status and were received by the US in a small town in Idaho.  

Farid Salimzade is a medical student in Turkey. He was born in Baku in 1995. Farid’s relatives were forced to leave Armenia in late 1987 due to pogroms. He lived in Russia and then in Baku again before moving to Turkey for his studies.  

Stanislav Sarkisov is a lawyer from California. He was born in Baku in 1985, leaving to Moscow in 1988, when tensions against Armenians started to arise. He lived with his family in Russia for a couple of years until they all moved to the US, settling down in Utah.   

Zaur SadigBayli is a lawyer and a civil administrator in France, helping with the administrative issues of people seeking refuge or moving to France to start a new life. He was born in Yerevan in 1976, and had to leave Armenia in 1988, when he was 11.5 years old. Zaur’s family fled to Azerbaijan and Zaur later moved to France to pursue his undergraduate studies, where he finally settled down and continues to reside to this day.  

Bright Garden Voices (Պայծառ Պարտեզի Ձայներ - ParlaqBağ Səsləri - Голоса из Светлого Сада) is a project that intends to provide a platform for constructive dialogue between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. We host Zoom meetings where guests from both sides share their experiences and ideas concerning all matters relating to Azerbaijani and Armenian conflicts and issues. Each meeting also hosts an audience which is able to propose questions or comments to the moderators to be voiced. The meetings are recorded and made available online. This project is the initiative of three enthusiasts for peace and dialogue who want to build bridges between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. We are neither affiliated with nor funded by any organization for this undertaking.   

You can also follow us on: 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvD-kkmxYjvxqey8siYc3tQ

Twitter: https://twitter.com/brightgardenv

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightgardenvoices

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightgardenvoices/

Our third meeting is titled "Us & Them", with Nazrin Gadimova-Akbulut and Garine Palandjian as our guests. Matters relating to identity are hotly disputed among Azerbaijanis and Armenians, often carrying various preconceptions and stereotypes. Having gone decades without contact, the new generations of Azerbaijanis and Armenians know very little about the other’s sense of national identity. Our guests discussed the main pillars that constitute the identities of both peoples, and how these identities are constructed and reconstructed.  

Nazrin Gadimova-Akbulut is a Research Fellow at the Center for  International and European Studies at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, Turkey. She wrote her doctoral thesis on the topic of correlation of national identity and regional fragmentation in the South Caucasus and the prospect for building a common identity in the region.  

Garine Palandjian is a PhD Candidate in Educational Policy and Evaluation at Arizona State University Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, USA. As a border thinker, Garine uses a decolonial lens for her dissertation research in Armenian education to explore how borders – and memories of bordering practices and experiences – redefine education and identities.  

Mentioned in this meeting was Garine Palandjian's virtual exhibition titled “Borders, Identity, and Pedagogy”, which features some of the stories, original photography, music, and sounds from her dissertation research on teachers’ memories and experiences of coexistence and crossing borders in Armenia, Turkey, and Azerbaijan. It can be accessed through this link: https://garinepalandjian.com/borders-identity-and-pedagogy/  

Also mentioned in this meeting was Mariam Avetisyan's documentary project "The Desire to Live": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVW2jH2wxhw

Bright Garden Voices (Պայծառ Պարտեզի Ձայներ - ParlaqBağ Səsləri - Голоса  из Светлого Сада) is a project that intends to provide a platform for constructive dialogue between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. We host Zoom meetings where guests from both sides share their experiences and ideas concerning all matters relating to Azerbaijani and Armenian conflicts and issues. Each meeting also hosts an audience which is able to propose questions or comments to the moderators to be voiced. The meetings are recorded and made available online. This project is the initiative of three enthusiasts for peace and dialogue who want to build bridges between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. We are neither affiliated with nor funded by any organization for this undertaking.   

Link to the YouTube episode: https://youtu.be/1bewzqrfdbg

You can also follow us on: 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/brightgardenv 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightgardenvoices 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightgardenvoices/