It has been seven years since the co-founder of the Imagine Center for Conflict Transmission Phil Gamaghelyan, together with his colleagues, brings together different groups of people from Armenian and Azerbaijani societies to encourage them to talk to each other, to listen and to understand, to fill the gap in mutual understanding that exists between the two societies. This work is very hard indeed, sometimes even unrewarding. We started our interview with that very question:
-Mr. Gamaghelyan, while trying to find avenues of understanding between the two societies, you often have to deal not only with the obstacle of being misunderstood, but also with the bitter reality: another soldier shot at the border, continuous attempts to distort history, cruel and inhuman attitude towards the captives, etc. Don’t you get discouraged from such incidents? How do you find willpower to continue dialogues?
-I will bring an example from a different context, from Syria, where we’ve also done some work (Imagine also organizes dialogue programs for conflicting sides in Syria, as well as works in Armenian-Turkish, Georgian- Ossetian contexts- M.B.). One of our colleagues, an Alawi living not far from Latakia, has recently been displaced and had to leave the country to seek safety. Two other colleagues, in this case from the opposition, were imprisoned by the regime. And regarding Kessab… well, you know better than I do what is happening there. Of course we get discouraged. Yet at the same, those same incidents make us more devoted. Peacebuilding stops being simply a job: it becomes a call of duty to our colleagues, their families.
My approach to the Armenian-Azerbaijani relations is similar. I am hoping to see some progress on the political level: de-escalation at the front line, decrease in hatred and propaganda. When we see this progress, we will consider a major part of our mission to be accomplished. At the same time, as there is escalation, as we have all the incidents you have listed, I see an even stronger need to listen, to understand and to work towards finding a common ground. In other words, I see an even greater need in the work of conflict resolution professionals particularly at times when tensions are high and the situation is disheartening.
– What made you initiate Imagine and when? How did you decide to start working on conflicts?
– It was in 2005, when I was working on my MA degree in Boston. There, during any conference on Armenian or Turkish themes, irrespective of the topic, students from the two sides would come and start shouting at each other. The same people would come repeatedly and make the exact same arguments over and over.
At the time I was working on my thesis in the field of conflict resolution and running some Arab-Israeli, Afghani and other dialogue projects, and I decided to pair up with one Turkish student to organize an Armenian-Turkish dialogue to deal with this unpleasant atmosphere. At first we decided not to talk about history at all, as we did not know how to. The group included PhD and masters students from a number of Boston area universities, including Harvard and others. The group was big initially, but grew smaller as the time progressed: we started with 30 people and ended with 15-20.
For a year, we would meet once a week for a dialogue, and the topics of the conversation would develop during the dialogue itself. And while we decided not to touch history during the meeting, the topic would continuously come up anyways. At some point of the dialogue, as we had already become friends with each other, we understood that we can’t avoid history and need to discuss it in order to move forward. But as we didn’t have a methodology to discuss history, once we opened the topic we started fighting. The “fight” lasted several months, until we managed to resolve this conflict for ourselves.
How did that happen?
On April 23, one of the Turkish participants called me and asked what our plans were for the following day, and I answered that we were going to the Armenian church. The next day when we went to the church, we saw the Turkish participants waiting there and we all entered the commemoration ceremony together. An American-Armenian speaker was delivering a speech, during which he didn’t talk much about the Armenian Genocide, and was mostly preoccupied with denigrating Turks. Towards the end of the speech, he said something like this: “recently I visited that awful country, and on my way from the airport to the hotel I saw two kinds of buildings: some had large windows and others had small windows. It was clear for me immediately that the ones with large windows belonged to Armenians, as they are open to the light and the world as the Armenian souls are; yet the ones with the small windows always belonged to Turks, as they are dark and closed to the world, like Turkish souls”. At this time the Armenian participants of our group got up and left the ceremony and we all went home. The Turkish participants had done their part, they participated in the commemoration; moreover, most in that group were using the word Genocide by that time. This day changed the attitude of the Armenian participants as well: we thought, what if talking to us someone included a point in their argument about “small and dark Armenia souls”, what could they expect from us? We understood that when the argument is pushed forward in such an aggressive manner, the reaction to it will be aggressive as well.
Later, we decided to analyze retrospectively which steps in our dialogue allowed us to discuss history constructively. This analysis helped us design a methodology that we currently use, which allows us to achieve in a matter of a day and a half something that our first group could only reach after a year of dialogue. If I was to formulate it in one sentence, I would say: we should not be trying to persuade each other about who is right and who is wrong; instead we should focus on understanding each other’s context and perspectives. We do not have to agree with each other’s opinions, as understanding itself makes conciliation and dialogue possible.
– So everything started with the Armenian-Turkish dialogue?
Yes. Later I focused my Ph.D research on the questions of dialogue design; some of my colleagues also explored these topics. We started with Turkish-Armenian dialogue, yet starting from 2007 we started to apply the model to Armenian-Azerbaijani dialogues also. The methodology helped us to address history, which is important as many dynamics in the conflict are based on it. In order to give context to the present day conflict, it is important to understand how we perceive history, and how is history perceived by the other side, what is prioritized in each side’s narrative. Only after discussing history, in our dialogue, we move to the discussion of the present day situation.
When initiating the Armenian-Azerbaijani dialogue, weren’t you concerned that this topic was still too hot and in a way very different? To what extent was it worth tackling history?
– Of course, we were concerned. In 2006, we attempted to hold our first dialogue, but it did not work. In 2007, during our first dialogue, we had many doubts regarding the methodology, so we decided not to discuss history. I need to mention here that for the first three years, we were holding dialogues mainly for Armenian and Azerbaijani “Muskie” fellows who were studying in the US. The dialogue participants were selected from among those who had finished their studies and volunteered to stay an extra week in the US to participate in the dialogue. 7 to 8 people from each side would participate.
Very soon, my Azerbaijani colleague and I agreed that history was very important, and even though we did not discuss it during the formal dialogue sessions, it was discussed during the dinners and hang outs; so we saw that addressing history could not be avoided and it was better to discuss it openly and with the help of our methodology.
– Do you change your approach based on the group you are working with? As far as I know the “Imagine Dialogues” are organized for different groups, i.e. historians, journalists, youth…
– Yes, of course, we change the approach based on the group. While working with historians we have one approach, with the youth another, and so on.
– It is already the 7th year that you are running these dialogues and there were many groups; do you see any transformation? Has anything changed in the understanding of the people?
– Many things have changed and based on that our approach has also changed. During the first two years, our goal was simply to have people meet each other and have a dialogue, to listen and understand. Gradually we started noticing that as trust and relations are built in the dialogue, people want to continue working together, many are not happy with the status quo. From 2009 we changed our approach: it was not a one-time meeting anymore. The “Dialogue” became just the first step, after which those who wanted to continue collaborating, had an opportunity to do so. The participants were the ones to choose the format of communication, which projects they would implement. We were there to help them institutionally; we would organize skill building trainings if they requested, etc.
– Were there any other formats, except of the Dialogue projects for historians, journalists, and the youth groups?
In the Nagorno-Karabakh context, we also have had formal and informal meetings aimed at coordinating the work between various levels involved with the peace process, for example facilitating the coordination between Track II level and Track I. I must confess that it is a very difficult work, with an occasional success, but the dialogue itself is very slow-running. What is important to ensure, of course, is that at least some communication between different levels exists.
After the Safarov release, our efforts aimed at Track II and Track I coordination stopped for some time and no meetings took place for a year, and then we resumed. During this past year several discussions took place, where experts from all the sides developed joint policy recommendations. The group included independent experts, representatives of governmental think-tanks and others, including from Nagorno – Karabakh. The recommendations we developed were all accepted through a consensus and were published in Armenian and Azerbaijani media, disseminated through round table discussions, shared with the OSCE and others.
The Imagine Center is, in fact trying to plant seeds of reconciliation between the two societies through its dialogues. What are the chances that these seeds will grow and come to fruition, considering that the situation is not ripe?
– We constantly aim to expand the realm of cooperation, the number of people ready to work for peace and reconciliation. Within these seven years we worked with more than a thousand people trough different projects, be it conferences, workshops or the dialogue program; in these years we have seen very few people who were not ready to talk, to communicate. If the dialogue is well designed, then almost everyone is ready to talk; no one wants a new war or an on-going conflict. People, by their nature, are able to communicate, to understand – we need to build on that instead of cultivating enemy images or fueling conflicts.
Perhaps that also depends on how you form the groups and whom you invite to join the dialogue projects?
– We are trying to work with groups who we think have influence on the society. For example the journalists and the historians, I believe, are among those who shape public opinion. Obviously, they themselves cannot change their own attitude and approaches within a day or a week, and even if they change, it will take a long time until they can have an impact on others. The history is written, based on that a textbook is published, which in its turn has its impact only some 20 years after. This means, that even if we have a history education reform today, it will not have an impact within a day; but of course this should not prevent us from doing all the necessary work already now. Additionally, we also work with youth, because the youth is an active segment of the population and with time, these young people become key actors and decision makers.
Furthermore, what gives me a certain hope is that Conflict Resolution is a relatively young discipline having originated in the 60s and 70s of the twentieth century. The many conflicts of the 19th and 20th century were resolved through either force or diplomacy. But nowadays, especially for smaller states, these traditional approaches are not effective. The methods of conflict resolution are changing. Yet if you follow our negotiation process, it looks like it is based at outdated 20th century approaches. One of the things that we are trying to do is to bring contemporary methodologies into the peace process.
What is the extent of the involvement of Nagorno Karabakh in these projects?
In the beginning of our work, we faced certain problems in this regard. Some donors would not allow us to use the funding to work in Karabakh. Yet we always invited participants from Karabakh to our programs. Sometimes they would not come, insisting that they want to be present as a third party and not be part of the Armenian group; in some formal situations, we have had some from Azerbaijan insist that there should be no participants from Karabakh; etc… so there were always problems with this, but we always did everything we could to include participants from Karabakh, and within the last few years we succeeded at that consistently.
I shall also mention here that while we faced obstacles from the Azerbaijani side when trying to invite Armenians from Karabakh to our programs, we also faced similar obstacles from the Armenian side when trying to invite Azerbaijani displaced people from Karabakh. This question of participation of anyone from Karabakh in the peace process is extremely politicized. Many projects could not move forward due to this politicization and unwillingness of the sides to make concessions. Oftentimes you are faced with a situation where you can either organize a dialogue between participants from Baku and Yerevan only or not have a dialogue at all… And while, perhaps, in formal negotiations sides are allowed to engage in exclusion, on the level of people to people contacts and informal dialogues there is no place for such discrimination; everyone affected by conflict has to be heard, has a right for a voice.
