JUST DON’T CALL IT TURKISH COFFEE
Roads and Kingdoms
April 17 2014
by Maxim Edwards
There is, as one would expect, no Turkish coffee in Armenia. Soorj,
that is, coffee prepared in a long-handled Jezve coffee pot, is
referred to either as Haykakan (Armenian) or, to be more euphemistic,
Aravelyan (Eastern). Arab coffee is easy to identify because of the
cardamom, but its northern neighbour, however we call it, is more
ambiguous. After nearly seven months living in Armenia, I am still
haunted by the first day when, bleary and decaffeinated, I asked
for Turkish Coffee in a Yerevan café. How could I? The waiter in
question still remembers, and when I order from him now, I am triply
careful to stress the drink’s fundamental Armenian-ness–Shat haykakan
Soorj, Hayastanum, Hayastaneets (very Armenian coffee, in Armenia,
from Armenia). “How do you make Turkish coffee?” begins a Soviet-era
Radio Yerevan joke. “Simple-burn the coffee crop and then lie about
it for a hundred years”.
For a term so restricted in use, the Armenian term Soorj may have quite
cosmopolitan origins. The word may be onomatopoeic, Soorj being the
slurp made by a contented coffee drinker. In troubled areas of the
South Caucasus, the etymology is an appealing one. “Turkish Coffee,
Armenian Coffee; it’s all bullshit anyway” summarised a Yerevan taxi
driver named Tigran. “Coffee’s from Ethiopia. Or Arabia. Or somewhere.
Either way, unless I see coffee growing right here, right now,
I can’t call it Armenian”.
A couple of years ago I visited Abkhazia, and under the arches and
palm trees of Sukhumi’s seaside promenade, I ordered Turkish coffee. A
Turkish cargo vessel stood on the horizon, punctuating the blue Black
Sea as it gave way to clear skies. Hakop and his moustache bristled
with indignation. “It may be Turkish when I buy it,” said the Armenian
café owner, “but when it comes out of the packet, it becomes Abkhazian
Coffee”. The boat’s prow nodded in agreement. I shut up and drank.
U Akopa, where locals go to caffeinate and converse by the Black Sea
coast in Abkhazia’s capital of Sukhumi.Photo by: Maxim Edwards
Of course, when we talk about Turkish coffee, we’re not really
talking about coffee. Coffee is barely the surface. As the Soviet
Union dissolved around them, the peoples of the South Caucasus endured
vicious ethno-territorial conflicts and economic despair. Blood was
spilt with thousands of deaths and bad blood remains in South Ossetia,
Abkhazia, and Nagorno-Karabakh, which account for three of the four
frozen conflicts in the post-Soviet space. In the byzantine world of
the Soviet Union’s nationality policy, the concept of authenticity was
greatly valued. Ethnic groups which qualified as titular nations–to
whom an autonomous region or republic could be dedicated–often had
to be autochthonous, the proven indigenous inhabitants of their
territory. It is no surprise that a number of the first leaders
of the Republics of the South and North Caucasus were historians
by profession. The nation was primordial, as were its customs, its
language, and potentially its cuisine.
These views have no doubt been entrenched by recent ethnic conflicts,
or at least the collective memory of them.
The Armenian aversion to Turkish coffee is a legacy, in its own small
way, of the Armenian Genocide
The Armenian aversion to Turkish coffee is a legacy, in its own small
way, of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 and the Nagorno-Karabakh war
with the Turkic Azerbaijanis from 1988-1994. After all, what food, a
Syrian-Armenian refugee in Yerevan asked me, could Turks possibly call
their own? As the descendants of nomadic peoples from Central Asia,
he claimed, only meat and dairy products were truly Turkish cuisine.
Urban legend has it that a fast food restaurant in the northern
Armenian city of Gyumri took it one step further. When embroiled in a
court case for using McDonald’s branding and logo, the shrewd manager
contended that he could not remove the corporation’s logo from his
storefront. His McDonald’s M, was not a letter after all, and instead
symbolised the twin peaks of Mount Ararat, sacred to all Armenians.
The Rabati, or old city, and its castle as viewed from the disputed
Surp Nshan church. Amongst these houses are Akhaltsikhe’s mosque,
Armenian Catholic church and two synagogues.Photo by: Maxim Edwards
Yet even in Armenia, where 98.1% of the population are ethnic
Armenians, views are far from unanimous. One of the country’s 2,769
members of the Assyrian community, Arman Gevargizov, sat in his garden
in the small village of Dimitrov, garrulous, shelling walnuts and
slicing pomegranates. He had just moved on to the subject of Assyrian
cuisine when his dog, Zeus, interrupted him in a fit of barks. His
mother approached Zeus to calm him and, after a few pats and whispering
some sweet nothings in Neo-Aramaic, went indoors. “Zeus is peculiar”,
mused Arman. “On a Sunday morning, he sits in complete silence, craning
his neck to hear the church bells”. “A good Christian!” I laughed.
“I don’t think so,” sighed Arman, defeated. “I sometimes give him
good pieces of pork as a treat, but he never touches them”.
Arman’s mother approached us with three small cups of black, sweet
coffee. Assyrian coffee.
What was it, I asked, which made Assyrian coffee unique? Incredulous,
and storming back into the kitchen by way of reply, she returned with
a large bronze Jezve, still slightly warm from the stove. It was a
family heirloom, and the Gevargizovs had no clue as to its age.
Lovingly polished, it was inscribed with a Lamassu, an ancient
Assyrian deity–a winged bull with a human head–and an inscription in
Neo-Aramaic, still the vernacular of many Assyrians in Armenia. “Don’t
ask me what’s written there,” snapped Arman. “I can’t read it, but
I know it’s Assyrian”. From afar, Zeus watched on with respectful
silence.
Assyrian Coffee – the Gevargizov family in Armenia prepare their
coffee in a Jezve covered with Assyrian imagery.Photo by: Maxim Edwards
It was therefore entirely natural that, after leaving Armenia and
arriving in Akhaltsikhe, I would wonder what to call the local caffeine
fix. A city in Samtskhe-Javakheti, a province of South-Western Georgia
near the Turkish border, Akhaltsikhe is known and–following the
renovation of its castle and old town–publicised for its historic
cosmopolitanism, a city with two synagogues, one mosque, Georgian
Orthodox, and Armenian Catholic and Gregorian Churches. The province is
known as Javakhk to its Armenian inhabitants, who form the majority of
its population. Crossing the border with Armenia at Bavra, and passing
Doukhubor villages, my companion from Yerevan dutifully pointed out
Armenian shop signs in Ninotsminda and Akhalkalaki.
“Armenian territory”, he noted. Stumbling through the ruins of
Akhalkalaki’s fortress, I came across two empty bottles of Ararat
Cognac lying in the snow, and was somehow tempted to agree.
Armenian Cognac.Photo by: Maxim Edwards,
Yet all is not well in Akhaltsikhe, despite its cosmopolitan facelift.
Samtskhe-Javakheti’s Armenian population claims discrimination, that
they are deprived of cultural and linguistic rights. Much of Southern
Georgia is heavily populated by ethnic Armenians and Azerbaijanis,
and some Armenians have demanded autonomous status. Georgians, wary
of ethnic secessionism after their experiences in South Ossetia and
Abkhazia, do not react positively. They sometimes declare Armenians
to be guests in the region, the descendants of refugees from Ottoman
Turkey: not indigenous, and therefore not qualified for autonomy. A
pressing concern for local Armenians is the ownership of church
property in the region–their grievances focus on former Armenian
Churches which, following renovation, now belong to a Georgian Orthodox
congregation. Akhaltsikhe’s church of Surp Nshan, on a summit across
the river from the Rabati, or old town, is a case in point.
It’s not difficult to gauge local opinion. The local taxi drivers,
four of whom I talked to while visiting the church, will readily
pontificate. Georgian taxi driver Zurab lit up and sputtered in
unison with his aging Lada as we crept through the backstreets. His
nationalism reached new depths as we ascended the hill to Surp Nshan.
“The tongue has no bone in it,” he declared, “so you can say what you
please”. Surp Nshan was an ancient Georgian church–only the Armenian
inscriptions on its facades had been added later (“The builders,
you see, were Armenians”). Georgii, an Armenian taxi driver, was
incensed, and whisked me away to Akhaltsikhe’s Armenian cemetery,
whose gravestones bear images of Surp Nshan. “Even the dead agree,”
he sighed. “And they rarely lie”. Simon Leviashvili, one of the
eight remaining Jews in Akhaltsikhe, offered a flippant solution as
we admired the city view from a Rabati sidestreet: “Simple. If they
can’t sort it out, make it a synagogue”. That evening, I sat in a
coffee shop with my notebook, and grudgingly ordered a Nescafe. That,
at least, was universal–in a Unilever sort of way.
Akhaltsikhe is an ethnically diverse town and capital of Georgia’s
Samtskhe-Javakheti province, wedged between Turkey and Armenia.Photo
by: Maxim Edwards
Travelling through the dramatic, photogenic gorges and canyons
which carve their way across this region of Georgia, one could be
forgiven for not noticing the remains of man-made, stepped terraces
in the valley floors. In some cases, these are the sole remains of
Meskhetian Turkish villages, of 115,000 people deported to Central
Asia in November 1944. The deportation of the Meskhetian Turks was
one of the lowest moments of Soviet administrative paranoia: an act of
pre-emptive retaliation against Muslim villagers of mixed extraction
who were seen as a potential fifth column for nearby Turkey. Now
estimated at 400,000, the Meskhetian Turks remain scattered across
the former Soviet Union, unable to return to their ancestral homeland.
Alongside the Volga Germans and Crimean Tatars, they were not included
in Khrushchev’s pardoning of deported peoples, and their resettlement
remained prohibited. As it had done for the Chechens and Ingush,
the years of exile formed (and continue to form) a coherent national
identity for Meskhetian Turks.
Forty-nine year old Mukhamad Khustushvili is a native of
Samarkand, Uzbekistan–though in his heart, he stresses, he is from
Samtskhe-Javakheti. Upon repatriating to Georgia in 1999, he opened
a small restaurant in the city centre with his wife. His is one of
roughly fifteen Meskhetian Turkish families living in the area, and
he is one of less than a thousand who have managed to repatriate. The
Turks have returned to southwestern Georgia, although now they are
lorry drivers, market traders and labourers from Eastern Anatolia,
from cities like Ardahan, Kars and Trabzon. Mukhamad’s modestly
successful restaurant is stocked with numerous brands of Russian vodka
and menus in English, Georgian and Turkish. Khutsushvili is exquisitely
aware of his people’s chequered history–who they were, and who they
became. He notes with palms upturned that Akhaltsikhe’s monuments to
inter-ethnic harmony–its mosque, synagogues, and churches–were all
built before 1944, the year of deportation. He talks and reminisces
as though he were an omen. We drank sweet black tea from Turkish
tulip-shaped glasses, as if to illustrate the point.
Hospitality – a gravestone in Akhaltsikhe’s Armenian cemetery. ‘Come
in, Don’t trample my ashes. Because I am at home – and you are my
guests’.Photo by: Maxim Edwards
Remembering my last Armenian coffee, I ask Mukhamad about concerns
that resettlement of Muslim Meskhetian Turks could raise tensions
with the local Armenian majority in Samtskhe-Javakheti. He swats the
question away with the palm of his hand, pantomiming its irrelevance.
“I am from the Caucasus–and have a lot in common with these Armenians.
Meskhetians have a Caucasian temperament; we will not grovel before
anybody–unlike those Turks across the border.”
They could integrate, he continues. They could make it work. He says
he certainly had in his restaurant. “Our food is even Georgian!” he
exclaimed “Georgian… but Halal.”
Georgia is key. Whoever controls it controls all the Caucasus
“Even if three percent of us would return, that would be something. A
land grows fallow without its master; a house starts to collapse. If
the great powers of the world–Russia, America–want us to return,
we’ll return. But it won’t be for the right reasons”
“Georgia is key. Whoever controls it controls all the Caucasus.” The
whole country, he lamented, was going to Khash (his place, Muhammad
hastened to add, served the best in town).
The tea glasses were cleared, and one of the next generation of
Khutsushvilis came, bearing chocolates and small cups of sweet,
black coffee. “TeÅ~_ekkurler”, I said (thank you in Turkish)–and
was met by a wide, infant smile.
“Turkish coffee?” I asked Mukhamad, taking the cup from his son.
“Of course,” he replied, raising his index finger. “Meskhetian
Turkish coffee.”
Maxim Edwards is a journalist and student from the UK. He has worked in
Tatarstan and Armenia, and writes on inter-ethnic and inter-religious
relations in the post-Soviet space. His work has been published with
OpenDemocracy, Souciant, the Forward, Al-Jazeera and others.
View photos at
http://roadsandkingdoms.com/2014/just-dont-call-it-turkish-coffee/