Excerpts from two and a half minutes of Samuel (Samvel) Karapetyan’s nephew Narek Karapetyan's interview by Carlson Tucker, on his show has gone viral on the Armenian media. The whole interview was 1 hour and 21 minutes long and consisted of two parts. The first 30 minutes was devoted to Narek Karapetyan, and the 90 minutes to their lawyer Robert Amsterdam. I watched the interview and wondered, what was it for? I have attached Narek Karapetyan's interview transcript in its entirety below, and highlighted the main points noted on the transcription and posted them too. Interested readers may decipher the purpose of this interview and form their opinion. Vaհe H Apelian.
The main points of Narek Karapetyan’s interview:
THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE: A RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION
CHRISTIAN MARTYRS, NOT JUST ETHNIC VICTIMS
THE FIRST CHRISTIAN NATION
THE WAR WITH AZERBAIJAN
ISRAEL’S ROLE IN THE CONFLICT
ATTACKS ON THE ARMENIAN CHURCH
ARCHBISHOPS IMPRISONED
THE PRIME MINISTER’S ANTI-CHRISTIAN AGENDA
WHO’S BEHIND THE ANTI-CHRISTIAN PUSH?
CONTROLLING HISTORY TO CONTROL THE FUTURE
The transcription of the interview is posted below.
THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE: A RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION
TUCKER CARLSON: Thanks so much for doing this. Armenia is famous, to the extent it’s famous. Armenians are famous for being successful in business and quite cohesive as a community and very sincerely Christian observant. But probably they’re most famous for being exterminated by the Ottoman Turks at the end of the First World War, the Armenian genocide.
And I think most people don’t fully appreciate the extent to which that was religious persecution. That was a religious genocide and they were murdered because they were Christians. Tell us how we know that.
NAREK KARAPETYAN: Yeah. At the end of the rule of Ottoman Empire after Balkan wars, Ottoman Turks saw that some Balkan countries like Bulgaria and part of Greece became independent and the Christian countries in Balkans became independent after that. They felt some big risk in Christian population of Ottoman Empire like Armenians. Pontus Greeks became independent and they started to persecute the Christian population of Ottoman Empire or to convert them to Islam.
How it went on: when the war started between Entente and Ottoman Empire, Germany and Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman army came to all villages of Armenians in Ottoman Empire and asked two questions, just the villagers or the people who lived in towns. The first question was, “Will you convert to Islam?” Like 98% of the population, Armenian population of Ottoman Empire, denied.
TUCKER CARLSON: Said no.
NAREK KARAPETYAN: Said no. And the second question is, if you don’t convert to Islam, you will go from here to Desert of Deir ez-Zor. It’s like 800 kilometers, 600 kilometers from Armenian Highlands. And all the men were killed and all the women were taken with children to Desert of Deir ez-Zor.
And we have lost the 70% of the population of our nation because everyone, one and a half million people, said no to converting to other religion.
We want everyone to know about this story, not just about the dark side of the history. It has a bright message too, that Christians in the 20th century were very, they went in a way of Christ and they were sacrificed.
And we hope they all, this sacrifice will bring the Christians of our days to more faith to that what we have, the biggest and most humanistic religion that we accept and we must live with it.
CHRISTIAN MARTYRS, NOT JUST ETHNIC VICTIMS
TUCKER CARLSON: So I did not understand until we just had breakfast that the victims of the Armenian genocide, who’ve been talked about a lot, there’s been a debate in the Congress for many years whether we can call it a genocide, whether that’s somehow trademarked, but it was a genocide. But I didn’t understand that they were Christian martyrs. They died not because of their ethnicity but because of their religious faith.
NAREK KARAPETYAN: There were no any problem with ethnicity. There were Armenians like 2% of Armenians in Ottoman Empire were Muslim. And just these 2% are living till now in the north of Ottoman Empire without any trouble.
TUCKER CARLSON: Interesting.
NAREK KARAPETYAN: The other 98%, every Christian Armenian who were asked this question, who answered that he will not convert to Islam, were killed.
TUCKER CARLSON: That’s amazing. And so that kind of defines 20th century, 21st century Armenian culture. We stood steadfast in our faith and were murdered for it. So Christianity is at the center of Armenian culture. Is that fair to say?
THE FIRST CHRISTIAN NATION
NAREK KARAPETYAN: It’s the first nation who has ever converted to Christian. In 301 was an Armenian kingdom. So in 301, before Constantine, before the Roman Empire, 11 years before Constantine, before Edict of Milan, it was 312, I guess. Armenia, like 11 years before, Armenian king Tiridates III converted to Christian religion and converted all our population to Christian religion.
And we are the oldest, eldest Christian nation in the world. That’s why our church and our identity are so already, it’s the same thing. The 80% or 70% of our identity comes from Christian values and our church, values of our church.
TUCKER CARLSON: Well that’s fascinating. And it’s, I mean the state of California where I’m originally from, the Armenian community is very, extremely successful, but very cohesive. Like they have a sense of themselves in a great way, I think. And that’s why obviously.
So over the past 30 years Armenia has been involved in a number of conflicts, really a sort of long running sporadic war with Azerbaijan, which is an Islamic country.
NAREK KARAPETYAN: Yes.
THE WAR WITH AZERBAIJAN
TUCKER CARLSON: How many Armenians were killed in that war?
NAREK KARAPETYAN: Almost 20,000 people were killed for defending a Christian population of Nagorno-Karabakh. And at the end of the war, the last war, the Christian population of Nagorno-Karabakh exceeded. Like everyone came to Armenia. And now after 2,000 years of living in this region, there is no any Christian in region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
TUCKER CARLSON: So there are none.
NAREK KARAPETYAN: There is no any.
TUCKER CARLSON: What I don’t understand is why nobody said anything as that was going on and why Christian leaders in the west didn’t say anything while that was going on that I heard.
NAREK KARAPETYAN: I think it’s a matter of real politics. We have allies with, we have a very close relationship with Greek nation, with Greece, we have close relationship with Cyprus. But even from there we felt that we had support, but not the support was just with words, not any actions. I know that real politics and the help of Turkey to Azerbaijan make the many countries that were allies with us or were in a good relationship with us to avoid.
TUCKER CARLSON: They didn’t want to get crossways with powerful countries like Turkey. I understand that.
NAREK KARAPETYAN: And this is what we have. Like this is the problem we face all over our history because the Armenian nation is in the center of a region where like Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iran and the only religious, only Christian nation of this from these three countries. And always we had this oppression from the empires like Ottoman Empire, there is Qajar Empire and other empires.
And the only thing made us to be unite and to save our culture was the church and education from the church. Yes, the schools. That church was built all over the country to educate us to be Christian and to be an Armenian Christian.
ISRAEL’S ROLE IN THE CONFLICT
TUCKER CARLSON: I was and remain confused by the role of Israel in this, in this war. Azerbaijan, Islamic Nation versus Armenia, Christian Nation and the cleansing of Christians from Nagorno-Karabakh, the region you just mentioned. Israel took a very aggressive position on the side of Azerbaijan against the Christians using American tax dollars to do it. So Israel was a participant in this war.
NAREK KARAPETYAN: The participation of Israel was the support of Azerbaijan by weapon and it was a part of real politics. But the problem…
TUCKER CARLSON: What kind of weapons?
NAREK KARAPETYAN: Drones, like aircraft, aircraft and other. It’s like not just defense and attack.
TUCKER CARLSON: But offensive weapons, offensive Azerbaijan received from…
NAREK KARAPETYAN: Israel and drones, many of drones and many of them were operated by, as we have read in media, by operators from these companies of Israeli companies.
TUCKER CARLSON: So wow. So you think they were Israeli drone operators?
NAREK KARAPETYAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because as many media told, like it was in many magazines and that.
TUCKER CARLSON: So that would mean that Israelis were killing Christians in this war with US tax dollars. I mean, because the Israeli defense sector is supported, billions and billions a year by the United States.
NAREK KARAPETYAN: The issue is about the real politics. They were, they are getting gas from Azerbaijan.
TUCKER CARLSON: Gasoline.
NAREK KARAPETYAN: Gasoline. They buy gasoline. I think the 70% of Israel gasoline is coming from Azerbaijan. And they have some type of economic ally. They are allies economically. The main issue is today real politics sometimes is like, make a big problem for the nations who want to defend themselves alone in the regions we are minority.
BOB AMSTERDAM: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, of course. And that’s how the world works. I just suppose from an American perspective it’s like, why are my tax dollars being used to murder Christians around the world? Cleanse the Christians from Iraq, cleanse the Christians from Nagorno-Karabakh, murder Armenian Christians. Like why am I paying for this?
NAREK KARAPETYAN: It is a problem. It is a problem.
TUCKER CARLSON: Problem for me. Yeah.
ATTACKS ON THE ARMENIAN CHURCH
So now you have a lull in the fighting with Azerbaijan, but you have a prime minister of Armenia who seems to be intent on destroying traditional Christianity or the church. Tell me what this is.
NAREK KARAPETYAN: Yeah, after like last two, three years after losing the war in Nagorno-Karabakh and after making like all the people, Christians from Nagorno-Karabakh have moved to Armenia. Our new prime minister decides to have a better relationship with Azerbaijan.
Better relationship with everyone is always welcomed by Armenian society. We are okay with this. But what we feel, we feel that Turkey or Azerbaijan had a mission like made him to change the narratives of the church. And he wants to change the narratives of the church to forget the issue of genocide, forget our history.
And our prime minister, six months ago he started attack Armenian church and head of Armenian church. He wants to dethrone him and he wants to dethrone, to change the structure of Armenian church that is like 1,700 years old. Because of taking control of the church. It’s the main institution in our country. Like 90%, 95% of our population are the members of Armenian Apostolic Church.
And when he started to attack against the church, our society was shocked because nobody have done it before him. Even at Ottoman time. And many people in Armenian society, they were against them, against it. But they couldn’t say anything.
TUCKER CARLSON: Why?
NAREK KARAPETYAN: Because they were afraid of some oppression from the government side. Armenia is a democratic country.
I think it’s one of the last democratic countries in this region in the last 30 years. We have elections, we have new leaders. It’s not authoritarian country. But this prime minister evolves from democratic leader every year. We see his changing to more authoritarian style of ruling because of decreasing of his reputation in Armenia.
And now he attacked the church. He took to prison three archbishops.
ARCHBISHOPS IMPRISONED
TUCKER CARLSON: He put archbishops in prison?
NAREK KARAPETYAN: Yeah. Archbishop, for you to understand, it’s not shock. We were, why the one of archbishop were took to prison? Because four years ago in an interview he said that this prime minister must be changed. The second archbishop was in prison, was taken to prison because of like three years ago or five years ago, he went into a protest against the prime minister.
And it’s, and nobody like from influential part of Armenian society, everyone were afraid of to talk about this. Yeah, the, you know, the city, everyone could talk who hadn’t a business, who hadn’t an influence, but influential part didn’t want to do it.
And the one man who started talk about this was my uncle, Samvel Karapetyan. He is one of the wealthiest Armenian in the world and biggest Armenian philanthropist of last 15 years. He is the biggest philanthropist in Armenia. So very many hospitals, kindergartens, schools.
And when he came to Armenia, he lives out of Armenia. He came to Armenia and at the 40 days of his father’s grave, and we have a tradition to go to church at liturgy in 40 days of someone grave.
TUCKER CARLSON: Good for you. So when someone dies, an Armenian dies, the family mourns for 40 days.
Samvel Karapetyan Speaks Out
NAREK KARAPETYAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And goes to liturgy. And when he came to Armenia and he was in liturgy, after liturgy, after mass in the church, the journalist came to him and said, “What do you think about the attacks from the side of government, attacks against the church?”
And he said, like it was 37 seconds, “What can I think if a small group of people forgetting Armenian history, forgetting history of our church is attacking Armenian church and Armenian people. If the politician will not handle the situation, we will take part of handling it by ourselves our way.”
TUCKER CARLSON: Good.
NAREK KARAPETYAN: It was 37 seconds. Do you know what’s going on after it?
TUCKER CARLSON: What happened?
NAREK KARAPETYAN: After 30 minutes of this interview, our prime minister posted on Facebook that this philanthropist must shut his mouth. After three hours he sent police special forces to a residence of Samvel Karapetyan, who is the most famous philanthropist of the country. And everyone was shocked. We were shocked too.
And these police forces came to his residence without a judge order. Armenia is a democratic country. We never saw something like this. And everything was going on, cameras showed everything. So everyone knows that he said it. 37 seconds. Then the prime minister was in parliament. He posted something like this on Facebook. And policemen came to the residence of Samvel Karapetyan.
But what happened then? The demonstrators came to the residence of Samvel Karapetyan to defend him. Thousands of people came to his house to defend him from police. And that day, usually when police come, it’s five minutes to take someone to jail, to police station. It was 14 hours. Demonstrators didn’t want to let him go to police station and they were saying, bring order of judge.
The demonstrators told the policeman and then he decided to go himself to police station to not cause a clash between policemen and demonstrators. And after that he was arrested and I was arrested too and my father, his brother was arrested.
TUCKER CARLSON: What were you arrested for?
NAREK KARAPETYAN: I don’t know, just being his nephew, just being there, I don’t know. And I remember we were in police station eight hours and they were looking for an article to charge because there is no article in 37 seconds.
I remember investigator came to the room and said, “Oh, I found one article,” and then the other said, “No, it doesn’t work.” And after seven hours they found an article and charged it that he said that the prime minister must be dethroned. But in this 37 second interview, you can watch it on YouTube, everyone can do it. There were no any word about the prime minister and anything.
And he is now in jail still. They took him to jail five months and the jail name, I don’t know what is the jail name, the KGB basement. So there’s that old Soviet time, communist time prison where the communists sent the people who were not agree with communist ideas. And he’s there in 12 square meters for defending the church and for this 37 seconds. He’s still in jail.
TUCKER CARLSON: Well, Grand Canyon University is not like most American colleges. It focuses on the things that actually matter. It is not a ripoff. It is the real thing. It’s private, affordable Christian university located in the heart of Phoenix.
THE PRIME MINISTER’S ANTI-CHRISTIAN AGENDA
TUCKER CARLSON: So this prime minister, who’s clearly authoritarian by definition, is against the church. So the idea is to break the back of orthodox Christianity, of traditional Christianity in Armenia and to use the police to do it. Is this popular? Do people like this?
ALSO READ: Transcript: Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson on Joe Rogan Podcast #1159
NAREK KARAPETYAN: It’s very unpopular. Like, 90% of the population is against that. And with population, our society doesn’t understand why he’s doing that.
TUCKER CARLSON: So his agenda, Armenia is a traditional country. Traditional families predominate. I noticed that the prime minister’s wife was interviewed and said something to the effect that women in traditional families are all unhappy.
NAREK KARAPETYAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He wants to change the society, but with power, not with soft power.
TUCKER CARLSON: The way he wants to change the society is very familiar to Americans. He is focusing on transgenderism is a good thing. LGBTQ agenda, whatever that is.
NAREK KARAPETYAN: Anti-traditionalism. So not to the traditional families. Like, you mustn’t care about your son. He must decide what to do.
TUCKER CARLSON: What, whether to become a woman or have sex with men or whatever.
NAREK KARAPETYAN: No, he hadn’t said something like this, but mostly he’s against the traditional values. So everyone knows that he has idea of changing our society.
TUCKER CARLSON: To make it less Christian.
NAREK KARAPETYAN: To make it less Christian. Yeah. Yeah, I guess.
WHO’S BEHIND THE ANTI-CHRISTIAN PUSH?
TUCKER CARLSON: Who’s supporting him in this? This has happened in every country in the west, almost every country in the west, with varying degrees of success. But who is behind that? Who’s pushing this?
NAREK KARAPETYAN: Who is behind that in every country in the West?
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, that’s a good question.
NAREK KARAPETYAN: Is the same people who is doing it in Armenia? They are doing it here too, I guess.
TUCKER CARLSON: Oh. And they’ve been extremely successful. I mean, they’ve destroyed our social fabric with this. But who are those people? Who is, let’s just stick with Armenia. Who’s supporting this prime minister? The population doesn’t support him.
NAREK KARAPETYAN: You know, I think the main issue when we thought why he’s doing it against the church, we think that he gets some information from Turkey and Azerbaijan that you must change the narrative of the church to forget the genocide and to have a new head of church for being, for going to a peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
And we feel that he wants to change the head of church to change. Then he will change the narrative of the church and to make our people to forget all our ancestors have done for our Christian religion and for being an Armenian. And this is the thing that we must show our societies that this is the way they work.
They want to destroy all the historical truth for some reasons. The reason is to be in peace, but we can’t. We are very welcome to be in peace, but these people, one and a half million people were killed already. They were killed for their religion. We must, Ottoman Empire must accept it. The Ottoman Turks or Turks must accept it because after that we will live in a more peaceful region.
CONTROLLING HISTORY TO CONTROL THE FUTURE
TUCKER CARLSON: Anyone who’s forcing you to lie about history is your enemy. And of course the purpose is always to maintain power. Right? Whoever controls the story, the past controls the future. Of course. That’s why Wikipedia exists, to lie to us about the past.
So last question. This is, I mean by any definition a grotesque human rights violation. You’re arresting Christian clergy because you don’t like their theological views, you don’t like their views of history, so you throw them in prison. How many Christian churches in the west have weighed in on this, have supported the clergy under arrest, have put pressure on the Armenian prime minister to stop arresting Christian clergy? Like, how much support are you getting from the West?
NAREK KARAPETYAN: We are getting support from the west, from the churches.
TUCKER CARLSON: You are?
NAREK KARAPETYAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There is a huge support and we are appreciated for this. And I want to tell you one more thing, like why these people are brave when they are going against the government’s ideas. My uncle Samvel Karapetyan and the clergyman, they could be released like tomorrow if they say that they will not defend the church.
TUCKER CARLSON: It’s always the same story, isn’t it?
NAREK KARAPETYAN: Yeah. So my uncle, we had like they wanted to confiscate his businesses in Armenia. He knows it, but he wants to defend the church after that too. So he’s continuing to. And the church. And this is the idea. These are the persons with whom we must, I think we must learn something because it’s like in first, it’s like in 20th century when this Armenian, our ancestors were sacrificed in Ottoman Empire for their religion.
I am proud that Samvel Karapetyan is, he can be free, he can be with his business, but he doesn’t do this for his religion because religion and faith matters. It’s important. Like the first Christian in first century, they were oppressed, but they fought for their religion. And this is the case Samvel Karapetyan faces now.
TUCKER CARLSON: It’s inspiring to watch. It’s upsetting to watch at the same time. So Godspeed. Thank you for telling us that story. Too few people know. And it’s not just about Armenia, of course. It’s a global push.
NAREK KARAPETYAN: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: Against this one specific religion, against Jesus. So that’s what they hate.
NAREK KARAPETYAN: Thank you very much.
TUCKER CARLSON: Thank you for doing this. I appreciate it.
No comments:
Post a Comment