MY REVIVAL

History of life of Aram Tumasyan, teacher of history and Turkish language at Military Institute after Vazgen Sargsyan

– I was born in Istanbul in 1953. My family is from the province Terjan. I went to school Bezdzhyan. It was approaching the age of my conscription. My father did not want me to serve in the Turkish army, so we moved to Armenia in 1971, and a new phase of my life began. The first problem was that we really did not speak Armenian, but we learned very quickly, even my parents went to school to learn the Armenian language. Besides Armenian I also learned Russian, English, perfected my French.

I graduated from the Department of Turkology, Faculty of Oriental Studies, Yerevan State University. After graduating, in 1980, I started working in the Fundamental Scientific Library of the Academy of Sciences. And I began my scientific career: I wrote the Turkish-Armenian dictionary, phrasebook and fables. This latter is very valuable, because includes fables of all times in the Turkish language, as well as borrowings from different languages.

In 1995, when I was already 42, I volunteered for service in the armed forces of Armenia. That time my work was very highly appreciated by Intelligence Head Basentsi Azoyan. Thereafter, until 2009, I taught at YSU Faculty of History, and since 2009 I teach at the Military Institute after V.Sargsyan, I am the head of the Turkish and Azerbaijani cycles. We can say that we started from nothing: developed a curriculum and then а tutorial. We already have developed a methodology, thematic plans, dictionaries. This work is very important to us.

We need to know the language of the enemy, to know his habits, mentality. Only then we can turn to any of its rebuff with his own language. Especially it is very necessary to the military. Now, in the era of the Internet, you can create contacts and pull a lot of information from there. Most of our students are able to read and write in these languages. So, everything is done to enrich the knowledge of our officers. I am sure that if necessary they can use it to “get to say” the enemy.

Interview by ARSEN AGHEKYAN