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The flag of Armenia: Three equal horizontal bands of red (top), blue, and orange.
The national flag of Armenia or the Armenian Tricolor consists of three horizontal bands, colored red on the top, blue in the middle and orange on the bottom. Before this flag, Armenia used symbolic variants, displaying different animals, representing Armenian Dynasties, on the solid colored cloth.
The current flag was adopted on August 24, 1990 by the Armenian Supreme Council decision. On June 15, 2006, the Law on the National Flag of Armenia was passed by the Armenian Parliament.
There are many interpretations of the meanings of the colors. However, many agree that the red stands for the blood shed by Armenian soldiers from all wars, the blue stands for the sky of Armenia, hope and the unchanging character of the land, and the orange represents the courage of the people and the fertile lands of Armenia and the workers who work on them.
The official meaning of the colors stated in the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia, as:
"The Red emblematizes the Armenian Highland, the Armenian people's continued struggle for survival, maintenance of the Christian faith, Armenia's independence and freedom. The Blue emblematizes the will of the people of Armenia to live beneath peaceful skies. The Orange emblematizes the creative talent and hard-working nature of the people of Armenia."
Armenia, officially the Republic of Armenia, is a landlocked mountainous country in Eurasia between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, located in the Southern Caucasus. It shares borders with Turkey to the west, Georgia to the north, Azerbaijan to the east, and Iran and the Nakhichevan exclave of Azerbaijan to the south. A former republic of the Soviet Union, Armenia is a unitary, multiparty, democratic nation-state and one of the oldest and most historic civilizations in the world with a rich cultural heritage, as well as the first nation to adopt Christianity as its official religion. Although Armenia is constitutionally a secular state, the Christian faith plays a major role in both its history and the identification of the Armenian people.
Culturally, historically, and politically, Armenia is considered to be part of Europe. However, its location in the southern Caucasus means that it can also be considered to be at the arbitrary border between Europe and Asia: in other words, a transcontinental nation.[2] However, both these classifications are entirely arbitrary, as there is no easily definable geographic difference between Asia and Europe.
Armenia is currently a member of more than 35 different international organizations including the United Nations, the Council of Europe, Asian Development Bank, the Commonwealth of Independent States, World Trade Organization and Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation. It is a Partnership for Peace member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. It is also an observer member of the Eurasian Economic Community, La Francophonie, and the Non-Aligned Movement. Armenian is also active in the international sports community with full membership in the Union of European Football Associations and International Ice Hockey Federation. The country is an emerging democracy and because of its strategic location, it lies among both the Russian and American spheres of influence.
Antiquity: Armenia has been populated since prehistoric times, and has been proposed as the site of the Biblical Garden of Eden. Armenia lies in the highlands surrounding the Biblical mountains of Ararat, upon which, as tradition states, Noah's Ark came to rest after the flood. (Gen. 8:4). Archeologists continue to uncover evidence that the Armenia and Armenian Highlands were among the earliest sites of human civilization. From 4000 BC to 1000 BC, tools and trinkets of copper, bronze and iron were commonly produced in Armenia and traded in neighbouring lands where those metals were less abundant.[3] During the ancient period of Armenia's history, several states flourished on its territory, including Aratta (3rd millennium BC), Hayasa-Azzi (15th - 12th cc BC), Nairi (12th - 9th cc BC), and the Kingdom of Urartu (9th - 6th cc BC), each participating in the ethnogenesis of the Armenian people. The Urartian language was closely related to the earlier Hurrian language of Syria and Anatolia, but it had no other certain relatives, and is not in the same language family as Armenian, which is in the Indo-European family. Yerevan, the modern capital of Armenia, was founded in 782 BC by the Urartian king Argishti I.
Around 600 BC, the Kingdom of Armenia was established under the Orontid Dynasty, which existed under several local dynasties till AD 428. The kingdom reached its height between 95 - 66 BC under Tigranes the Great, becoming one of the most powerful kingdoms of its time. Throughout its history, the kingdom of Armenia enjoyed periods of independence intermitted with periods of autonomy subject to contemporary empires. Armenia's strategic location between two continents has subjected it to invasions by many peoples, including the Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Mongols, Persians, Ottoman Turks and Russians.
In 301, Armenia became the first country in the world to adopt Christianity as its official state religion. There had been various pagan communities before Christianity, but they were converted by an influx of Christian missionaries. Tiridates III (AD 238-314) was the first ruler to officially Christianize his people, his conversion ten years before the Roman Empire granted Christianity official toleration under Galerius, and 36 years before Constantine was baptised.
After the fall of the Armenian kingdom in 428, most of Armenia was incorporated as a marzpanate within the Sassanid Empire, ruled by a marzpan. Following an Armenian rebellion in 451, Christian Armenians maintained their religions freedom, while Armenia gained autonomy and the right to be ruled by an Armenian marzpan unlike other territories of the empire where the marzpan was a Persian. The Marzpanate of Armenia lasted till 630s, when Sassanid Persia was destroyed by Arab Caliphate.
After the marzpanate period (428-636), Armenia emerged as an autonomous principality within the Arabic Empire, reuniting Armenian lands previously taken by the Byzantine Empire as well. The principality was ruled by the Prince of Armenia, recognized by the Caliph and the Byzantine Emperor. It was part of the administrative division/emirate Arminiyya created by the Arabs, which also included parts of Georgia and Caucasian Albania, and had its center in the Armenian city Dvin. The Principality of Armenia lasted till 884, when it regained its independence from the weakened Arabic Empire.
Medieval: The reemerged Armenian kingdom was ruled by the Bagratuni dynasty, and lasted till 1045. In time, several areas of the Bagratid Armenia separated as independent kingdoms and principalities such as the Kingdom of Vaspurakan ruled by the House of Artsruni, while still recognizing the supremacy of the Bagratid kings.
In 1045, the Byzantine Empire conquered Bagratid Armenia. Soon, the other Armenian states fell under Byzantine control as well. The Byzantine rule was short lived, as in 1071 Seljuk Turks defeated the Byzantines and conquered Armenia at the Battle of Manzikert, establishing the Seljuk Empire. To escape death or servitude at the hands of those who had assassinated his relative, Gagik II, King of Ani, an Armenian named Roupen with some of his countrymen went into the gorges of the Taurus Mountains and then into Tarsus of Cilicia. Here the Byzantine governor of the place gave them shelter where the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia was eventually established.
The Seljuk Empire soon started to collapse. In the early 1100's, Armenian princes of the Zakarid noble family established a semi-independent Armenian principality in Northern and Eastern Armenia, known as Zakarid Armenia. The noble family of Orbelians shared control with the Zakarids in various parts of the country, especially in Vayots Dzor and Syunik. Southern parts of Armenia remained under control of Kurdish dynasties of Shaddadids and Ayyubids.
Foreign Rule: In 1230's Mongol Ilkhanate conquered the Zakaryan Principality, as well as the rest of Armenia. The Mongolian invasions were soon followed by those of other Central Asian tribes, which continued from 1200's till 1400's. After incessant invasions, each bringing destruction to the country, Armenia in time became weakened. In 1500s, the Ottoman Empire and Safavid Persia divided Armenia among themselves. The Russian Empire later incorporated Eastern Armenia (consisting of the Erivan and Karabakh khanates within Persia) in 1813 and 1828.
Under Ottoman rule, the Armenians were granted considerable autonomy within their own enclaves and lived in relative harmony with other groups in the empire (including the ruling Turks). However, as Christians under a strict Muslim social system, Armenians faced pervasive discrimination. When they began pushing for more rights within the Ottoman Empire, Sultan ‘Abdu’l-Hamid II, in response, organized state-sponsored massacres against the Armenians between 1894 and 1896, resulting in an estimated death toll of 80,000 to 300,000 people. The Hamidian massacres, as they came to be known, gave Hamid international infamy as the "Red Sultan" or "Bloody Sultan."
World War I: As the empire began to collapse, the Young Turks overthrew the government of Sultan Hamid. Armenians living in the empire hoped that the Young Turk revolution would change their second-class status. However, with onslaught of World War I and the Ottoman Empire's assault on the Russian Empire, the new government began to look on the Armenians with distrust and suspicion. This was due to the fact that the Russian army contained a contingent of Armenian troops. On April 24, 1915, Armenian intellectuals were arrested by Ottoman authorities and eventually a large proportion of Armenians living in Anatolia perished as a result of the Armenian Genocide. The events of 1915 to 1917 are regarded by Armenians and the vast majority of Western historians to have been state-sponsored mass killings, or genocide. Despite overwhelming evidence of genocidal intent, Turkish authorities maintain that the deaths were the result of a civil war coupled with disease and famine, with casualties incurred by both sides. Most estimates for the number of Armenians killed range from 650,000 to 1.5 million. Armenia and the Armenian diaspora have been campaigning for official recognition of the events as genocide for over 30 years. These events are traditionally commemorated yearly on April 24, the Armenian Christian Martyr Day, or the Day of the Armenian Genocide.
Although the Russian army succeeded in gaining most of Ottoman Armenia during World War I, their gains were lost with the Russian Revolution of 1917. At this time, Russian-controlled Eastern Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan attempted to bound together in the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic. This federation, however, only lasted from February to May 1918, when all three parties decided to dissolve it. As a result, Eastern Armenia became independent as the Democratic Republic of Armenia (DRA) on May 28. Unfortunately, the DRA's short-lived independence was fraught with war, territorial disputes, a mass influx of refugees from Ottoman Armenia, spreading disease, and starvation. Still, the Entente Powers, appalled by the actions of the Ottoman government, sought to help the newly-found Armenian state through relief funds and other forms of support.
At the end of the war, it was decided to divide up the Ottoman Empire. Signed between the Allied and Associated Powers and Ottoman Empire at Sèvres on August 10, 1920, the Treaty of Sèvres promised to maintain the existence of the DRA and to attach the former territories of Ottoman Armenia to it. Because the new borders of Armenia were to be drawn by United States President Woodrow Wilson, Ottoman Armenia is also "referred to as "Wilsonian Armenia." There was even consideration of possibly making Armenia a mandate under the protection of the United States. The treaty, however, was rejected by the Turkish National Movement, and never came into effect. The movement, under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, used the treaty as the occasion to declare itself the rightful government of Turkey, replacing the monarchy based in Istanbul with a republic based in Ankara.
Soviet Armenia: The Coat of Arms of Soviet Armenia.In 1920, Armenia and Turkey engaged in the Turkish-Armenian War, a violent conflict that ended with the Treaty of Alexandropol in which the Armenians surrendered the bulk of their weapons and land to the Turks. Simultaneously, Armenia was invaded by the Red Army, which led to establishment of Soviet rule in Armenia in December of 1920. The treaty of Alexandropol, signed by deposed former Armenian officials after the establishment of Soviet rule, was never ratified by the new Communist government. In 1922, the country was incorporated into the Soviet Union as part of the short-lived Transcaucasian SFSR along with Georgia and Azerbaijan. The Treaty of Alexandropol was then superseded by the Treaty of Kars, between Turkey and the Soviet Union. In it, Turkey ceded the province of Ajara to the Soviet Union in return for sovereignty over the territories of Kars, Ardahan, and Igdir. Because the Armenians did not have a say in the treaty, Armenia, to this day, does not recognize the treaty as legitimate and still holds claims to those provinces.
The TSFR existed from 1922 to 1936, when it was divided up into three separate entities (Armenian SSR, Azerbaijan SSR, and Georgian SSR). Armenians enjoyed a period of relative stability under Soviet rule. They received medicine, food, and other provisions from Moscow, and communist rule proved to be a soothing balm in contrast to the turbulent final years of the Ottoman Empire. The situation was difficult for the church, which struggled under Soviet rule. After the death of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin took the reins of power and began an era of renewed fear and terror for Armenians. As with various other ethnic minorities who lived in the Soviet Union during Stalin's Great Purge, tens of thousands of innocent Armenians were either executed or deported. Fears decreased when Stalin died in 1953 and Nikita Khruschev emerged as the country's new leader.
Independence: In the Gorbachev era of the 1980s, tension developed between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. In the same decade, Soviet Armenia suffered the devastating 1988 Leninakan Earthquake. In 1991, the Soviet Union broke apart and Armenia re-established its independence. Unfortunately, the early years of Armenia's independence were marred by the continued confrontation with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. A Russian-brokered cease-fire was put in place in 1994. Since then, Armenia and her neighbor have held peace talks, mediated by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (or OSCE). The status over Karabakh has yet to be determined and the economies of both countries have been hurt in the absence of a complete resolution. Still, despite high unemployment, Armenia has managed to make some economic improvements. It has made a full switch to a market economy and as of 2006, remains the 27th most economically free nation in the world. Its relations with Europe, the Middle East, and the CIS states have allowed Armenia to increase trade. Gas, oil, and other supplies come through two vital routes: Iran and Georgia, both of whom Armenia has been maintaining cordial relations with.
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