What Is Western Armenia? The Land Behind Mount Ararat

Western Armenia is the name Armenians use for the historic Armenian lands that came under Ottoman rule and now lie inside eastern Turkey. Mount Ararat stands near that same territory, visible from Yerevan and out of reach. Here is what the name covers, and how the mountain ended up on the far side of a closed border.

What Western Armenia refers to

Start with the geography. The Armenian Highland is a mountain region that lies mainly in present-day Turkey. The Republic of Armenia occupies one corner of it. The plateau of eastern Anatolia was inhabited primarily by Christian Armenians for centuries before Ottoman rule.

Western Armenia means the part of that homeland the Ottomans held. In the diplomatic language of the nineteenth century it was reduced to six provinces: Erzurum, Van, Bitlis, Diyarbekir, Kharpert and Sivas. Armenians know them as Karin, Van, Baghesh, Dikranagerd, Kharpert and Sebastia.

So when Armenians say eastern Turkey was Armenian, it is not a slogan. It is where the churches, the manuscripts, the villages and the cemeteries are.

The mountain was lost separately, and later

This part usually gets skipped, and it is the part worth knowing.

Ararat was never Ottoman territory in the years the first Republic of Armenia existed. It sat in the Surmalu district of the Erivan Governorate, on the Russian side of the line, along with Igdir. It passed to Turkey under the Treaty of Kars, signed on October 13, 1921, together with Kars, Ardahan and the ruins of Ani.

Two losses, six years apart. The Armenian population of the Ottoman provinces was destroyed and deported in the genocide that began in 1915. Then the mountain itself was signed away by treaty in 1921.

Armenia kept Ararat at the center of its coat of arms regardless. Turkey raised objections about it in the Soviet period. The mountain stayed on the emblem.

What is still standing there

The sites did not vanish with the people.

• Ani, the Bagratid Armenian capital in the tenth and eleventh centuries, now a ruin field near Kars. UNESCO inscribed it in 2016, citing it as exceptional testimony to Armenian architecture and to the building tradition known as the Ani school.
• The Church of the Holy Cross on Aghtamar, on an island in Lake Van, built between 915 and 921 for the Armenian king Gagik I Artsruni. Its carved exterior is one of the most important surviving works of medieval Armenian art.
• Khachkars, the carved cross-stones, across the region. They are the reason that form still reads as Armenian anywhere in the world.

You will often find these described without the word Armenian attached. That omission is part of what the diaspora reacts to.

Why the image ends up on our walls

Ararat is the one piece of Western Armenia that is still visible from home soil. You can see it from Yerevan and from Khor Virap. You cannot walk up to it. That combination is why it carries grief alongside pride, and why it turns up on so much Armenian décor. We have written about what the mountain itself means separately.

The other motifs do similar work. The pomegranate, the tree of life and the birds in Armenian manuscript art all come from the same highland. They sit in our Pomegranate & Haykakan Symbols collection, and a wall hanging is the format that gives them room.

Why it matters to say the name

Western Armenia is not a claim on a map. It is the correct name for where a large part of Armenian history happened, and using it keeps that history attached to the people who made it. For a diaspora scattered by what took place there, that is not a small thing.