have you experienced any type of
prejudice against
you because you're a turkish citizen oh
frank
right now we're going to meet a uh
turkish citizen
who is traveling through armenia we're
going to see
some of his views on what it's like as a
turkish person
traveling through armenia as he found
any type of hardships or anything like
that
i actually got notified of him through
his youtube channel
uh you can find that in the description
so right now we're
here in uh center of eurovon armania
with
uh argonne and he is going to uh tell us
a few interesting things about himself
and what he's been doing these uh
these last times uh so can you please uh
introduce yourself tell us a little bit
about yourself sure
uh my name is argon konouk i am a 25
year old turkish traveler
and also i write travel articles i make
travel videos
on youtube i make videos and i write
articles on my own website
and uh three weeks ago i came to armenia
to travel to see around to get to know
the culture to meet people
and i love it it's been terrific and
yeah this is my story
um well it's kind of an interesting time
for a turkish citizen to
come to armenia with the the war and
everything that's been going on
i mean did that make you a little bit
worried about coming here i i get that a
lot
and people ask me why did you come here
but uh i
am a person who is in love with people
history
culture food so armenia is obviously a
great place to experience this
and uh i know that after the war it's a
little sensitive but i saved money i'm a
fresh graduate
and since i had many i was like why not
come here why not meet people why not
see the other side of the coin you know
because
uh i i always wanted to see armenia
experience the country travel
especially you know experience the food
so
that's why i came here and so far uh
i've never had any negative attitude
with any negative
you know experience so people have been
so friendly
and so and you weren't worried about
coming
i i speak russian which made the
communication really easy for me so
i knew that i was not going to have a
language barrier uh
i was not worried at all i was kind of
intimidated that maybe at the border
uh people would uh ask me some questions
like
why why would they why did you come to
armenia why did you do that but
people were friendly people showed up i
think everything about like
everything went so smoothly and at the
border i mean
what was the experience like coming in
with a turkish passport
let me tell you so quickly i showed my
turkish passport you guys said like okay
why did you come to armenia i said i'm a
traveler
i love people i love cultures i just
came to experience like to explore your
country
and he said what's your address what's
your phone number stamp welcome to
armenia huh that's all it was
it was no dark room or nothing nothing
the police was so friendly and he
just so like you know intricate rosh
galdin to armenia
in turkish and he's so like welcome
that's all uh-huh
have you experienced any type of
prejudice against
you because you're a turkish citizen uh
franklino
and i openly said that i'm turkish and i
am a turk nationality-wise ethnicity of
us i am a turk because
that's the first question that people
ask me are you kurdish or what's your
ethnicity
and i said like i'm turkish but everyone
said welcome to armenia i mean nothing
negative
people are so amazing here so friendly
and this is a common misconception in
turkey that we have
turkish people cannot come to armenia no
they can and people are friendly
if you if you're just here to explore
the country
meet people of course fine if you are
here if you're here
with good intentions people are going to
be fine for you
very interesting can you tell us about
some of the
maybe experience that you the
experiences that you've had here
uh okay uh at this um it's
a church and i don't remember the name
of it the priest came
and asked like where am i from i said
i'm from turkey then he was like oh
welcome like how are you doing how do
you like our country is everything good
then he gave me a private tour of the
church
i wish i remembered his name i have a
horrible memory about that
and apart from that i went to this uh
food market gum
in yerevan and i was walking around and
people are obviously i was holding my
camera filming the food and filming the
stalls and people ask me where am i from
and i said i'm turkish
and everyone gave me so many free
samples so i didn't have to have dinner
at that time at that day
yeah people have been amazing but that's
how i could name it amazing
wow pretty pretty interesting uh what
what's
i guess uh what did your your family
feel about you coming here uh i come
from a
really open-minded and accepting family
obviously my parents said that please be
careful don't go near the border just
be a tourist and i was like anyways i i
came here to be a tourist
my parents were first a bit scared that
my dad was especially he was saying that
i mean is everything good
is it safe is it fine then i said yeah
sure at first they were fine that i
this time i called them on facetime and
i was showing them the streets and i was
like look i'm here i'm fine everything
is good the city is normal it's not a
war zone on the contrary to what
the media shows sometimes it's just a
normal city people go about their days
i like that first ever scare but then
they came around
and speaking of media what how is
armenia portrayed in
the media in turkey let me answer that
because okay
no uh okay no no uh worries
and uh like um we
we talked about before the interview any
anything that might
make everyone feel a little bit uh
uncomfortable
um you know this is a open free
interview like
always and we want to just make sure
that everyone's comfortable as always
during our report so
what else do you think uh the world
needs to understand about armenia
that it's a really beautiful country
it's a tourist friendly country
you can have a great experience here all
these monasteries
all these churches like blew my mind
yeah
amazing and people are so friendly and
especially for the
if if there's anyone who is from turkey
watching this i can say that
people are amazing like suffering they
get so flattered when they know that
they wanna
you want to explore their culture
explore their country
and okay what else they have to know um
food is amazing and it's so similar to
our cuisine
we have pretty much the same stuff like
all dolmas kapamas hashtag
soups it's really similar from a tourist
experience
it is an amazing country as a truck i
can say that armenia is an amazing
country for tourists and how many
countries have you actually been to
around 65 60 and armenia would be
definitely in my top five
definitely i'm not saying this because
i'm in the other one but definitely my
top five
nice nice and how long have you been
here today i've been here
uh 19 days and today i'm going back
sadly
but hopefully soon i'll come back to
explore tatev and dilijan especially
because these are the two of the places
that i
couldn't go i didn't have an outside and
have you talked to many people uh from
art suck
oh no i know okay
um and uh i guess uh
one one big question that some of my
subscribers wanted me to ask you about
uh um was the
back in 1915 there was the the armenian
genocide do you have any
thoughts or do you want to maybe talk
about that a bit about that i don't
you know i've got to ask some of the
questions that i totally understand no
of course of course you ask me
you know um so
yeah i'd actually love to have you uh
back on a um
a live stream i would love to have you
yeah okay that would be great uh but
yeah today's just been a
a nice a quick uh talk here with
argon and uh if there's anything else
that maybe you want
uh my subscribers who now are like
because i've been here for so long
a lot of them are mania and maybe they
you should want them to know about
turkey
i want to tell your subscribers that
thank you for
all my armenian brothers sisters who
make me feel like i'm home
even after the war i never had anything
negative people are so friendly the city
is amazing the country is amazing i had
a terrific time here
so i want to thank you my fellow
armenians to make me feel like i'm home
that's what i would like to say yeah me
as i mean i'm an outsider here as well
uh you know i'm from the united states
and
i've really felt very comfortable here
myself i
i've loved being in armenia i can see
i agree with you pretty much everything
you've said about it's great for uh
tourism even though there's just the war
ending it's still a great place really
open
friendly people so i really appreciate
you uh coming on today
and i hope we meet again hope so thank
you thank you thank you so that was a
pretty interesting interview
uh he had some interesting things to say
about
uh his experiences a turk
traveling uh armenia i didn't want to
push too hard because we had a
conversation beforehand like i said
about him not wanting to be
uh uh talking about any politics or
anything like that because he is just
a travel blogger that's that's what he
does i mean he
you know takes his time to share his
experiences traveling around the world
uh with us uh over youtube and of course
you could find his youtube channel in
the description below
um but you know he had a lot of great
things to say about uh
armenia you know kind of this
similar experience to what i've had here
really open people
uh no problems uh great food
um it's you know armenia is a really
nice place to be you know unfortunately
uh the war has been going on and
it's not too far in the past now so
there's still scars
from that and that's unfortunate
but we're going to continue to bring you
all of these
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