ABOUT HYESTART

Hyestart was founded in 2016 on the idea that it was absolutely essential to defend the rule of law, human rights - particularly minority rights and artistic freedoms - and democracy in Armenia and Turkey. 

 

The unprecedentedly violent war launched by Azerbaijan, with the full support of Turkey and Russia, against the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh in the autumn of 2020 has forced Hyestart to adapt.

 

Its vision of a democratic Turkey that finally acknowledges its past and the Armenian genocide, a sine qua non for a peaceful region that respects human rights, has not changed. 

 

While our bilingual blog, which aims to be a laboratory of ideas, remains fundamental, we have had to put on hold our actions to support artistic freedom and contemporary creation in Armenia. Our scholarship for the translation of contemporary Armenian literature (the Vartanouche Krikorian Fund) has thus been put on pause. 

 

From autumn 2020 to autumn 2023, we were resolutely committed to the right of the people of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) to self-determination as the only way to prevent ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh. In the face of international inaction, ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh finally took place in autumn 2023. It followed an illegal and inhumane blockade of Artsakh lasting almost 10 months. Hyestart is now committed to justice for this uprooted people.

 

We also engage in various advocacy, campaigning and awareness-raising actions against what the European Parliament has rightly described as "a systematic, state-level policy of Armenophobia, historical revisionism and hatred towards Armenians promoted by the Azerbaijani authorities, including dehumanisation, the glorification of violence and territorial claims against the Republic of Armenia which threaten peace and security in the South Caucasus" (10 March 2022 resolution).