A little humor and sarcasm on Turkish journalists’ visit of Armenia Promoting the Defeat Lap

· March 20, 2025

By Jirair Tutunjian

This is the transcript of a recent telephone conversation between two leading Turkish journalists.

EKSOY SHAH: Gule, gule, arkadash.

IMAD TARAF: Do you know it’s 5 a.m.? Why did you wake me up? This better be important.

ESH: I was going to ask you whether you’ve been invited to Ermenistan by their president …Sakhalluh

Pashinoglu? I heard a dozen or so Turkish journalists have been invited. I was wondering whether you were invited.

IT: No, I haven’t.

ESH: You know when racing drivers win, they make a victory lap to brandish their victory, to boast, to show-off. But I haven’t seen adefeated president or prime minister do a defeat lap. Sarsam Pashinyan is doing a defeat lap by professing his defeat at the hands of our little brother Baby Aliev. Sakhat Pashinyan seems to want to show us the X-rays of his rout. Criminals and other wrong-doers often have the urge to confess. Our Baby Aliev

certainly eviscerated, emaciated, and disemboweled Nicky.

IT: Hey, it looks like you’ve been reading the Turkish Roget’s thesaurus.

ESH: Never mind. Listen to this: it’s an all-expense-paid trip. It’s what travel writers call junket. In other words,

Sarsakh Pashinyan, the head of an impoverished country, will spend many thousands of dollars to promote himself. I think he has invited twelve Turkish journalists and one from the Ermeni Agos of Istanbul.

IT: Had I been invited, I wouldn’t have accepted.

ESH: Come on…you have never refused a junket. I am sure they would serve dishes they have stolen from us…lehmejoun, harissa, and shish kebab which they call khorovadz. But they have decent brandies. They might give you a bottle or two to celebrate eternal Turkish-Armenian friendship…or as we say in the business to “lubricate the wheels.” Have you Googled Armenia’s tourist attractions?

IT: Why would I do that?

ESH: Armenia’s main attractions are Garni Temple, Tatev Monastery, Geghard Monsatary, Haghpad and Sanahin Monasteries, Noravank, Cathedral of Echmiadzin… all gavoor churches. Now a brain-dead Armenia oligarch is erecting a statue of the main gavoor idol Issa Massih which will be taller than the one in Rio de Janiero.

IT: You are being unnecessarily nasty. You have not mentioned Armenia has the world’s longest cable car at Tatev Monastery.

ESH: It doesn’t count: it was built by the Austrians or was it the Swiss?

IT: Let’s not kid ourselves: almost all of Turkey’s famous tourist sites are natural formations. Turkey’s man-made famous tourist sites were all built by Greeks. You also didn’t mention the Lake Sevan resort.

ESH: But a number of churches overlook Lake Sevan. Armenian tourist promoters—I am using the descriptive generously–idiotically boast that Ermenistan has 4,000 churches. Who would tour Armenia so as to see its

million churches? There’s also Karahunge…but that’s a pagan church.

IT: How about visiting the caves where the oldest shoe was found…or the oldest winery.

ESH: I see you are persuading yourself to go on the junket. By the way, what have they done since their

independence thirty-five years ago?They built that monument of the alleged genocide. It’s a tourist attraction

now. We should build a genocide museum ten times the size of the Ermenlerin farce museum. We should call it The Martyr Trio Museum: Enver, Cemal, and Talaat.

IT: The so-called Armenian genocide museum was built long before their so-called independence.

ESH: You know something…I too might accept the invitation. For nearly a thousand years, we have tried to eliminate this accursed race. We have tried everything: we drove them to the four corners of the globe, we destroyed their towns and stole their wives and the young…and yet they survive. Now their standard of living is higher than ours and they are better educated.

It: Despite Pashinoglu.

ESH: You know what? I’ll go if they invite me. My article will be titled From Armenia With Love. A touch of our famed diplomacy there.