One of the founders of Aras Publishing, Yetvart Tomasyan, passed away last night.
Along with Mıgırdiç Margosyan, Ardaşes Margosyan and Hrant Dink, he is one of the four founders of Aras Publishing[1], which began publishing in 1993.
He has undertaken important work to promote Armenian culture and literature. He has particularly tried to be the voice of the Armenian community in Turkey.
The Armenian Genocide of 1915 had a profound impact on his life and work.
He also carried out his work in the Agos Newspaper and pioneered the development of dialogue and understanding between societies with his contributions in these areas.
[1] "We have established Aras Publishing, a room of three by five, fifteen square meters... There are three tables in this room, three people are constantly sitting there, working, and three people come and go during the week. The person who comes sits at the end of one of the tables and starts working. There are also two guest chairs, behind the door, and the guests who come and go sit there. When a third guest comes, he has to stand, it is a narrow room, in fact, when the guest sits down, the door cannot be opened completely, when the door opens, it hits the knee of the person sitting and opens halfway.
"We have three regular guests: Sarkis Seropyan, Mardiros Balıkçıoğlu and Yelda. It would be correct to say that they come by every day. Sarkis Abi and Mardiros Abi are two giant people, they can't fit next to each other anyway. Sarkis Abi is on bad terms with Paylin, 'Man,' he says, 'I told Paylin forty times, she didn't set up a table for me right there.' Paylin is nagging, 'Sarkis Abi, the door doesn't open from your knee, where can I put the table?' should I put it?’ This dialogue continued for years, until one day Hrant came up with the idea of ‘Brother, come on, let’s publish a newspaper.’
“Book publishing did not stop Hrant’s excitement, he could not be satisfied, he insisted on ‘Let’s publish a weekly newspaper.’ Meeting after meeting, Sarkis Abi was by Hrant’s side, giving him the energy. Six months passed, finally Hrant said, ‘I’ll leave and go, I’ll publish a newspaper,’ and he went with Sarkis Abi. I will never forget that excitement. He had brought the zero number of Agos to the Sayat Nova Choir’s concert at the Maçka Mining Faculty G Amphitheater, and was handing it out in the foyer with great pleasure. He was soaring…”