YEREVAN. – The girls at the children’s home in Armenia’s Gavar city will be taken to Turkey. Aravot daily received such information from a reader. 

“[And] In an interview with us, Gavar Children’s Home Director Nikolay Nalbandyan did not deny the news. [But] He added that not only girls, but also boys [and] representatives from the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry and the Children’s Home’s headship [likewise] are included in the group that will go. 

In his words, ‘this is a cultural and a recreational event. Children over the ages of twelve will head [to Turkey] for around ten days.’

The Director confessed that the news received a wide resonance, that there were people who had called 1-02 [Police hotline], and even people from the Police had come to check the data and the lists of the children who will go. 

Nalbandian assured that the invitation was from the [Armenian] Patriarchate of Constantinople, with funding by an Armenian-Swedish organization.

‘Is it bad that thirty children will travel around Western Armenia—Kars, Ani, HolyCrossChurch, home of [great Armenian poet, writer, and public activist] Yeghishe Charents, our ancestral lands?’ 

Also, he said that in the previous years they took Gavar’s children to Germany, the Netherlands, US, [and] France.

‘It is the Armenian [Deputy] Patriarch [of Constantinople] who invited. Shall we reject the Armenian Patriarch?’”, Aravot writes.