GUEST OPINION
The memorial dedicated to the Armenian victory at the battle of Sardarabad near Araks, Armavir, Armenia (Drawing by Agnes Karikaturen)
May 28th marks Armenian Independence Day, the anniversary of the birth of the First Republic of Armenia in 1918.
By William Paparian
At its heart stands the Battle of Sardarabad, the decisive victory of May 1918, when a small, exhausted force of Armenian soldiers, volunteers, farmers, and refugees turned back an Ottoman army intent on completing the destruction begun during the Genocide. Without Sardarabad, there might have been no Armenia left to declare independence. As one historian warned, the word “Armenia” could have become merely “an antique geographical term.” Instead, on that battlefield near what is now Nor Armavir, our people chose life.
One hundred years after my grandfather, Nishan Paparian, left Kharpert in Ottoman-occupied Armenia and stepped onto Ellis Island in 1907, my wife, our three sons, and I made the pilgrimage home. It was Father’s Day 2007. Our youngest had just graduated from high school. We had spoken of this journey for years; now it was time to walk the soil our ancestors had been forced to leave.
On the road to Sardarabad, the dry Armenian plateau stretched beneath a brilliant blue sky, the air warm and fragrant with wild thyme and sunbaked earth. Tucked beside the highway in the village of Musaler stood a modest yet powerful monument to the defenders of Musa Dagh — a site absent from most guidebooks. In the summer of 1915, nearly 5,000 Armenians from six Cilician villages at the foot of Musa Dagh refused Ottoman deportation orders. They climbed the mountain, fortified a windswept plateau called Damlayik, and held out for fifty-three days against vastly superior forces. When supplies ran low, they raised giant banners visible from the sea: “Christians in Distress: Rescue!” French warships evacuated more than 4,000 survivors to safety in Egypt. Their stand was immortalized in Franz Werfel’s novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. Standing before the Musaler Memorial, the rough stone warm beneath our hands and the wind whispering through the grass, we felt the unbroken thread of defiance stretching from the salty breezes of Cilicia to the plains where we now stood.
From Musa Dagh’s story of desperate survival, we continued to Sardarabad, the place where defiance became victory. In late May 1918, roughly 9,000–10,000 Armenian fighters faced a larger Ottoman force advancing on Yerevan and Etchmiadzin. Under determined commanders, they launched fierce counterattacks. Church bells rang for days, calling peasants, women, and clergy to arms alongside soldiers. After eight days of fighting, the Ottoman advance was halted and pushed back.
As we climbed the broad stone steps toward the towering winged bulls, the rough granite cool beneath our palms and the midday sun warming our shoulders, the memorial bells suddenly began to ring. No ceremony was scheduled. Their deep, resonant peals rolled across the plain like thunder from the past, vibrating through our chests. Tears flowed freely. In that moment, the same bells that once summoned a people to battle seemed to welcome us home.
The museum at Sardarabad remains unmatched in our memory. In its cool interior, scented with aged wood and polished metal, our guide brought the exhibits to life, the weight of rifles carried by farmer-soldiers, grainy photographs of resolute faces, dioramas of the very fields outside. We left understanding that Sardarabad marked the moment Armenians passed from victims to victors, from refugees to republic-builders.
Later, we lit candles in Etchmiadzin’s ancient cathedral and walked the windswept ruins of Zvartnots. Yet it was the twin memorials — Musaler’s quiet fortress and Sardarabad’s soaring bells — that bound our journey together. One spoke of holding on when all seemed lost; the other proclaimed that a people could still rise and claim their future.
On May 28th, as we commemorate the Battle of Sardarabad and the independence it secured, I still carry the sound of those bells. They echo from Kharpert to Ellis Island, from the heights of Musa Dagh to the plains of Sardarabad, from the pain of the Genocide to the pride of nationhood.
They remind every generation that we are not merely inheritors of tragedy, but guardians of triumph, and that the fight begun on that plain in 1918 lives on in us, in our children, and in the sacred chain that binds past, present, and future.
May the bells of Sardarabad ring loud and long for all Armenian Americans. May they stir in us the courage that once saved a mountain, won a republic, and brought a diaspora family home. And may we, like those who came before us, choose life, fiercely, joyfully, and without end.
Happy Armenian Independence Day.
May 28, 2026
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