Reported violence in Turkey involving holidaymakers from Armenia and at least one case of an Armenian citizen gone missing in the neighboring country have raised concerns in Yerevan about possible ethnic motives behind these developments. While it appears that the reports were sensationalized and information not verified, the result, nonetheless, has been that some Armenian tourists are now nervous about going for a Turkish holiday.

A local tour operator offering trips to Turkish spas and resorts says following these one-sided accounts they’ve seen an increased number of telephone inquiries from concerned citizens who were hesitating whether to choose to spend their summer vacations in Turkey (whose resorts are believed to offer a better value for money than local holiday spots).

(Armenia and Turkey share a history of mutual animosity and despite efforts at the level of political leaderships in recent years to mend fences still do not have diplomatic relations and their common border remains closed. Still, a large number of Armenians, including citizens of Armenia, live or stay in Turkey for work and go there for rest every year).

Reports about a pregnant Armenian woman who went missing in Turkey and an Armenian family that suffered violence in a hotel have been spreading through media and online social networks in recent days. Many, among them also some officials, have been giving some political coloring to these events, urging people to refrain from traveling to Turkey for vacation.

Quoting Turkish daily newspaper Sabah, Armenian media reported that 29-year-old Anna Davtyan (she is married and lives in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, and is in her sixth month of pregnancy) went missing in mysterious circumstances as she has not been seen since she parted with her friend at a hotel in Ankara on July 17. Davtyan’s mother Karina Davtyan, who went to Turkey to find her daughter, fears she might have been kidnapped.

No further information is available about this case. Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesman Tigran Balayan told ArmeniaNow that the Ministry was working in the direction of finding the missing citizen, but did not elaborate on concrete steps being made. The spokesman said the Ministry was informed about the case only twelve days after it supposedly happened, which, according to him, is “strange”. But the official promised that the Ministry will keep the public updated on this case if information of any value pertaining to the case becomes available.

Another Armenian family on a holiday in Turkey returned mostly unscathed, but have told of the ordeal they had to go through while staying in a Turkish hotel. According to their accounts, they suffered because together with a group of young men from Russia (two of them ethnic Armenians) they stood up to defend two girls from Moscow, one of whom was also an ethnic Armenian, and that resulted in a brawl and a fistfight with hotel workers.

Liana Mamyan says her son and husband did nothing wrong but were mistreated by Turkish hotel workers. She said that the Russian girls were sitting in the hotel’s foyer and working on their notebook when a waiter came and rudely dragged the table cloth. The girls reproached the waiter who started to argue with them and then four young men from Russia joined in the quarrel and that’s how the fight between the hotel workers and the four men began. According to Mamyan, hotel workers also beat her elder son and her husband.

“We have decided one thing for sure in our family. We will never, ever go to Turkey again,” Mamyan concluded in her published account.

What objectively appears an isolated incident not connected to locale or nationality, has gained an ethnic coloring as the family’s account has been disseminated and discussed in internet forums and on television.

The issue of whether Armenians should go to Turkey as holidaymakers has generated heated debates in Armenia for years. Those who advise against spending vacations in Turkey usually say that by going there Armenians help Azerbaijan, Turkey’s ethnic cousin and Armenia’s archrival in the region, because Turkey ostensibly sends the money left by Armenians in Turkish resorts to Baku.

In a recent TV interview Gagik Yeganyan, head of the Migration Agency at the Ministry of Local Government of Armenia, recalled the statement containing threats to deport Armenians staying in Turkey illegally that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan made earlier this year. He alleged that some ordinary Turks may have taken those words as a call to action.

But Tez Tour Ltd director Narine Davtyan told ArmeniaNow that media in Armenia have been spreading the news of recent violence involving Armenians in Turkey without checking facts with them. (Tez Tour, a major Russian tour operator that has an affiliate in Armenia, had organized the trip for the family in question and says it possesses first-hand information from its representative in Antalya.)

“In fact, the incident happened at about 1-2 a.m. and it was waiters asking the girls repeatedly to take their notebook off the table so they could prepare it for the morning breakfast, and those repeated request remained unanswered. An angry waiter then took the notebook and put it on another table,” says Davtyan, adding that at that moment a group of four young Russians approached and the quarrel began.

According to Davtyan, that incident did not involve any political or ethnic motives and the cause was the disrespectful attitude towards the waiters, which “can often be met in Yerevan as well.”

“In general, hotels in Antalya are apolitical because they are interested in the business side of things,” says Davtyan, adding that this is the first such incident that happened to their tourists in Turkey. She also says that they first learned about it from press publications and that none of the people who claim to have suffered violence from Turkish hotel workers have lodged a complaint with the company.