Thirty-nine-year-old Duru Ors is a translator and clarinetist from Izmir, Turkey who hopes music will help her learn more about Armenia, a neighbor with which her homeland shares a bitter past.

Through a fellowship from the Istanbul-based Hrant Dink Foundation, Ors is spending seven months in Yerevan, teaching Turkish and music in the city’s Mkhitar Sebastaci Educational Complex and collaborating with Armenian musicians.

She lives with an Armenian family of which several members are musicians, too. Sometimes in the evenings, they play music together.

Ors believes that such contacts can help Armenians and Turks build on what they have in common.

After all, she says with a smile, both are “in the same marshrutka” going somewhere.