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Armenia Marks Genocide Day
NEWS BRIEFS
Thousands of people marched to the genocide memorial in Yerevan on Tuesday, in the annual silent remembrance of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians killed or starved to death during the final years of the Ottoman Empire. Official ceremonies and church services across the country marked the 86th anniversary of the beginning of what many historians say was the first genocide of the 20th century.
In a written address to the nation, President Robert Kocharian described the mass killings and deportations as the "greatest tragedy" in the history of Armenians and vowed to continue government efforts aimed at international recognition of the genocide. "The pursuit of an international recognition of the Armenian genocide continues to be on the foreign policy agenda of the Republic of Armenia as the expression of just and legitimate expectations of all segments of the Armenian people," he said. Kocharian and other senior officials laid wreaths at a monument to the victims of the tragedy.
Turkey firmly denies the genocide, saying that there was no premeditated policy by the Ottoman authorities to exterminate the ethnic Armenian population of the disintegrating Empire. Ankara vehemently protested the recent passage of resolutions by parliaments of several European countries recognizing the massacres as genocide.
(Hrach Melkumian)
International Recognition In Progress 86 Years After Armenian Tragedy
It is a day that Armenians throughout the world remember all too well. April 24 evokes painful memories and keeps alive their resolve to have the rest of the world recognize the tragedy they were subjected to 86 years ago.
This year's remembrance of an estimated 1.5 million victims of the Armenian genocide, the most defining moment in the nation's long history, has an important difference from previous ones. For it follows ground-breaking developments that have raised the long-running campaign for international condemnation of the mass killings and deportations to new heights. A spate of resolutions by several European legislatures recognizing the bloody events of 1915 as genocide and strong chances that the US Congress will eventually follow suit have placed the lifelong goal of several generations of Armenians within reach. Decades of research and lobbying now seem to be paying off.
"We are definitely closer [to recognition]," said Lucig Danielian, a political science professor at the American University of Armenia (AUA). "There can be no doubt that there has been tremendous progress over the last twenty years and that Armenians have been able to achieve the goals that they have set for themselves. And there is no doubt that we will continue to achieve them and that were are getting closer and closer to the point where recognition will be considered the normal state of affairs and we will no longer have to be proving that the genocide took place."
Rouben Adalian, director of the New York-based Armenian National Institution (ANI) agreed: "The breakthrough has been achieved, the barriers have been crossed and the struggle for universal affirmation is now on a very different plane."
Few observers could predict what a snowball effect the appearance of a pro-Armenian resolution on the Congress floor last October would have. A last-minute intervention from former President Bill Clinton, whose extraordinary warning about danger facing "American lives" in Turkey led Speaker Dennis Hastert to block a vote in the House of Representatives, may have killed the non-binding legislation. But it was to become a catalyst for more successful Armenian lobbying efforts in major European countries.
The Turkish government's consistent policy of genocide denial suffered its most serious setback in November when both houses of the French parliament unanimously approved a bill officially recognizing the Armenian genocide. President Jacques Chirac signed it into law in January, ignoring Turkish threats of economic sanctions against France.
A similar initiative was, in the meantime, approved by the parliament of Italy. And the European Parliament further infuriated Ankara by referring to the genocide in a statement setting out requirements for Turkey's membership of the European Union. The word "genocide" was also mentioned in a joint statement late last year by the heads of the Roman Catholic and Armenian Apostolic Churches, in what amounted to the Vatican's affirmation of the tragedy.
Never before has the Western press paid so much attention to the issue. In Britain, for example, a media outcry forced the government of Tony Blair to include Armenians in official ceremonies on the Holocaust Memorial Day in January.
Meanwhile, the recognition effort is again gathering momentum in the US, with President George W. Bush facing mounting pressure to reaffirm his pre-election statement that Armenians had been victims of a "genocidal campaign." Armenian-American groups, which now boast one of the most influential ethnic lobbies on Capitol Hill, now say that passage of an appropriate Congressional resolution is just a matter of time.
This could indeed be tantamount to international recognition of the genocide. But Armenians will not consider "historical justice" restored as long as Turkey is unrepentant about its past. There is, however, no reason to expect that Turkey's present political and military elite will reconsider its stance any time soon. The official Turkish version of the tragic events has it that the Armenian death toll is grossly exaggerated and that most of those deaths resulted from internal strife, disease and hunger that had plagued the crumbling Ottoman Empire. The infamous death marches to the Syrian desert by hundreds of thousands of children, women and the elderly are described as the peaceful evacuation of a population sympathetic to enemy troops fighting the Ottoman Turks in the First World War.
For the vast majority of Turks, this is the essence of what their leaders call "Armenian incidents." Not surprisingly, their dominant reaction to the recent wave of genocide resolutions was shock and anger. But perhaps more importantly, the international resonance has also meant that the issue is being for the first time openly discussed in Turkey. And although the dominant view continues to be one of denial of any wrongdoing, there are growing calls for the nation to confront its troubled past.
"I think that we must get rid of the taboos that surround the events of 1915," Halil Berktay, a history professor at Istanbul's Sabanci University, wrote in the French weekly "L'Express" last November. "For decades, Turkish public opinion is being lulled to sleep by the same lullaby. And yet there are tons of documents proving the sad reality," Berktay said.
"Turkish society is going through a crisis of negation," his colleague from Galatasaray University, Ahmet Insel, noted in a February article for the Turkish daily "Radikal."
This is the kind of change which AUA's Danielian finds "extremely important." She says: "I think it is one of the expected by-products of all of this activity. Really, what we are talking about is dialogue with not only the Turkish state but with its people as well."
One of the proposed ways of such dialogue is for the matter to be discussed by Armenian and Turkish historians. Armenian scholars say such discussions are welcome as long as they do not question the very fact of a genocide. As ANI's Adalian puts it: "There should be parity, there should be an understanding that the subject is not questionable but rather an open discussion is being held on the historic effects of the Armenian genocide and not on whether it occurred or didn't occur."
One thing that makes official Ankara so opposed to the recognition is the fear of Armenian territorial claims on parts of eastern Turkey that had once made up part of ancient and medieval Armenian kingdoms. While there is consensus in Armenia and the Diaspora over the need for international recognition, Armenians have still to agree on what its ultimate aim should be. Nationalist groups such as the Armenian Revolutionary Federation-Dashnaktsutyun still have the creation of a "united Armenia" on their political agenda.
Successive governments in Yerevan, however, have ruled out territorial demands on Turkey. President Robert Kocharian reiterated this stance in a recent interview with the CNN-Turk news channel. Kocharian said that even if Ankara were to "ask forgiveness for what has happened," Yerevan would not be able to lay claim to its territory because "today's Republic of Armenia is not the heir to those lands."
A research and analysis group of the Armenian News Network, a California-based online news service, concluded in an article on April 15 that the Diaspora Armenians, the main driving force behind the recognition campaign, must submit a specific "list of reparations" to the Turkish authorities. "The issue of reparations cannot be disentangled from the issue of recognition. Turkey will not take the final step until it knows what it will encounter next," the analysts said.
"The publication of such a reparation list can also be used during the
gradual process of rapprochement, which is needed if the Turkish state
starts shifting its attitude towards the Genocide legacy. In return
for Turkey taking some steps towards implementing some of the
provisions mentioned in this list (for example, returning abandoned
Armenian Church property to its rightful owner, the Armenian
Patriarchate in Istanbul), the Diaspora Armenians may agree to
temporarily slow down their international campaign for Genocide
recognition to allow the Turkish elite time to prepare the public for
the coming shift in position."
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