Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Genocide News

Mr. President--The Dead Don't Offer Quid Pro Quo
by David Davidian, AWOL February 24-March 2, 2001
Posted: Tuesday, March 20, 2001 01:53 am CST

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In a February 1, 2001 interview with Turkish columnist Ali Birand, Armenian President Robert Kocharian stated that all Turkey needed to do regarding its 1915 crime of genocide against the Armenians is to simply apologize. He also stated that if compensatory claims were made against the Republic of Turkey, such would be the exclusive realm of the Armenian Diaspora. Knowing the propensity of some Turkish media for selectively deleting facts and twisting reality, it seemed prudent to simply wait for an official statement from the Presidential Office or the Foreign Ministry clearing up this issue. No statement was forthcoming.

On February 12, 2001, Kocharian reiterated some of what he was quoted as saying to Birand in the French newspaper Le Figaro, while on an official state visit to France, a country which earlier this year officially recognized the Turkish genocide of the Armenian people as a historical fact.

It has been three weeks since Kocharian's claim that justice need not be rendered to the victims of this genocide as far as Armenia is concerned. It is now incumbent upon concerned Armenians to express outrage and reach our own conclusions about the background and motivation of statements made by Kocharian. The President of Armenia was neither elected by Armenians in the Diaspora nor the million and a half murdered at the hands of the Turkish government.

Recognition by the perpetrator of a horrific crime is merely the initial step in rendering justice. If no amends are made for such crimes against humanity, but rather a mere gesture of guilt is proclaimed, the crime remains unpunished and justice is aborted. The Armenian government will go down in history as having aided the Turkish government in absolving itself from paying any price for the wholesale murder of the Armenian population in Anatolia and wiping out the vestiges of their 3,000-year old civilization. If Turkey merely makes a gesture of recognition, then Turkey will have gotten away with genocide.

Justice for the Turkish crime of genocide against the Armenian people requires recognition of the crime by the Republic of Turkey, reparations amounting to four billion US dollars--compounded by the cumulative inflation rate starting in 1915 until the day of Turkish atonement be paid to survivors and all descendants of survivors of this crime--and the return of land comprising the six Armenian vilayets which includes much of the east and northeast of today's Turkey to these same surviving Armenians and their descendents. Anything less is a crime encouraged.

Presently, Kocharian demands of the rapist a simple admission of guilt without punishment. His stance is contrary to the basic tenets of laws and deterrents, crime and punishment, and flies in the face of the constitution of the Republic of Armenia.

Events such as the French recognition of the Turkish genocide of the Armenians do not happen in a vacuum. Such is the great international chess game of big power relations. One need only view the series of events several years ago when the Russians found direct Turkish support for the Chechens fighting against the central government in Moscow. This was followed by a seemingly unprovoked Alawi uprising in Turkey. That was punctuated by a high-level Russian visit to Turkey, followed by a switch in alliances between rival Kurdish groups in Turkey and Iraq. Power politics and quid pro quo were played out.

The recent French action was followed by Putin's visit to Baku without a courtesy call on Yerevan, and a warming in Russian- Turkish relations.

Putin's Azerbaijiani visit was interpreted in certain circles in Yerevan as a deterioration in Armenian-Russian strategic relations. The October 1999 shootings in the Armenian Parliament took place at a time when the Armenian government may have been making an "unacceptable" deal on Nagorno Karabagh in a conference in Istanbul, Turkey.

We also note in the Armenian Diaspora--within the ranks of certain self-proclaimed academic pioneers--efforts are being made towards facilitating a Turkish-Armenian dialogue. While no rational Armenian or Turk should reject such contact, established history is being selectively deleted by the self-proclaimed in order to make such contacts palatable for the Turks, and to create the illusion of "progress" in both Armenian and Turkish camps.

Certainly, history can be studied and its messages sharpened. However, when historical facts are trampled and the beneficiaries of premeditated genocide are rewarded without a moment's thought to justice because the timing is in the interest of major world powers, we descendents of the murdered dispossessed have a right to protest and question motives and intentions.

This Armenian is outraged at Kocharian's statements made in the name of all Armenians. While Kocharian might claim his statements have nothing to do with the Armenian Diaspora, it has everything to do with justice for the Armenian nation. By artificially separating citizens of Armenia and Armenians in the Diaspora, he has played into the hands of big power politics. Such politics are not necessarily pro-Turkish or anti-Armenian, they simply have their own dynamics. France did not pass the Armenian Genocide resolution because they happen to like the Armenians. In 1939, the French essentially ceded the heavily Armenian-populated Sanjak of Alexandretta to Turkey, hoping among other things, to forestall Turkey's entry into World War II on the side of its traditional ally, Germany.

When the Turkish border with Armenia is opened as part of a deal, then Kocharian's Armenia will be economically swallowed by Turkey and even more of its population will emigrate. Currently, Armenia has little to offer because rather than having built an economy with the help of the Armenian Diaspora integrated into the world system, it specifically excluded the Diaspora to perpetuate Armenian's mafia infrastructure. Armenia is now at the mercy of institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF, from which officials can siphon easy money in exchange for maintaining a poor, depleted, downtrodden population of unemployed or underemployed people.

If Kocharian is being pressured by the dictates of big power interests, he could be a man and a real spokesman for the nation and resign rather than capitulate. Doing so, however, would betray the government-mafia complex set into motion in the early 1990s. That course played into the hands of regional and international interests, while policies of successive Armenian governments allowed massive emigration, draining the country's best natural resource--its people. Armenian rulers chose feudal expediency rather than planning and working for a national goal.

Alas, if one were to live in Armenia, one would understand. No, one wouldn't understand because in the real world one lives with one's mistakes, and does not cash in one's demands for historical justice for short-lived gain.

Mr. Kocharian, you do not speak for Armenians anywhere seeking justice nor for those murdered in the Turkish genocide of one and a half million Armenians.

David Davidian is the Director of the Genocide Archive Project, Inc., based in Belmont, MA.

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