Metro Detroit Armenians remember genocide victims
Weekend events to commemorate 89th anniversary of massacre in Turkey
By Christopher M. Singer / The Detroit News
April 22, 2004
DEARBORN – Metro Detroit’s 40,000-member Armenian communityon Friday
will launch a series of events marking the 89th anniversary of the
20th century’s first genocide.
This year, the commemoration follows news that New York Life Insurance
Co.
last month agreed to place $1.7 million in a fund for what the company
called ` unclaimed or heirless’ life insurance policies from which
Armenian religious groups in the United States will benefit.
Descendants of Armenian genocide victims in 1999 brought a
class-action lawsuit against New York Life to pay on 2,186 policies
purchased by victims. But the lack of Armenian birth certificates or
Turkish death records made it virtually impossible for descendants to
prove victims ever existed.
Lawmakers, including Michigan Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, are pushing
for a commemoration of the genocide. Levin has signed a letter to
President Bush urging him to officially call the deaths from 1915-23
of 1.5 million Armenians a genocide, a press aide said.
Before April 24, 1915, an estimated 3 million Armenians lived in
Armenia and Turkey. By the time Turkey stopped the killing in 1923,
about 1.5 million Armenians still were alive but scattered in places
like the United States, Palestine, Lebanon, France and Brazil, along
with Armenia and Turkey.
The exact number of victims will never be known because Armenian birth
records were destroyed and Turkey kept no records of what Armenians
label`the massacre.’ The Rev. Daron Stepanian, pastor of St. Sarkis
Armenian Apostolic Church in Dearborn recalled the story of what Talat
Pashah had declared when the killing started.
Pashah was the leader of the Young Turks, a group of military officers
who in 1908 staged a coup to overthrow the sultan who ruled the
Ottoman Empire.
`He said they would keep one Armenian in a museum so future
generations would know what an Armenian looked like,’ Stepanian said.
April 24 is marked as `Martyr’s Day’ because 400 Armenian
intellectuals were rounded up and murdered in Istanbul on April 24,
1915.
Turkey, an ally of Germany and an enemy of czarist Russia in World War
I, announced during the war that Armenians had been, for their own
safety, evacuated to strategic hamlets so they wouldn’t be caught
between Turkey and Russia.
In reality, Armenians forcibly were marched into the Syrian
desert. Those who didn’t die of thirst or exposure, starved or died of
disease.
Even today, the modern secular nation of Turkey rigidly denies that a
genocide occurred.
`The world should care,’ an agitated Stepanian demanded.`Hitler
himself said, `Who remembers the Armenians?’ Acknowledgement must
come.’ On Saturday night, Armenians from three different churches
will gather at St. Sarkis to worship and to remember at the khach kar,
or `cross of the stones,’ a peculiarly Armenian art form dating to 301
A.D., when the nation was converted to Christianity.
Worshippers will wear white carnations. Genocide survivors will be
given red carnations. Stepanian fears there soon will be no one to
give red carnations to.
Bruce Russel, professor and chairman of the philosophy department of
Wayne State University, sees meaning and value when attention is
given, whether it’s remembering the genocide during the gathering at
St. Sarkis or a pilgrimageto Auschwitz in his native Poland by Pope
John Paul II.
`There’s some value in acknowledging these things,’Russell said. `You
want to acknowledge that human beings can do awful things. We need to
acknowledge evil because it keeps it in the forefront of our minds,
and we can’t push it to the back.’ Acknowledgement won’t be easy.
Last week, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul warned his
country’s border with Armenia – closed following the fall of the
Soviet Union’ will not be reopened `unless the Armenian lobby in
the U.S. drops its false claims about the alleged Armenian genocide.’
The issue of Turkey’s denial bothers some Turks.
Fatma Muge Gocek is an associate professor of sociology at the
University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Born in Turkey, Gocek came to the
United States in 1981 to earn her doctorate in sociology at Princeton.
Gocek is on a sabbatical to write a book on a topic she calls
`Deciphering Denial.’ `I try to understand why the denial occurred,’
she said.`They admit that there were massacres, but they reject the
charge of genocide.’ Gocek said her motivation was simple: As a Turk
herself, she got worn out answering questions about the genocide.
You can reach Christopher M. Singer at (734) 462-2093 or
[email protected].