ARMENIAN GENOCIDE DEBATE CONTINUES
By: Matthew Watkins
Texas A&M The Battalion, TX
April 24, 2006
Adan Peña, Robert Saucedo, Wade Barker – THE BATTALION. Susan Gordone
discusses photos of her relatives who experienced the Armenian genocide
that started in 1915.
Very few would doubt that Armenian-American Susan Gordone’s family
has suffered. However, what to call the cause of their suffering is
a ninety year-old debate.
In 1913, Gordone’s grandmother, Rose, was asked by her pregnant
mother to help deliver her younger sister. At the time, her whole
family lived in Turkey.
“Rose was eight years old. The baby, with its afterbirth, slipped
through her hands and died. Three days later, her mother died,” said
Gordone, who lives in College Station and is a former worker for the
Texas A&M theater arts and English departments. “A week later when
her father returned, he told the remaining members of the family that
they must leave immediately, pack into a wagon or be killed.”
Seven years after the death of her mother and sister, Rose traveled
to America to escape the danger in her home country.
“But in those seven years, she, along with my Uncle John and Aunt
Tervanda, would persevere in the death caravans, watching other family
members die along the way before arriving in Ellis Island in 1920,”
Gordone said.
On Monday, Gordone, along with the Armenian community, will observe
the 91st anniversary of the Armenian genocide, which some estimates
indicate took the lives of as many as 1.5 million Armenians. However,
others, including the Turkish Government, contend that the Armenian
genocide never happened.
The events of the Armenian genocide occurred when the Young Turks, who
had power over Turkey at the time, relocated or deported the country’s
Armenian population during World War I. Most of the Armenians were
relocated on foot causing many to die of exhaustion or starvation. Most
Armenians and many scholars contend that the deaths were genocide.
The Turkish government acknowledges the deaths of hundreds of thousands
of Armenians between 1915 and 1917, but says the deaths were the
result of a civil war and starvation that affected all members of
the Turkish population.
The debate about the events has become so heated that it has sometimes
prevented Armenians and Turks from becoming friends at A&M, said Yaman
Evrenoglu, a Turkish graduate student in electrical engineering. He
said he remembers at least five times when a personal friendship
between an Armenian and Turk was halted when the pair’s nationality
was revealed.
The most recent shake up in the controversy was an hour-long
documentary, “The Armenian Genocide,” which aired on PBS and told
the story of the genocide. The film featured many scholars, some
of whom were Turkish, telling the story of death marches in which
Armenians were pushed off cliffs, drowned, starved and exhausted. A
25-minute panel discussion about the Turkish involvement in these
deaths followed the documentary.
“(The documentary) provides a blatantly one-sided perspective of a
tragic and unresolved period of world history,” Turkish ambassador
to the United States Nabi ?ensoy said in a statement after the
documentary’s airing. “Its premise is rejected not only by my
government, but also by many eminent scholars who have studied the
period in question.”
Armenians and the myriad of scholars who contend that the genocide
is a historical fact said the panel legitimized a view that hatefully
refused to acknowledge the genocide.
“Turkish denials of the genocide are part of a state-sponsored policy
of propaganda that serves only the interests of Turkey. The historical
truth of the Armenian genocide has been established beyond reasonable
doubt by abundant documentary and eye-witness evidence from thousands
of sources,” Vako Nicolian said in an online petition he authored
and sent the vice president of programming at PBS.
As of Sunday, the petition has gathered 22,195 signees.
Gordone said she had no problem with the airing of the panel
discussion, which featured two scholars on each side of the issue,
because it simply revealed the lack of depth to the Turkish
government’s claims.
“If we are going to pretend that a stateless Christian minority
population, unarmed, is somehow in a capacity to kill people in an
aggressive way that is tantamount to war, or civil war, we’re living
in the realm of the absurd,” said Peter Balakian, a professor at
Colgate University in the debate.
Evrenosoglu said he was more upset about the debate than the
documentary.
“The documentary was much more moderate compared to ones that I
have witnessed,” he said. “It was too biased for us of course, but
at least they presented the Turkish government and the Turkish point
of view. The debate was a complete disaster because the theme of the
debate was not about discussion of the Armenian genocide but why the
Turkish government is rejecting it.”
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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
