EFFORTS ARE RISING TO GET THE U.S. TO RECOGNIZE THE DEATHS OF 1.5 MILLION ARMENIANS
Tammy Krikorian, Tribune
East Valley Tribune, AZ
April 24 2007
When my great-grandparents left their Ottoman Empire home for America
in 1913, it was to escape a pending genocide that would claim the
lives of their entire families.
Today marks the 92nd anniversary of the start of the Armenian genocide
that killed 1.5 million and forced an additional 500,000 through the
desert and away from their ancestral homeland.
Lessons from the first genocide of the 20th century remain relevant
today, as a modern-day genocide ravages the Darfur region of Sudan,
and as the Turkish government continues to deny the crimes committed
against Armenians in its Ottoman past.
A Christian minority in the Ottoman Empire, Armenians suffered
massacres beginning in the mid-1890s, but the genocide is considered
to have begun April 24, 1915, when more than 200 Armenian leaders
were arrested in Istanbul and sent to join hundreds more in prison.
The majority were executed.
Over the next eight years, the Armenians were driven from the land
they called home for centuries and sent on a death march through
the Syrian desert. In what the Ottoman Turks called a deportation,
Armenians were forced from their homes and raped, robbed and tortured
along the way. Many who were not killed starved to death. The course
of the Euphrates was changed for a hundred yards because of thousands
of bodies lying dead in the river.
In his memoir, U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire Henry Morgenthau
Sr. wrote, "When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these
deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole
race; they understood this well, and, in their conversations with
me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact. … I am
confident that the whole history of the human race contains no such
horrible episode as this."
While the Armenian genocide has been well documented, the United States
government has yet to recognize the atrocities as a genocide in order
to protect its diplomatic relations with Turkey. Turkey continues
to deny a genocide occurred, and under Article 301, it is a crime to
"denigrate Turkishness."
When journalist Hrant Dink, a Turkish citizen of Armenian descent,
was assassinated in January, most Turks assumed it was because Dink
condemned the mass killings of Armenians. As thousands of Turks
took to the street to protest the shooting and promote freedom of
expression, Armenians around the world were hopeful that attitudes
in Turkey are changing.
But the Los Angeles Times reported last month that there has been
a backlash against Turkey’s intellectual community following Dink’s
assassination.
"Shadowy nationalist groups have issued chilling threats against
authors and thinkers who, like Dink, speak out against Turkey’s
official denial that the mass killings of Armenians beginning in
1915 constituted genocide, or on the power of the Turkish military,
or the status of minority Kurds," the article said.
Prominent Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk was tried in 2005 for
insulting Turkishness after he told a Swiss newspaper "30,000 Kurds
and 1 million Armenians were killed in these lands, and nobody but me
dares to talk about it." The charges were dropped on a technicality,
and in 2006 Pamuk became the first Turkish writer to win the Nobel
Prize in literature.
As Turkey continues to stifle freedom of speech and expression,
it only hurts itself. On one hand, it makes the nation’s efforts to
join the European Union more difficult. On the other, when prominent
Turks are charged, it brings international attention to the issue and,
hopefully, sparks dialogue among Turkish citizens about the genocide.
Adolf Hitler, on ordering his military commanders to attack Poland
without provocation in 1939, dismissed objections by saying "(W)ho,
after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"
The Armenian genocide must be recognized, to honor the memory of
those who died, to help stop the genocide in Darfur, and to prevent
similar atrocities from being committed in the future.
The first step is to urge your senators and congressmen to sponsor
Senate Resolution 106 and House Resolution 106, which asks the
president "to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States
reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues
related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented
in the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide, and
for other purposes."
The full text of the resolution is available online at
Today, the local chapter of the Armenian Youth Federation is holding
a March for Humanity beginning at 3 p.m. in Patriots Square Park
at the corner of Central Avenue and Washington Street in Phoenix,
ending at the state Capitol.
Following the march, a remembrance program will be held at 4:30 p.m.
at the Wesley Bolin Plaza.