Month: April 2007

OP-ED: GW’S SHAMEFUL AFFILIATIONS
By Alison Tahmizian Meuse

Daily Colonial, DC
George Washington University
April 25 2007

Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes at GW? Have
you ever taken the time to look into our university’s political and
financial commitments? Well I have, and I am distressed to report
that the hands of our administration are filthy.

My individual awareness to such matters began when it came to the
attention of the Armenian Students Network that GW holds a membership
in the American Turkish Council (ATC). While the ATC has many positive
goals in regards to promoting Turkish interests in the US, one of its
more touchy objectives is to block the Armenian Genocide resolution
in the United States Congress. As an Armenian whose grandparents
were forced to flee Turkey in the face of systematic massacres
and deportations, it was rather revolting to discover that my own
university is a party to such an objective. President Trachtenberg is
to be commended for his straightforward affirmation of the genocide;
nevertheless, the university’s affiliation with the ATC derogates his
individual candor. By attaching the university’s name to such a lobby,
the GW administration is implicitly agreeing with all of the policies
and viewpoints adopted by that council. I encourage all students,
campus organizations, and faculty members to further investigate the
broader issue at hand. There is no doubt that the ATC is simply one
lobby group among many supported by our university.

Living in our nation’s capital has shown me the sway that Turkish
lobby groups exert in America. Indeed, it is groups like the ATC that
keep the Armenian Genocide out of our textbooks, despite the fact
that it was not the current Turkish government which perpetrated the
massacres. Even on April 24, when Armenians from around the world
gather to remember the deaths of loved ones, the Turks mobilize to
protest our commemoration observances. And they have that right. We
are all blessed to live in a country that permits free speech; a free
land where journalists do not fear for their lives and intellectuals
are not jailed for insulting the state. We do not have a penal code
whereby individuals are imprisoned for insulting "Americanness,"
as is the case in Turkey.

I was not compelled to write this article because I am against
Turkey. I have a dear friend who is Turkish, and I am in favor of
Turkey’s ascension to the European Union – an ongoing process that
is reforming both the government and society as a whole. Perhaps the
Turkish government will never accept the term "genocide" to describe
the events of the early twentieth century, but that seems unlikely
given that both the European Parliament and the Council of Europe
recognized the Armenian genocide years ago. The obstruction of genocide
recognition in the United States cannot be attributed to a historical
quandary on the veracity of the event; rather, it is a political
dilemma. Turkey is a crucial ally in the region; the combination of
its NATO membership, useful military bases, and positive relationship
with Israel has long forced our government to skirt the issue.

The author, a sophomore in the Elliott School, is an intern at the
Embassy of Jordan and Social Coordinator of the International Affairs
Society.

Editor’s Note: The article this story references can be found here.
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CHALLENGER BLASTS WEXLER OVER STANCE ON 1915 MASSACRE
By Larry Lipman

Palm Beach Post, FL
April 25 2007

WASHINGTON – It’s an issue that is splitting the Jewish community and
has entered a South Florida congressional primary: How can a Jewish
congressman not recognize the 1915 massacre of possibly 1.5 million
Armenian civilians as genocide?

The issue was raised Tuesday, which many countries recognize
as Armenian Genocide Memorial Day, by Ben Graber, a former state
representative and former Broward County mayor who plans to challenge
U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler of Delray Beach in next year’s Democratic
primary.

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Graber, who is Jewish and the son of Holocaust survivors, called
Wexler an "embarrassment" to the Jewish community for opposing a
resolution in the House that recognizes the deportation and killing
of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire as genocide.

The resolution was sponsored by Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat from
California who is Jewish.

Wexler, who is also Jewish and is co-chairman of the Congressional
Turkey Caucus, said there is debate among historians about whether
the killings should be classified as genocide.

Wexler said his position is in line with those that have been adopted
by most major Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation
League, the American Jewish Committee and the Israeli government.

He said it would be unfair to describe his position or those taken
by the Jewish organizations or Israel as being "deniers" of genocide.

But Graber said the record is clear. He cited reports and comments
from leading figures of the time, including then-U.S. Ambassador Henry
Morgenthau Sr., who later 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."

David Shneer, director of the University of Denver Center for Judaic
Studies, said, "serious historians of the history of 20th-century
genocide would agree that the Armenian genocide happened."

Wexler said he is strongly supports the Bush administration’s efforts
to convene a commission of experts, including representatives from
Armenia and Turkey, to examine the historical record and seek a
resolution to the issue.

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92ND ANNIVERSARY OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

ABC30.com, CA
April 25 2007

Get the story, pictures, and video on your phone @ myabc30.com
04/24/2007 – Armenian-Americans around the Valley Tuesday, marked
the 92nd anniversary of the Armenian genocide.

The City of Fresno raised the Armenian flag at city hall to mark
the day, April 24th, 1915, When the Armenian people were driven from
their traditional lands by the Ottoman Empire.

More than 300 Armenian leaders were arrested and most of them were
later murdered. Eventually, more than one and a half million people
were killed.

The Armenian National Committee estimates 50,000 people of Armenian
descent are living here in Central California.

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THE DIVERSE SOUNDS OF TIGRAN MANSURIAN
By Mark Swed, Times Staff Writer

Los Angeles Times
Calendar Live
April 25 2007

A program of his work traces its roots to Armenia as well as
Modernism. The packed Zipper Hall listens.

Tigran Mansurian’s time may not have quite arrived, but it’s getting
very close. The Colburn School’s Zipper Hall was full Monday for the
chamber music component of "A Mansurian Triptych," three concerts
sponsored by the Lark Musical Society. Friday night had been devoted
to choral works. Tonight at the Alex Theatre in Glendale two big
concertos are scheduled, including one for violin that premiered in
Sweden this year.

Zipper was full because the concerts were programmed to coincide with
the anniversary of the Armenian genocide of 1915 and because Mansurian
is, for Armenians – of whom there are many in Southern California –
a legendary musical figure. The rare presence of the composer onstage
to accompany violist Kim Kashkashian in arrangements of "Four Hayrens"
– short pieces of profound beauty from 1967, originally written for
voice and piano – was the kind of thing you take your children to so
they can tell their grandchildren about it.

In fact, it probably doesn’t make much sense to try to separate
Mansurian’s works from what they represent to a people who have had
more than their share of cultural and political struggles in modern
history. Yet though his music is Armenian to the core, it also shares
many of the spiritual concerns of other Eastern European composers of
his post-Shostakovich generation, including the Estonian Arvo Part,
the Pole Henryk Gorecki, the Georgian Giya Kancheli, the Russian
Alfred Schnittke, the Ukrainian Valentin Silvestrov and the Tartar
Sofia Gubaidulina.

Like them, Mansurian, who was born in 1939, is a former musical
dissident who as a young man adopted forbidden Western Modernist
techniques but later reconciled them with more traditional music of
deep religious conviction.

The six chamber works Monday covered nearly 40 years, yet the
kinship between "Four Hayrens" and the Agnus Dei for clarinet,
violin, cello and piano, written last year, was evident. In both,
Mansurian displayed melodic restraint. Lyricism is ever present as is
a gentleness of spirit. Expression comes in small, intense moments,
in tiny tremblings of tone.

In the Agnus Dei, which lasted 15 mesmerizing minutes, the clarinet
(exquisitely played by Gary Bovyer) reached such a degree of quiet
tenderness that the ending felt more like a mystical breeze lightly
touching the skin than sound waves striking the ear.

The String Quartet No. 3 begins in a harsher, almost Bartokian
fashion, but it too ends somewhere beyond, with an Adagio full of
strange outbursts and ethereal violin solos. The gripping, expert
performance was by violinists Movses Pogossian and Searmi Park,
violist Alma Fernandez and cellist Armen Ksajikian. If they haven’t
thought of forming a quartet, they should.

Madrigal II from 1976 is an attempt to wed Armenian music and
Monteverdi for soprano, flute, cello and piano. Soloist Shoushik
Barsoumian’s nervousness was part hers, part the music’s, though both
score and soprano eventually quieted down.

"Lamento" for solo violin, written in 2002, begins wrathfully but also
gradually calms to a state of sad resignation. The violin writing is
virtuosic, and Pogossian, one of the tribute’s organizers, played it
very well.

After "Four Hayrens," in which Mansurian proved downright haunting in
the intensity of his piano playing, Kashkashian joined Lynn Vartan in
Duet for viola and percussion, written for the violist in 1998. The
work, given its West Coast premiere last week at the University of
Judaism, is, like its title, abstract, a study in the raw expression
of sound.

Here, it was Kashkashian who cast a spell with every tone she played.

Vartan supported her with a rainbow of shimmering effects on marimba
and gongs. The score seemed both very old and very modern, very
sophisticated and very elemental, all at the same moment.

AREA ARMENIANS PAUSE TO REMEMBER VICTIMS

The Republican, MA
April 25 2007

Marineh Kirakosian and her husband, the Rev. Bedros Shetilian, both
have ancestors who were directly affected by the tragedy of their
people, which often has been called the first genocide of the 20th
century – the Armenian genocide of 1915.

An estimated 1.5 million Armenians were massacred and expelled from
the crumbling Ottoman Empire during World War I. Turkey has never
acknowledged the events as genocide, saying instead that the deaths
were caused by a civil war and ethnic strife.

Yesterday, the day which marked the start of the full-scale massacres
in 1915, was commemorated by Armenians worldwide as Genocide Memorial
Day.

"My ancestors fled from Turkey to Syria. Marineh’s ancestors went
to Armenia," said Shetilian, 43, who was born in Aleppo, Syria,
and speaks English, Arabic, Armenian, Russian and Turkish.

He lives in Ludlow and serves as the pastor of two Armenian Apostolic
churches: St. Gregory in Indian Orchard and Holy Cross in Troy, N.Y.

The parishes have some 180 members between them, mostly descendants
of those who came to America after the events of 1915.

St. Gregory the Illuminator is recognized by Armenian Apostolic
Church as its apostle, whose efforts made Armenia the first country
to adopt Christianity as its official religion in the beginning of
the 4th century.

"Many of our parishioners are second- or third-generation Americans,
although we have a few people who recently came from Armenia," said
Shetilian, who speaks old Armenian during services and delivers his
sermon in English.

A symphony orchestra conductor by training, Shetilian had worked with
the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the oldest symphonic ensemble in the
former Soviet Union, and the Bardi Symphony Orchestra of Leicester,
United Kingdom, before becoming a priest.

"At first, I think, he wasn’t planning on this to happen until sometime
later in his life," his wife said.

They met in 1983 in a music school in Yerevan, the capital of Soviet
Armenia, where Shetilian came from Syria to study music.

"Then we got married and moved to Russia," she said.

While studying at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Shetilian discovered
for himself the Russian philosophers of the Silver Age.

"I can say that the writings of Nikolay Berdyaev, Vladimir Solovyov,
Sergey Bulgakov, as well as those by (Russian Orthodox theologian,
Biblical scholar and writer) Father Aleksandr Men, were the greatest
influence on my decision" to become a priest, Shetilian said. "And
the books of Dostoyevsky, of course."

There was not an Armenian seminary in St. Petersburg, he said, so he
enrolled in St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary, a Catholic school.

"I would go to the classes in the evenings after my day job as a
conductor," he said. "I studied there for two years and then went to an
Armenian Apostolic Church seminary in Lebanon for another two years."

He was ordained in 2001. Two years later he was sent to serve in
America.

"We lived in Boston and New York City first and then moved to Ludlow,"
said Kirakosian, 36, who attends English language classes at the
Ludlow Area Adult Learning Center.

They still go to New York once a week.

"Our daughter, Arpi, is studying violin at the conservatory there,
so we drive to see her every Saturday," Kirakosian said. Alex Peshkov,
a staff writer for The Republican, immigrated to Western Massachusetts
from Arkhangelsk in 2002. His column focuses on the Russian-American
community. He can be reached at apeshkov@ repub.com

TURKEY IS WASHINGTON’S PUREST TEST OF REALISM V. IDEALISM.
by Christopher Beam

New Republic, DC
April 25 2007

Name Calling

In recent years, President Bush has had no trouble using the word
"genocide"–first in reference to Saddam, then to the killings in
Darfur. The word connotes a moral imperative to intervene, perhaps
because of its reductio ad Hitlerum quality–how can you stand idly
by during a genocide? But, when discussing the million-plus Armenians
killed in Turkey between 1915 and 1923, President Bush, like President
Clinton before him, has avoided the word entirely.

That’s because, unlike other questions of who killed whom that the
United States has answered over last decades (Iraq, twice in the
Balkans, Rwanda, Sudan), there is a strategic reason to stay mum
about the Armenians: Turkey, a NATO ally of 50 years and a partner
in the war on terrorism, would get mad. According to Ankara, only
300,000 died, and only because its government suppressed uprisings
provoked by the crumbling Ottoman Empire. (Samantha Power dedicated
the first chapter of her Pulitzer Prize-winning book on genocide
to debunking this myth.) The Turks recognize the dispute and want
"further study," but in the meantime, they really don’t want to be
known as perpetrators of genocide.

For years, U.S. presidents have obliged–a tradition Bush continued
yesterday on the weirdly-named "National Day of Remembrance of Man’s
Inhumanity to Man," when, in a tribute to Armenians, he conspicuously
omitted the word "genocide." But that may soon change. The House
had been planning to mark April 24 by passing a resolution calling
the murder of Armenians during and after World War I genocide. The
measure, co-authored by California Republican George Radanovich and
co-sponsored by 190 House members, is just the latest of many genocide
bills supported by Armenian-American groups. But, unlike the others,
this one has a good chance of passing. It has bipartisan support,
and its language is purely symbolic: no restitutions, no requests for
apology. Just a statement urging the president to call the killings
genocide.

This has frightened Ankara, where it is a crime to "insult Turkishness"
(apparently there’s no greater insult than applying that label to
killings perpetrated almost a century ago by the country’s founder,
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk). In the past week, Turks have been frantically
lobbying members of Congress, urging them to oppose the resolution. The
Embassy of Turkey took out a full-page ad in Monday’s New York Times
urging Congress "to examine history, not legislate it." And they are
threatening to hamper U.S. efforts in Iraq.

We know they did something wrong, but they won’t let us say it. The
reasons for and against using the term "genocide" are perfectly clear:
morally, we should; strategically, we shouldn’t. This choice–between
retaining a key ally and recognizing a distant crime–has become
Washington’s purest test of realism versus idealism.

he last time such a bill made it to the floor, in 2000, Dennis Hastert
halted the vote at the request of Bill Clinton. It’s likely President
Bush will make a similar call to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi if she
pushes for a vote. But, given that Pelosi was willing to fork the
administration’s eye by traveling to Syria, there’s no reason to think
she’d obey on Armenia, particularly given her history of advocacy on
the issue. (Although, after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and
Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned in a joint letter last month that
the bill could "harm American troops in the field," the House agreed
to delay the vote till sometime after yesterday’s commemoration.)

If defense hawks have their way, that vote will never happen.
Congress shouldn’t risk our valuable alliance with Turkey, they
argue, in exchange for a few Armenian-American votes. Besides, the
bill’s opponents don’t deny the importance of genocide. They simply
consider preserving U.S.-Turkey relations more important than making
a political statement about events that, while contemptible, have
little bearing on our foreign policy.

They’re right to be concerned: Last year, France passed a law
making it a crime to deny the Armenian genocide (in other words,
it’s illegal there to not "insult Turkishness"), much like Germany
and Switzerland’s laws against Holocaust denial. Turkey responded by
severing military ties with France. If the United States decides to
affirm the genocide, the Turks have said they may dissolve American
defense contracts and cut off cargo routes used to reach U.S. forces
in Iraq. And, perhaps more importantly, the bill could alienate the
only pro-Western secular democracy (albeit one that jails dissident
authors) in the Muslim world.

Yet neither the idealists nor the realists have been entirely
forthcoming. For one thing, many of the House members supporting the
resolution have large Armenian-American constituencies, particularly
in California and Michigan. Plus, the Democratic Congress has so far
relished exposing the administration’s hypocrisy; forcing Bush to
confront his selective concern for genocide is a tempting symbolic
zinger. On the other side, Turkey’s strident denial of historical
wrongdoing doesn’t make life easy for realists. The Turks say it’s
wrong to sanction a historical perspective, but if legislating
history is the problem, Ankara has been the biggest offender of all.
Europeans cite this stubbornness as an obstacle to Turkey’s admission
into the European Union. It’s only because other governments have
continued to waffle on the genocide question that Turkey has been able
to continue denying what is, to everyone but the Turkish government,
settled history.

Congress handles the bill should depend on two assessments: First,
the realists need to consider whether Turkey’s threats are credible.
Turkish foreign minister Abdullah Gul has indicated that the resolution
would complicate Turkey’s close cooperation in stabilizing Iraq and
stemming nuclear proliferation. It’s true, Turkey initially offered
to send 10,000 troops to Iraq and has since granted the United States
billions of dollars in defense contracts. But the kindness goes both
ways. Turkey is the third largest recipient of U.S. military aid,
behind Israel and Egypt. In 2003, it received a onetime $1 billion
aid package. President Bush requested $25 million in 2006. Despite
recent tensions over the Kurds, Ankara doesn’t want to jeopardize
this mutually munificent relationship any more than Washington does.

Second, the idealists should decide what they gain by applying the
"genocide" label to an episode already widely recognized as tragic.
One possible reason–no laughing here–is moral authority. Since the
invasion of Iraq, the United States has lost much of the respect
it commanded in international opinion. An administration that has
marshaled the word "genocide" so readily to justify its own actions
should, at the very least, be consistent in applying it. Asking that
Turkey face its past, especially when such a request hinders U.S.
interests, would set a principled example for other governments.

Turkey’s threats are salient only because of the prevailing silence
about its genocide. Earlier this month, the United Nations delayed
an exhibit at U.N. headquarters on the Rwandan genocide after
Turkey objected to one sentence citing Armenian deaths. If enough
countries forced Turkey to acknowledge these crimes, it wouldn’t
have the option of waxing indignant like it did with France and the
United Nations. Coming from a staunch ally with mutual interests to
preserve, an affirmation of the Armenian genocide would sound that
much more powerful. The United States occupies this unique position:
It’s up to Congress to use it.

Christopher Beam is an editorial assistant at Slate.

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LOCAL MARCHERS COMMEMORATE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Michael Muskal, Times Staff Writer

ktla 5, CA
April 25 2007

Armenians and their supporters gathered on the streets of Hollywood
today to commemorate the 92nd anniversary of one of the first acts
of genocide in the 20th century.

"We are recalling the attack on the night of April 24, 1915, when,
in Istanbul, the leaders of the Armenian community were executed,"
Haig Hovsepian, community relations director for Armenian National
Committee of America Western Region, said this afternoon.

Hovsepian described the act as the beginning of years of violence
against the Armenian community by Turks. An estimated 1.2 million
were killed between 1915 and 1918, the last days of the Ottoman
Empire during World War I. Turkey maintains that the deaths were not
sanctioned by the government and disputes that a genocide took place.

Even though the violence took place early in the past century, its
commemoration has continued to be laden with political overtones.

Los Angeles police estimated that the crowd along Fairfax Avenue at
about 1,000 protesters, but Hovsepian said he thought it was double
or triple that number this afternoon and growing as the demonstration
neared the Turkish Consulate in Hollywood. Thousands also marched
earlier in the day.

The demonstrations were peaceful with no arrests or traffic disruption,
said LAPD spokeswoman Officer Karen Smith.

RADICAL ARMENIANS IN GEORGIA INSULT TURKISH FLAG
By Fadime Gulcicek (JTW)

Journal of Turkish Weekly, Turkey
April 25 2007

Ultra-nationalist Armenians living in Javakhk (Georgia) insulted
Turkey and Turkish flag.

Members to ‘Javakhk Scout Movements’ holding the Armenian flags sang
the scout anthem. After passing over the Turkish Republic’s flag,
they burnt the Turkish flag. The radical Armenians accused Turkey of
being responsible for the 1915 clashes.

Later the Armenians stayed and served as ‘guards of honor’ in front
of the Armenian memorial.

Though in a doubt, the delegation of local officials followed the
scouts and passed over the Turkish flag again.

Armenian separatism is a strong movement among the Georgia Armenians.

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE – JEWISH CAMPAIGN ISSUE?
By Larry Lipman

Palm Beach Post, FL
April 25 2007

Wexler blasted for opposing Armenian genocide resolution

WASHINGTON – It’s an issue that is splitting the Jewish community
and has entered a South Florida congressional primary: How can a
Jewish congressman not recognize the 1915 massacre of possibly 1.5
million Armenian civilians as genocide? The issue was raised Tuesday –
recognized by many countries as Armenian Genocide Memorial Day – by
Ben Graber, a former state representative and former Broward County
mayor who plans to challenge U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler of Delray Beach
in next year’s Democratic primary.

Graber, who is Jewish and the son of Holocaust survivors, called
Wexler an "embarrassment" to the Jewish community for opposing a
resolution in the House of Representatives that recognizes the killing
and deportation of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire as genocide.

The resolution was sponsored by Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat from
California who is Jewish. It has been bottled up in the House Foreign
Affairs Committee whose chairman is Rep. Tom Lantos – also a Democrat
from California who is Jewish and a Holocaust survivor.

Wexler, who is also Jewish and serves as co-chairman of the
Congressional Turkey Caucus, said there is debate among historians
about whether the killings should be classified as genocide.

"There is no question that hundreds of thousands of Armenians were
massacred, that is not debatable," Wexler said, noting that the
killings took place during World War I when the Armenian population
in the Ottoman Empire sided with the czarist Russians.

"The only question before the Congress is does the Congress have
the expertise to make that historical conclusion" that the killings
were genocide.

Wexler said his position is in line with that adopted by most major
Jewish organizations – including the Anti-Defamation League and the
American Jewish Committee, U.S. presidents of both parties, and the
Israeli government.

He said it would be unfair to describe his position or those taken
by the Jewish organizations or Israel as being "deniers" of genocide.

But Graber said the record is clear. He cited reports and comments
from leading figures of the time, including then-U.S. Ambassador Henry
Morgenthau Sr., who later 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." David Shneer, director of the University of Denver Center
for Judaic Studies and an associate professor of history, said,
"serious historians of the history of 20th Century genocide would
agree that the Armenian genocide happened. Those who dispute that it
happened tend to have some type of political agenda." Wexler said he
is a strong supporter of efforts by the Bush administration and some
international leaders to convene a commission of experts – including
representatives from Armenia and Turkey – to examine the historical
record and seek a resolution to the issue.

The issue has international significance because of Turkey’s role as
a Western-leaning Muslim country that in recent decades has adamantly
denied the killings were genocide. Turkey has made it illegal for
its citizens to publicly take that position.

Turkey also is a rare Muslim ally of both the United States and Israel.

"To totally undermine that relationship could be extremely costly
for America and Israel," Wexler said.

"I want to make sure we deploy our American troops out of Iraq as
soon as possible," Wexler said. "In order to best accomplish that,
we need to have cooperation from Turkey." Graber said Wexler and other
opponents of the resolution were being "hypocritical." "If it was the
Jewish Holocaust that was in question, you can be certain that there
would be no question about the facts. There are some things that you
just can’t deny. You have to say ëyes it happened,’ accept it, and go
forward." Just as the current generation of Germans blames the World
War II Holocaust on the Nazis, Graber said the current generation of
Turks should blame the Armenia genocide on the Ottomans.

"This is something that is too important and too big to not recognize
for political reasons," he said. "It’s an issue of what is right."

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ARMENIANS COMMEMORATE 1915 GENOCIDE -DESPITE TURKISH CENSORSHIP
Submitted by Bill Weinberg

World War 4 Report, NY
April 25 2007

April 24 marks the 92nd anniversary of the start of the Armenian
genocide, and Armenians worldwide commemorated the "First Genocide
of the 20th Century" with solemn religious and civil ceremonies.

However, little more than a week before the anniversary, the United
Nations dismantled an exhibit on the Rwandan genocide and postponed
its scheduled opening by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon-in response
to objections from the Turkish mission to the exhibit’s references
to the Armenian genocide, which Turkey denies happened.

The panels of graphics, photos and statements were assembled in
the UN lobby on April 5 by the British-based Aegis Trust. The trust
campaigns for the prevention of genocide and runs a center in Kigali,
the Rwandan capital, memorializing the 500,000 victims of the massacres
there in 1994.

Hours after the show was installed, a Turkish diplomat noticed
references to the Armenians in a section entitled "What is genocide?"

and raised protests. The passage said that "following World War I,
during which one million Armenians were murdered in Turkey," Raphael
Lemkin, a Polish lawyer credited with coining the word genocide,
"urged the League of Nations to recognize crimes of barbarity as
international crimes." James Smith, the chief executive of Aegis,
said he was told by the UN April 7 the text would have to be struck
or the exhibit would be closed down.

Armenian ambassador Armen Martirosyan told the New York Times he
sought out Kiyotaka Akasaka, UN under-secretary general for public
information, and thought he had reached an agreement to let the
show go forward by deleting the words "in Turkey." But Akasaka said:
"That was his suggestion, and I agreed only to take it into account
in finding the final wording." Turkish ambassador Baki Ilkin said:
"We just expressed our discomfort over the text’s making references to
the Armenian issue and drawing parallels with the genocide in Rwanda."

Smith said he was "very disappointed because this was supposed to
talk about the lessons drawn from Rwanda and point up that what is
happening in Darfur is the cost of inaction." (NYT, April 10 via the
Armenian-American website MezunUSA)

Historical material realted to the Armenian Genocide and a list of
global commemorations is online at GenocideEvents.com. They write:

During WWI, The Young Turk, political faction of the Ottoman Empire,
sought the creation of a new Turkish state… Those promoting the
ideology called "Pan Turkism" (creating a homogenous Turkish state)
now saw its Armenian minority population as an obstacle to the
realization of that goal.

On April 24, 1915, several hundred Armenian community leaders and
intellectuals in Constantinople (modern day Istanbul) were arrested,
sent east, and put to death. In May, after mass deportations had
already begun, Minister of the Interior Talaat Pasha ordered their
deportation into the Syrian Desert.

The adult and teenage males were separated from the deportation
caravans and killed under the direction of Young Turk functionaries.

Women and children were driven for months over mountains and desert,
often raped, tortured, and mutilated. Deprived of food and water and
often stripped of clothing, they fell by the hundreds & thousands
along the routes to the desert. Ultimately, more than half the
Armenian population, 1,500,000 people were annihilated. In this
manner the Armenian people were eliminated from their homeland of
several millennia.

On April 29, 1915, Henry Morgenthau, Sr. United States Ambassador to
the Ottoman Empire, had stated that "I am confident that the whole
history of human race contains no such terrible episode as this. The
great massacres and persecutions of the past seem almost insignificant
when compared to the sufferings of the Armenian race in 1915."

In 1915, thirty-three years before UN Genocide Convention was adopted,
the Armenian Genocide was condemned by the international community
as a crime against humanity.

(Westender, Brisbance, Australia, April 24)

Tens of thousands of people silently marched in Yerevan, Armenia’s
capital, in the annual remembrance of the estimated 1.5 million
victims of the Armenian genocide. The official commemoration of the
anniversary began with a prayer service at the genocide memorial
on Yerevan’s Tsitsernakabert Hill. It was led by the head of the
Armenian Apostolic Church, Garegin II, and attended by President
Robert Kocharian and other top government officials.

In a written address to the nation, Kocharian evoked the increasingly
successful Armenian campaign for international recognition of the
genocide. "The international community has realized that genocide
is a crime directed against not only a particular people but the
entire humanity," he said. "Denial and cover-up of that crime is no
less dangerous than its preparation and perpetration." Nearly two
dozen countries, among them France, Canada and Russia, have formally
recognized the Armenian massacres as the first genocide of the 20th
century.

Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian said genocide recognition will remain
on the Armenian government’s foreign policy agenda, but also called
for normalizing relations with Tirkeu. "We remember our past, but
Armenia is moving forward, seeking to establish normal relations
with all of its neighbors," he said. Sarkisian voiced solidarity with
dissident Turkish intellectuals who publicly recognize the genocide,
and recalled the recent assassination of Turkish-Armenian editor
Hrant Dink who also challenged the official Turkish revisionism.

Said Hrant Markarian of the governing Armenian Revolutionary Federation
(Dashnaktsutyun): "A state can not live by denying its past. Turkey
must recognize the Armenian genocide as soon as possible for the sake
of Turkey’s future."

Dashnaktsutyun branches in the worldwide Armenian diaspora have for
years lobbied the parliaments and governments of Western states to
officially recognize the Armenian genocide. The nationalist party
controls one of the two main Armenian lobbies in Washington seeking
to push a genocide resolution through the US House of Representatives
this year.

While praising Armenian efforts at genocide recognition, Raffi
Hovannisian, a US-born opposition leader, sounded a note of caution.

"I believe that we must not excessively concentrate on or be very
buoyed this spate of recognitions because the Armenian genocide and the
loss of our people’s homeland is a fact affirmed by many historians,"
he said. (Armenia Liberty, April 24)