WHEN DICTIONARIES ARE LEFT UNOPENED: HOW ‘MEDZ YEGHERN’ TURNED INTO TERMINOLOGY OF DENIAL
by Vartan Matiossian
November 27, 2012
You may want to know that ‘Meds Yeghern’ does not mean genocide;
it means “Great Calamity.” Armenians used that term before the word
‘genocide’ was coined by Raphael Lemkin in the 1940â~@²s.
-Harut Sassounian1
These explanatory words appeared after President Barack Obama used
“Medz Yeghern” in his April 2009 statement: “The Meds Yeghern must
live on in our memories, just as it lives on in the hearts of the
Armenian people. … Nothing can bring back those who were lost in the
Medz Yeghern.”2 He repeated Medz Yeghern twice or three times–always
without translation–in each of his April 24 statements between 2009
and 2012.
A scene from the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan on April 24,
2012 (Photo by Nanore Barsoumian) In this article, we will discuss the
use of the phrase and some of the reactions it triggered in Armenian
and Turkish quarters, and in one of the many realms of public debate:
Wikipedia.
Barack Obama and Medz Yeghern
Obama had certainly heard the phrase in June 2008, when, as a Senator,
he questioned Marie Yovanovitch during the hearings that led to her
confirmation as United States ambassador to Armenia. However, we
cannot rule out that someone else in his administration or entourage
may have inspired its use in his statements.3The source could also
have been the apology campaign, which was started in December 2008
by a group of Turkish intellectuals and which had gathered 30,000
signatures by October 2009, etching in stone the equation that we
may refer to as Medz Yeghern = Buyuk Felâket = Great Catastrophe
with the explicit purpose of leaving aside the word “genocide.” The
President might have read the echoes of the apology campaign in the
American press or the musings of any Armenian who wrote “Medz Yeghern
(Great Calamity)” before April 2009.
Armenians immediately condemned the use of a phrase entirely
unfamiliar to non-Armenians that, moreover, had been left without
translation. Turkish journalists were equally critical, if for
different reasons. For instance, Oktay EkÅ~_i wrote in Hurriyet that
Obama’s use of Medz Yeghern was worse than “genocide”: “He can turn
to the Armenians and defend his statement by saying, ‘You use the
term Meds Yeghern for the killings, and I used the same expression
as you.'”4 As Dogu Ergil put it, “Mr. Obama has used the term Meds
Yeghern to identify with the trauma of the Armenians without offending
the Turks. He has proven to be a more astute and sensitive politician
than many of his Turkish and Armenian colleagues who have expressed
their distaste with this terminology. They wanted either a full
accusation and condemnation or a full absolution.”5
Ali Bulac took a different path. He claimed that Medz Yeghern was “the
best word in the Armenian language to describe the events of 1915”
and added, “Meds Yeghern is not the exact Armenian term for genocide,
but its meaning is very close to genocide. These words come from the
old Armenian language, from a time when the concept of genocide was not
even known. The best translation of Meds Yeghern is ‘Great Calamity.'”6
Bulac became a pathfinder: On May 6, 2009, journalist Ben Schott opened
an entry in his New York Times blog “Schott’s Vocab” with the purported
meaning of Medz Yeghern–“An Armenian term meaning ‘great calamity,’
used to describe the murder of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman
Turks in 1915”–and explicitly cited the Turkish columnist’s piece.7
We have found no sign that the Armenian-American media ever challenged
either Bulac’s or Schott’s translations. Instead, it continued to
repeat the same translation. Meanwhile, the chorus of disappointment
and condemnation followed the next presidential statements, as
reflected by Armenian American commentator Harut Sassounian last year:
“Despite-Armenian Americans’ persistent appeals to President Obama to
refrain from substituting ‘Meds Yeghern’ (Great Calamity) for Armenian
Genocide in his annual April 24 statements, he has continued to do
so for three years in a row. Apparently, henchmen of the denialist
Turkish regime and their American cohorts have been able to compel the
president of the United States to avoid any reference to the ‘genocide’
or ‘tseghasbanoutyoun,’ its Armenian equivalent. Otherwise, why would
the president of the United States address the American public in a
foreign language known only to a few?”8
Although the translation of Medz Yeghern never appeared in Obama’s
messages between 2009 and 2012, most references to his use of the
phrase in Western media and books are coupled with the translation
“Great Calamity,”9 fueled either by Turkish insistence on it and/or,
ironically, its uncritical acceptance by Armenian-Americans. For
instance, in 2010 Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Ahmet Davutoglu
manipulated the untranslated phrase to claim that “Obama’s using [of]
the term ‘great calamity’ in his statement is not acceptable.” He
added, “If we are going to share grief for humanitarian reasons,
then we would expect respect for our own grief as well.”10
Is saying Medz Yeghern blasphemy?
Many Armenians, including some who claim proficiency of the Armenian
language, seem unaware of what Medz Yeghern means. It was used by
the survivors to name the event that crushed them, as Sassounian has
recalled: “Every April 24, they would commemorate the start of the
Armenian Genocide by gathering in church halls and offering prayers
for the souls of the 1.5 million innocent victims of what was then
known as the Meds Yeghern, or Great Calamity.”11
The term has now been degraded to denialist terminology by their
descendants and become the ultimate casualty forced by the denier: The
victim is compelled to deny his own words, like Peter denying Jesus
three times. The irony of Sassounian’s comment is a case in point:
“Not surprisingly, in his first April 24 statement, President Obama
repeated all the euphemisms and word games for which he had strongly
condemned his predecessor, President Bush! Obama used the old and
all too familiar denialist terminology of past presidents, such as
‘atrocity,’ ‘massacre,’ ‘terrible events of 1915,’ and most incredibly,
‘Meds Yeghern’ in Armenian for ‘Great Calamity’!”12
Another interesting case is the classification of Medz Yeghern as
an imprecise term by Appo Jabarian, the publisher and editor of USA
Armenian Life weekly, who blasted the director of the Armenian Genocide
Museum-Institute of Yerevan, Hayk Demoyan, for its use during a press
conference in Los Angeles in March 2012. Jabarian’s column was entitled
“Demoyan Commit[ed] Blasphemy to [the] Memory of Armenian Genocide
Martyrs and Artsakh.” The contents was remarkably consistent with
the hyperbole of the title:
“During his remarks, Mr. Demoyan spoke at length about the Armenian
Genocide and other issues without using the proper and legally
indispensable term ‘Genocide’ (‘Tseghaspanutyun’). Instead, he
carelessly misused the words ‘Meds Yeghern’ (“Great Calamity”) which
misrepresent the facts of the Armenian Genocide. … Mr. Demoyan’s
careless mischaracterization of [the] Armenian Genocide and of
the Armenian identity of the Artsakh Republic amounts to an act of
desecration of the memory of martyrs of both the Genocide and the
Artsakh liberation war. Mr. Demoyan’s ‘invention’ of duality in
the usage of both terms of ‘Genocide’ and ‘Great Calamity’ may not
be intentional but it does promote the Turkish denialist propaganda
that seeks to weaken the magnitude of premeditated and state-organized
genocide to mere ‘Great Calamity.’ … Instead of being gracious about
his grave mistakes, Mr. Demoyan resorted to ranting and to patronize
his critics at the cost of blaspheming the memory of the martyrs of
both the Armenian Genocide and Artsakh Liberation War.”13
It is, or should be, common knowledge that both terms officially
reference the same historical episode; for instance, the
Haygagan Tseghasbanutian Tankaran-Institut (“Armenian Genocide
Museum-Institute”), as it has been called since its founding in 1995,
is adjacent to the Medz Yegherni Hushartsan (“Memorial of the Medz
Yeghern”), the name of the monument that has stood on the hill of
Dzidzernagapert since it was unveiled in 1967.14 The website of the
Museum-Institute () describes the Hayots
Yegherne (“the Armenian Yeghern”) and translates it as “Armenian
Genocide” on the English page, and as “Ermeni Soykırımı” (Armenian
Genocide) on the Turkish one.
It is most ironic that Armenian American commentators themselves seem
to have unintentionally promoted Turkish denialist propaganda and
weakened “the magnitude of premeditated and state-organized genocide”
by repeating “Medz Yeghern (Great Calamity)” ad nauseam. They have
given fodder to columnists like Suat Kiniklioglu, who in 2009 made the
case for a “common commemoration” of all the victims of the violence
that took place during the fall of the Ottoman Empire:
“…I believe it is worth examining whether the term ‘Meds Yeghern’
has the potential to become a mutually acceptable term for both sides
to commemorate the events in question,” he wrote. “As is now commonly
known, ‘Meds Yeghern’ denotes ‘Great Calamity/Great Disaster’ in the
Armenian language. Although I am not in a position to fully comprehend
the context in which this term is being used in Armenian, I am willing
to venture into the following. I believe the events of World War I
constituted a Great Calamity for Turks, Kurds, Armenians, Anatolian
Greeks, and probably other peoples of the Ottoman Empire. Indeed, it
was a great trauma for the Turks, who saw their great empire collapse
in front of their own eyes and who saw a multitude of peoples rebel
against the state and side with the invading enemies of the time. It
was a Great Calamity to the Armenians who had to be relocated during
harsh war conditions and subsequently suffered immensely. It was
a disaster for them as they left behind their homes and memories,
similar to the millions of Turks who were chased out of the Balkans,
the Caucasus, and the Middle East.”15
The argument that the asymmetry of violence precluded the existence
of any common “Great Calamity” would likely be met with the following
denialist counterargument: “Armenians say that Medz Yeghern means
‘Great Calamity’ and Turks say that Buyuk Felâket means ‘Great
Calamity.'” Therefore, the logic of denial would conclude that the
“Great Calamity” is common to both.
Our survey of nine Armenian-English and English-Armenian dictionaries
published between 1922 and 2009 has yielded the following conclusions:
(1) All of the dictionaries include translations of yeghern as “crime”
or “genocide;” (2) no dictionary shows its translation as “calamity.”16
A bilingual dictionary published in 2010, oddly enough, is the
first and only one we have found to contain the equation yeghern =
calamity and calamity = yeghern.17 We can think of one possible reason:
the relentless repetition of that equation in the Armenian-American
press may have misled the author. But, in any case, that dictionary
followed–not preceded–the use of the translation.
We are therefore entitled to question and reject categorically the
grounds on which English-language newspapers and journalists from the
United States to Turkey and beyond, Armenian and non-Armenian alike,
have translated Medz Yeghern as “Great Calamity” since the beginning
of this century.18
The battle over ‘Great Calamity’
We have previously shown that Armenian-Turkish dictionaries do not
support the contention that the Turkish translation of Medz Yeghern is
Buyuk Felâket. Nevertheless, this mistranslation has been cleverly
exploited by denialists to blunt the meaning of the Armenian term
for the genocide, and thus subtly diminish its meaning from “crime,”
a legal term, to “calamity,” a non-legal one.
It is not surprising that a denialist offensive, taking advantage
of the repeated Medz Yeghern = Great Calamity translation in
English-language sources, has tried to insert that translation in
Wikipedia. Interestingly, the translation had only appeared so far in
one of the 40 top languages of this online encyclopedia (with more
than 100,000 entries): the “Ermeni Kırımı” (Armenian Massacres)
entry of the Turkish version contains the Buyuk Felâket translation
for Medz Yeghern.
It seems to be no mere coincidence that, on April 24, 2012, the name
“Great Crime” was deleted from the lead paragraph of the English
Wikipedia article “Armenia Genocide” as a translation of Medz
Yeghern, and replaced by “Great Calamity.” Two bitterly opposed sides
subsequently debated the accurate translation of the term in the “Talk”
section of the entry. Meowy, one strident advocate of “Great Calamity,”
admonished Diranakir with tirades like the following for his staunch
advocacy of “Great Crime” (all emphasis is from the original):
1) The translation “crime” is reputedly trivial and distorting:
“It is not correct to give direct translations where the direct
translation alters the essential meaning of the original. Nor is
it correct [to] use modern meanings to translate a phrase that was
coined almost a century ago. What is required is a translation which
communicates the full meaning of the original. Most sources do use
‘calamity’ as the translation, and do not use a pov [point of view]
word like ‘crime.’ Personally, I feel it is particularly objectionable
to use the ‘great crime’ translation: it is a corruption and distortion
of the original meaning. It was a phrase that was used INTERNALLY,
WITHIN THE COMMUNITY, by those who survived the genocide as a way
of trying to define and describe events which could otherwise not be
defined and described. They would not have used a trivial, everyday
word like ‘crime’ to define the disaster that fell upon them and I
think that it is an insult to their memory to advocate such a usage”
(May 4, 2012).
2) There are many supporting sources for “Great Calamity”:
“I am not debating this further because I do not need to: you have
presented no legitimate arguments! Dictionaries are not sources, and
we are not translating single words but the meaning of a phrase. There
are numerous sources for ‘Great Calamity.’ … The ‘Great Calamity’
translation will ALWAYS be returned to this article because it is
supported by hundreds of sources” (May 5, 2012).
3) Medz Yeghern is an “almost euphemistic” term:
“It’s rather sad that Diranakir cannot seem to comprehend what deep
meaning ‘Medz Yeghern’ actually has. It and the Shoah = Catastrophe
example are cases of catastrophic events (man-made or natural)
being named by those who survived them using non-specific and almost
euphemistic terms (another example would be the 19th-century potato
famine in Ireland and Scotland being described as the ‘Great Hunger’
or the ‘Bad Times’ – there are probably many more examples)” (May
7, 2012).
4) Whoever uses “great crime” is just a propagandist:
“Let me say that, personally, I think your aims are obnoxious. You
(and those whose works you cite [sic]) are propagandists who seek
to exploit for their vain and selfish reasons the deaths of some two
million people–and are so shameless that you try to alter even the
wording the survivors used to define the disaster that fell upon them.
Just because some Armenian nationalists have, over the last few
years (no source you have cited is older than 2009), been engaged
in producing their ‘Great Crime’ propaganda campaign does not mean
that this very recently coined distorted meaning can enter the article
(any more that the words ‘so-called’ can enter it because some Turkish
nationalists use that wording)” (May 25, 2012).
As it often happens in similar cases, no references were cited to
ground these arguments in fact. However, one non-Turkish source,
Sassounian’s “Why Does Pres. Obama Torture Himself and Armenians
Every April 24?,” published on May 3, 2012, was immediately used as
a footnote to the spurious translation “Great Calamity”: “When they
ran out of substitute English words for genocide, the president’s
hardworking wordsmiths turned to an Armenian term, ‘Meds Yeghern,’
without providing its English translation (Great Calamity), so no one
other than Armenians would understand what Pres. Obama is speaking
about!”19 We may well wonder how one individual’s unsupported
“translation” can be accepted as more authoritative than a dictionary.
On June 26, 2012, “Great Calamity” and its footnote were deleted and
replaced with “Great Crime,” now backed by two dictionary citations
(it was previously supported by a 2011 citation from the Armenian
Reporter). After a two-month ceasefire, Meowy made several attempts
(Aug. 17-22) to revert to what s/he claimed, in the “History”
section of the article, to be the “original, reasonably well-crafted
introduction that had been mangled and propagandised.” The argument
was: “‘Great Calamity’ must remain as a translation for Medz Yeghern
because it exists in a cited source. Is there something about that
fact you do not understand? Stop deleting properly referenced content!
You have been warned repeatedly about this in the edit summaries”
(Aug. 22, 2012). The fourth attempt was successful: Between Aug. 26
and Oct. 1, the Wikipedia entry stated that Medz Yeghern is “usually
translated as the Great Calamity or Great Crime,” with Sassounian’s
article again in place as support for the translation “Great Calamity”
and the Armenian Reporter article for “Great Crime.” This attempt was
repealed on Oct. 1, when the status quo of June 26 was restored and
“Great Calamity” disappeared from the text. The situation remains
unchanged at the time of publication of this article, but denial may
always try another comeback.
It is pertinent to quote another supposed justification for the
inclusion of “Great Calamity” in Wikipedia: “Also, ‘Great Calamity’
needs to remain as the primary translation because, as was carefully
explained to you many months ago, Google search results suggest that
usage of ‘Great Calamity’ is almost four times more common than
‘Great Crime’ (and about 15% of all ‘Great Crime’ usage is in the
context of an argument about whether ‘Great Crime’ should be use[d]
instead of ‘Great Calamity’)” (Aug. 22, 2012). A good portion of those
inflated results is unfortunately the product of ignorance of the
Armenian language on the part of Armenian speakers who transmit their
defective understanding to their peers, speakers, and non-speakers of
Armenian alike, thereby unabashedly making themselves and those they
influence readily available for the exploitation of denialists. Such
is the case of scholar Lou-Ann Matossian, who misguidedly declared
in 2009: “Meds Yeghern is an Armenian phrase, which translates as
‘great calamity.’ A tornado is a ‘great calamity.’ A genocide is a
crime. The concept of crime implies the concept of justice. ‘Genocide’
has a meaning in international law. ‘Calamity’ (yeghern) has none.”20
It is time to save the term from the entrapments of denialist
terminology and the misrepresentation of facts put forward by
well-intentioned but ill-advised Armenian wordsmiths. The only
responsible way to scale the rugged walls of the language is to
enter its long history and to find there the answers to the following
questions: Does yeghern indeed mean “calamity”? Is it the case that
it has no legal meaning?
Notes
1 The Huffington Post, April 28, 2009.
2 See
3 Armenian American commentator Edmond Y. Azadian has suggested
that Samantha Power, who was already in the staff of the National
Security Council, “most probably had crafted the president’s speech”
using the precedent “created by Pope John Paul II” (The Armenian
Mirror-Spectator, June 13, 2009).
4 Today’s Zaman, April 27, 2009.
5 Today’s Zaman, May 3, 2009.
6 Today’s Zaman, April 28, 2009.
7 See
8 The Armenian Weekly, April 28, 2011.
9 See, for instance, Thomas de Waal, The Caucasus: An Introduction,
Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 58.
10 See
11 Harut Sassounian, “Genocide Recognition and Quest for Justice,”
The Armenian Weekly/Hairenik Weekly, April 2011 magazine, p. 37.
12 The Huffington Post, December 8, 2009.
13 USA Armenian Life, March 26, 2012.
[1]4 “Metz Yegherni Hushardzan” (Memorial of the Metz Yeghern),
Haykakan Hamarot Hanragitaran (Armenian Abridged Encyclopedia), vol.
III, Yerevan: Armenian Encyclopedia, 1999, p. 666.
15 Today’s Zaman, April 27, 2009.
16 H. H. Chakmakjian, A Comprehensive English-Armenian Dictionary,
Boston: E. A. Yeran, 1922, p. 200, 350; Adour Yacoubian,
English-Armenian and Armenian-English Dictionary Romanized, Los
Angeles: Armenian Archives Press, 1944, p. 15, 21, 90, 170; Mesrob G.
Kouyoumdjian, A Comprehensive Dictionary English-Armenian, Cairo:
Sahag-Mesrob Press, 1961, p. 185, 312; Idem, A Comprehensive Dictionary
Armenian-English, Beirut: Atlas Press, 1970, p. 11, 168; Mardiros
Koushakdjian and Rev. Dicran Khantrouni, English-Armenian Modern
Dictionary, Beirut: G. Doniguian and Sons, 1970, p. 135, 201; Idem,
Armenian-English Modern Dictionary, Beirut: G. Doniguian and Sons,
1970, 7, 94; Thomas Samuelian, Armenian Dictionary in Transliteration,
New York: Armenian National Education Committee, 1993, 7, 16, 69,
127; Nicholas Awde and Vazken-Khatchig Davidian, Western Armenian
Dictionary and Phrasebook, New York: Hippocrene Books, 2006, p. 29, 58;
Sona Seferian et al., English-Armenian, Armenian English Dictionary,
Yerevan: Areg, 2009, p. 60, 83, 385, 456.
17 Gilda Buchakjian, Armenian English Practical Heritage Dictionary,
New York: St. Vartan Press, 2010, p. 24, 108.
18 For a study of the semantic field of the word yeghern and
the grounds to translate it as “crime,” see Seda Gasparyan,
“Yeghern bari hamarzhekutian dashte anglerenum” (The Field
of Equivalence of the word yeghern in English), Vem, 1,
2010, p. 125-135 (an English translation is available in
)
19 California Courier, May 3, 2012.
20 Eric Black, “President Obama breaks a promise to call
the Armenian genocide a genocide,” MinnPost, April 26, 2009
().