Thinking Aloud: The 2015 Centennial of the Armenian Genocide
21:43, September 14, 2013
By Christina Najarian
In less than two years, the world will have an opportunity to prove
Adolf Hitler wrong. It was him who, prior to embarking upon a
genocidal campaign in Europe, said: `Who, after all, remembers the
annihilations of the Armenians?’
Unfortunately, 98 years after the onset of the Armenian Genocide, many
countries worldwide still do not recognize the darkest moment of our
history. Perhaps more painfully, the Armenian nation is still
unprepared. With so little time left until the April 24, 2015
centennial, the nation needs a strategy to ensure the recognition of
the Genocide and to address its consequences in the foreseeable
future, both necessary pre-conditions for healing between the two
nations to begin.
The centennial can bifurcate in two directions: it can be a time of
healing or a time of further division. I suspect much will depend on
the state of Turkey’s civil and political societies themselves.
However, Armenians should not rely on the developments in Turkey to
move this agenda forward, as there is simply too much at stake. There
needs to be a new course of action to guarantee that the centennial is
a time of healing.
To date, the Armenian community is still unprepared to ensure
worldwide recognition. I always thought that Armenia’s struggle
towards genocide recognition was stifled by its weak stance in the
global economy and also by weak coordination between Armenia and the
Diaspora. I always wondered, however, if domestic politics too had any
role to play here.
There are currently separate centennial committees working in
isolation to promote genocide recognition before the 2015 memorial
service. These committees include the Pan-Armenian Centennial
Committee put together by official Yerevan and the Armenian Genocide
Centennial Committee set up in Los Angeles by major Armenian-American
organizations on the West Coast. These committees share similar
objectives, but they apparently rarely collaborate. It begs a question
if there is enough drive on both sides to join forces and create a
unified front, a formula that is guaranteed to be most efficient.
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