Month: February 2015

EVERYTHING WILL BE OK, DAVIT, DON’T WORRY!

Haikazn Ghahriyan, Editor-in-Chief
Country – 03 February 2015, 13:20

The spokesman for the NKR president Davit Babayan commented on
the incident in Berdzor and Igor Muradyan’s press conference in an
interview with Tert.am. During that press conference Igor Muradyan
had returned the NKR state award and made some statements. Davit
Babayan says let Igor Muradyan accept a medal from Aliyev and let
his statements please the Azerbaijanis.

The style and wording are not new and are ubiquitous in Karabakh and
Armenia as the last “argument” as nothing else is left to say and
retort. However, the problem is not this but the phenomenon itself.

It turns out that the opinion of Aliyev and Azerbaijani press is the
ultimate opinion for broad public and political circles which is taken
as a benchmark for the assessment of internal phenomena. What is this?

Is this a trick, a complex, a spooky or anything else? Maybe
all together, depending on the motivation, purpose or simply the
intellectual state of the users of this thesis.

In the meantime, let’s go back to Davit Babayan and ask him since
when has Aliyev’s and other Azerbaijanis’ opinion so highly assessed
in Karabakh, a country which has defeated Azerbaijan in the war? Is
it OK when the spokesman for the president of a winner country refers
to such things?

Igor Muradyan, Emil Abrahamyan, Zhirair Sefilyan and others who are
standing at the beginnings of the establishment of the Karabakh state
and had a great contribution to the organization of armed resistance
and victory were attending the car march. In addition, they did not
care for what Moscow’s politburo and Azerbaijan were saying about it.

Unlike many others who were against all this and were even willing
for Karabakh to participate in the election of the president of
Azerbaijan. Davit Babayan should know what happened to them. If these
people did not have these characteristics and they cared for Baku’s
opinion, Karabakh would not be an independent state today, and Davit
Babayan would not be the spokesman for the head of this state. At best,
he would be sitting in the “regional soviet” and writing letters to
Baku or he would be jobless and busy studying Chinese demography.

In Armenia they may not know such things but the assessments of the
press secretary of the country that won the war should be appropriate
to his position.

Something painful happened, and there is a need to understand it,
prevent similar occurrences in the future. Such assessments do not
help improve the situation. They make it even worse. And if there
is nothing to tell, one should keep silent. Let those speak who have
anything to do with it. This will be more correct.

Everything will be OK, Davit, don’t worry!

ZHIRAIR SEFILYAN’S AND OTHERS’ FATAL MISTAKE

Haikazn Ghahriyan, Editor-in-Chief
Country – 03 February 2015, 11:02

One of the outstanding representatives of the Armenian public and
political elite Arakel Movsisyan, also known as Schmeiss, has listed
several points defining who can visit Karabakh and for what purpose.

He listed investments, trips, food and drinks, holidays and so on.

Perhaps, nobody could explain better the role of Karabakh in the life
of Armenians and the Armenian state to the public.

Shmeiss is one of those who “gave a** for the nation”, as he put
it once in the headquarters of the southern front where he had
gone to ask for weapons. The headquarters “politely” sent him back
(it is important to describe the details in a way that will not go
beyond the rules of ethics). There were a lot of such people during
the war, and Zhirair Sefilyan had a winged phrase for this case:
“We don’t need a**givers, we need soldiers.”

In the villages of the southern front where Shmeiss later arrived
together with General Manvel, according to the commanders of the
southern front, Schmeiss was busy with “rear supply”, and later when
they had to do “relocation”, according to General Manvel, Schmeiss
counted helicopters transporting bodies.

In this period the situation changed not only on the southern front
but entire Karabakh thanks to the superhuman efforts of the Armenian
people and its devotees because they had to fight on three fronts –
the Russians, the Azerbaijanis and the local pilferers. In addition,
the developments on the southern front were a breakthrough.

Eventually, there was the victory which later became small change
for the groups that usurped government with the “right of war”.

Schmeiss has defined the dream of these groups precisely. At one time,
for example, they put “schlagbaums” on every single path to Artsakh,
and they decided who could go or who could not go there. Under the
name of war rules (let’s leave aside the details). And their dream
is still the “schlagbaum”.

Among the participants of the car march there were people who
created the victory in a severe war in three fronts. At Berdzor they
encountered a “schlagbaum” and then they were attacked. These people
defeated the Russian-Azerbaijani army but lost the internal “front”
considering it a secondary issue, and the people starting ruling in
the country whose real place is in the … This was the fatal mistake
of the creators of victory.

From: Baghdasarian

U.S.-ARMENIAN DEFENSE COOPERATION WAS DISCUSSED

Lragir.am
Politics – 03 February 2015, 14:15

On February 2 the first deputy minister of defense Davit Tonoyan met
with the delegation of the United States European Command headed by
the Brigadier General McNeilly. The delegation was accompanied by
the U.S. Charge d’Affaires Clark Price.

During the meeting issues relating to the U.S.-Armenian cooperation
in the sphere of defense were discussed. The sides highlighted the
importance of maintaining the dynamics of development of cooperation
and cooperation in new spheres, the RA MoD informed.

THIRD DIGITAL EXHIBIT ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RELEASED

17:01, 03 Feb 2015
Siranush Ghazanchyan

A third digital exhibit on the Armenian Genocide consisting of 128
images on 24 panels entitled “The First Deportation: The German
Railroad, the American Hospital, and the Armenian Genocide” was
released today by the Armenian National Institute (ANI), Armenian
Genocide Museum of America (AGMA) and Armenian Assembly of America
(Assembly). Available on the ANI, AGMA, and Assembly websites, the
exhibit focuses on two localities, Zeytun, an Armenian city in the
Taurus Mountains, and Konya, a Turkish city in the central Anatolian
plain, both linked by the Armenian Genocide.

The remote and self-sustaining city of Zeytun was the first Armenian
community in Ottoman Turkey deported en masse in April 1915. To deprive
the Zeytun Armenians of any capacity to defy the deportation edicts,
the Young Turk government divided its population sending one part
east toward the Syrian Desert and another part west to the barren
flats of the Konya Plain.

By this fate, the Zeytun deportees were routed down from their mountain
homes through the nearby city of Marash and the Cilician Plain and back
up through the high passes of the Cilician Gates of the Taurus Range,
the only accessible road from Cilicia to Anatolia. This route also
placed them along the Berlin-Bagdad rail line then under construction
through those very same passes.

By intersecting that rail line, Zeytun Armenians soon found themselves
among the rest of the Armenian population of western Anatolia being
deported east by train to the main terminus at Konya and substations
beyond, where they were offloaded from cattle cars to walk down the
mountain passes, while work crews led by German and Swiss engineers
were cutting open new roads and tunnels to complete the construction
of the rail system.

There also happened to be an American hospital in Konya manned by
three outstanding figures who soon found themselves in the midst
of hundreds of thousands of Armenian deportees and as such became
witnesses to the unfolding of the Armenian Genocide. The station
at Konya was supposed to serve only as a transit camp, but with all
of the Armenians of western and central Anatolia routed through the
city, the open spaces beyond the station transformed into a vast
concentration camp. Because Konya was never intended to exist as
a destination camp and was evacuated within a short time, it has
been forgotten as a major site in the trail of deportation and the
central object of what transpired there overlooked. It was evident to
all observers in the city how rapidly the Ottoman Turkish government
reduced an industrious and prosperous people to misery. In Konya it was
already visible that all it took was a matter of days, not even weeks.

The testimony provided by Dr. Wilfred Post and Dr. William Dodd,
and the efforts of Miss Emma Cushman, all three American medical
missionaries, provide compelling information about the rapidly
deteriorating conditions along the rail line and the start of the
process of extinguishing Armenian life across the region. Their
information is paralleled by the protests of German civilians in the
same area who sharply criticized the Ottoman authorities and raised
questions with their own government about the morality of German
wartime policies.

More compelling still were the photographs taken by Dr. Wilfred Post
and the German railroad engineers that documented the wartime reality
on this particular swath of Ottoman territory. While as wartime
allies of the Turks, Germans enjoyed a certain amount of liberty in
their actions, Dr. Post took a serious risk in defying the ban on
photographing the Armenians.

Retrieved from the United States National Archives, the entire set of
photographs taken by Dr. Wilfred Post are being issued for the first
time in this exhibit. They constitute the central evidence around
which the entire exhibit is constructed.

Dr. Post captioned the photographs, and succeeded in delivering them
to the American Embassy in Constantinople, the Ottoman capital, from
where they were sent by diplomatic pouch to Washington, DC. They might
have been the very first images of the Armenian Genocide to arrive
into the hands of U.S. officials. In this regard, the historic value
of Dr. Post’s photographs are matched only by those taken by U.S.

consul Leslie Davis who documented the Armenian Genocide in the region
of Harput/Kharpert.

Because of the numbers of Armenians being deported and the pace at
which the western Anatolian cities were emptied of their Armenian
inhabitants, the Konya train station became a choke point in the
deportation process. Vast concentration camps of homeless Armenian
families soon formed along the tracks. The brutality of the process,
the complete lack of sanitation, and the absence of sources of food
very rapidly created an explosive situation threatening the spread of
epidemics. Thousands of Armenians never made it beyond the stations
of the Konya line and conditions in the refugee camps were so foul
and violent that a train conductor is quoted by Dr. Dodd describing
the Bozanti station as “hell on earth.”

Consisting of 121 images, 7 maps, and containing a rich variety of
eyewitness testimony, the exhibit reconstructs Armenian life in Zeytun,
reproduces the two rare photographs showing the arrest of the Zeytun
men, outlines the deportation route to the degree that contemporary
photographs allow, depicts the city of Konya, showing the contrast
between the rugged mountains in which Zeytun Armenians were accustomed
to living and the flat, arid, and sparsely populated plain of Konya.

The exhibit includes previously unpublished photographs of Zeytun,
reproduces newly released images from German sources, and, in addition
to the United States National Archives material, presents images
from the Australian War Memorial; University of Newcastle upon Tyne,
England, Gertrude Bell Archives; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
Kelsey Museum; Mennonite Church USA Archives; the Armenian Missionary
Association of America and the Haigazian University Archives of Beirut,
Lebanon; Library of Congress; Republic of Armenia National Archives;
as well as online resources and private individuals.

ANI especially recognizes the historian Aram Arkun whose close study
of documentary sources addressed the complex situation surrounding
the denouement in Zeytun and who served as project consultant for the
exhibit. ANI also thanks Gunter Hartnagel, a professional photographer,
who provided valuable guidance on German historical images, and whose
researches in historical geography helped understand the terrain
that was covered by the Zeytun deportees and appreciate the hardships
endured by those who trudged through the mountains of Cilicia at the
point of a bayonet.

The location of Konya on the train line also helped to document
the post-war situation in the city. Accompanying a U.S. aid mission
and relief workers, the American photographer George Robert Swain
recorded the efforts of Miss Cushman to create a safe haven for
surviving Armenian orphans. In so doing Swain added another layer of
documentation about the fate of the Armenian population and helped
create, in sum with Dr. Post’s pictures, one of the more comprehensive
photographic records of a single location so directly impacted by
the Armenian Genocide.

The final demise of the Armenians of Konya was sealed with the
fate of Dr. Armenag Haigazian who, as a highly-regarded educator,
embodied the Armenian Protestant community’s hope of recovery. He
had survived the war years and the violence of the Young Turk regime,
but his restoration of the Apostolic Institute made him the target of
the Turkish Nationalist movement, which saw to the shuttering of the
school and the second exile and persecution of Dr. Haigazian. World
War I may have ended and the Young Turk government overthrown, but
the Armenian Genocide in Turkey continued, making the death of Dr.

Haigazian a most poignant tragedy, especially as he famously held a
doctorate from Yale University.

This third digital exhibit continues and builds upon the themes
developed in the exhibits released earlier, including the role and
fate of Armenian clergy, churches and schools, the role of American
missionaries and relief workers, and the role of Germans in Ottoman
Turkey, while distinguishing between the attitudes of civilian,
military, and diplomatic representatives.

The exhibit highlights the unsolvable dilemma faced by the Armenian
Catholicos of Cilicia Sahag II Khabayan, who, unaware of the broader
scheme about to be implemented by the Young Turk regime, advised the
Zeytun population to cooperate with the authorities in the hope of
avoiding a repetition of the Cilician massacres that spread terror
across the region a mere six years earlier. The acts and observations
of other clergymen, including Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople
Zaven Der Yeghiayan, his successor Archbishop Mesrob Naroyan,
Archbishop Stepannos Hovagimian of Ismit, Grigoris Balakian, and
Reverend William Peet, are also explained as part of the testimony
on this specific aspect of the Armenian Genocide.

The exhibit also highlights the role of an exceptional Ottoman
official, who, as governor of Aleppo and of Konya, opposed the
measures of the Young Turk radicals. Jelal Bey was the highest ranking
administrator in the Ottoman Empire who disapproved of the policies
of the triumvirate ruling from Constantinople. A number of lower
ranking officials who disagreed with the regime were killed by Young
Turk party henchmen. Opposing the Young Turk regime required courage,
and Jelal placed his life in jeopardy. He may have been spared only
because of his stature and lifelong service to the state.

The exhibit also reveals the involvement of a German diplomat, who as
an embassy councilor in Constantinople played a role in maintaining
German-Turkish relations, and as such became among the recipients
of the flow of information being reported about the implementation
of the Armenian Genocide. A lesser official at the time, Konstantin
von Neurath rose through the ranks eventually to serve as Minister
of Foreign Affairs in Nazi Germany and as governor of occupied
Czechoslovakia, where Reinhard Heydrich, one of the architects of
the Holocaust, served as his deputy.

The exhibit concludes with testimony from Dr. Charles Mahjoubian,
a native of Konya who resettled in Philadelphia and entered the
profession of dentistry. As a survivor, he committed himself to
testifying to the events he witnessed in his hometown. He pointed with
pride to his birthplace as one of the earliest centers of Christianity,
dating to St. Paul preaching in Iconium (ancient name of Konya), and as
a center of Turkish Islam where religious piety restrained the hand of
the local population, in sharp relief to the political fanaticism of
the Young Turk regime and the brutality of its associates. According
to Mahjoubian, by a strict reading of the banishment legislation,
Jelal Bey succeeded for a brief while in delaying the deportation of
Catholic and Protestant Armenians.

“The First Deportation: the German Railway, the American Hospital,
and the Armenian Genocide” strengthens and clarifies the photographic
documentation of the Armenian Genocide in a manner consistent and
supportive of third party records, eyewitness accounts and survivor
testimony. It expands the scope of the evidence and attests to the
horrors that unfolded in 1915.

“It did not escape contemporaries that there were immediate lessons
to be drawn from the example of Zeytun,” observed Van Z. Krikorian,
ANI chairman. “Other communities grasped the methods by which the Young
Turk regime pressurized local politics and aggravated relations among
religious and ethnic groups in order to create conditions to justify
the wholesale depopulation of Armenian towns and cities. Reverend
Ephraim Jernazian drew a direct connection between the failure of
the Zeytun Armenians to stand their ground and the heroic defense of
their neighborhood by Urfa Armenians. Hopeless as their actions might
have been at the time, the Armenians of Urfa made the point that they
would not be submitting to tyranny willingly, nor give up their lives
easily to help fulfill the violent designs of the Young Turks.”

“The clarity of that lesson from the past resonates today with the
necessary defense of Nagorno Karabakh where Armenians yet again
a century later face another enemy whose objective remains their
expulsion from their homeland. The commitment of the Armenians of
Artsakh to avoid the fate of the Western Armenian population was
inspired by the tragedies of the Armenian Genocide and the pledge of
survivors to avoid a repeat of such a calamity,” concluded Krikorian.

“I want to thank Rouben Adalian for uncovering these valuable records
on the Armenian Genocide, and Joe Piatt and Aline Maksoudian for
working with Dr. Adalian in creating this impressive exhibit,”
Krikorian added.

“Relief workers, educators, missionaries, orphanage administrators,
and other volunteers from the United States played a massive role in
relieving the plight of the survivors,” stated ANI Director, Dr.

Rouben Adalian. “Many of the longtime American residents of Turkey
also witnessed and reported the deportations and massacres of 1915.

Because of the remoteness of Konya from the other major centers of the
Armenian Genocide, Dr. Wilfred Post, Dr. William Dodd, and Miss Emma
Cushman may not have been extended the recognition they deserve. The
compelling evidence of this exhibit now ranks them among the heroic
Americans who helped save lives during the Armenian Genocide.”

THE TRAVEL CHANNEL’S “BOOZE TRAVELER” VISITS ARMENIA

15:48, 03 Feb 2015
Siranush Ghazanchyan

Cocktail connoisseur Jack Maxwell, host of the Travel Channel’s series
Booze Traveler travels to Armenia to discover the old and new in booze.

He checks out the oldest wine press, tries Ararat brandy and tastes
the nightlife in Yerevan. Along the way, he samples mulberry oghi
before wrapping up his trip at a wedding.

CO-CHAIRS PLAN TO VISIT THE REGION SOON FOR TALKS WITH ARMENIAN, AZERBAIJANI LEADERS

14:41, 03 Feb 2015
Siranush Ghazanchyan

The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group are deeply concerned by the
serious violence which recently occurred in Nagorno-Karabakh, US
Co-Chair ofthe OSCE Minsk Group James Warlick said in an interview
with the Voice of America.

The diplomat said they are seriously concerned by the serious
violence which recently occurred on the contact line of troops and
the Azerbaijani-Armenian border, noting that the recent incidents
and the escalating violence directly harm all countries in the region.

“We plan to visit the region soon and negotiate with the presidents
of Azerbaijan and Armenia,” he said.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT: “THE ARMENIAN MASSACRE WAS THE GREATEST CRIME”

February 2, 2015

U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt in his letter to Cleveland Hoadley
Dodge on May 11, 1918

“The Armenian massacre was the greatest crime of the war, and the
failure to act against Turkey is to condone it… the failure to deal
radically with the Turkish horror means that all talk of guaranteeing
the future peace of the world is mischievous nonsense.”

TALAAT PASHA’S REPORT ON THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

February 2, 2015

Recent Documents released in Turkish archives, combined with surviving
documents from Talaat’s Pasha’s private papers, confirm that Talaat
was indeed the architect of the Armenian Genocide. There is a clear
record that he ordered and supervised the general deportation of
Ottoman Armenians in 1915-16, and that he followed the fate of such
deportees from close quarters. Talaat was sent updates regarding
Armenians at different stages of deportations, as well as information
about the fate of others who were subjected to special treatment.

Although a great deal of Ottoman records still remain unavailable
in Turkish archives, the available records show that the Ottoman
deportation thesis was a smokescreen for the annihilation of
Armenians. Ottoman records in Turkish archives, as well as Talaat’s
1917 report, show that less than 100,000 Armenians survived in the
so-called resettlement zone for Armenians. According to Talaat’s
report on the Armenian Genocide, most Armenians in the Ottoman Empire
had disappeared between 1915 and 1917, or they were dispersed in
different provinces of the Ottoman Empire for assimilation. The forced
assimilation of hundreds of thousands of Armenians was indicative of
the power, control and purpose of the Ottoman state.

Talaat Pasha’s Report on the Armenian Genocide is the closest
official Ottoman view we have of the Armenian Genocide. The report was
undoubtedly prepared for Talaat Pasha and meant for his private use.

It was not meant for publication and probably only survived because
Talaat was assassinated in 1921 and his widow gave the report to
a Turkish historian who eventually published it.* No such record has
been released by Turkish archives to date, though the data presented in
the 1917 report can be checked against the available Ottoman records
and stands scrutiny.

According to Talaat’s figures 1,150,000 Armenians disappeared in
the Ottoman Empire between 1915-1917. This number includes well over
100,000 Armenians who fled from the Ottoman Empire in 1915 (and died
in large numbers from hunger, exposure and disease), but it does
not include tens of thousands of Armenian women and children who
were absorbed into Muslim families or placed into state orphanages
for assimilation.

In this publication of Talaat’s report on the Armenian Genocide,
historian Ara Sarafian discusses the 1917 report in light of other
Ottoman records. He presents Talaat’s statistics in all detail and
includes two invaluable color maps demonstrating the content of
the report, as well as additional Ottoman documents related to the
Armenian Genocide. Sarafian presents Talaat’s breakdown of the number
of Armenians, their native provinces, and their whereabouts in the
Ottoman Empire in 1917.

Free download Book. Talaat Pasha’s Report on the Armenian Genocide

Map 1. The Destruction of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1914-1917

Map 2. Surviving Armenian Deportees in the Ottoman Empire, 1917

TALAAT PASHA’S REPORT ON THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

London: Gomidas Institute, 2011 70 pp, colour maps insert ISBN
978-1-903656-66-2, paperback, UK£12.00/US$18.00 To order please
contact [email protected]

I REMEMBER THE BLOODSTAINED EUPHRATES

February 3, 2015

We are natives of Bitlis. I’m the granddaughter of Moukhsi Vardan. The
Turks destroyed our house. Our family was composed of seventy members.

There were seven boys and five girls in our family. All the boys have
been killed by the Turks. From our large family, only I have survived
and Missak, who is now a general in Moscow

Before the deportation, in 1914, they took my eldest brother to the
army; he became a corporal. Once he came to see us. My father said:
“Khosrov, lao, don’t go.”

My brother said: “How can I? I’m a corporal, if I don’t go, the Turks
will burn you.”

He went and never came back. A few Armenian soldiers had decided to
run away; the Turks opened fire on them, but they threw themselves
into the Arax River and were saved. They joined the Russian army.

My father had run from the Turkish army and had hidden in the straw
heap. The Ottoman Turks came, drew him out and killed him. We remained
orphans.

Our neighbor, Turk Yousouf efendi had pity on us and took us to his
house. The Kurd Hamidie soldiers came and asked my mother: “Where
are your gold coins?”

Terror-stricken, my mother said: “There, they are in the jar.”

The Turks took the gold coins and went away.

Our Turk neighbor, who had taken care of us, got angry with mother
and asked why she hadn’t given the gold to him and put us out of
his house. We came out; the corpses of the killed Armenians were
everywhere; they had massacred all the Armenians. Those who were
still alive, were driven we did not know where. On the road there
was confusion and uproar. The Turkish gendarmes drew us forward with
bayonets. At night they came and took away the young women and girls.

One day they took away my mother, too, and then they brought her back.

It was good that my father was not alive and did not see himself
dishonored.

I remember, on the road of exile our cart turned over into the water.

Many people were drowned in the Euphrates River and many were killed
and thrown into the river. That was why the Euphrates River was
completely colored bloody red.

Walking on foot we reached Kars. We saw the statue of Loris-Melikov
– a man, who had put his foot on an eagle. From there we walked to
Igdir. With the refugees we reached Edjmiadsin. The exiles, sick,
emaciated and exhausted, lay under the walls of the monastery: old and
young, all of them ill and dying. Two men came and distributed bread
and eggs to the children. They gave mother an egg and some bread. My
mother said: “I have two children.” They gave one more egg and we ate.

In fact, one of these kind men was had been Hovhannes Toumanian.

Suddenly it began pouring and all the exiles remained under the rain.

My mother covered us with tarpaulin.

Hov. Toumanian sent the sexton to the Catholicos to fetch the keys
to the monks’ chambers, to give shelter to the refugees, but the
Catholicos had refused saying that they would soil the chambers. Hov.

Toumanian took an axe and began to break the doors of the chambers
and let in the exiles. He said: “Go and say that the Catholicos of All
Armenians refused, but the poet of all Armenians Hovhannes Toumanian
broke the door with an axe and sent in the refugees.”

My mother took away the tarpaulin, poured away the water and took
us into a room, where it was warm. But in the morning many of the
refugees had died. Cholera had infected most of them. My poor mother
also died of it. I remained all-alone. Together with the refugees,
I came to Yerevan. They did not accept us well in Yerevan. They used
to call us “refugees.”

In Yerevan I studied at the school named after Khachatour Abovian. In
1933 I graduated from the Agricultural Institute, which, at that time,
was a faculty of the University. From 1933 till 1936 I worked in
Stepanavan as an agronomist. I was acquainted with Aghassi Khandjian,
while Matsak Papian was the chairman of our kolkhoz. I have received
the title of “Honored Agronomist.” During the war I served in the
rear and have received rewards. For fifty-five years I have worked
at the Ministry of grain storage as a chief specialist, and I have
received rewards.

Verjine Svazlian. The Armenian Genocide: Testimonies of the Eyewitness
Survivors. Yerevan: “Gitoutyoun” Publishing House of NAS RA, 2011,
testimony 20, p. 117.

From: Baghdasarian

GROUNDBREAKING SYMPOSIUM AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY FOCUSING ON MONUMENTS & MEMORY

By MassisPost
Updated: February 3, 2015

By Taleen Babayan

Major scholars from around the world will participate in a timely,
and thought-provoking conference at Columbia University, “Monuments
and Memory: Material Culture and the Aftermath of Histories of Mass
Violence” on Friday, February 20, 2015.

This all-day symposium concentrating on material culture and memory,
with the ruins of the ancient Armenian city of Ani as the centerpiece,
is organized and hosted by Peter Balakian, Donald M. Constance H.

Rebar Professor of the Humanities at Colgate University, and Rachel
Goshgarian, Assistant Professor of History at Lafayette College, and
sponsored by the Armenian Center of Columbia University, Columbia’s
Institute for the Study of Human Rights, the Institute for Comparative
Literature and Society, and the Armenian General Benevolent Union.

The conference will explore the general themes of restoration,
restitution and social justice and will be groundbreaking in its
comparative analysis of Jewish monuments in Eastern Europe, Muslim
monuments in the Balkans, and Armenian-Christian monuments in Turkey.

Four sessions revolving around these topics will take place throughout
the day, each chaired by a member of the Columbia community who will
conduct and moderate the question and answer sessions.

The first session, “Monuments and Memory: the Significance of Material
Culture in the Aftermath of Genocide,” (10:00 a.m. to 11:15 a.m.),
chaired by Christine Philliou, Associate Professor of History at
Columbia University, will address the historical contexts for the
destroyed or appropriated material cultures of minority peoples in
the aftermath of histories of mass violence. The current conditions of
these monuments will be analyzed, as well as their roles in collective
memory for both occupying and exiled cultures. Presenters include
Peter Balakian; Andrew Herscher, Associate Professor of Architecture
at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and Marianne Hirsch, William
Peterfield Trent Professor of English and Comparative Literature at
Columbia University.

The second session, “The Medieval Armenian City of Ani: A Case Study
in the Politicization of Art History, History, Historical Monuments
and Preservation in a Post-Genocidal Context,” (11:30 a.m. to
12:45 p.m.), chaired by Nanor Kebranian, Assistant Professor in
the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies
at Columbia University, will include papers on subjects related to
Ani’s multicultural past, cultural destruction, restoration projects,
depiction in modern Turkey, and place in the construction of Armenian
identity. Presenters include Rachel Goshgarian; Christina Maranci,
Arthur H. Dadian and Ara Oztemel Associate Professor of Armenian Art
and Architecture at Tufts University; Heghnar Watenpaugh, Associate
Professor of Art History at the University of California, Davis;
and Yavuz Ozkaya, Restoration Architect at PROMET Architecture and
Restoration Co.

The third session, “Monuments, Memory, Restitution, and Social Justice:
What issues do monuments raise in these historical contexts?

How can social justice and restitution be achieved decades after the
event of genocide or mass-killing?” (2:15 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.) will be
chaired by Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies
and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Presenters include
Osman Kavala, Founder of Anadolu Kultur; Leo Spitzer, Kathe Tappe
Vernon Professor of History at Dartmouth University; and Elazar Barkan,
Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.

The concluding session will be a round table discussion followed by
a reception for participants and attendees.

“Rachel and Peter are bringing together a wide range of speakers
to address the issue of Ani, from historians to cultural heritage
advocates, to practicing architects actively engaged in restoration
projects at Ani,” said Maranci.

“I hope that it will galvanize more dialogue about the fate of the
churches and other ancient monuments in and around Ani, because of
their historical and architectural importance and because of their
structural vulnerability.”

“There is tremendous opportunity here to address the painful history
of Armenians and Turkey and forge a different way forward regarding
Armenian cultural heritage in Turkey,” said Watenpaugh, who recently
published, “Preserving the Medieval City of Ani: Cultural Heritage
Between Contest and Reconciliation” in the Journal of the Society of
Architectural Historians. “This is the right time to have a critical
and public discussion about this site, and the broader issues it
raises.”

Mark Momjian Esq., Chair of the Armenian Center and an alumnus of
Columbia College and Columbia Law School, emphasized his alma mater’s
role not only in aiding the survivors of the Armenian Genocide,
but in advocating support of the Armenian Republic.

“Ambassador Henry Morgenthau was an alumnus of Columbia Law School,
and he is in the pantheon of heroes to the Armenian people. Talcott
Williams was the first director of Columbia’s School of Journalism,
and he was heavily involved with Near East Relief. George Edward
Woodbury, a comparative literature professor at Columbia, assailed
the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide. And there are countless
others,” said Momjian, a Philadelphia lawyer and community activist.

“This symposium marks the centennial of the Armenian Genocide,
but it also honors the many Columbians who denounced this terrible
crime against humanity and who worked tirelessly to help the Armenian
people.”

The event will take place in Room 1501 of Columbia University’s
Morningside Campus International Affairs Building, located at 420
West 118th Street, from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. with breaks for lunch
and coffee. A reception will follow. This event is free and open to
the public.