Daily Targum , NJ
April 25 2005
Recognize the Armenian genocide
By Laurie Apelian
In the wake of the solemn remembrance of the 90th anniversary of the
Armenian Genocide, Mehmet Basoglu has yet again attempted to
discredit and undermine the events of the genocide with myriad skewed
facts and sketchy statements regarding what occurred.
At first, I was tempted to respond to Mr. Basoglu’s article “Changing
History” (The Daily Targum, April 14) by refuting each historical
“fact” of his one by one. I decided not to for two reasons.
The first reason is that I strongly urge all of you who are reading
this letter to read the following: “Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story,”
the eyewitness accounts of the American ambassador, Henry Morgenthau,
who was stationed in Turkey during the latter parts of the massacres
and documented exactly what he observed; “The Slaughterhouse
Province: An American Diplomat’s Report on the Armenian Genocide
(1915 – 1917),” based on the American consul Leslie Davis’ report to
the State Department from Harput, Turkey; and Peter Balakian’s “The
Burning Tigris,” a thorough compilation of many historical sources
and documents regarding the massacres and an examination of America’s
response to the Armenians’ plight. These sources are no “British Blue
Book propaganda,” with which Mr. Basoglu accuses Armenian Americans
of being brainwashed. These sources contain the facts that no one but
the Turkish government is trying to conceal.
My second reason for not disputing his claims one by one is that the
accounts of my own grandfather and great-grandfather are enough
evidence to me that the genocides occurred, and that is what I’d like
to share a little bit of with you.
Mr. Basoglu makes the statement that “true progress will never be
made on this issue until the Armenian Diaspora examines the roots of
their own identity.” I am a child of the Armenian Diaspora, and I
know full well the roots of my Armenian identity. My roots reach back
to my great-grandfather, Bedros Bahadourian, who passed away a few
years ago. As a child, as a teenager, I would sit next to my
great-grandfather and listen to his first-hand accounts of how he was
orphaned during the massacres, of how he and his siblings had to
march through the desert, of how he watched the bodies of those he
loved perish under the sun and at the hands of the Turkish troops,
and of how he was left poor, homeless and starving to the point of
stealing food and licking the remains of food off of the ground.
Also, my grandfather, Kevork Parseghian, was born and raised in
Turkey, and he describes how he and his younger sister would be
physically harassed and spit upon by the Turks while simply passing
by Turkish villages on their way to school. These stories are not
slanted British propaganda. They are not lies or allegations made up
by extremists. They are the true experiences of my own family
members.
Amazingly enough, my great-grandfather never once exhibited hatred
toward the Turks, although he and his family suffered at their hands.
He never taught his children, his grandchildren or his
great-grandchildren to hate the Turks or to retaliate in violence. My
great-grandfather was not a revolutionary or a member of a political
party – he was a man of God, who after relating all the horrors of
his childhood to us, would say, “Oor eyeenk, oor yegank Park
Asdoodzo,” meaning, “Where were we before? And look how far we have
come! Praise be to God!”
Mr. Basoglu quotes Turkish sources – if they are not slanted sources,
I don’t know what is – as saying only 300,000 Armenians died during
the period of the massacres. The truth of the matter is that 300,000
Armenians lost their lives in just the first period of attacks, from
1894-1896 at the hands of Sultan Abdul Hamid II. That is a fact from
“The Armenian Massacres, 1894-1896 U.S. Media Testimony” by Arman J.
Kirakossian. The massacres continued and only escalated during World
War I until about 1916, this time led by leaders like Enver Pasha and
Talaat Pahsa, among many others. By the end of 1916, the death toll
had reached over one million, a fact documented in many places, but
namely Merrill D. Peterson’s “Starving Armenians.”
To me personally, the exact numbers of how many people died is not
what matters the most. What is more crucial is that a targeted,
premeditated genocide against one specific group of people was
carried out for the sole reason that they were Armenian, and nothing
else. The Young Turks went after the Armenians for the same basic
reasons that Adolf Hitler and the Nazis went after the Jews and the
Hutus in Rwanda went after the Tutsis – to exterminate an ethnic
group of people who they did not see fit to live. The Jewish
Holocaust and many other occurrences of ethnic cleansing have been
acknowledged and dealt with on a federal level. Why must the Armenian
people alone continue to suffer the disgrace and pain of having their
genocide called “slanted propaganda” and mere “allegations”?
I do not support the few and far between Armenian extremists who
express their views with violence and hatred. But every time someone
like Mr. Basoglu writes such infuriating, blasphemous, careless
inaccuracies about the genocide that my own family members suffered
through, my Armenian blood boils. It is my Christian values that keep
me from retaliating in hatred, but it is my human dignity that
demands recognition of the atrocities committed against my people.
Laurie Apelian is an Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy sophomore.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress