KASBARIAN: THE LESSONS OF LISBON
By Antranig Kasbarian
August 1, 2013
Lisbon reminds me that we must avoid lapsing back into conformism.
On July 27, 1983, five young Armenians-Sarkis Abrahamian, Setrak
Ajemian, Vatche Daghlian, Ara Kuhrjlian, and Simon Yahniyan-stormed
the Turkish Embassy in Lisbon, Portugal, seeking to occupy it in an
effort to publicize Turkey’s ongoing denial of the Armenian Genocide.
While the attempt ultimately failed-the five became trapped inside
the Embassy and eventually committed suicide-it is worth looking at
the Lisbon incident, and more broadly, the years of armed struggle in
the 1970s and ’80s, to evaluate the impact of those years and where
we’ve come since that time.
Armed struggle was carried out largely by two groups-the Armenian
Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) and the Justice
Commandos of the Armenian Genocide (JCAG)-and their offshoots. While
the groups varied considerably in tactics and allegiances, they came
out of the same period of ferment, marked by civil rights activism,
anti-colonial movements, the rise of national liberation struggles
in the Third World, and a broad tendency toward radicalism among the
youth. Far from being a band of hotheads or quixotic adventurers, many
of the young avengers were part of this broader, worldwide tendency,
and thus reflected the spirit of their times: Conventional political
means had yielded little results, and the Great Powers-both US and
USSR-despite their professed idealism and concern for human rights,
were seen as part of the problem rather than part of the solution;
in the US’s case especially, viewed no longer as the bastion of the
free world but rather as an imperialist power that backed dictatorships
and other criminal states, including modern Turkey.
Bearing these trends in mind, we must view the rise of armed struggle
for what it was: A movement that, frustrated by the seeming impotence
of mainstream advocacy, began to call for more extreme actions
(such as targeted assassinations of high-ranking Turkish diplomats)
that could shake the system’s foundations. The effort was designed
essentially as a wake-up call, and on two fronts:
Aiming to send shock waves through Turkey, as well as international
public opinion.
Seeking to repoliticize Armenian communities worldwide, replacing
conventional notions of democracy and human rights with bolder,
ideologically sharper notions of self-sacrifice, liberation, and
revolutionary zeal in pursuit of our cause.
On the first front, the wave of political assassinations did indeed
wake up Turkey. In fact, in the early years Turkish opinionmakers
were frankly startled, having grown accustomed to seeing Armenians as
modest and unthreatening, hardly a bold or formidable adversary. It
took a few years, but by the late 1970s Turkey’s elite had regained
its balance: At first, Ankara sought quick remedies to defuse its
“Armenian problem”: Recall then-Foreign Minister Caglayangil, who
invited the leaders of the Armenian political parties-ARF, Hunchak and
ADL-to meet secretly in Switzerland. The Foreign Minister expressed
his country’s dismay over the rise in political violence, and sought
the Armenian groups’ assistance, but was kindly rebuffed. He was told
that while the parties did not condone such violence per se, a) the
cessation of hostilities was beyond their means; and b) nothing short
of justice would cause the assassins to lay down their arms. Soon
thereafter, Turkey evaluated these results and decided to drop the
possibility of subsequent meetings.
Soon thereafter, Turkey became more pro-active. Both directly and
indirectly, it began to pressure Armenian leaders and community
institutions inside Turkey. More ominously, it began to pour millions
of dollars into organized denial efforts, creating a political machine
that has continued to grow till this day.
We may look upon this today as cause for concern, but at the time
Armenians believed that armed struggle had made headway in a limited
sense: It had forced Turkey to blink, and it had drawn widespread
reaction-both positive and negative-from international public opinion,
as mainstream media voraciously devoured news of every assassination.
For a period, it seemed that the Armenian Cause had gone from being
yesterday’s news to emerging as a serious matter of contemporary
relevance.
However, the armed struggle did not have staying power. Some believe
that by the 1980s it had gone too far, particularly in the wanton
destruction of Paris’s Orly Airport and other cases where innocent
bystanders were recklessly killed. This likely caused a decline in
support from many Armenians, especially in Europe where the avengers
had won widespread sympathy. And yet, others say the decline in
political violence came because it perhaps did not go far enough:
As long as politicized Armenians did not have presence on the ground
inside Turkey, the assassination attempts were increasingly cast as
isolated incidents staged by the diaspora, which had no foothold on
its historic lands, and was not part of any organic struggle inside
Turkey. (It would have been interesting to see such organic struggle,
but of course the tentative openings inside Turkish society were still
over 20 years away.) Still others rightly point to another factor:
ASALA and JCAG also didn’t have staying power because another organic
struggle on the ground-Karabagh-soon emerged to occupy Armenians’
attention.
On the second front, the movement did often repoliticize Armenian
communities. But it also generated controversies, especially in the US,
where Armenian-Americans had grown up for decades seeking to integrate
with their host societies, not by challenging the mainstream but by
accepting it. The image of the ‘peaceful Armenian’ had been tarnished,
if not shattered, by the armed struggle, and people reacted in
different ways to this. For those who viewed their Armenian identity in
simple or conservative terms, the wave of political violence was often
too much too handle: “Good Armenians” sought to distance themselves not
just from so-called “terrorism,” but from activism of any kind, often
avoiding the faintest mention or involvement with the Armenian Cause.
But for others who were more reflective, the years of armed struggle
gave important meaning to being Armenian. Now, all of a sudden, being
Armenian involved making choices, often difficult choices, tied to
one’s belief system. I can recall the numerous examples when newspaper
reporters and federal investigators began questioning our community
leadership, who by and large stood together, saying that while we do
not condone such violence, we understand the causes behind it, and
that fundamental solutions require justice for the crime of Genocide.
For many of us, there was a maturation process involved, as such
pressures caused us to think more deeply and clearly about what we
did and didn’t believe in.
Meanwhile for those-fewer in number-who were even more politicized,
the years of armed struggle offered existential shifts. The old
narratives, alliances, even worldviews were all challenged by the new
order that was seemingly upon us: Armenians as the US’s “little ally”
was replaced for me by a horizontal view where our most natural,
nourishing alliances came not from the Great Powers but from other
struggling, dispossessed peoples such as the Kurds, Basques, and
Palestinians. I recall being moved by an influential article in the
New York Times by a Columbia University professor (I believe it was
Steele Commager) who pointed to the hypocrisy of condemning such
acts of “terrorism” when the greatest, most lethal violence against
innocent people comes from the large, ostensibly democratic states
we reside in (and the military-industrial complexes that sustain them).
“What do you expect?” was his question, reminding that “terrorism”
is the obvious weapon-of-the-weak, used by those who do not have a
state apparatus to legitimize their use of violence. Either condemn
violence across the board, he seemed to say, or don’t condemn it at
all. In such a milieu, being Armenian was no longer something you
simply wore on your skin; it was a choice, an attitude, a stance on
life-writ-large. And for some of us, being Armenian became a choice
increasingly not to conform to dominant values, but to stand by our
principles even if those principles aren’t always fashionable.
In this spirit, I would affirm that the incident in Lisbon-and the
five martyrs who gave their lives there-was not reckless, merely
destructive or without purpose. If anything, it reminds me that
we must avoid lapsing back into conformism. Lisbon reminds us to
be creative, demanding, and to push the envelope-remaining aware of
‘inside strategies’ as well as ‘outside strategies’ in pursuit of our
goals. More plainly, we must remain ready to work, when necessary,
through established institutions in pursuit of our cause; but we must
also stand ready to question the foundations, and the legitimacy, of
such institutions, rather than simply accepting them as the natural
order of things.
This article is adapted from an address delivered at a July 28, 2013
commemoration organized by the ARF “Soghomon Tehlirian” gomideh in
Fresno, Calif. The author is a member of the ARF Central Committee,
Eastern United States.
http://www.armenianweekly.com/2013/08/01/kasbarian-the-lessons-of-lisbon/