Author: Kanayan Tamar

France 5 TV has shot a film about Armenia. The film presents the country’s picturesque landscape and rich culture.

A camera fixed on a drone has flown above different settlements of Armenia and has caught exceptional shots for the film.

On 4 May Artsakh President Bako Sahakyan received observers, who had arrived in Nagorno Karabakh from Abkhazia and Transnistria to carry out observation mission at the 2015 parliamentary elections, Central Information Department of the Office of the NKR President reports.

President Sahakyan noted in his speech that in Artsakh they attach particular importance to the sustainable development and deepening of relations with Abkhazia and Transnistria, accentuating its importance from historical, political and moral perspectives.

GENOCIDE ARMENIEN : L’HISTOIRE, LES FAITS, LES VERSIONS ( AFP – REPERES) – PHOTOS

Turquie-Armenie-genocide-anniversaire

Erevan (AFP) – Les Armeniens a travers le monde commemorent vendredi
le centenaire des massacres de leurs ancetres, perpetres par les Turcs
ottomans lors de la Première guerre mondiale, une tragedie qualifiee de
genocide par l’Armenie alors que la Turquie rejette fermement ce terme.

Voici les faits principaux sur ces massacres et deportations,
commis entre 1915 et 1917 et qui enveniment toujours les relations
turco-armeniennes :

– Historique du conflit –

Après des siècles de domination persane et byzantine, le territoire
de l’Armenie historique est partage au milieu du XIXe siècle entre
les empires russe et ottoman. Entre 1,7 et 2,3 millions d’Armeniens
vivent dans l’Empire ottoman vers 1915, selon les estimations des
historiens occidentaux.

Les autorites ottomanes soupconnent les sujets armeniens de manquer
de loyaute a l’egard de l’Empire depuis la naissance, a la fin du
XIXe siècle, d’un mouvement nationaliste reclamant l’autonomie des
Armeniens.

Entre 100.000 et 300.000 Armeniens auraient ainsi ete massacres en
1895-1896, sous le règne du sultan Abdul Hamid II.

En octobre 1914, l’Empire ottoman entre dans la Première guerre
mondiale, aux côtes de l’Allemagne et de l’Autriche-Hongrie. Lorsque
l’Empire essuie de lourdes pertes dans les combats affectant les
provinces armeniennes, les autorites en rejettent la responsabilite
sur les Armeniens et lancent une campagne de propagande les qualifiant
d'”ennemi interieur”.

Le 24 avril 1915, des milliers d’Armeniens, soupconnes de sentiments
nationaux hostiles au gouvernement central sont arretes. La plupart
d’entre eux sont ensuite executes ou deportes et le 24 avril devient
dès lors, pour tous les Armeniens du monde, la Journee commemorative
du genocide armenien.

– Chaîne des evenements –

Le 26 mai 1915, une loi speciale autorise la deportation des Armeniens
“pour des raisons de securite interieure”, suivie le 13 septembre
d’une loi ordonnant la confiscation de leurs biens.

La population armenienne d’Anatolie et de Cilicie est alors contrainte
a l’exode vers les deserts de Mesopotamie. Un grand nombre d’Armeniens
sont tues en chemin ou dans des camps.

Beaucoup sont brûles vifs, noyes, empoisonnes ou victimes du typhus,
selon des rapports des diplomates etrangers et des agents de
renseignement de l’epoque.

L’ambassadeur americain dans l’Empire ottoman, Henry Morgenteau,
decrit dans un câble diplomatique au Departement d’Etat une “campagne
d’extermination raciale sous couvert de repression de la rebellion”.

Le 30 octobre 1918, l’Empire ottoman se rend aux forces de la Triple
Entente (Grande-Bretagne, Russie et France). Un accord sur l’armistice
permet alors aux Armeniens deportes de revenir dans leurs maisons.

En fevrier 1919, un tribunal militaire a Constantinople reconnait
plusieurs hauts responsables ottomans coupables de crimes de guerre,
y compris contre les Armeniens, et les condamne a mort.

– Versions contradictoires –

Les Armeniens estiment que 1,5 million des leurs ont ete tues de
manière systematique a la fin de l’empire ottoman.

La Turquie evoque pour sa part une guerre civile en Anatolie, doublee
d’une famine, dans laquelle 300 a 500.000 Armeniens et autant de
Turcs ont trouve la mort.

En avril 2014, le president actuel Recep Tayyip Erdogan, alors
Premier ministre, avait fait un pas en avant inedit en presentant des
condoleances pour les victimes armeniennes de 1915, sans pour autant
cesser de contester toute volonte d’extermination.

“Ce gouvernement a fait plus que tous ses predecesseurs pour faire
tomber les tabous de la fondation de la Republique, mais il s’est
malheureusement arrete en cours de route”, estime Cengiz Aktar,
professeur de sciences politiques a l’universite privee Sabanci
d’Istanbul.

En 2000, 126 chercheurs, parmi lesquels le laureat du prix Nobel Elie
Wiesel, l’historien Yehuda Bauer et le sociologue Irving Horowitz,
affirment dans un communique publie par The New York Times que “le
genocide armenien lors de la Première guerre mondiale est un fait
historique incontestable”.

“La deportation armenienne est une vraie tragedie”, reconnaît Ilber
Ortayli, professeur d’histoire a l’universite Galatasaray d’Istanbul,
en appelant les historiens des deux pays a “se saisir de cette
question” et a “etudier point par point” cette periode de l’histoire
turco-armenienne pour “aller au fond de choses”.

A ce jour, une vingtaine de pays reconnaissent le genocide armenien,
parmi lesquels la France et la Russie. Le Parlement europeen a fait
la meme demarche.

En 2008, lors de sa campagne electorale Barack Obama avait promis
de reconnaître le genocide armenien. Cependant, une fois elu, le
president americain n’a jamais employe ce terme.

vendredi 24 avril 2015, Stephane (c)armenews.com

COMMEMORATIONS FOR ARMENIAN MASSACRE VICTIMS HELD IN TURKEY

Human rights groups and activists gather in Istanbul to mark centenary
of the start of mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks

Turkish and Armenian activists hold pictures of victims during
a commemoration for the victims of mass killings of Armenians by
Ottoman Turks at the Haydarpasa train station in Istanbul. Photograph:
Stringer/Reuters

Constanze Letsch Friday 24 April 2015 16.03 BST

More than 100 people gathered in front of the Islamic Arts museum in
Istanbul on Friday to commemorate the massacre of Armenians during
the last days of the Ottoman empire.

One hundred years ago the building – today a popular tourist attraction
– served as the Ottoman police headquarters and was the site where
the first 250 Armenian intellectuals were rounded up and incarcerated
prior to their deportation on 24 April 1915.

The commemoration, organised by Turkish and international human rights
organisations, was one of a series of events taking place in Istanbul
to mark the centenary of the Armenian genocide during which over 1.5
million Armenians were killed, according to historians’ estimates.

Analysis The Armenian genocide – the Guardian briefing

Turkey has never accepted the term genocide, even though historians
have demolished its denial of responsibility for up to 1.5 million
deaths

Turkey insists the toll has been inflated and rejects that those killed
were victims of genocide, arguing that the Armenians died as a result
of civil war and general unrest during the first world war. On the
eve of the centennial, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
reiterated his view that the nation’s ancestors never committed
genocide.

But at the commemoration in front of the museum, participants did
not shy away from the use of the g-word.

“This is the first time I have the opportunity to attend the
memorials”, said university student Mustafa Polat, 25, a Kurd from
Diyarbakir. “I wanted to be here to remind the world of this genocide.

The truth is clear, this was a crime against humanity that Kurds were
also a part of.

“One doesn’t need to be Armenian, or politically educated to recognise
this genocide, it’s enough to have a conscience.”

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On the “Walk to Remember” through the district of Sultanahmet the
group almost vanished between the throngs of tourists and groups of
Anzac Day visitors looking for their buses to Gallipoli.

Only a few shyly carried folded posters that read “Recognise the
Genocide”, some held red carnations or violet crocuses, a stand-in
for the purple forget-me-nots that symbolise the centenary elsewhere.

There were no slogans and no chants. Riot police accompanied the
hurried march to the shore of the Golden Horn, where a boat took
the delegations to the Haydarpasa train station, from where Istanbul
Armenians were deported and sent to their deaths.

Ali Rabis, 58, an unemployed shoemaker from Istanbul, said he has
attended each public commemoration since 2010, when groups first
came together on Istanbul’s central Taksim Square to remember the
1915 genocide.

“I am Turkish, which is why I come”, he said. “One cannot be aware
of such horrible killings and pretend they have never happened.” He
added that he hoped the commemorations would send a strong message:
“If the genocide had not happened in 1915, maybe world war two would
not have been as horrible, maybe the Holocaust would never have
happened. I want that such things never happen again.”

Benjamin Abtan, president of the European Grassroots Antiracist
Movement (Egam) that has been part of the commemorations since 2011,
said that despite the modest numbers of participants, the atmosphere
in Turkey has changed.

Centenary of the Armenian genocide: descendants tell their family’s
stories

“Very different people are now taking part in the commemorations: more
young people, more women, more religious Muslims, and more Armenians
from Turkey. The Turkish media are more openly referring to the term
genocide. There is more confidence”, he said, adding that the movement
had also become more international. “When I came the first time in
2011, I was the only person who was not a Turkish national. Today
there are delegations from over 15 countries, including from Armenia.”

On Friday morning, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and the
French president, Francois Hollande, joined other state leaders at
the genocide memorial complex in the Armenian capital Yerevan. After
a flower-laying ceremony, Armenia’s President Serge Sarkisian told the
guests: “I am grateful to all those who are here to once again confirm
your commitment to human values, to say that nothing is forgotten,
that after 100 years we remember.”

In an angry reaction earlier this month, Turkey recalled its
ambassadors to the Vatican and to the Austrian capital Vienna after
both countries recognised the Armenian massacres as genocide. A
non-binding resolution passed by the European parliament to commemorate
the centenary of the genocide prompted a similarly furious reply,
with Erdogan saying that “such a decision would go in one ear and
out the other”.

However, the tone of his message read during the memorial service
in honour of the killed Armenians held on Friday at the Armenian
Patriarchate in Istanbul was softer.

“We share the Armenians’ pain with sincerity,” his message read. “The
doors of our hearts are open to the deceased Ottoman Armenians’
grandchildren.”

The Turkish president underlined that Armenians had made important
economic and cultural contributions to the Ottoman empire, while
insisting Armenians were only one of “millions of people from every
nation living in the Ottoman empire’s borders” who also died during
the first world war.

For the first time in the history of the Turkish republic, a Turkish
state official attended the church service. Volkan Bozkir, minister
in charge of Turkey’s EU relations, said he was honoured to be able
to attend the service, and added: “We respect the pain felt by our
Armenian brothers”.

Later on Friday a rally of Turkish and international human rights
groups and others is planned in Istanbul’s Taksim Square. Sarkisian
lauded the attendants as “strong people who are rendering an important
service to their country”.

THE ‘CULTURAL GENOCIDE’ OF THE ARMENIAN PEOPLE ISN’T OVER YET, DESCENDANTS ARGUE

Huffington Post
April 24 2015

Religion News Service | By Tania Karas

YUKARI BAKRACLI, Turkey (RNS) This tiny Kurdish village outside the
city of Van in Turkey’s southeast is home to the ruins of a once-famous
11th-century Armenian Christian monastery.

Known to Armenians as Varagavank, it thrived as a place of worship
until Turkish forces looted it and murdered parishioners in the mass
killing sprees of 1915.

Today, the roof is collapsing. Toppled stone columns lie nearby. And
with no signage, there is no acknowledgment it was once a celebrated
church for Armenians.

Varagavank is one of hundreds of disappearing physical reminders
of a community whose history in present-day Turkey goes back more
than 2,000 years. Over the past century, the Turkish government,
in writing its own narrative of what Armenians call genocide, has
destroyed many Armenian churches, homes, schools and cemeteries or
allowed them to fall into ruins. They are sites other countries might
consider valuable antiquities.

“The term we use for this is ‘cultural genocide,'” said Vahram
Ter-Matevosyan, a historian at the American University of Armenia
in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital. “We consider what is happening to
many churches a continuation of the genocide which started at the
beginning of the 20th century. It is painful, utterly painful.”

Historians and visitors have noted holes in the ground of Armenian
historical sites throughout Turkey, evidence of widespread rumors
that Armenians buried their riches before fleeing.

Hermine Sayan, an Armenian who lives in Istanbul, said her heart was
broken when she visited what remained of a destroyed church in Malatya,
a city in eastern Turkey, a few years ago.

“We stood together saying our prayers, and we were crying,” said Sayan,
whose grandparents survived the genocide.

On Friday (April 24), Armenians worldwide will commemorate 100 years
since almost 1.5 million of their ancestors died in the last days
of the Ottoman Empire, in massacres, by starvation or during forced
death marches into the Syrian desert.

The date marks a century of fierce disagreement between Armenia
and Turkey over what happened that spring. Armenians and their
supporters — including many historians, Pope Francis and the European
Parliament — say the murders constitute a systemic elimination of
their population from eastern Anatolia in present-day Turkey.

But Turkey rejects the genocide label, saying hundreds of thousands
of both Turks and Armenians died in battles between Ottoman and
Russian forces in World War I. In a move that disappointed Armenians,
the White House on Tuesday (April 21) announced that President Barack
Obama would not use the word “genocide” to describe the deaths despite
his 2008 presidential campaign promise to do so.

Preservation and respect of Armenian history, culture and monuments
in Turkey is a critical step toward Turkish-Armenian reconciliation,
said George Aghjayan, an Armenian-American from Westminster, Mass.,
who studies Armenian demographics in Turkey and its environs.

“We have a right to our presence on this land,” said Aghjayan, who
plans to visit former Armenian villages and ruined sites in Van this
weekend. “It’s where our people were born, and it shouldn’t be devoid
of any evidence of their presence.”

Van, located on Lake Van’s picturesque shores, was once the capital
of Vaspurakan, the first and biggest kingdom of greater Armenia. Van
was also where, in 1915, Armenians saved thousands of their own when
they held back the Ottoman army from city walls for a month. Resistance
leaders who survived the siege founded the Armenian republic.

The Van Museum, however, offers a different take on regional history.

One exhibit shows the “massacre (of Turks) undertaken by the Armenians
during the occupation of Van in 1915 by the Russian troops,” according
to the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism’s website. (The museum
was damaged in a 2011 earthquake and is being rebuilt.)

Present-day Van is part of unofficial Turkish Kurdistan. No Armenians
are left; Turkey’s 60,000 remaining Armenians mainly live in Istanbul.

But Van and nearby villages contain what are known as Turkey’s
“hidden Armenians,” descendants of women and children who converted to
Islam after they were adopted by sympathetic neighbors or forced into
marriage. Some are upfront about their origins, said Ferzan Demirtas,
a tour guide in Van. But others stay silent, still fearful after a
century of living as Kurds or Turks.

Cengiz Aktar, a scholar of Armenian-Turkish relations with the
Istanbul Policy Center, argues that the Turkish attitude toward its
Armenian minority is shifting. Aktar studies the politics of memory,
or the influence of politics in how collective remembrances take shape.

“The real memories are undertaken by Turkish society,” Aktar said,
adding that Turkish citizens are increasingly exploring the truth
behind what they learned in school.

Turkey’s attempt to rewrite history is evident in Yemislik, another
village outside Van, where Turkish officials replaced a former Armenian
monastery with a mosque. But Van is perhaps best known for the Armenian
Church of the Holy Cross on Akdamar Island in Lake Van.

It is one of the only Armenian churches restored by the Turkish
government, though it operates as a state museum.

On the eve of its reopening in 2007 after nearly a century of disuse,
Turkish officials balked at placing a cross on the church’s dome. They
relented after a few years.

So far, Turkish promises to restore other sites have gone unfulfilled,
leaving some to ponder whether Armenians of the diaspora should pitch
in. Aghjayan, however, questions the logic of asking Armenians to pay
for restoration of churches and villages from which their ancestors
were displaced.

“What kind of justice is that?” he asked.

RECOGNITION OF ARMENIAN PEOPLE’S TRAGEDY, A NECESSARY SIGNAL FOR ELIMINATING HATRED, INTOLERANCE, RACISM, XENOPHOBIA – ROMANIAN PRESIDENT

17:02 * 24.04.15

Romanian President Klaus Iohannis on Friday sent a message on the
occasion of the commemoration of 100 years since the Armenians’
historical tragedy, in which he says that the recognition of this
tragedy is an important and necessary signal to get rid of hatred,
intolerance, racism and xenophobia.

“One century after the tragic events of 1915, I bring a pious homage
to the victims of the Armenian people, who resisted over decades
the history’s ups and downs and the hardships from the beginning
of the last century. Hundreds of thousands of innocent souls have
perished then in a terrible crime that overshadowed humanity and
compels us today to recognition and reconciliation,” Iohannis said
in his message, the Romanian national news agency Agerpres reports,
citing the Presidential Administration.

The president added that the commemoration and the awareness of the
drama the Armenian people has passed through are today mandatory
approaches for our world to learn the lesson of the past.

“The respect for the victims forces us to turn our mind to the
disappeared and pray for them in silence. May the memory of the victims
stay eternally in our hearts!” says Iohannis in the above-mentioned
message.

RAKEL DINK: A CENTURY OF GENOCIDE

04.24.2015 10:01NEWS

Rakel Dink, in the article titled ‘A Century of Genocide’ she wrote
for the April 24, 2015, issue of Cumhuriyet newspaper, relates what
befell her family and relatives in 1915, how she met Hrant Dink,
and the struggles they put up together: Today, first at Balıklı, at
my Cutak’s grave, then in Ã…~^iÃ…~_li, at Sevag’s grave, and finally,
in Taksim Square, to commemorate the ones we lost during the 1915
Genocide, I will silently wait for this country to become free.

Today, the day you read this article, is April 24. A heavy, and very
painful day of mourning. Today, I will briefly try to write for you,
with the help of God, my own story.

I was born in 1959, in the Armenian Varto Tribe, which is today
administratively linked to Å~^ırnak. Today its name has been changed
to Yolagzı Village. Varto is the name of my father’s grandfather;
it comes from the name Vartan. Back in the day, my great grandfather
Vartan migrated to this area from Van. The lands of the tribe are
in the southern foothills of Cudi Mountain. Close to the borders
with Iraq and Syria. The Cudi Mountain presents a majestic view when
seen from our lands. And from our neighbouring Hasana Village, the
mountain appears as if it has spread its wings over the land. Today,
neither the Hasana Village, nor the Armenian Varto Tribe exist. In
1915, the firman (edict) for destruction arrived. In our tribe, they
used to call it ‘Fermana Me Xatibi’, in Kurdish. Our tribe managed
to survive this firman with the help of an Arab Muslim tribe we knew
as the “Tribe of Tayans”, in the depths of the Cudi Mountain, hiding
for many years in the highlands, in coves and caves. “Cudi is the
name of a saint. Christ protected us for her sake,” the elders used
to say. In fact, there is even a legend claiming that the caves they
sought shelter in did not actually exist…

Did she fall prey to the wolves, or perhaps to the birds?

As they escaped in 1915, the newly born child of a relative began
to cry, and could not be silenced. The mother-in-law said, “You keep
walking, pass the baby to me, my daughter,” and took her, and then…

I can’t utter the words, you can guess what happened. That baby was
the child of my maternal grandmother’s elder sister… Another person
in the convoy could no longer carry their daughter, blindfolded her,
and left her below a tree. They placed a piece of dry bread in her
hand. They blindfolded her so when harm did come, she was not afraid.

Every time they tell this story, they begin to cry, saying, “Did she
fall prey to the wolves, or perhaps to the birds”. Who knows? Maybe
she is the grandmother of one of you out there…

My father Siyament’s surname was Vartanyan, but it was changed to
Yagbasan when the Surname Law came into force. My mother was Delal.

They were both highly skilful people who did whatever they did in
the best possible way, and they were courageous and honest. They made
their living the hard way, never set eyes on other people’s property,
never breathed a lie, and always defended what’s right, true and just.

Even in the face of persecution. And they gave and taught us what they
carried within themselves, setting an example with their very lives.

My mother fell ill when she was 35. I was eight years old. She passed
away into eternal peace. During that year a group of philanthropists
visited our village. Encouraged by our Patriarch Shenork Srpazan back
then, they travelled to the villages in Anatolia to find remnants of
the sword. Since not a single Armenian school was left in Anatolia,
their aim was to take children of a suitable age and bring them
to Istanbul. Along with my father, Hrant Guzelyan and Orhan Yunkes
brought 12 children to Istanbul. We were the second group. We were
placed in boarding school to learn our language and religion and to
receive education.

Our fathers would keep guard

When we were in the village, many nights, our fathers would keep
guard. Dogs would howl. It seemed as if a spirit of fear wandered. Of
course, they tried not to let the children realize, but you would
sense it from their mood, and from the women’s incessant whispering of
prayers, and you would see the anxiety. At different times, twice our
shepherds were murdered. The week before the last remaining people
of the tribe migrated to Istanbul, they murdered a man from the
neighbouring Hasana Village, which was another Christian village,
and hurled each part of his remains in a different corner. Fear
gradually increased.

The agha of the neighbouring Dadar Village, a tenant of my father,
had conjured up a fake deed and filed a lawsuit against my father. For
40 years, my father pursued these cases and the field surveys. He was
injured many times, at times he tired, but he never gave up. My father
passed away at the age of 72 in Brussels, while, to use your phrase,
as a member of the “Diaspora” his “land demand” continued. The case
is still open.

I met my beloved husband at boarding school. We first met at the
summer residence of the boarding school, the Tuzla Armenian Children’s
Camp. Together, we played knucklebones, we ran, we sang hymns, and we
learned to help each other, to console each other, to cry with those
who cried, to laugh with those who laughed, and to love and respect.

We learned righteousness, honesty and sharing. We learned how to
separate the good from the bad. On April 23, 1977, on Children’s Day*,
we two children got married. Let me tell you something: We loved each
other, and we loved to love.

In 1978, they shot our camp director Guzelyan. He was injured but
survived. In 1979, they imprisoned him on the pretext of raising
Armenian militants. We, a family with two children, took responsibility
as directors of the camp during summers. Hrant was a student at
university on the one hand, and our struggle to make a living continued
on the other. In 1986, our third child was born. And then, the Tuzla
Camp was seized by the state. It still stands today, dilapidated. I
wish they had used it for a good purpose. They took it from us and
gave it back to its former owner. Then it apparently changed hands
several times. It brought no good to any of its new owners.

And the places in Istanbul where the children stayed were closed one
by one during the winter.

Today, in this age of information, no one has the right to say ‘I
don’t know’. My life story, or other people’s life stories… One
observes how each person who survived during that period managed it
only by a miracle.

There is even more to it than murder

These days, the pathetic Perincek and his like make up stories saying,
“Hrant did not call it genocide”. They have teamed up with state cadres
in their pursuit for “freedom of expression”… Talaat Pasha and his
friends… Thus we see that there is even more to it than murder. We
saw the trials that took place after 19 January 2007. And at those
trials I saw the anger and hatred that is not satiated by murder.

My dear Cutak**… He wanted for you to reach the honour and greatness
of seeing the consequences through your own means, and he wanted
to do that without offending you. Because he was good. He loved
you very much. His wish and aim was to help you. We have seen many
guises of racism, heartless, blinded, and inhuman. In the middle of
the courtroom, they kicked and stamped the remains of the dead. Both
while we lived with the threats, and after the assassination. Is that
not the mentality of the Genocide?

Saying “No one is left… They are all gone, that is all”, “I wish
they had not left. They went, and with them, the abundance of the land
disappeared as well”, “We got along well, it was external powers that
sew discord” means nothing. It is necessary to sincerely recognize
the atrocity that took place, the grave robbing, the evil in laying
waste to all forms of intimacy, that all those rights you call the
rightful share of the servant of God were trampled under foot, that
belongings, property and dignity were destroyed and that no right
whatsoever was protected.

Which heart can comprehend the magnitude of that whole?

What I know, what I have heard, what I have experienced are perhaps
trivial. Perhaps they constitute a mere fraction of a larger whole.

But which mind, which heart can comprehend the magnitude of that whole?

Now I stand and look. I observe how grotesque and ridiculous humanity
looks in the garb of denial. Mine is a bitter smile. A smile turned
sour, full of tears. A smile in part full of anger and expectation.

I observe the world in 1915. I cry bitter tears for all humanity, and
its policies. I observe the humanity of 2015, and my soul wails inside
me. My life is drained out. I observe my country. I am ashamed. I cry.

A lump sticks in my throat. I cannot swallow. I let loose my voice. My
tears flow from my chest. I speak to God, I pour out my grief to Him.

And by faith in His name, I beg to Jesus. For Him to show mercy to
humanity. To lead hearts to repentance. Then the Lord will descend
upon the earth, and humanity will move on with sincere recognition.

Hearts will unite, wounds will be salved, and healing and joy will
come. And thus the old rotten mentality will be cast aside like a
dirty ragged garment. People will become pure, redeemed; they will
shed their weight and emancipate themselves from the noose of history.

Today, first at Balıklı, at my Cutak’s grave, then in Ã…~^iÃ…~_li,
at Sevag’s grave, and finally, in Taksim Square, to commemorate the
ones we lost during the 1915 Genocide, I will silently wait for this
country to become free.

* April 23, in commemoration of the establishment of the Grand National
Assembly of Turkey on that day in 1920, is celebrated in Turkey as
Children’s Day.

** Cutak means ‘violin’ in Armenian. It is also Rakel Dink’s nickname
for Hrant Dink, and a pseudonym Hrant Dink used when he began to
write columns.

LEADING WORLD TV CHANNELS OFFER LIVE BROADCAST FROM GENOCIDE CENTENARY COMMEMORATION IN YEREVAN

12:22 24/04/2015 ” SOCIETY

A number of leading world TV channels, including CNN, Mir, Euronews,
France 24 and Russia 24, are broadcasting live the Armenian Genocide
centenary commemoration ceremony at the Armenian Genocide Memorial
Complex Tsitsernakaberd.

A commemoration ceremony dedicated to the Armenian Genocide centenary
is underway in Yerevan. Over 60 foreign delegations, including the
Presidents of Russia, France, Serbia and Cyprus, are participating
in the ceremony.

THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE AND THE BURDEN OF SHAME

Heidi Boghosian Become a fan

New York City Attorney

Posted: 04/24/2015 10:43 am EDT Updated: 3 minutes ago

A part of me cringed each time I uttered my last name in grade school.

For just as soon as I said it, I was asked: “What kind of name is
that?” Blank stares and silence usually followed when I said Armenian.

I felt embarrassed by who I was because I couldn’t explain it to
my classmates. All I knew was that something unspeakable, something
secret, had happened to the Armenian people. The only public reference
I had was friends’ parents cautioning fussy eaters to “remember the
starving Armenians.”

Every week I overheard my father speaking Armenian on the phone
with his sister Hasmig and mother Baidzar, the sounds of hard Ks,
Vs and Zs, punctuating their incomprehensible conversation. Over time
some of the words became familiar to me but the fact that I couldn’t
understand their language underscored how little I knew of my family
history. Kept in the dark, how could I embrace my heritage?

In the 1970s my father would proudly point out the occasional famous
Armenian in popular culture–the actor Mike Connors (born Krekor
Ohanian) of the television show Mannix, or Cher (born Cherilyn
Sarkisian). He told me that there weren’t many Armenians left in the
world, alluding vaguely to the 1915 massacre of the Armenians by the
Ottoman Turks.

It was my mother, who was Irish, who explained–when we were
alone–that as a teenager my grandmother had seen her family
slaughtered on the steps of a church. She was taken as a slave into a
Turkish household where for she served the woman of the household by
day, then was forced to service the male by night. After three years,
my grandmother and another Armenian girl from a few doors down were
able to escape in the middle of the night. They ultimately made their
way to an orphanage in Corinth. My grandfather Mesrop, who had fled
to the United States during the genocide, paid for her passage from
Greece. They married and moved to New Britain, Connecticut to work
in the hardware factories.

I was slow to learn about Armenian culture, one of the oldest settled
societies in the world. Nonetheless, living with an Armenian father,
I grew to understand key elements of that culture: tradition, modesty,
personal reserve and propriety about the way certain things are done.

Those traits help inform the reluctance of some Armenians to talk
about the genocide, especially the details of how girls like my
grandmother were abused.

Armenians lived in the Caucasus region of Eurasia for approximately
3,000 years. Theirs was the first nation to adopt Christianity as its
official religion in 301 AD. In the 15th century, part of Armenia was
absorbed into the Ottoman Turkish Empire, ruled by Muslims. There,
Armenians were viewed as Christian “infidels,” and treated unequally
and unjustly.

As the Ottoman Empire crumbled in the late 1800s, Turkish leaders were
angered by Armenian efforts to secure civil rights. A state sanctioned
program to suppress Armenian civil rights brought protests by Armenians
and then massacres by Turkish officials. When the post-Ottoman Young
Turks assumed power, their “Turkification” campaign deemed Christian
non-Turks a threat to the new state. Turkish leaders sought to create
a Pan-Turkic and Pan-Islamic empire consisting of Turkish-speaking
Muslim regions in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

On April 24, 1915, the Armenian genocide began with the Turkish
government’s arrest and execution of several hundred Armenian
intellectuals, clergy, artists, poets, and others. Armenians were
sent on death marches, often stripped naked, through the Mesopotamian
desert without food or water, until they dropped dead. “Butcher
battalions”–violent criminals released from prison specifically
for this purpose–carried out drownings, crucifixions, bayoneting,
live burnings, and throwing off cliffs. By 1923, fewer than 100,000
Armenians remained in the Ottoman Empire.

Many Armenian women genocide survivors were raped or forced into
harems. Later, they were ashamed to talk about what they had
experienced. The Turkish nationalist party’s multi-pronged plan
to render Armenians extinct included taking attractive Armenian
brides and virgins into Turkish harems where many gave birth to
children fathered by their masters. In Armenian Golgotha, Grigoris
Balakian–an intellectual who was arrested in the earliest phase of
the genocide–wrote: “The young brides and virgins were yanked from
the embrace of their crying mothers and taken to Turkish harems;
even ten-year-old girls were subjected to all manner of savage,
unbearable Turkish debauchery.”

These practices, and other unconscionable acts, help explain why
parents often spoke in Turkish or Assyrian instead of English or
Armenian when discussing the crimes they experienced. They did not
want their children to understand. Children of survivors describe
the topic as secret or forbidden.

Such absence of talk, and mystery about the genocide, contributed
to perpetuating a sense of shame. Observers to the worst crimes of
humanity–some burned alive, others poisoned by Turkish physicians
and pharmacists or drowned, starved to death, or left to perish from
disease–how could surviving witnesses not be haunted for the rest
of their lives?

On the centennial of the genocide, to help dispel the shame that some
Armenians feel, it is time to talk openly about the genocide. This
chapter in history–secreted away for a century–does not belong just
to Turks and Armenians. It belongs in the moral consciences of all
citizens of the world.

The talking so necessary to help dispel the shame has started. On
April 12, 2015 Pope Francis reaffirmed the Vatican’s past position
that Turkey committed the first genocide of the 20th century. In words
that angered Turkey enough to recall its ambassador to the Holy See,
the Pope said: “It seems that the human family has refused to learn
from its mistakes caused by the law of terror, so that today, too,
there are those who attempt to eliminate others with the help of a few,
and with the complicit silence of others who simply stand by.”

While many around the world hoped that President Obama would
acknowledge the Armenian genocide by its 100th anniversary, it
will be still be a victory if global awareness increases. Formal
acknowledgement should follow after the shame is shared.

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FLAGS OF FRANCE AND ARMENIA SPOTTED ON HOLLANDE’S PLANE (VIDEO)

14:22 | April 24,2015 | Politics

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Yerevan yesterday evening,
while President of France Francois Hollande came early in the morning.

Both men were received at Zvartnots airport by their Armenian
counterpart Serzh Sargsyan.

The flags of France and Armenia were seen hoisted on the French plane
when it landed at Zvartnots airport.