Gazeta Wyborcza
April 24, 2005
Armenian Massacre – the first act of genocide in the 20th century
By Aris Janigian
It is a strange feature of human psychology that in absence of
contrition a perpetrator will either demonize the victim or claim that
the victim was complicit in his own suffering. For decades such was
the way of the Turks who at the time of WWI murdered over a million
Armenians – writes Aris Janigian, American psychologist and essayist
of Armenian background.
When I was a young boy, an elderly uncle of mine said `if you
should ever meet a Turk, you must kill him.’ I knew that the Turks had
committed a terrible sin against my people, that they were the
perpetrators of Medz Yeghren, The Great Cataclysm as we Armenians
called it, but the thought of killing a man, possibly another boy,
terrified me. Did I have what it took? Couldn’t I just spit on him or
call him names? What kind of burden was this to put on the shoulders
of a young boy? This happened so long ago. Couldn’t everyone just get
on with their lives?
Luckily, we landed in a place where there were no Turks, or,
if there were, they never dared make it known with so many Armenians
surrounding them. Between the two wars, thousands of Armenians
flooded into California’s Great Central Valley with the hopes of
claiming a stake in the most productive agricultural region in the
world. They came to resurrect something of the homeland, to make
something new from the ashes of their past.
Nothing illustrates this hope better, I think, than a label for a
fruit box I came across years ago. It is for the farming family Harry
Berberian and Sons: The label, ARARAT BRAND, features a white bearded
Noah walking with a shovel over his shoulder. In the foreground there
is a bounty of fruit, peaches and cherries and grapes. In the near
background we see Mount Ararat in the heart of historical Armenia,
with Noah’s ark resting proudly at thesummit. Behind Mount Ararat
there is a lush valley that gently rolls to the horizon, where it ends
at another mountain range that is unmistakably the Sierra Nevada which
flanks the Central Valley to the East. `Produce U.S.A.’ is
matter-of-factly stamped on the label. Such were the dreams of those
refugees. The blackest page
The German and Swedes and `real Americans,’ who had settled
Fresno, however, had no use for these Armenians. `What is this flotsam
thathas washed up on our shores,’ they asked. Arabs, or worse, Jews?
Real estate developers quickly attached clauses to the property deeds
barring Armenians from entryto the newer and more fashionable
enclaves. They must have assumed for our dark eyes and dark hair and
complexion that we were neither Caucasian, nor Christian, but of
course, nothing could be further from the truth. My
forefathers’ grazed sheep in the shadows of the Caucuses, the
Armenians had converted to Christianity in 301 AD–the oldest
Christian nation. They were throwing upcrosses and erecting churches
while Swedes were still evoking the names of Thor and Oden, and the
Germans were offering animal sacrifices to the gods. Around 402 AD,
Mesrop Mashtots developed a unique alphabet, `divinely inspired’ for
the sole purpose of translating the bible into Armenian.
And, of course, the Armenians had hardly come to America by
choice. Between year 1915 and 1918, the Young Turks, as they were
called, under the cover of World War I began a mass deportation and
slaughter that would eliminate between 1 and 1.5 million. It was the
first genocide of the 20th century, and when the Turks were finished,
the Armenians, who had called that area home for nearly 3000 years,
would all but disappear.
Henry Morgenthau, the United States ambassador to Turkey
during those tumultuous years said `Among the blackest pages in modern
history this is the blackest of them all.’ There was a vast
outcry. The US press covered the slaughters so careful and up to the
moment that their later coverage of the Jewish, Cambodians, or Rwandan
genocides would dim by comparison. Multiple millions of dollars poured
in through charitable organizations to feed and support` the starving
Armenians,’ as every school kid of the time had come to know them.
When Turkey was defeated, the allied powers, appalled at the
violence unleashed toward the Armenians, found a tribunal which
included member of the new Turkish government. Though the leaders of
the Young Turk government had fled by then, they were found guilty of
the massacres and sentenced to death in abstentia. Roosevelt and the
allied powers carved up Turkey and in 1918 Armenians were granted a
small independent state. Although Kemel Ataturk, the father of modern
Turkey, was keen to distance himself from the decrepit Ottomans, some
of the old ways remained `in the blood’ so to speak. Determined to
keep his transformed Turkey territorially intact, he finished the job
that the Young Turks began, mopping up what Armenians were
left. Within two years the Republic of Armenia vanished. But, this
time, the Western Powers turned a blind eye to the Armenians’
suffering: Russian Communism was one the rise, and Turkey would be a
strategic partner against its advance. There was hardly anyone left to
protest and safeguard the Armenians memory. Certainly not a few
Armenians scattered like stray seeds across the globe.
Rewriting history
Under the cover of this `strategic partnership’ the Turks began
a campaign to rewrite history. It is a strange but incontrovertible
fact of human psychology that in the absence of contrition a
perpetrator will either demonize the victim or concoct an explanation
that shows that the victim was complicit in his own suffering. This
captures the psychology of the Turks between the wars and the rhetoric
which they promulgate to this day. The Armenians, according to
Turkish history books, are alternately portrayed as villains who
betrayed their homeland (some had aided the Russian Army in an attempt
to forestall their own deaths), or, worse, as perpetrators of a
genocide against the Turks themselves. The most charitable
characterization would have Armenians as regrettable bystanders to a
terrible war-torn time, as though what had hit them was a natural
phenomenon, not a precisely planned extermination.
But it was not all psychology. The threat of Armenians
someday seeking territorial restitution for their loss lurked in the
background. The Turks calculated retorted amounted to: `If we did
nothing to them, we owethem nothing.’ In any case, in the great chess
game of world events, theArmenians were sacrificed from the board like
a pawn, and they were left to take, piecemeal, justice into their own
hands. In 1924 in Berlin, a survivor of the genocide, Sagomon
Tehrilian, assassinated Talat Pasha, the chief architect of the
genocide. There was no question that he pulled the trigger, and
revenge washis only defense. He was acquitted.
But if the France, and Britain, and American had turned their
eyes from the Armenian Issue, others were keenly interested in
studying it. The Nazi Party, similar in their rhetoric and
nationalistic fervor to the young Turks, was encouraged by how
efficiently memory was swept from out of sight just twenty years
before. On the eve of invading Poland, when asked by his commanding
officers what made him think he could get away with this, Hitler,
argued`Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the
Armenians?’
After the tumult and atrocities of World War II, Raphael
Lempkin, drafted and prompted the United Nations to adopt a resolution
against genocide. The Armenian Genocide-and especially the Tehrelian
case, was utmostin Lempkin’ s mind when he first confronted the
paradox that laws abounded for holding individuals accountable for
murder, but that no law existed for holding states accountable for
mass murder. Turkey signed on to the convention, and continued its
revisionist rhetoric.
In the mid-1970, an underground Armenian revolutionary group
begana series of assassination of Turkish diplomats and spectacular
bombings to bring attention to the Armenian claims. While they
succeeded in assassinating several Turkish officials, many innocents
were killed as well. This was useful fodder for the Turks, who began
to ratchet up the rhetoric against the `Armenians Nationalist
terrorists.’
They issued clumsy compilations of `documents’ selectively
culled from the Ottoman Archives, they threatened severing ties with
countries that recognized the genocide, and attempted to buy chairs in
Turkish History at American Universities.
`Genocide’ – the forbidden word
But history has an uncanny way of raising its head even after
it has been seemingly guillotined. In its bid to join the European
Union, Turkey has been advised to reconcile itself with its
history. French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said flatly `Turkey
needs to face up to its history.’ In theface of such pressure from the
Europeans, some press reports have detected a ` softening’ of
the Turkish position. On April 14, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah
Gul told a special session of the Turkish parliament `Turkey is ready
to face its history, Turkey has no problem with its history.” But
anyone who has cared to track recent events in Turkey can easily
conclude the opposite, that a hardening is occurring as nationalist
sentiments rise to the surface.
As the April 24 Day of Armenians Remembrance approaches,
nearly every issue of the top Turkish dailies carries a story about
yet another`uncovered ‘ document exonerating the Turks, and
reproaching the Armenians. Amnesty International has condemned Article
305 of the new Turkish Penal Code. It criminalizes “acts against the
fundamental national interest,’ and includes the Armenian Genocide as
a prime example of a crime that is `contrary to historical truths.
Orhan Pamuk, Turkey most celebrated novelist has had death threat and
citations for arrest issued against him for a admitting to a Swiss
audiencelast month that there was a genocide. Just a week ago, in
order to enlighten itself, the Turkish Parliament invited one of the
most vociferous revisionists, Justin McCarthy, to lecture that
body. One Australian newspaper that covered this incredible spectacle
found foreign diplomats shaking their heads. `It would have been more
fruitful to invite people of differing opinions on the subject to the
parliament,’ one diplomat was quoted as saying, but `they are still
very timid.’ Last week, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip purportedly sent a
letter to the Armenian President Robert Kocharian calling for a
dialogue between the two countries on the genocide, as though the
hundreds of books and articles on the subject, and the opinion of the
most learned scholars in the field of genocide studies did not
exist. Armenian Foreign minister Oskanian replied that that there was
nothing to debate.
Many countries, including France, Italy, Russia, Switzerland,
as well as the European Parliament, agree with this position, and have
taken steps to formally recognize the genocide. America, where more
Armenians live thanany place outside of Armenian, has not. At my
daughter’s school in Los Angeles, many children, for the entire month
of April, have chosen to wear a T-shirt which says on front `90 Years
of Denial,’ and on the back,`remember the Armenian genocide.’ They are
hoping to appeal to the conscience of the US Congress and the US
President. But every year on April 24 the president remarks on those
events with a strange mix of evasive and scorching language: `On this
day we pause in remembrance of one of the most horrible tragedies of
the 20th century, the annihilation of as many as of 1.5 Armenians
through forced exile and murder at the end of the Ottoman Empire.’
Every April 25 or so, theTurkish Press glows that the American
President refrained from using word Turks most fear, ` genocide,’ and
made no mention that the Turkish Republic is responsible for
perpetuating the crime through denial.
The Turkish revisionists have also been comforted by some
ironical bedfellows. It has also been well documented (and publicly
flaunted by Turkish Opinion makers), that the Israelis and several of
the most powerful American Jewish political organizations have fought
`hand in hand’ with the Turks against Armenian genocide Recognition in
the United States. In April 2001, the Nobel Laureate and Israeli
Foreign Defense minister Shimon Peres made many Turks giddy when in an
interview with the Turkish press he affirmed the state’s
position that the genocide had never occurred. The next year the
Ambassador of Israel to Armenia repeated this assertion in
Yerevan. This sad reversal of the historical reality reached perverse
proportions, rarely seen outside of Turkey itself, when in 2003 an
Israeli citizen of Armenian descent was asked to light a candle and
say a few words about herself in celebration of Israel’s 55
Independence Day Celebration. When the government got wind from the
advanced text for the occasion that she described herself as a
`survivor of the Armenian Genocide of 1915,’ they demanded she change
it so as to not insult the Turks. Professor Yaur Auron of Hebrew
University, who has documented the Jewish response in great detail,
recently summed it up thus: `To my sorrow, Israel has become Turkey’s
principal partner in helping it deny the Armenian Claims.’ A hall of
mirrors
I’d like to apologize to the reader, if this essay should
soundlike a point by point recital of the evidence. One of the saddest
consequences of being a victim is that until the perpetrator of the
crime comes clean one becomes stuck in reciting the past. Perhaps this
is even more so the case you are left to defend that actual victim
after he is gone.
I believe that Turkey has stunted its own maturity as a
country in denying the Armenian Genocide. But it is also true that
Armenians have been stunted. A few of my friends privately wonder if
the genocide has not ransomed the energy and imagination of our
people, driving other aspects of our long history and, more
importantly, our future work to the peripheries. At times, it is as
though we were standing in a hall of mirrors, where we repeat
ourselves and disappear at the same time.
I should like to end with an answer to my Uncle’s question:
Should I kill a Turk if I ever met one? The answer is, of course,
no. And unlike when I was a child, the opportunity has arisen many
times. In my 20 years as a professor, I have had several Turkish
students. When I ask them what they know of those events, they shake
and occasionally drop their heads in shame. One student told me,
`that area, and that time—it is like a dark holein our history.’
This April 24, the world should stop and recall, however
briefly, that an ancient people, just 90 years ago, were nearly wiped
from the face of the earth. For more than one reason, more than even
revenge or restitution,it is my hope that light will shine on the
Turkish republic, and that this darkness will be obliterated for once
and for all, and for us both.
Editor’s note: Armenian Genocide
In 1914 Turkey joined the world war siding with Germany and
Austro-Hungarian Empire. The leaders of the Young Turks accused –
unfoundedly – the Armenian minority of supporting Russia. On April
24, 1915 they issued an edict aboutthe arrest of Armenian political
leaders. In Istanbul itself 2345 people were arrested of whom the
majority was murdered. On May 27, 1915 another deportation temporary
measure was issued, on the basis of which all the way to 1917 several
provinces of the empire were ethnically cleansed. The arrested
Armenians- men, women and children – were formed into marching columns
and exterminated mercilessly. The German writer Franz Werfel called
them `the marching concentration camps.’ The Armenians were drowned,
pushed into the mountain chasms; people had horse shoes nailed to
their feet; priests were burnt alive or buried alive in the
ground. Towards the end of 195 half a million victims were hoarded
into a Syrian Desert where they perished of heat and thirst.
The intentions of the Turkish government were plainly stated by the
Minister Talaat Passza in the telegram of September 1915: `As it had
been declared earlier, the government made the decision regarding
extermination of all Armenians residing in Turkey. (¦) Regardless
whether women, children or the sick, and regardless of how tragic the
means of this extermination might be, without listening to the voice
of conscience they have to be annihilated.’
The Turks dealt in a particularly vicious way with the Armenian
Church. The authorities publicly announced that the only way to avoid
repressions was a` plea’ to accept the faith of Allah. (In 2001 John
Paul II beatifiedthe Bishop Ignacy Maloian who, together with 12
priests, was murdered for rejecting the conversion to Islam).
The Armenians made several desperate attempts to revolt. Starting on
April 20, 1915 the inhabitants of an Armenian quarter in the city of
Wan fought bravely for a month – they were saved by the Russian
offensive. At the hill of Musa Dagh five thousand Armenians of the
region of Musa fought for over 50 days.