Hajots Tseghaspanutjan

[nairiporter.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry that this will not be a jolly funny post, but sometimes there are days like this.

Today all Armenians around the world commemorate the 97th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. In 1915, during World War I, the Ottoman authorities ordered the deportation of the Armenian population from the empire, and as a result of starvation and massacres 1.5 million Armenians perished. Turkey continues to deny to this very day that the massacres were a genocide.

Recently France tried to adopt a law that would criminalise the denial of the Armenian genocide, similarly to the Holocaust. There was a big controversy in Europe, as Turkey used its diplomatic levers to put pressure on France to quit their intentions for such a law, while right-wing politicians across Western Europe were using this drama to score political points, playing by the tune of rising xenophobia in Europe. Eventually the constitutional court of France rejected the bill, on grounds that it is against the principle of freedom of speech. Turkey rejoiced.

Regardless of all the political games behind these events, I think the most important thing is to recognise the Armenian genocide, as the evidence is quite eloquent. If Turkey could do that, perhaps it would be possible to move on, and find reconciliation. A lot of time has passed since then, and time certainly heals old wounds, but when you keep being in denial and essentially keep putting salt into the wound, they won't heal. It's time for reconciliation. And the ball is in Turkey's court. It has always been.

Comments

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

I took a few history classes with Steven Rosenthal, an expert in Turkish history and genocides. We actually had a Turkish guy in my "genocide in the modern world" class - I think, in part, so he could argue with the entire class. He challenged Dr. Rosenthal to provide evidence from the Turkish archives regarding the genocide, since the Turks apparently kept quite fastidious records. Dr. Rosenthal responded that of course there were no records of the genocide - there were no records from any of the affected areas in the relevant time periods.

What surprised me was that this Turkish guy wasn't brainwashed in any other way - he'd left Islam behind for humanism, he was openly gay, he was viciously skeptical and scientific... but on this one thing, he just couldn't believe anything other than what he'd been told in elementary school. It's a powerful testament to the need to speak the truth early, and not sugar-coat things or trust everyone to come to correct conclusions independently.

[nairiporter.livejournal.com]

Yes, that guy does not live in Turkey so he an afford to not be brainwashed. In Turkey criticizing Atatürk is criminalised, in fact there are already cases of putting people to trial for arguing that perhaps he was "sort of" dictatorial.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Really? I had no idea they had a cult of personality even at this point. It's funny, criticism of Mao and Stalin was relatively accepted after they left power within their countries, but Ataturk is still protected from such indignities...

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

It actually collapsed very fast in both cases. The cases are also different in that Ataturk single-handedly reversed an attempt to do something that would have amounted to the real-world annihilation of the Turkish people due to the Treaty of Sevres and actually earned his personality cult within a narrow parameter. Mao and Stalin couldn't deliver an unambiguous success if they were given the ability to warp reality. This isn't a justification, mind, merely noting historical accuracy here.

I've always been bemused at how Germans can whine and cry about Versailles when Sevres doesn't so much as merit a mention.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

In fact the Soviets did everything they could to erase the memory of Stalin soon after he died.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

At least a part of this is that the Turkish state originated as a military dictatorship directly emulating their Fascist contemporaries in Italy. Kemalism is one of those local totalitarian variants that tends to be neglected for the bigger ones. However if we're going to say that for criminalizing criticism of the founders of their states Turks brainwash their citizens, what do we call Greece for wanting Macedonia to use any other name but Macedonia with regard to this issue and its own citizens? Or North Korea and South Korea with regard to each other? Or North Sudan and South Sudan? Or Ethiopia and Eritrea? Much of the political use of history, to put it crudely, is a fine example of the Big Lie.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I agree to this, with the caveat that this is viewed as it historically was, namely the WWI appearance of what the USSR did in 1942 and not some twisted attempt by Christians to hijack the Holocaust by claiming that the Ottoman state had the ability to engage in bureaucratic mass murder when it couldn't even find a bureaucracy for its own army. Unfortunately the cruel reality of 1915 tends to be overshadowed by exaggerated propaganda on the part of the Armenians that means the real atrocities get forgotten in an attempt to embellish them. And frankly put my very cynical view on it is that the moment Turkey does do this, Armenia starts demanding what it calls "Wilsonian" Armenia as recompensation ala Lausanne and Turkey will say "Hell no" and a war will start five minutes later.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

After all, this is what happened between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and when 1 million Muslims were ethnically cleansed, where was the rest of the world? Off daydreaming to something else.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

This, incidentally, is what Armenia claimed it was supposed to have, including areas where in the 1914 census the Armenian population did not exist because Armenians simply did not live there:



In all seriousness, yes, I do accept the historical reality that almost a million Armenians were ethnically cleansed in 1915 and don't deny that at all. What I don't accept is that this was a proto-Holocaust because the Ottoman state would have used a bureaucracy like that to fight the war, not kill people for shits and giggles. 1915 was a horrid example of the spirit of modern war: a clumsy, blood-stained axe that cuts what it will regardless of the evils and costs in that cut, a squalid and destructive force that latches like gangrene onto the limbs of an otherwise healthy society, a gangrene of the heart and the mind that coarsens and destroys.

[danalwyn.livejournal.com]

That may be a bit pessimistic. If a war does break out (and I'm not sure that's likely), it will probably be fought entirely in Azerbaijan, where neither side has to worry about things like NATO involvement, or direct conflict, or the possibility of serious domestic unrest. Sucks to be living in Azerbaijan or Nagorno-Karabakh, but that seems to be how these things end up these days.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Yes, because only Christians count when it comes to wholesale atrocities. Muslims quite obviously do not. Though I think if Armenia asked for Kurdistan the Turks would be ecstatic to make the PKK Armenia's problems and have them blow up Armenian women and children. Which seems to only count to some if those women and kids are Israelis.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Everyone should face the truth about their past, so they could move on. Otherwise the grudges remain to stay like a stinking ulcer.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Except when it comes to colonialism or the extermination of the indigenous inhabitants of Australia and the Americas. In that case the people affected should just STFU and stop trying to blame people. The Holocaust and Pearl Harbor? Never forget them. Slavery and segregation? Who gives a flying fuck, why are people blaming people today for what their grandparents did?

This is an idea that is never consistently applied, unfortunately, and it always has a double-standard favoring English-speakers over everyone else.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Too Anglo-centric. This is valid almost everywhere, we're not immune to close-mindedness especially here on the Balkans.

I thought the distance of time and the fact that we're not responsible for the actions of our ancestors would make it a bit easier to admit their mistakes, but that's just wishful thinking.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

My prediction is what it will really want is Wilsonian Armenia. If it asks for Kurdistan, the Turks might well be deceptively magnanimous and make the PKK Armenia's problem.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians? (http://www.armeniangenocidedebate.com/hitlers-armenian-genocide-quote)

—Adolph Hilter.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Except that there's a verbatim transcript of that conversation by Admiral Canaris that doesn't include that sentence anywhere in it. Given Canaris was an Allied agent from 1939 onward and never liked Hitler prior to that in the first place, he had zero reason to omit such a statement.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

For a false historical quote, I sure do see it in a lot of places. Snopes has no updates. Could there have been another transcript/translation? Was Canaris a bit of a drinker? A hater of Armenians himself? Perhaps Turkish?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

That's because there are a number of such quotes that are famous but were never actually said. Another one is "One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic." It's a famous quote, but Stalin never actually said it.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

"There's a person - there's a problem. There's no person - there's no problem". -- Stalin

It'd be a pity if that quote never happened either. :-S

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

That one was actually genuine.

One of my favorite quotes from the World Wars that was never actually said was "Hard pressed on my right, center is yielding, situation excellent, I shall attack!". Foch never said that, either.

Nor did Petain say "They shall not pass". It's a funny thing that quite a bit of famous quotes never were said in quite that fashion. :-S

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Petain must have been the keeper of the Secret Flame of Valinor.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

He wasn't, because *he* did not say that. General Nivelle said that, so *he* was the keeper of the Flame of Valinor. ;P

What Petain said was "On Les Aura"/"We'll get 'em."

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Sounds GWBushonian.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Well, he *did* preside over an authoritarian state that relied on make-believe, so you never know..... ;P

[nairiporter.livejournal.com]

You guys crack me up. (That was the phrase, wasn't it?)

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Nairi was an Armenian tribe, wasn't it?

[nairiporter.livejournal.com]

Well yes.