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THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE - 97 YEARS ON
By Robert Kazandjian
The Comment Factory
http://www.thecommentfactory.com/the-armenian-genocide-97-years-on-8846/
April 24 2012
An article that addresses Turkish state denial of the Armenian Genocide
on the 97th anniversary.
inShare.Malcolm X said 'If you stick a knife in my back nine inches
and pull it out six inches, that's not progress. If you pull it all
the way out, that's not progress. The progress comes from healing the
wound that the blow made. They haven't even begun to pull the knife
out. They won't even admit the knife is there.'
The catastrophic wound inflicted upon our collective identity by the
Armenian Genocide cannot begin to heal. The blade of the Ottoman
Gendarme's bayonet is lodged deep in our hearts. There can be no
progress without recognition.
Ataturk built his modern Turkish state on the myth of resistance
against the imperial powers and their influence. The reality is his
immediate predecessors had expunged all minority peoples from the
land. From Ataturk, to Erdogan, successive Turkish governments have
followed a policy of fierce denial, perpetuating historical lies
through propaganda and repression.
Self-declared beacons of democracy, Israel, the United Kingdom and
the United States, still fail to officially recognise the Armenian
Genocide. Turkey has long been of great strategic importance to
these nations, during the cold-war era as NATO defender on the Soviet
border, today as a proxy in the crusade to liberate specific Middle
Eastern states. It is not surprising that the Armenian Diaspora in
Syria, directly descended from genocide survivors left to languish
in desert deportation camps, shudders at the increasing prospect of
a Turkish-led military intervention.
Any move towards international recognition prompts a predictably
angry response from Ankara.
French parliament submitted legislation that would make it a crime
to deny any genocide officially recognised by the state. France
only recognises the Jewish Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide. The
legislation prompted a furious response from Prime Minister Erdogan.
Turkey threatened retaliatory measures against its NATO ally.
In the United States, an Armenian Genocide resolution was proposed by
congress to President Clinton. The resolution sought to ensure that
recognition of the genocide became constitutional, a simple bill with
no legal ramifications. Ankara warned the United States that passing
the resolution would have disastrous consequences, Turkish airbases
would be closed to American planes and weapons contracts would be
cancelled. The resolution was quashed and a super-power had been
censored by a client state.
Any attempt to recognise the Armenian Genocide within Turkey is
punishable by law and can have tragic consequences. Under Article 301
of the Turkish Penal Code it is illegal to insult Turkey, Turkish
ethnicity and Turkish government institutions. Article 301 is an
overt suppression of free speech.
Prominent Turkish-Armenian intellectual Hrant Dink, who publicly
acknowledged the Armenian Genocide, was charged under Article 301.
Ultra-Nationalists with suspected links to the Turkish deep state
subsequently assassinated him. These explosions of violence are
inevitable. Governmental denial reshapes history and demonises the
victims, successfully replicating the anti-Armenian sentiment that
was rife when the genocide occurred.
The Armenian Genocide is of great importance to modern world history
because it provided a blueprint for centrally organised, systematic
annihilation of a race of people. Fuelled by a pan-Turkic ideology and
under the cover of the First World War, the triumvirate leadership
of the Committee of Union and Progress planned and conducted our
great tragedy.
On April 24th, 1915, Ottoman authorities arrested prominent Armenian
community figures and intellectuals in Constantinople and the majority
were executed. This date conventionally marks the beginning of the
genocide. Operating under the pretence that the Armenian minority was
a security threat to the Ottoman Empire, wholesale deportation of all
Armenians from the eastern provinces to concentration camps in the
Syrian Desert was ordered. Deportation was code for massacre. Men,
women and children were slaughtered. The barbaric methodology varied.
Those who survived the death marches were left to starve in the camps.
Over 1,000,000 lives perished.
Immediate parallels can be made between the Armenian Genocide and
the Jewish Holocaust. World War created the ideal conditions for each
atrocity to take place. The propagandist idea that Armenians were a
disease that infected Turkish society foreshadowed the Nazi ideal that
Germany needed to be free of the Jewish race in order to revitalise
itself. When addressing his generals before the invasion of Poland in
1939, Hitler asked rhetorically 'who, after all, speaks today of the
annihilation of the Armenians?' This statement is indicative of the
successful erosion of memory perpetuated by Turkish governments. The
Zionist state's failure to recognise the Armenian Genocide is
sickeningly ironic.
It is a fallacy to believe that the Armenian Genocide has two
legitimate histories, one for the perpetrators and one for the
victims. The genocide is not an allegation. It is a fact. The denial
of the genocide is a cruel attempt to subvert the truth in order to
preserve a national mythology.
The Armenian Diaspora long for a Turkish leader to recognise the
babies, tiny bodies injected with morphine, futures callously
extinguished by doctors in hospitals. To recognise the children,
forced on to crowded vessels, drowned in the Black Sea and the Tigris.
To recognise the women, brutally, repeatedly violated and left to die.
To recognise the men, horseshoes nailed to their feet, forced to walk
the dusty road towards their own crucifixions.
The Armenian Diaspora long for a Turkish leader to recognise their
ancestor's crimes so the tortured souls of ours can finally rest.
From: Baghdasarian
By Robert Kazandjian
The Comment Factory
http://www.thecommentfactory.com/the-armenian-genocide-97-years-on-8846/
April 24 2012
An article that addresses Turkish state denial of the Armenian Genocide
on the 97th anniversary.
inShare.Malcolm X said 'If you stick a knife in my back nine inches
and pull it out six inches, that's not progress. If you pull it all
the way out, that's not progress. The progress comes from healing the
wound that the blow made. They haven't even begun to pull the knife
out. They won't even admit the knife is there.'
The catastrophic wound inflicted upon our collective identity by the
Armenian Genocide cannot begin to heal. The blade of the Ottoman
Gendarme's bayonet is lodged deep in our hearts. There can be no
progress without recognition.
Ataturk built his modern Turkish state on the myth of resistance
against the imperial powers and their influence. The reality is his
immediate predecessors had expunged all minority peoples from the
land. From Ataturk, to Erdogan, successive Turkish governments have
followed a policy of fierce denial, perpetuating historical lies
through propaganda and repression.
Self-declared beacons of democracy, Israel, the United Kingdom and
the United States, still fail to officially recognise the Armenian
Genocide. Turkey has long been of great strategic importance to
these nations, during the cold-war era as NATO defender on the Soviet
border, today as a proxy in the crusade to liberate specific Middle
Eastern states. It is not surprising that the Armenian Diaspora in
Syria, directly descended from genocide survivors left to languish
in desert deportation camps, shudders at the increasing prospect of
a Turkish-led military intervention.
Any move towards international recognition prompts a predictably
angry response from Ankara.
French parliament submitted legislation that would make it a crime
to deny any genocide officially recognised by the state. France
only recognises the Jewish Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide. The
legislation prompted a furious response from Prime Minister Erdogan.
Turkey threatened retaliatory measures against its NATO ally.
In the United States, an Armenian Genocide resolution was proposed by
congress to President Clinton. The resolution sought to ensure that
recognition of the genocide became constitutional, a simple bill with
no legal ramifications. Ankara warned the United States that passing
the resolution would have disastrous consequences, Turkish airbases
would be closed to American planes and weapons contracts would be
cancelled. The resolution was quashed and a super-power had been
censored by a client state.
Any attempt to recognise the Armenian Genocide within Turkey is
punishable by law and can have tragic consequences. Under Article 301
of the Turkish Penal Code it is illegal to insult Turkey, Turkish
ethnicity and Turkish government institutions. Article 301 is an
overt suppression of free speech.
Prominent Turkish-Armenian intellectual Hrant Dink, who publicly
acknowledged the Armenian Genocide, was charged under Article 301.
Ultra-Nationalists with suspected links to the Turkish deep state
subsequently assassinated him. These explosions of violence are
inevitable. Governmental denial reshapes history and demonises the
victims, successfully replicating the anti-Armenian sentiment that
was rife when the genocide occurred.
The Armenian Genocide is of great importance to modern world history
because it provided a blueprint for centrally organised, systematic
annihilation of a race of people. Fuelled by a pan-Turkic ideology and
under the cover of the First World War, the triumvirate leadership
of the Committee of Union and Progress planned and conducted our
great tragedy.
On April 24th, 1915, Ottoman authorities arrested prominent Armenian
community figures and intellectuals in Constantinople and the majority
were executed. This date conventionally marks the beginning of the
genocide. Operating under the pretence that the Armenian minority was
a security threat to the Ottoman Empire, wholesale deportation of all
Armenians from the eastern provinces to concentration camps in the
Syrian Desert was ordered. Deportation was code for massacre. Men,
women and children were slaughtered. The barbaric methodology varied.
Those who survived the death marches were left to starve in the camps.
Over 1,000,000 lives perished.
Immediate parallels can be made between the Armenian Genocide and
the Jewish Holocaust. World War created the ideal conditions for each
atrocity to take place. The propagandist idea that Armenians were a
disease that infected Turkish society foreshadowed the Nazi ideal that
Germany needed to be free of the Jewish race in order to revitalise
itself. When addressing his generals before the invasion of Poland in
1939, Hitler asked rhetorically 'who, after all, speaks today of the
annihilation of the Armenians?' This statement is indicative of the
successful erosion of memory perpetuated by Turkish governments. The
Zionist state's failure to recognise the Armenian Genocide is
sickeningly ironic.
It is a fallacy to believe that the Armenian Genocide has two
legitimate histories, one for the perpetrators and one for the
victims. The genocide is not an allegation. It is a fact. The denial
of the genocide is a cruel attempt to subvert the truth in order to
preserve a national mythology.
The Armenian Diaspora long for a Turkish leader to recognise the
babies, tiny bodies injected with morphine, futures callously
extinguished by doctors in hospitals. To recognise the children,
forced on to crowded vessels, drowned in the Black Sea and the Tigris.
To recognise the women, brutally, repeatedly violated and left to die.
To recognise the men, horseshoes nailed to their feet, forced to walk
the dusty road towards their own crucifixions.
The Armenian Diaspora long for a Turkish leader to recognise their
ancestor's crimes so the tortured souls of ours can finally rest.
From: Baghdasarian