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The Centennial Commemoration Is About Truth, Memory and Justice, Not

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  • The Centennial Commemoration Is About Truth, Memory and Justice, Not

    George Shirinian, Executive Director
    Zoryan Institute
    255 Duncan Mill Rd., Suite 310
    Toronto, ON
    Canada M3B 3H9
    Tel: 416-250-9807 Fax: 416-512-1736


    The Centennial Commemoration Is About Truth, Memory and Justice, Not Hatred

    K.M. Greg Sarkissian, President, Zoryan Institute
    January 5, 2015


    It is 2015. Soon, we will start commemorating the centennial of the Armenian
    Genocide and pay tribute to the memory of some 1.5 million victims of the
    Young Turk regime of the Ottoman Empire. We will also pay tribute to the
    memory of those few Turks, Kurds, Arabs and others who risked their own
    lives to help Armenians escape certain death.

    There are several reasons why we should remember especially those courageous
    Turks who, first and foremost, objected to the mass deportation and murder
    of their Armenian neighbors by their own government and countrymen. Second,
    they did not become by-standers, and swayed by religious piety and their
    respect for human life and dignity saved some of the Armenians, with
    compassion and care. Third, it gives a more positive basis for Turks and
    Armenians to look together at 1915 as part of their shared history.

    No one knows how many individual acts of courage and humanity occurred
    during that period of horror and death. One such person, Haji Khalil, a
    devoted Muslim and a righteous Turk, was my grandfather's business partner.
    He had promised my grandfather he would care for his family in case of
    misfortune. When the disaster greater than anything either of them could
    have imagined struck, my grandfather, Krikor, was hung just for being an
    Armenian. But Haji Khalil kept his promise. He hid my grandmother, her
    sister and their seven children in the attic of his house in Urfa for almost
    a year. He fed and cared for them and saw them to safety to Aleppo. He did
    this knowing well that whoever saved Armenians could have shared their fate
    of death and destruction.

    Some twenty years ago, in April of 1995, I shared the story of Haji Khalil
    from the podium at an International conference entitled, "Problems of
    Genocide" in Yerevan, which the Zoryan Institute had co-sponsored with the
    Armenian government. I concluded my speech by saying,

    I want to extend my hand to the people of Turkey, to ask them to remember
    that though at one time their state was led by mass murderers, they also had
    their Haji Khalils, and that it would honor the memory of the latter to
    acknowledge the overwhelming truth of the Genocide, to express regrets, so
    that the healing process may begin between our two peoples.

    As a result of my speech, one of the scholars participating in the
    conference, Taner Akçam, approached me with tears in his eyes, hugged me and
    started telling me things in Turkish that I could not understand. But, I
    could feel his warmth and his sincerity in trying to tell me that he
    acknowledged and shared the trauma and the pain that I was experiencing at
    that moment. The next day we attended a memorial service in Etchmiadzin, the
    Holy See of Armenian Church. There, I took him by the hand and asked him to
    join me in lighting two candles, one in memory of my grandfather lit by him,
    and another, which I lit in memory of Haji Khalil. Then we embraced and
    promised each other that we would do everything possible to bring our
    peoples together by preserving the legacy and the memory of that righteous
    human being, Haji Khalil, and through him, undermine denial and promote
    truth and justice.

    Since that encounter in 1995, Dr. Akçam has written many well respected and
    influential books and articles, published in several languages, about the
    Armenian Genocide and the violence perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks. His
    works demonstrate how the Ottoman Government, led by the Union and Progress
    Party, inspired by the ideology of pan-Turanism and dreams of imperial
    expansion, carried out the planned destruction of their own fellow citizens,
    the entire Armenian population in its ancestral homeland for three
    millennia.

    During the next ten years, from 1995 to 2005, numerous tentative contacts
    were made between Turks and Armenians. Some on an individual basis, some in
    academic forums, where research and scholarship was shared and exchanged
    between Turkish and Armenian scholars. Some, such as the Workshop on
    Armenian-Turkish Studies or WATS, used virtual communication to facilitate
    dialogue between Armenians and Turks. Some Turkish scholars visited various
    research centres, such as the Zoryan Institute and the Armenian Studies
    Chairs, to learn about the research conducted and/or to view oral history
    testimonies of the survivors of the Genocide. Some 15 Turkish students have
    attended the Comparative Genocide Course run by the Zoryan Institute with
    the University of Toronto some continued their studies to become recognized
    specialists of the Armenian Genocide.

    Some businessmen organized official forums, such as the Turkish Armenian
    Business Development Council, to promote trade between the two countries,
    hoping that trade would be the best way to bring these two peoples together.
    Attempts were made even by the Armenian government a few years ago, through
    the so called `football diplomacy' for rapprochement with the Turkish
    government. This was followed by the signing of the as yet unratified
    "Protocols."

    All of these efforts were attempts to bring about a change in the attitudes
    of these two peoples, who continued to see each other through the prism of
    the events 1915 as unchanging and monolithic enemies. Unfortunately, more
    work is needed by both Turkish and Armenian civil societies to raise
    awareness about the events of 1915, to encourage the Turkish state to change
    its narrative.

    There were strong voices that wanted to reclaim history as a legacy that
    needed to be recognized, and thus pressed their government to abolish all
    obstacles to this process. For example, the series of events since 1995,
    described above, led to the first public conference on Armenian issues which
    was organized by Turkish academics and intellectuals and took place in
    Istanbul on May 25, 2005, entitled "Ottoman Armenians during the Decline of
    the Empire: Issues of Scientific Reasonability and Democracy." Some of the
    participants at this conference were scholars and intellectuals who were in
    continuous contact with their Armenian counterparts. The conference was
    condemned and criticized by the Turkish authorities. Just one day before the
    conference, then Turkish Justice Minister Cemil Cicek accused those who
    organized and participated in the conference of treason, calling them
    traitors to their country, condemning the initiative as a blow to the
    government's attempts to counter a mounting Armenian campaign to have the
    killings recognized internationally as genocide. He went as far as stating,
    "This is a stab in the back to Turkish nation..." As a result, some of these
    Turkish scholars, intellectuals and media representatives were charged,
    persecuted and even jailed by Turkish authorities.

    Since 2005, the Turkish government has continued its unrelenting denial
    policy in spite of civil society wanting to know more about their own
    history. The denial policies of the deep state, continued by the current
    Turkish government, have led to hatred, discrimination and incitement of
    violence towards the remaining Armenians in Turkey. This policy culminated
    in the killing of Hrant Dink, the editor of AGOS newspaper, who had openly
    challenged the narrative of the government as an obstacle to democracy in
    Turkey. Hrant Dink's murder by a Turkish ultranationalist impacted not only
    the Armenian community in Turkey, but also the Kurdish, Yezidi, Alevi and
    other minorities, who saw the assassination as a major blow to freedom of
    thought and speech and to their aspiration for cultural and religious
    freedom.

    Those who fear that Turkey will succeed "to neutralize the effect of the
    Armenian side's preparations for the centennial of the Armenian Genocide,"
    do not sufficiently believe in the power of historical truth. No matter what
    Turkey does through its policy of denial, it cannot avoid the facts of
    history. Fear of Turkish "penetration" of Armenian society, in the Diaspora
    and/or in Armenia, concern about causing "domestic disagreements" to "take
    control of society" reduces Armenians and Armenia to hapless victims rather
    than aware, independent adults who are able to articulate and defend their
    national interest.

    All denial attempts, whether that be by distorting history or cajoling
    certain members of Armenian society to cooperate with them, have not helped
    Turkey in controlling Armenian society. On the contrary, they have only
    strengthened the resolve of Armenians worldwide to mobilize for
    acknowledgement and restorative justice because Armenians collectively are
    fully aware of their history and the profoundly devastating effects of
    genocide on their nation.

    "To speak well of the Turks that saved Armenians" actually helps
    contextualize and bring home for Turks what the Armenian Genocide was all
    about. One cannot talk about Turks who saved Armenians without explaining
    what it is they saved the Armenians from. This can only help promote shared
    knowledge of history and a past that both societies can talk about to each
    other, on a common basis of understanding and without any fear of
    persecution. Hopefully this can lead to dialogue and eventually
    reconciliation.

    We must have hope that the human values, fortified with the knowledge of
    historical truth, will eventually empower Turkish civil society to demand
    its government more effectively to embrace the facts of history. Without
    that, there will be no true democracy and therefore no security for any
    individual or collective in that country.

    Such empowerment is already evident by the fact that currently, two Turkish
    human rights organizations are partnering with the International Institute
    for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, (A Division of the Zoryan Institute)
    to jointly submit a brief to the European Court of Human Rights in the
    Perinçek case - a matter of genocide denial - documenting his discriminatory
    and racist activities and statements against Armenians in Turkey and
    Switzerland. Such instances of co-operation strengthen contacts between the
    two societies and serve as evidence of the power of shared universal human
    values.

    We cannot be oblivious to the changes happening in Turkey. Armenians have a
    role in helping Turkish society learn and understand the indisputable facts
    of the Armenian Genocide through education, dialogue and contacts on all
    levels of Turkish society. This is a critical process in order to emancipate
    both societies from this problem of enmity, prejudice and hatred.

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