By Khatchig Mouradian
The selection of Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff—the first major appointment by President-elect Barack Obama—did not fare well with many Armenian-Americans who supported the Illinois Senator’s bid for presidency. While the Armenian-Americans who overwhelmingly voted for Obama showed signs of unease, those who supported the McCain-Palin ticket were quick to exclaim, I told you so!
The concerns of Armenian-Americans are understandable. Beginning with his days in the Clinton Administration through his years in Congress, Emanuel’s support has been mixed. It appears—if we are to take Robert Novak’s word for it—Emanuel opposed Clinton Administration affirmation of the Armenian Genocide. And yet, in his first term in Congress in 2003, he cosponsored Armenian Genocide legislation (H.Res.193) and urged President Bush in 2003, 2004 and 2005 to properly characterize the events from 1915-1923 as genocide.
Back then, Emanuel wasn’t afraid to question U.S. assistance to Turkey. In fact, in February 2003, when Congress was considering a $24 billion aid package to Turkey in return for allowing U.S. troops to open up a northern front to battle Iraqi insurgents, Emanuel was positively poetic in listing the myriad of domestic uses for those funds—from “no child left behind programs,” to college tuition assistance. Turkey eventually blocked U.S. troops from setting up the northern front.
Since 2006, it appears Emanuel has gone back to his Clinton-Administration days, counseling Speaker Pelosi not to place the Armenian Genocide resolution on the House agenda—advice that Pelosi and the House leadership did not heed.
So, again, that Armenian-Americans are concerned is understandable. What is not understandable, however, is the leap that many Armenian-Americans are making—concluding that the appointment of Emanuel is proof that Obama is somehow on the road to reneging on his election pledge even before taking his oath of office.
Such thinking comes off to be a bit naive. If the criteria for appointing a presidential chief of staff were for him to agree with the President on every single issue, no one would ever serve in that post. The President will have points of agreement and disagreement with his chief of staff—and all members of his Administration, for that matter—with the final word being that of the President, himself. Not to mention the fact that it is foolhardy to think that the President’s choice of a chief of staff would be decided on a single human rights issue—however just.
Armenian-American critics of the Emanuel pick ought to keep in mind the impressive record of President-elect Obama and—perhaps even more importantly—that of vice President-elect Biden, when it comes to issues of concern to Armenian-Americans. Although their record does not guarantee their support of Genocide recognition now that they have assumed the highest office of the country, it should, at least, make one think twice before jumping to conclusions.
Concentrating on the Emanuel pick is a distraction. Regardless of who the chief of staff is, immense pressure is going to be exerted on Obama—by some Washington elites, the Turkish state and U.S.-based lobby groups working openly or silently for the Turkish government—to dissuade him from recognizing the Armenian Genocide.
Given that reality, Armenian-Americans have two clear choices. To sit on their hands, thinking that they already did their part by voting for Obama and now it is his turn to deliver, or to struggle more fiercely than ever for truth and justice, knowing well that they have in the highest office of their country, a President who understands their struggle for truth and justice—certainly more than his predecessors.
Khatchig Mouradian is a writer, translator and journalist. He is the editor of the Armenian Weekly. He can be contacted at khatchigm@hotmail.com.
Showing posts with label Activism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Activism. Show all posts
Friday, November 7, 2008
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Lettre à un militant Américano-Arménien
Par Khatchig Mouradian
Traduction Louise Kiffer
Dans des années à partir d'aujourd'hui, vous vous rappellerez le 4 novembre 2008
comme le jour du point final où la reconnaissance du génocide arménien a commencé dans ce pays.
Ou vous allez vous en souvenir comme encore un autre jour d'élection, où encore un autre président a été élu, mais malgré tous les espoirs, les efforts et les promesses, peu de choses ont changé.
Et ce ne sera pas le Président Barack Obama à lui tout seul qui décidera de la route à suivre.
Ce sera aussi vous.
Ne dites pas: "j'ai soutenu Barack Obama pendant les élections, j'ai fait campagne pour lui, de porte en porte et par téléphone, j'ai voté pour lui, et maintenant, c'est son tour".
"Je vous demande de croire, a dit votre Président, non seulement en ma capacité d'apporter un changement réel à Washington…Je vous demande de croire en la vôtre".
Et aujourd'hui, avant de lui demander d'apporter un changement réel, croyez en votre capacité à le faire.
Et mettez-vous au travail.
Car les ennemis de la vérité, les adversaires de la justice les maîtres du statu quo, et ceux qui sont sur la liste du personnel du déni et de la falsification vont continuer à travailler contre vous de toutes leurs forces.
Mais n'oubliez pas que la question arménienne a commencé en Turquie, et c'est là qu'elle doit être résolue. N'oubliez pas que les cendres des victimes, dispersées à travers l'Anatolie et les déserts de Syrie, ne trouveront pas la paix même dans tous les pays qui auront reconnu leurs souffrances.
Leurs âmes ne trouveront le repos que lorsque la Turquie ornera ses cités de mémoriaux pour les victimes et de statues de Siamanto et de Varoujan.
Et seulement quand les chants de Komitas résonneront de nouveau dans les villes et villages d'Anatolie.
N'oubliez pas que votre militantisme ici aux Etats-Unis n'est qu'un moyen d'exercer une pression sur l'Etat turc et d'aider à éduquer le peuple.
Ce n'est pas une fin en soi.
N'oubliez pas que même si votre Président reconnaît le génocide arménien, vous aurez encore un long chemin à parcourir.
Vous aurez encore à lutter et à éduquer. Vous aurez encore des millions de cœurs et d'esprits à convaincre; les cœurs et les esprits du peuple qui a hérité – de gré ou de force – du patrimoine d'un régime génocidaire.
Et, ce qui est le plus important, ne soyez pas découragés par les déclarations de ceux qui pensent qu'ils peuvent résoudre aujourd'hui ou demain les problèmes entre l'Etat turc et les Arméniens.
La route vers la vérité et de la justice est une longue route.
Elle n'a pas commencé avec vous. Et ne finira pas forcément de votre temps.
Mais elle exige sûrement votre dévouement.
Donc, relevez vos manches et mettez-vous au travail.
Si vous luttez incessamment, vos efforts porteront leurs fruits: votre Président, vos représentants et vos concitoyens et amis joindront leurs mains aux vôtres.
Et quand vous aurez réussi à apporter un changement dans votre pays, rappelez-vous que votre génération n'est pas la seule victorieuse.
Cette victoire appartient à tous les survivants du génocide, autant qu'à leurs descendants, qui ont continué à croire en la vérité et la justice.
Aussi, quand votre militantisme finalement rapportera la reconnaissance, nous aimerions tous voir dans ce pays, avant les feux d'artifice et les célébrations, allumer un cierge à la mémoire de ces victimes et des survivants.
Et n'oubliez jamais que vous n'aurez pas honoré les victimes de Turquie de 1915, si vous n'avez pas lutté pour mettre fin aux génocides partout et en tous les temps.
C'est maintenant – plus que jamais auparavant – qu'il est temps pour vous d'effectuer un changement.
Et, oui, vous le pouvez.
4 novembre 2008
Boston, Mass.
Khatchig Mouradian est écrivain, traducteur et journaliste. Il est rédacteur en chef d'Armenian Weekly. On peut le contacter à: khatchigm@hotmail.com
Traduction Louise Kiffer
Dans des années à partir d'aujourd'hui, vous vous rappellerez le 4 novembre 2008
comme le jour du point final où la reconnaissance du génocide arménien a commencé dans ce pays.
Ou vous allez vous en souvenir comme encore un autre jour d'élection, où encore un autre président a été élu, mais malgré tous les espoirs, les efforts et les promesses, peu de choses ont changé.
Et ce ne sera pas le Président Barack Obama à lui tout seul qui décidera de la route à suivre.
Ce sera aussi vous.
Ne dites pas: "j'ai soutenu Barack Obama pendant les élections, j'ai fait campagne pour lui, de porte en porte et par téléphone, j'ai voté pour lui, et maintenant, c'est son tour".
"Je vous demande de croire, a dit votre Président, non seulement en ma capacité d'apporter un changement réel à Washington…Je vous demande de croire en la vôtre".
Et aujourd'hui, avant de lui demander d'apporter un changement réel, croyez en votre capacité à le faire.
Et mettez-vous au travail.
Car les ennemis de la vérité, les adversaires de la justice les maîtres du statu quo, et ceux qui sont sur la liste du personnel du déni et de la falsification vont continuer à travailler contre vous de toutes leurs forces.
Mais n'oubliez pas que la question arménienne a commencé en Turquie, et c'est là qu'elle doit être résolue. N'oubliez pas que les cendres des victimes, dispersées à travers l'Anatolie et les déserts de Syrie, ne trouveront pas la paix même dans tous les pays qui auront reconnu leurs souffrances.
Leurs âmes ne trouveront le repos que lorsque la Turquie ornera ses cités de mémoriaux pour les victimes et de statues de Siamanto et de Varoujan.
Et seulement quand les chants de Komitas résonneront de nouveau dans les villes et villages d'Anatolie.
N'oubliez pas que votre militantisme ici aux Etats-Unis n'est qu'un moyen d'exercer une pression sur l'Etat turc et d'aider à éduquer le peuple.
Ce n'est pas une fin en soi.
N'oubliez pas que même si votre Président reconnaît le génocide arménien, vous aurez encore un long chemin à parcourir.
Vous aurez encore à lutter et à éduquer. Vous aurez encore des millions de cœurs et d'esprits à convaincre; les cœurs et les esprits du peuple qui a hérité – de gré ou de force – du patrimoine d'un régime génocidaire.
Et, ce qui est le plus important, ne soyez pas découragés par les déclarations de ceux qui pensent qu'ils peuvent résoudre aujourd'hui ou demain les problèmes entre l'Etat turc et les Arméniens.
La route vers la vérité et de la justice est une longue route.
Elle n'a pas commencé avec vous. Et ne finira pas forcément de votre temps.
Mais elle exige sûrement votre dévouement.
Donc, relevez vos manches et mettez-vous au travail.
Si vous luttez incessamment, vos efforts porteront leurs fruits: votre Président, vos représentants et vos concitoyens et amis joindront leurs mains aux vôtres.
Et quand vous aurez réussi à apporter un changement dans votre pays, rappelez-vous que votre génération n'est pas la seule victorieuse.
Cette victoire appartient à tous les survivants du génocide, autant qu'à leurs descendants, qui ont continué à croire en la vérité et la justice.
Aussi, quand votre militantisme finalement rapportera la reconnaissance, nous aimerions tous voir dans ce pays, avant les feux d'artifice et les célébrations, allumer un cierge à la mémoire de ces victimes et des survivants.
Et n'oubliez jamais que vous n'aurez pas honoré les victimes de Turquie de 1915, si vous n'avez pas lutté pour mettre fin aux génocides partout et en tous les temps.
C'est maintenant – plus que jamais auparavant – qu'il est temps pour vous d'effectuer un changement.
Et, oui, vous le pouvez.
4 novembre 2008
Boston, Mass.
Khatchig Mouradian est écrivain, traducteur et journaliste. Il est rédacteur en chef d'Armenian Weekly. On peut le contacter à: khatchigm@hotmail.com
Letter to an Armenian-American Activist
By Khatchig Mouradian
Nov. 4, 2008
Boston, Mass.
Years from now, you will remember Nov. 4, 2008 as the day on which the final dash to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide began in this country.
Or you will remember it as yet another election day, when yet another president was elected, but despite all hopes, efforts and promises, little changed.
And it won’t be President Barack Obama alone who will determine the road taken.
It will also be you.
Do not say, I supported Barack Obama during the elections, I canvassed for him, I made phone calls, I knocked on doors, I voted for him, and now, it is his turn.
“I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change to Washington... I’m asking you to believe in yours,” said your President.
And today, before asking him to bring about real change, believe in your ability to do so.
And get to work.
Because the enemies of truth, the adversaries of justice, the masters of the status quo, and those who are on the payroll of denial and falsification will continue working against you in full-force.
But do not forget that the Armenian issue started in Turkey, and that’s where it will be resolved.
Do not forget that the ashes of the victims, scattered across Anatolia and the deserts of Syria, will not find peace even if all countries recognize their suffering.
Their souls will rest only when Turkey itself recognizes the genocide.
Their souls will rest only when Turkey adorns its cities with memorials for the victims and with statues of Siamanto and Varoujan.
And only when the songs of Komitas echo again in the cities and villages of Anatolia.
Do not forget that all your activism here in the U.S. is just a means to exert pressure on the Turkish state and help educate the public.
It is not an end in itself.
Do not forget that, even when your President acknowledges the Armenian Genocide, you will still have a long way to go.
You will still have to struggle and educate. You will still have millions of hearts and minds to win over; the hearts and minds of the people who inherited—willingly or not—the legacy of a genocidal regime.
And, most importantly, do not be discouraged by the pronouncements of those who think they can resolve today or tomorrow the problems between the Turkish state and the Armenians.
The road to truth and justice is a long one.
It did not start with you. And it will not necessarily end in your day.
But it sure requires your dedication.
So roll up your sleeves and get to work.
If you struggle tirelessly, your efforts will bear fruit: Your President, your representatives and your fellow citizens will join hands with you.
And when you succeed in bringing about change in your country, remember that you generation is not the sole victor.
That victory belongs to all the survivors of the Genocide as well as their descendents, who continued to believe in truth and justice.
So when your activism finally brings about the recognition we all would like to see in this country, before the fireworks and celebrations, light a candle in memory of those victims and survivors.
And never forget that you will not have honored the victims of Turkey in 1915, if you do not struggle to end genocides everywhere and at all times.
Now—more than ever before—is your time to effect change.
And, yes, you can.
Khatchig Mouradian is a writer, translator and journalist. He is the editor of the Armenian Weekly. He can be contacted at khatchigm@hotmail.com.
Nov. 4, 2008
Boston, Mass.
Years from now, you will remember Nov. 4, 2008 as the day on which the final dash to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide began in this country.
Or you will remember it as yet another election day, when yet another president was elected, but despite all hopes, efforts and promises, little changed.
And it won’t be President Barack Obama alone who will determine the road taken.
It will also be you.
Do not say, I supported Barack Obama during the elections, I canvassed for him, I made phone calls, I knocked on doors, I voted for him, and now, it is his turn.
“I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change to Washington... I’m asking you to believe in yours,” said your President.
And today, before asking him to bring about real change, believe in your ability to do so.
And get to work.
Because the enemies of truth, the adversaries of justice, the masters of the status quo, and those who are on the payroll of denial and falsification will continue working against you in full-force.
But do not forget that the Armenian issue started in Turkey, and that’s where it will be resolved.
Do not forget that the ashes of the victims, scattered across Anatolia and the deserts of Syria, will not find peace even if all countries recognize their suffering.
Their souls will rest only when Turkey itself recognizes the genocide.
Their souls will rest only when Turkey adorns its cities with memorials for the victims and with statues of Siamanto and Varoujan.
And only when the songs of Komitas echo again in the cities and villages of Anatolia.
Do not forget that all your activism here in the U.S. is just a means to exert pressure on the Turkish state and help educate the public.
It is not an end in itself.
Do not forget that, even when your President acknowledges the Armenian Genocide, you will still have a long way to go.
You will still have to struggle and educate. You will still have millions of hearts and minds to win over; the hearts and minds of the people who inherited—willingly or not—the legacy of a genocidal regime.
And, most importantly, do not be discouraged by the pronouncements of those who think they can resolve today or tomorrow the problems between the Turkish state and the Armenians.
The road to truth and justice is a long one.
It did not start with you. And it will not necessarily end in your day.
But it sure requires your dedication.
So roll up your sleeves and get to work.
If you struggle tirelessly, your efforts will bear fruit: Your President, your representatives and your fellow citizens will join hands with you.
And when you succeed in bringing about change in your country, remember that you generation is not the sole victor.
That victory belongs to all the survivors of the Genocide as well as their descendents, who continued to believe in truth and justice.
So when your activism finally brings about the recognition we all would like to see in this country, before the fireworks and celebrations, light a candle in memory of those victims and survivors.
And never forget that you will not have honored the victims of Turkey in 1915, if you do not struggle to end genocides everywhere and at all times.
Now—more than ever before—is your time to effect change.
And, yes, you can.
Khatchig Mouradian is a writer, translator and journalist. He is the editor of the Armenian Weekly. He can be contacted at khatchigm@hotmail.com.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
An Interview with Nicholas D. Kristof
By Khatchig Mouradian
The Armenian Weekly
Volume 74, No. 13
April 5, 2008
NEW YORK (A.W.)—Nicholas Kristof has been an Op-Ed columnist for the New York Times since November 2001. In his weekly columns, he often tackles issues of human rights abuses and genocide, and has been instrumental in creating awareness on the situation in Darfur.
A two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, he has lived on four continents, reported on six, and traveled to 140 countries. (He is at least a two-time visitor to every member of the Axis of Evil.)
Nicholas Donabet Kristof is the son of Ladis Kristof, a Transylvanian-born Armenian who immigrated to the United States after World War II.
In this interview, conducted in his office at the New York Times on March 28, we talk about the genocide in Darfur.
***
Khatchig Mouradian—You’ve been covering the genocide in Darfur for four years now. What has changed over this time in both public awareness and the situation on the ground?
Nicholas Kristof—There’s certainly more attention to Darfur now. And it really is heartening, for example, how many university students all across the country have been willing to campaign for Darfur. So in my more hopeful moments, I think about the hundreds of thousands of college students who are protesting on behalf of people of a different religion, different skin color, who they will never meet, and I think, “Wow, we are really making some progress.”
But then at the end of the day, on the ground in Darfur, the situation is as messy now as it was four years ago. If you had told me four years ago when I first went there that in 2008, people would know what Darfur is, they would know what is going on there, that the president would have called it “genocide,” I would have been surprised. But if you told me that people would know what’s going on and yet still we wouldn’t do anything, then I would have been even more stunned and depressed.
K.M.—In the past, governments were careful not to invoke the term “genocide” because then they would have to act. Now, President Bush used the word when referring to Darfur, but nothing happened. Has the word “genocide” lost its meaning?
N.K.—I don’t think it ever really had a lot of meaning to inspire action. However, it does make people feel guilty. The reason you do have a lot of people protesting on behalf of Darfur is the word “genocide.” If you use the word “ethnic cleansing,” I don’t think it gets people so upset.
Look at how in the Congo the death toll has been much greater, but it’s not really a case of genocide; it’s a messy difficult case of rival militias and that has attracted much less attention than Darfur. What has made a difference is that in Darfur the death toll is smaller, but it is genocide. So I do think that genocide as a reality and as a term does make a difference—but just not nearly enough.
K.M.—In your columns, you’ve mentioned that you’ve received emails from people saying, Yes, the situation in Darfur is bad, but we have other priorities. How do you feel about this kind of reaction, be it from ordinary people or government officials?
N.K.—I think that one of the basic mistakes that Western governments make is that while they think that it’s unfortunate what is happening in Darfur, that there are a lot of unfortunate things going on in a lot of places around the world. And Darfur is their number 38th priority.
In fact, I think it’s one of the lessons of history that over time genocide really does rise to the very top of the priority list. The Armenian genocide is a perfect example of that. When it was going on, the Wilson administration certainly thought that it was unfortunate; they didn’t want Armenians killed, but they had huge challenges with Europe, with the Ottoman Empire, and so it just never rose very high on the priority list. The same is true with the Holocaust, Rwanda, and Bosnia. Yet, each of those has had a staying power, a resonance throughout history precisely because it was genocide. I think that the mistake that the administration has made, the State Department has made, and a lot of us in the media have made is that we don’t appreciate that there really is something different about a government choosing a people based on race, color, religion, or whatever, and deciding to kill them.
K.M.—Do you think there will be any drastic changes in the U.S. policy on Darfur when there’s a new president in the Oval Office next year?
N.K.—There is some reason to believe that the next president will be modestly more active on Darfur. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have both been very active on the issue. John McCain had been earlier on; he has slowed down a little bit on Darfur more recently. But all of them have been, at one time or the other, real leaders on it. So yes, there is hope that if they were in the White House, they would be more active on it.
But at the end of the day, I think that one of the things we see from history is that the president is never going to really lead in a case of genocide because there tends not to be a national interest involved, and there tends to be a lot of uncertainty about the right thing to do, and there are a lot of other priorities. When there has been some kind of response, it has been because you just had a lot of Americans shaming their president to act. Kosovo is a good example of that. There, we had the Clinton administration that really didn’t want to do very much, but they had just been tormented over a combination of Rwanda and Bosnia and, finally, they felt they had to do something and they did the right thing. Ultimately, I think it is going to be the same in the case of Darfur. The shaming of the U.S., Europe, China is going to actually make a difference.
K.M.—So you believe that the movement to change the situation is going to be from the bottom-up…
N.K.—It would be great if there were more change at the top, but the reality is that Mia Farrow has done more good for the people of Darfur diplomatically than Condi Rice has. And to the extent that China is now paying attention to Darfur, and is being somewhat helpful, that’s really because of Mia Farrow, not because of Condi Rice.
That said, I hope that we’re going to see more rigorous action by government officials, and Sarcozy, I think, is going to be more helpful in Chad especially. But fundamentally, political leaders are going to be reactive rather than proactive. So it’s going to be the grassroots activists who are going to be the ones bringing about that change, whether it’s in our government or in the Chinese government.
K.M.—What are your thoughts about the way Muslim countries have been reacting to the crisis in Darfur? They point out the double standards of the U.S., but they also uphold similar double standards by speaking about human rights violations in Israel and the Palestinian territories, while ignoring the genocide in Darfur.
N.K.—Everybody has double standards and we always tend to be more shocked about everybody else’s double standards. Look at Zimbabwe, for example. The world was horrified when you had white Rhodesians doing terrible things to blacks there, but when it’s Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe, then it tends to be more accepted by everybody. Likewise, Sudan can get away with doing things to its own people that no outsider could get away with.
I do think that there have been double standards in the Egyptian news media, in particular. I really had hoped that the Egyptian news media, because it’s so important in the region, could have done more with Darfur. Instead, there is this reflexive sense that those Yankee imperialists went after Iraqi oil and neutralized Iraq on behalf of Israel and now they’re going to do the same thing to Sudan. I think that’s very unfortunate, but, I must say, we suffer from double standards all the time as well.
K.M.—And U.S. foreign policy in recent years has aggravated the situation…
N.K.—Absolutely. I think that our Middle Eastern policy—the Arab-Israeli conflict and Iraq—has left us in a situation where everything we do is viewed through an incredible prism of suspicion. That makes it very difficult for us to do anything about an Arab country, especially an Arab country with oil. This is one reason why it would be so helpful if we worked more with European countries and Muslim countries. If Egypt, the Arab League, or other Muslim countries outside the Arab world were to be more concerned about Muslims being slaughtered in Darfur, that would be of huge help.
K.M.—How does this affect you on a personal level? Isn’t it very frustrating to see how slowly things change—if they ever do?
N.K.—Absolutely. And the most frustrating is the difficulty translating from concern to actually any kind of positive action. I find that incredibly frustrating. I’m quite worried that the next issue is going to be the North-South war in Sudan. And Darfur might just be remembered as the prologue to something much bloodier…
One of the lessons that we should have learned is that you can intervene much more easily early on in a conflict. Once Humpty Dumpty has fallen off the wall, then it’s impossible to put him back together again. Right now, everybody is watching south Sudan fall off the ledge. We can still do something, but a year from now it may be utterly too late.
K.M.—What do you usually tell people who ask what they can do to help?
N.K.—Some of the websites that I recommend people to go to are Save Darfur (www.Save Darfur.org), the Genocide Intervention Network (www.genocide intervention.net) and Dream for Darfur (www.dreamfordarfur.org).
I do think that the Armenian community has some special responsibility to lead the way. One of the ways of memorializing the Armenian genocide should be to prevent the next genocide from happening…
K.M.—Just like the role the Jewish community is playing…
N.K.—Exactly. I think those websites are a good place to start, and some combination of calling the White House and writing member of Congress. There’s a website called Darfurscores.org that shows how each member of Congress has done. I think letters to other governments are helpful, too.
K.M.—What about the humanitarian aspect of all this?
N.K.—Early on, when people asked me what they could do to help, I would point them to specific humanitarian organizations like Doctors Without Borders (www.doctorswithoutborders.org). I think they do great work and if one donates to them, that’s not money wasted at all.
But for four years now I’ve been going and I’ve seen doctors bandage up kids with bullet wounds. That can keep on going for 20 years. So at some point, you begin to think that the real response is not a lot more bandages and more surgeons, but to do something to actually stop the killing. And so for that reason, now when people ask, I tend to emphasize the advocacy organizations.
The Armenian Weekly
Volume 74, No. 13
April 5, 2008
NEW YORK (A.W.)—Nicholas Kristof has been an Op-Ed columnist for the New York Times since November 2001. In his weekly columns, he often tackles issues of human rights abuses and genocide, and has been instrumental in creating awareness on the situation in Darfur.
A two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, he has lived on four continents, reported on six, and traveled to 140 countries. (He is at least a two-time visitor to every member of the Axis of Evil.)
Nicholas Donabet Kristof is the son of Ladis Kristof, a Transylvanian-born Armenian who immigrated to the United States after World War II.
In this interview, conducted in his office at the New York Times on March 28, we talk about the genocide in Darfur.
***
Khatchig Mouradian—You’ve been covering the genocide in Darfur for four years now. What has changed over this time in both public awareness and the situation on the ground?
Nicholas Kristof—There’s certainly more attention to Darfur now. And it really is heartening, for example, how many university students all across the country have been willing to campaign for Darfur. So in my more hopeful moments, I think about the hundreds of thousands of college students who are protesting on behalf of people of a different religion, different skin color, who they will never meet, and I think, “Wow, we are really making some progress.”
But then at the end of the day, on the ground in Darfur, the situation is as messy now as it was four years ago. If you had told me four years ago when I first went there that in 2008, people would know what Darfur is, they would know what is going on there, that the president would have called it “genocide,” I would have been surprised. But if you told me that people would know what’s going on and yet still we wouldn’t do anything, then I would have been even more stunned and depressed.
K.M.—In the past, governments were careful not to invoke the term “genocide” because then they would have to act. Now, President Bush used the word when referring to Darfur, but nothing happened. Has the word “genocide” lost its meaning?
N.K.—I don’t think it ever really had a lot of meaning to inspire action. However, it does make people feel guilty. The reason you do have a lot of people protesting on behalf of Darfur is the word “genocide.” If you use the word “ethnic cleansing,” I don’t think it gets people so upset.
Look at how in the Congo the death toll has been much greater, but it’s not really a case of genocide; it’s a messy difficult case of rival militias and that has attracted much less attention than Darfur. What has made a difference is that in Darfur the death toll is smaller, but it is genocide. So I do think that genocide as a reality and as a term does make a difference—but just not nearly enough.
K.M.—In your columns, you’ve mentioned that you’ve received emails from people saying, Yes, the situation in Darfur is bad, but we have other priorities. How do you feel about this kind of reaction, be it from ordinary people or government officials?
N.K.—I think that one of the basic mistakes that Western governments make is that while they think that it’s unfortunate what is happening in Darfur, that there are a lot of unfortunate things going on in a lot of places around the world. And Darfur is their number 38th priority.
In fact, I think it’s one of the lessons of history that over time genocide really does rise to the very top of the priority list. The Armenian genocide is a perfect example of that. When it was going on, the Wilson administration certainly thought that it was unfortunate; they didn’t want Armenians killed, but they had huge challenges with Europe, with the Ottoman Empire, and so it just never rose very high on the priority list. The same is true with the Holocaust, Rwanda, and Bosnia. Yet, each of those has had a staying power, a resonance throughout history precisely because it was genocide. I think that the mistake that the administration has made, the State Department has made, and a lot of us in the media have made is that we don’t appreciate that there really is something different about a government choosing a people based on race, color, religion, or whatever, and deciding to kill them.
K.M.—Do you think there will be any drastic changes in the U.S. policy on Darfur when there’s a new president in the Oval Office next year?
N.K.—There is some reason to believe that the next president will be modestly more active on Darfur. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have both been very active on the issue. John McCain had been earlier on; he has slowed down a little bit on Darfur more recently. But all of them have been, at one time or the other, real leaders on it. So yes, there is hope that if they were in the White House, they would be more active on it.
But at the end of the day, I think that one of the things we see from history is that the president is never going to really lead in a case of genocide because there tends not to be a national interest involved, and there tends to be a lot of uncertainty about the right thing to do, and there are a lot of other priorities. When there has been some kind of response, it has been because you just had a lot of Americans shaming their president to act. Kosovo is a good example of that. There, we had the Clinton administration that really didn’t want to do very much, but they had just been tormented over a combination of Rwanda and Bosnia and, finally, they felt they had to do something and they did the right thing. Ultimately, I think it is going to be the same in the case of Darfur. The shaming of the U.S., Europe, China is going to actually make a difference.
K.M.—So you believe that the movement to change the situation is going to be from the bottom-up…
N.K.—It would be great if there were more change at the top, but the reality is that Mia Farrow has done more good for the people of Darfur diplomatically than Condi Rice has. And to the extent that China is now paying attention to Darfur, and is being somewhat helpful, that’s really because of Mia Farrow, not because of Condi Rice.
That said, I hope that we’re going to see more rigorous action by government officials, and Sarcozy, I think, is going to be more helpful in Chad especially. But fundamentally, political leaders are going to be reactive rather than proactive. So it’s going to be the grassroots activists who are going to be the ones bringing about that change, whether it’s in our government or in the Chinese government.
K.M.—What are your thoughts about the way Muslim countries have been reacting to the crisis in Darfur? They point out the double standards of the U.S., but they also uphold similar double standards by speaking about human rights violations in Israel and the Palestinian territories, while ignoring the genocide in Darfur.
N.K.—Everybody has double standards and we always tend to be more shocked about everybody else’s double standards. Look at Zimbabwe, for example. The world was horrified when you had white Rhodesians doing terrible things to blacks there, but when it’s Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe, then it tends to be more accepted by everybody. Likewise, Sudan can get away with doing things to its own people that no outsider could get away with.
I do think that there have been double standards in the Egyptian news media, in particular. I really had hoped that the Egyptian news media, because it’s so important in the region, could have done more with Darfur. Instead, there is this reflexive sense that those Yankee imperialists went after Iraqi oil and neutralized Iraq on behalf of Israel and now they’re going to do the same thing to Sudan. I think that’s very unfortunate, but, I must say, we suffer from double standards all the time as well.
K.M.—And U.S. foreign policy in recent years has aggravated the situation…
N.K.—Absolutely. I think that our Middle Eastern policy—the Arab-Israeli conflict and Iraq—has left us in a situation where everything we do is viewed through an incredible prism of suspicion. That makes it very difficult for us to do anything about an Arab country, especially an Arab country with oil. This is one reason why it would be so helpful if we worked more with European countries and Muslim countries. If Egypt, the Arab League, or other Muslim countries outside the Arab world were to be more concerned about Muslims being slaughtered in Darfur, that would be of huge help.
K.M.—How does this affect you on a personal level? Isn’t it very frustrating to see how slowly things change—if they ever do?
N.K.—Absolutely. And the most frustrating is the difficulty translating from concern to actually any kind of positive action. I find that incredibly frustrating. I’m quite worried that the next issue is going to be the North-South war in Sudan. And Darfur might just be remembered as the prologue to something much bloodier…
One of the lessons that we should have learned is that you can intervene much more easily early on in a conflict. Once Humpty Dumpty has fallen off the wall, then it’s impossible to put him back together again. Right now, everybody is watching south Sudan fall off the ledge. We can still do something, but a year from now it may be utterly too late.
K.M.—What do you usually tell people who ask what they can do to help?
N.K.—Some of the websites that I recommend people to go to are Save Darfur (www.Save Darfur.org), the Genocide Intervention Network (www.genocide intervention.net) and Dream for Darfur (www.dreamfordarfur.org).
I do think that the Armenian community has some special responsibility to lead the way. One of the ways of memorializing the Armenian genocide should be to prevent the next genocide from happening…
K.M.—Just like the role the Jewish community is playing…
N.K.—Exactly. I think those websites are a good place to start, and some combination of calling the White House and writing member of Congress. There’s a website called Darfurscores.org that shows how each member of Congress has done. I think letters to other governments are helpful, too.
K.M.—What about the humanitarian aspect of all this?
N.K.—Early on, when people asked me what they could do to help, I would point them to specific humanitarian organizations like Doctors Without Borders (www.doctorswithoutborders.org). I think they do great work and if one donates to them, that’s not money wasted at all.
But for four years now I’ve been going and I’ve seen doctors bandage up kids with bullet wounds. That can keep on going for 20 years. So at some point, you begin to think that the real response is not a lot more bandages and more surgeons, but to do something to actually stop the killing. And so for that reason, now when people ask, I tend to emphasize the advocacy organizations.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Of Grasshoppers and Men
An Interview with Arundhati Roy
By Khatchig Mouradian
The Armenian Weekly
Feb. 9, 2008
Arundhati Roy was born in 1959 in Shillong, India. She studied architecture in New Delhi, where she now lives, and has worked as a film designer, actor, and screenplay writer in India. Roy is the author of the novel The God of Small Things, (Random House/HarperPerennial) for which she received the 1997 Booker Prize. The novel has been translated into dozens of languages worldwide. She has written several non-fiction books: The Cost of Living (Random House/Modern Library), Power Politics (South End Press), War Talk (South End Press), An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire (South End Press) and Public Power in the Age of Empire (Seven Stories/Open Media).
Roy was featured in the BBC television documentary, “Dam/age,” which chronicles her work in support of the struggle against big dams in India and the contempt of court case that led to a prolonged legal case against her and eventually a one-day jail sentence in spring 2002. A collection of interviews with Arundhati Roy by David Barsamian was published as The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile (South End Press). Roy is the recipient of the 2002 Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Prize.
On Jan. 18, 2008, Roy delivered the Hrant Dink memorial lecture at Bosphorus University in Istanbul. In her lecture, titled “Listening to Grasshoppers: Genocide, Denial and Celebration,” Roy reflected on the legacy of Hrant Dink and dealt with the history of the “genocidal impulse,” the Armenian genocide of 1915 and the killing of Muslims in Gujarat, India in 2002.
Speaking about the slain editor of the Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos, Roy said, “I never met Hrant Dink, a misfortune that will be mine for time to come. From what I know of him, of what he wrote, what he said and did, how he lived his life, I know that had I been here in Istanbul a year ago I would have been among the one hundred thousand people who walked with his coffin in dead silence through the wintry streets of this city, with banners saying, ‘We are all Armenians,’ ‘We are all Hrant Dink.’ Perhaps I’d have carried the one that said, ‘One and a half million plus one.’”
“I wonder what thoughts would have gone through my head as I walked beside his coffin,” she added. “Maybe I would have heard a reprise of the voice of Araxie Barsamian, mother of my friend David Barsamian, telling the story of what happened to her and her family. She was ten years old in 1915. She remembered the swarms of grasshoppers that arrived in her village, Dubne, which was north of the historic city Dikranagert, now Diyarbakir. The village elders were alarmed, she said, because they knew in their bones that the grasshoppers were a bad omen. They were right; the end came in a few months, when the wheat in the fields was ready for harvesting.”
In this interview, conducted by phone on Feb. 2, we talk about some of the issues she raised in her lecture and reflect on genocide and resistance.
Khatchig Mouradian—What was going through your head when you were writing the speech for the commemoration in Istanbul of Hrant Dink’s assassination?
Arundhati Roy—These days, we are going through a kind of psychotic convulsion in India. Genocide and its celebration are in the air. And it’s terrifying for me to watch people celebrating genocide every day. It was at a time when I was very struck by this celebration in India and the denial in Turkey that they asked me to go to Istanbul.
When I landed in Istanbul, I realized that there’s a very big difference between what Armenians, Turks and others could say outside Turkey—where everybody could be very direct about the Armenian genocide—and inside Turkey—where, Hrant Dink, for example, was trying to find a way of saying things in order to continue living. His idea was to speak out, but not to die.
In Istanbul, I spoke with people and I was very concerned not to give the impression that I flew in, made a speech, and flew out leaving everybody else in trouble. I was interested in helping to create an atmosphere where people could begin to talk about the Armenian genocide to each other. After all, that’s the project of the Armenians who are living in Turkey and trying to survive there.
At the same time, I was somebody who is involved quite deeply in issues in India and I didn’t want to be some global intellectual who flies in, makes some superficial statements and then flies out. I wanted to relate the issue to what I knew and what I fought for, and tried to push a little bit more and a little bit more. And this is not a simple thing to do.
K.M.—The story that weaves your lecture together is that of your friend, David Barsamian’s mother, Araxie Barsamian. In an interview, you say, “I think that a story is like the surface of water, and you can take whatever you want from it.” What did you take from the story of Araxie Barsamian?
A.R.—In fact, David happened to be in India just before I went to Turkey and we talked about the issue. It mattered to me that I knew him. I’m not saying that if I didn’t know him I wouldn’t have spoken, but it suddenly became something that was more personal. I was having the discussion with a friend that there are people who talk about politics that is informative and politics that is transformative. These are such silly separations because in Turkey, for example, everybody knows what happened. It’s just that there’s a silence around it and you’re not allowed to say what happened. And when you say it, it becomes transformative in itself. I made my point through the words of David’s mother instead of going and saying, “Look, that bullet that was meant to silence Hrant Dink actually made someone like myself take the trouble to go and read history. Whether I say it or I don’t say it, you and I know what happened, and if you want to maintain the silence, then people here will have to fight with that, as I will have to fight with the celebration around genocide in India.”
This is something that a novel writer does. How you say what you want to say is as important as what you want to say. By telling Araxie Barsamian’s story, the history comes alive. You could say that 1.5 million people were killed or you could say that the grasshoppers arrived in Araxie Barsamian’s village…
K.M.—You spoke about the difference between speaking about the Armenian genocide outside and inside Turkey. But in your speech, you are quite bold: You do not come off as trying to imply things rather than stating them outright. You are not trying to avoid using the term genocide…
A.R.—When I started speaking about the term “genocide,” defining it, then talking about the history of genocide and what’s happening in India today—how Indian fascists killed Muslim—I wanted to make it clear that that the genocidal impulse has cut across religions and that the same ugly, fascist rhetoric that the Turks used against the Armenians has been used by the Christians against the Indians, has been used by the Nazis against the Jews, and today, it is being used by Hindus against Muslims. Genocide is such a complex process. The genocidal impulse has never been related to just one culture or just one religion. I spoke about the Armenian genocide and its denial openly to the extent that I could without shutting down the audience.
I would like to note that in my readings, one problem I realized is that many scholars who have studied the Armenian genocide in detail—almost all of them—keep on insisting that it was the first genocide of the 20th century and, in asserting that, they deny the other genocides that took place—for example, the genocide against the Herrero people in 1904. So I was also trying to talk about the Armenian genocide without giving the impression that some victims are more worthy than others.
K.M.—How was your lecture received?
A.R.—The important thing was that it was received. It wasn’t blocked out. It wasn’t denied. People didn’t say, “Oh, here’s a person who has come here to tell us about our own past.” That’s because I wasn’t just talking about the past of Turkey. For me, that was the way of guaranteeing that my talk was received.
The biggest thing is that it was received. It was taken in and it was thought about. I saw many people in tears in the hall. And I hope that in some tiny, little way, it will change the way this subject is spoken of. I might be presuming too much…
K.M.—As you point out in your lecture, genocide and gross human rights violations have plagued us for centuries and they continue to do so. What has changed?
A.R.—I don’t think that there’s been that much change in the genocidal impulse. Technology and industrialization have only enabled human beings to kill each other in larger numbers. I talked about the slaughter of 2,000 Muslims in the state of Gujarat in India. It was all on TV.
About three months ago, the killers were caught on camera talking about how they decided how to target the Muslim community, how it was all planned, how the police was involved, how the chief ministers were involved, how they murdered, how they raped. It was actually broadcast on TV and it worked in the favor of that party. The people who voted for them said, “This is what they deserve.” So I actually feel that this notion of the liberal conscience, of human conscience, is a fake notion. Today in India we are on the verge of something terrible. Like I say in the article, the grasshoppers have landed, and there is a kind of shutting down and cutting off of the poor from their resources, herding them off their land and rivers. And people are just watching. Their eyes are open but they are looking the other way. And again and again we think of the fact that in Germany when Jews were being exterminated, people must have been taking their children to piano lessons, violin lessons, worrying about their children’s homework. That kind of absolute lack of conscience is still present today. No amount of appeal to conscience can make any change. The only way disaster can be averted is if the people who are on the receiving end of that can resist.
Khatchig Mouradian is a journalist, writer and translator, currently based in Boston. He is the editor of the Armenian Weekly. He can be contacted at: khatchigm@hotmail.com.
By Khatchig Mouradian
The Armenian Weekly
Feb. 9, 2008
Arundhati Roy was born in 1959 in Shillong, India. She studied architecture in New Delhi, where she now lives, and has worked as a film designer, actor, and screenplay writer in India. Roy is the author of the novel The God of Small Things, (Random House/HarperPerennial) for which she received the 1997 Booker Prize. The novel has been translated into dozens of languages worldwide. She has written several non-fiction books: The Cost of Living (Random House/Modern Library), Power Politics (South End Press), War Talk (South End Press), An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire (South End Press) and Public Power in the Age of Empire (Seven Stories/Open Media).
Roy was featured in the BBC television documentary, “Dam/age,” which chronicles her work in support of the struggle against big dams in India and the contempt of court case that led to a prolonged legal case against her and eventually a one-day jail sentence in spring 2002. A collection of interviews with Arundhati Roy by David Barsamian was published as The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile (South End Press). Roy is the recipient of the 2002 Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Prize.
On Jan. 18, 2008, Roy delivered the Hrant Dink memorial lecture at Bosphorus University in Istanbul. In her lecture, titled “Listening to Grasshoppers: Genocide, Denial and Celebration,” Roy reflected on the legacy of Hrant Dink and dealt with the history of the “genocidal impulse,” the Armenian genocide of 1915 and the killing of Muslims in Gujarat, India in 2002.
Speaking about the slain editor of the Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos, Roy said, “I never met Hrant Dink, a misfortune that will be mine for time to come. From what I know of him, of what he wrote, what he said and did, how he lived his life, I know that had I been here in Istanbul a year ago I would have been among the one hundred thousand people who walked with his coffin in dead silence through the wintry streets of this city, with banners saying, ‘We are all Armenians,’ ‘We are all Hrant Dink.’ Perhaps I’d have carried the one that said, ‘One and a half million plus one.’”
“I wonder what thoughts would have gone through my head as I walked beside his coffin,” she added. “Maybe I would have heard a reprise of the voice of Araxie Barsamian, mother of my friend David Barsamian, telling the story of what happened to her and her family. She was ten years old in 1915. She remembered the swarms of grasshoppers that arrived in her village, Dubne, which was north of the historic city Dikranagert, now Diyarbakir. The village elders were alarmed, she said, because they knew in their bones that the grasshoppers were a bad omen. They were right; the end came in a few months, when the wheat in the fields was ready for harvesting.”
In this interview, conducted by phone on Feb. 2, we talk about some of the issues she raised in her lecture and reflect on genocide and resistance.
Khatchig Mouradian—What was going through your head when you were writing the speech for the commemoration in Istanbul of Hrant Dink’s assassination?
Arundhati Roy—These days, we are going through a kind of psychotic convulsion in India. Genocide and its celebration are in the air. And it’s terrifying for me to watch people celebrating genocide every day. It was at a time when I was very struck by this celebration in India and the denial in Turkey that they asked me to go to Istanbul.
When I landed in Istanbul, I realized that there’s a very big difference between what Armenians, Turks and others could say outside Turkey—where everybody could be very direct about the Armenian genocide—and inside Turkey—where, Hrant Dink, for example, was trying to find a way of saying things in order to continue living. His idea was to speak out, but not to die.
In Istanbul, I spoke with people and I was very concerned not to give the impression that I flew in, made a speech, and flew out leaving everybody else in trouble. I was interested in helping to create an atmosphere where people could begin to talk about the Armenian genocide to each other. After all, that’s the project of the Armenians who are living in Turkey and trying to survive there.
At the same time, I was somebody who is involved quite deeply in issues in India and I didn’t want to be some global intellectual who flies in, makes some superficial statements and then flies out. I wanted to relate the issue to what I knew and what I fought for, and tried to push a little bit more and a little bit more. And this is not a simple thing to do.
K.M.—The story that weaves your lecture together is that of your friend, David Barsamian’s mother, Araxie Barsamian. In an interview, you say, “I think that a story is like the surface of water, and you can take whatever you want from it.” What did you take from the story of Araxie Barsamian?
A.R.—In fact, David happened to be in India just before I went to Turkey and we talked about the issue. It mattered to me that I knew him. I’m not saying that if I didn’t know him I wouldn’t have spoken, but it suddenly became something that was more personal. I was having the discussion with a friend that there are people who talk about politics that is informative and politics that is transformative. These are such silly separations because in Turkey, for example, everybody knows what happened. It’s just that there’s a silence around it and you’re not allowed to say what happened. And when you say it, it becomes transformative in itself. I made my point through the words of David’s mother instead of going and saying, “Look, that bullet that was meant to silence Hrant Dink actually made someone like myself take the trouble to go and read history. Whether I say it or I don’t say it, you and I know what happened, and if you want to maintain the silence, then people here will have to fight with that, as I will have to fight with the celebration around genocide in India.”
This is something that a novel writer does. How you say what you want to say is as important as what you want to say. By telling Araxie Barsamian’s story, the history comes alive. You could say that 1.5 million people were killed or you could say that the grasshoppers arrived in Araxie Barsamian’s village…
K.M.—You spoke about the difference between speaking about the Armenian genocide outside and inside Turkey. But in your speech, you are quite bold: You do not come off as trying to imply things rather than stating them outright. You are not trying to avoid using the term genocide…
A.R.—When I started speaking about the term “genocide,” defining it, then talking about the history of genocide and what’s happening in India today—how Indian fascists killed Muslim—I wanted to make it clear that that the genocidal impulse has cut across religions and that the same ugly, fascist rhetoric that the Turks used against the Armenians has been used by the Christians against the Indians, has been used by the Nazis against the Jews, and today, it is being used by Hindus against Muslims. Genocide is such a complex process. The genocidal impulse has never been related to just one culture or just one religion. I spoke about the Armenian genocide and its denial openly to the extent that I could without shutting down the audience.
I would like to note that in my readings, one problem I realized is that many scholars who have studied the Armenian genocide in detail—almost all of them—keep on insisting that it was the first genocide of the 20th century and, in asserting that, they deny the other genocides that took place—for example, the genocide against the Herrero people in 1904. So I was also trying to talk about the Armenian genocide without giving the impression that some victims are more worthy than others.
K.M.—How was your lecture received?
A.R.—The important thing was that it was received. It wasn’t blocked out. It wasn’t denied. People didn’t say, “Oh, here’s a person who has come here to tell us about our own past.” That’s because I wasn’t just talking about the past of Turkey. For me, that was the way of guaranteeing that my talk was received.
The biggest thing is that it was received. It was taken in and it was thought about. I saw many people in tears in the hall. And I hope that in some tiny, little way, it will change the way this subject is spoken of. I might be presuming too much…
K.M.—As you point out in your lecture, genocide and gross human rights violations have plagued us for centuries and they continue to do so. What has changed?
A.R.—I don’t think that there’s been that much change in the genocidal impulse. Technology and industrialization have only enabled human beings to kill each other in larger numbers. I talked about the slaughter of 2,000 Muslims in the state of Gujarat in India. It was all on TV.
About three months ago, the killers were caught on camera talking about how they decided how to target the Muslim community, how it was all planned, how the police was involved, how the chief ministers were involved, how they murdered, how they raped. It was actually broadcast on TV and it worked in the favor of that party. The people who voted for them said, “This is what they deserve.” So I actually feel that this notion of the liberal conscience, of human conscience, is a fake notion. Today in India we are on the verge of something terrible. Like I say in the article, the grasshoppers have landed, and there is a kind of shutting down and cutting off of the poor from their resources, herding them off their land and rivers. And people are just watching. Their eyes are open but they are looking the other way. And again and again we think of the fact that in Germany when Jews were being exterminated, people must have been taking their children to piano lessons, violin lessons, worrying about their children’s homework. That kind of absolute lack of conscience is still present today. No amount of appeal to conscience can make any change. The only way disaster can be averted is if the people who are on the receiving end of that can resist.
Khatchig Mouradian is a journalist, writer and translator, currently based in Boston. He is the editor of the Armenian Weekly. He can be contacted at: khatchigm@hotmail.com.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
America Deserves
By Khatchig Mouradian
The Armenian Weekly
Feb. 2, 2008
“I know I haven’t spent a long time to learn the ways of Washington, but I’ve been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.”—Barack Obama
The ANCA this week decided to endorse Barack Obama as the Democratic Presidential candidate who can change “the ways of Washington” when it comes to issues of concern for Armenian-Americans and the anti-genocide community in the U.S. The decision was made because the ANCA, and the Armenian-American community on the whole, are sick and tired of the ways of Washington—the way continuous administrations have insulted the memory of the victims of the genocide and the ever-dwindling numbers of genocide survivors by trivializing their suffering. These survivors have since become citizens of this country, have fought and struggled for this nation, while their presidents—leaders of the free world—have yet to validate their history.
The Armenian-American community—and, we believe, every informed and concerned citizen of this country—cannot help but be sick and tired of how the ways of Washington and the ways of Ankara merge when it comes to denial, the falsification and complete disregard to the suffering of an entire people.
The Armenian-American community is also sick and tired of the way the Bush Administration has treated Armenia and the Karabakh question, succumbing more often than not to policies dictated by a country considered to be America’s ally—Turkey.
For all these, and many other reasons, America deserves a leader…America deserves a leader who will not say, “It is not the right time” when it comes to recognizing genocide.America deserves a leader who will not say that there’s “more important work to do” for Congress than setting the historical record straight.
America deserves a leader who will stand up against human rights violations, atrocities and genocide, whether past or present, whether committed by allies on enemies.
America deserves a leader who says, “I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington… I’m asking you to believe in yours.”
And, finally, America deserves a leader who says, “America deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the Armenian Genocide and responds forcefully to all genocides. I intend to be that President.” And stands by what s/he says. We look to Barack Obama to be that leader.
The Armenian Weekly
Feb. 2, 2008
“I know I haven’t spent a long time to learn the ways of Washington, but I’ve been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.”—Barack Obama
The ANCA this week decided to endorse Barack Obama as the Democratic Presidential candidate who can change “the ways of Washington” when it comes to issues of concern for Armenian-Americans and the anti-genocide community in the U.S. The decision was made because the ANCA, and the Armenian-American community on the whole, are sick and tired of the ways of Washington—the way continuous administrations have insulted the memory of the victims of the genocide and the ever-dwindling numbers of genocide survivors by trivializing their suffering. These survivors have since become citizens of this country, have fought and struggled for this nation, while their presidents—leaders of the free world—have yet to validate their history.
The Armenian-American community—and, we believe, every informed and concerned citizen of this country—cannot help but be sick and tired of how the ways of Washington and the ways of Ankara merge when it comes to denial, the falsification and complete disregard to the suffering of an entire people.
The Armenian-American community is also sick and tired of the way the Bush Administration has treated Armenia and the Karabakh question, succumbing more often than not to policies dictated by a country considered to be America’s ally—Turkey.
For all these, and many other reasons, America deserves a leader…America deserves a leader who will not say, “It is not the right time” when it comes to recognizing genocide.America deserves a leader who will not say that there’s “more important work to do” for Congress than setting the historical record straight.
America deserves a leader who will stand up against human rights violations, atrocities and genocide, whether past or present, whether committed by allies on enemies.
America deserves a leader who says, “I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington… I’m asking you to believe in yours.”
And, finally, America deserves a leader who says, “America deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the Armenian Genocide and responds forcefully to all genocides. I intend to be that President.” And stands by what s/he says. We look to Barack Obama to be that leader.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Genocide and Holocaust Scholars Criticize ADL Position on Armenian Genocide
By Khatchig Mouradian
WATERTOWN, Mass. (A.W.)—On Aug. 23, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) released a statement that reiterated its objection to the Armenian Genocide Resolution pending in Congress and continued to ambiguously recognize the Armenian genocide by calling “for further dispassionate scholarly examination of the details of those dark and terrible days.”
“The force and passion of the debate today leaves us more convinced than ever that this issue does not belong in a forum such as the United States Congress,” the statement read.
“We must encourage steps to create an atmosphere in which Armenia will respond favorably to the several recent overtures of Turkey to convene a joint commission to assist the parties in achieving a resolution of their profound differences,” it continued.
Several genocide and Holocaust experts expressed outrage over the idea of convening with Turkish state historians who have made a career out of denying and trivializing the Armenian genocide. When Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggested the idea of a “joint commission” a few years ago, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) sent an open letter to Erdogan saying, “We are concerned that in calling for an impartial study of the Armenian Genocide you may not be fully aware of the extent of the scholarly and intellectual record on the Armenian Genocide. … We want to underscore that it is not just Armenians who are affirming the Armenian Genocide but it is the overwhelming opinion of scholars who study genocide: hundreds of independent scholars.”
Genocide and Holocaust scholars in the U.S. and Europe, contacted by the Armenian Weekly today, harshly criticized the ADL’s statement as well as its hypocritical approach to the Armenian genocide in general.
“ADL is getting into the issue a bit late to be of any substance," said Dr. Stephen Feinstein, director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota. "Furthermore, by Foxman saying there was a need to protect the Turkish-Jewish community, the question is, protect from what if they have lived as a loyal minority for 500 years? This suggests that the ADL is missing the point and cannot be part of the discourse,” he added.
“A commission now would be a disaster. The Turkish state must make clear that they have a very strong intention to resolve this issue. The rhetoric of the Turkish authorities is not conducive of a solution. As long as people like Yusuf Halacoglu—a very radical, nationalist, even racist historian—Gunduz Aktan and Sukru Elekdag give the tone for the policy of Turkish government, I don’t think that you can reach any result from a commission,” said Turkish-born historian and sociologist Taner Akcam, author of A Shameful Act: The Armenian genocide and the Question of Turkish responsibility. “For them the commission would be the continuation of the war they are waging against the Armenians, whom they consider as the enemy,” he added.
“We don’t need a historical commission. We need historians to have completely free and open access to the archives in Turkey so scholars and anyone else can research, write and talk about this history without fear of intimidation,” said Professor Eric Weitz, author of A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation. “That is the key issue: free and open debate without intimidation from the state and from anti-democratic organizations that are allowed to operate with the tacit support of the state.”
“Furthermore, not the regional ADL leader [Andy Tarsy] but Abraham Foxman should be fired," Weitz added. "He should have been fired a long time ago for many other statements and comments in addition to his long-standing refusal to recognize the Armenian genocide.”
“I’m entirely in agreement with Eric Weitz on the access [to archives] and free debate,” said Dr. Donald Bloxham of the University of Edinburgh who was recently awarded the 2007 Raphael Lemkin prize for his book The Great game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians.
“And I reject the silly commission idea,” Bloxham added.
WATERTOWN, Mass. (A.W.)—On Aug. 23, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) released a statement that reiterated its objection to the Armenian Genocide Resolution pending in Congress and continued to ambiguously recognize the Armenian genocide by calling “for further dispassionate scholarly examination of the details of those dark and terrible days.”
“The force and passion of the debate today leaves us more convinced than ever that this issue does not belong in a forum such as the United States Congress,” the statement read.
“We must encourage steps to create an atmosphere in which Armenia will respond favorably to the several recent overtures of Turkey to convene a joint commission to assist the parties in achieving a resolution of their profound differences,” it continued.
Several genocide and Holocaust experts expressed outrage over the idea of convening with Turkish state historians who have made a career out of denying and trivializing the Armenian genocide. When Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggested the idea of a “joint commission” a few years ago, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) sent an open letter to Erdogan saying, “We are concerned that in calling for an impartial study of the Armenian Genocide you may not be fully aware of the extent of the scholarly and intellectual record on the Armenian Genocide. … We want to underscore that it is not just Armenians who are affirming the Armenian Genocide but it is the overwhelming opinion of scholars who study genocide: hundreds of independent scholars.”
Genocide and Holocaust scholars in the U.S. and Europe, contacted by the Armenian Weekly today, harshly criticized the ADL’s statement as well as its hypocritical approach to the Armenian genocide in general.
“ADL is getting into the issue a bit late to be of any substance," said Dr. Stephen Feinstein, director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota. "Furthermore, by Foxman saying there was a need to protect the Turkish-Jewish community, the question is, protect from what if they have lived as a loyal minority for 500 years? This suggests that the ADL is missing the point and cannot be part of the discourse,” he added.
“A commission now would be a disaster. The Turkish state must make clear that they have a very strong intention to resolve this issue. The rhetoric of the Turkish authorities is not conducive of a solution. As long as people like Yusuf Halacoglu—a very radical, nationalist, even racist historian—Gunduz Aktan and Sukru Elekdag give the tone for the policy of Turkish government, I don’t think that you can reach any result from a commission,” said Turkish-born historian and sociologist Taner Akcam, author of A Shameful Act: The Armenian genocide and the Question of Turkish responsibility. “For them the commission would be the continuation of the war they are waging against the Armenians, whom they consider as the enemy,” he added.
“We don’t need a historical commission. We need historians to have completely free and open access to the archives in Turkey so scholars and anyone else can research, write and talk about this history without fear of intimidation,” said Professor Eric Weitz, author of A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation. “That is the key issue: free and open debate without intimidation from the state and from anti-democratic organizations that are allowed to operate with the tacit support of the state.”
“Furthermore, not the regional ADL leader [Andy Tarsy] but Abraham Foxman should be fired," Weitz added. "He should have been fired a long time ago for many other statements and comments in addition to his long-standing refusal to recognize the Armenian genocide.”
“I’m entirely in agreement with Eric Weitz on the access [to archives] and free debate,” said Dr. Donald Bloxham of the University of Edinburgh who was recently awarded the 2007 Raphael Lemkin prize for his book The Great game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians.
“And I reject the silly commission idea,” Bloxham added.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Regional Board urges ADL National to reinstate Tarsy
By Raphael Kohan
The Jewish Advocate
Thursday August 23 2007
Committee also calls for vote to address congressional resolution
The New England Region of the Anti-Defamation League adopted two resolutions in an early-morning meeting Wednesday to address the rift between its office and national headquarters.
The resolutions, adopted unanimously – apart from one abstention – called for the reinstatement of fired Executive Director Andrew H. Tarsy and urged the national office to address whether it should take a “pro-active position” in a congressional resolution acknowledging the Armenian genocide.
Neither Tarsy nor National Director Abraham H. Foxman were present at the meeting, which was attended by about 70 board members.
“Everyone wants to move on,” Regional Board Chairman James Rudolph told the Advocate. “Our board is clear that we want to have Andy reinstated, if that’s possible.”
Speaking to the Advocate from Israel prior to Wednesday’s meeting, Combined Jewish Philanthropies President Barry Shrage said reinstating Tarsy would restore unity to the community.
“I think it will help the healing process in Boston, especially because the issue it stemmed from has been resolved,” he added.
Earlier this week, Foxman said Tarsy “fired himself” when he publicly dissented from national policy. Foxman also described Tarsy’s future with the organization as a management decision and “nobody’s business.”
Wednesday’s resolutions mark the latest development in the ongoing controversy that began in Watertown last month. On Tuesday, after mounting criticism and a community backlash, national ADL reversed its position on the massacre of Armenians during World War I, recognizing the events as genocide. Foxman explained in a statement that the organization changed its stance after he consulted with Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel and other historians.
The move came after dozens of Boston Jewish organization, spearheaded by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, signed onto a community statement that called on the ADL national office to “reconsider their position on this issue.”
Many local Jewish leaders welcomed the change from national ADL.
“This is a huge step forward,” said Nancy K. Kaufman, executive director of the JCRC. “The key issue here was the issue of genocide, and the change is important and positive.”
Those close to the matter said it was unusual for Jewish organizations to break ranks and publicly condemn a fellow Jewish group. JCRC’s community statement represented a shift in handling ideological disputes.
“I thought that was so hurtful and destructive,” said Foxman of the community statement. “I didn’t know any other way to stop this avalanche, which will undermine the Jewish community.”
Foxman’s new position on the term genocide, however, did not include a shift in the organization’s stance on a congressional resolution surrounding the genocide, which Foxman described as “counterproductive.”
“The significance of putting [the congressional resolution] on the national agenda is it provides an opportunity to discuss the resolution,” said Rudolph. “Personally, I’ve learned that the resolution is a very complex issue. It will be debated nationally.”
One of the recent challenges for the ADL has been reconciling its mission statement, which reads, “To stop the defamation of the Jewish people … to secure justice and fair treatment to all,” with its real-life policy. Prior to his dramatic reversal, critics called Foxman’s stance hypocritical, since he protects the memory of the Holocaust but refused to acknowledge the genocide of another people.
“Sometimes these missions are in conflict,” said Foxman.
Board Member Jason Chudnofsky suggested that Foxman needs to clarify the mission of the ADL.
“He’s gotten himself into a real challenge right now on his own mission statement,” said Chudnofsky.
Regardless of how Wednesday’s resolutions are handled by the national office, this controversy represented a blow to the ADL, according to Jonathan Sarna, professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University.
“I think this issue will weaken both the local and national organizations and will be looked upon as a case study of how not to deal with an issue of this sort,” said Sarna.
Meanwhile, Newton, Lowell and Arlington may follow Watertown’s lead in severing ties with the ADL-sponsored program No Place for Hate.
Khatchig Mouradian, editor of the Armenian Weekly Newspaper, said ADL’s new stance will have little impact on improving relations between the Armenian community and the human rights organization.
“There’s still a lot of outrage,” said Mouradian.
But what shouldn’t go unnoticed, he added, is the role of the Jewish community in prompting ADL’s changed stance.
“This recognition would not have been possible without the support of many righteous Jews and the Jewish community in general,” said Mouradian. “I hope this support continues until the ADL starts working for the resolution or at least stops working against it. I don’t want to give Abe Foxman a medal for recognizing the Armenian genocide after so many years of denying it.”
The Jewish Advocate
Thursday August 23 2007
Committee also calls for vote to address congressional resolution
The New England Region of the Anti-Defamation League adopted two resolutions in an early-morning meeting Wednesday to address the rift between its office and national headquarters.
The resolutions, adopted unanimously – apart from one abstention – called for the reinstatement of fired Executive Director Andrew H. Tarsy and urged the national office to address whether it should take a “pro-active position” in a congressional resolution acknowledging the Armenian genocide.
Neither Tarsy nor National Director Abraham H. Foxman were present at the meeting, which was attended by about 70 board members.
“Everyone wants to move on,” Regional Board Chairman James Rudolph told the Advocate. “Our board is clear that we want to have Andy reinstated, if that’s possible.”
Speaking to the Advocate from Israel prior to Wednesday’s meeting, Combined Jewish Philanthropies President Barry Shrage said reinstating Tarsy would restore unity to the community.
“I think it will help the healing process in Boston, especially because the issue it stemmed from has been resolved,” he added.
Earlier this week, Foxman said Tarsy “fired himself” when he publicly dissented from national policy. Foxman also described Tarsy’s future with the organization as a management decision and “nobody’s business.”
Wednesday’s resolutions mark the latest development in the ongoing controversy that began in Watertown last month. On Tuesday, after mounting criticism and a community backlash, national ADL reversed its position on the massacre of Armenians during World War I, recognizing the events as genocide. Foxman explained in a statement that the organization changed its stance after he consulted with Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel and other historians.
The move came after dozens of Boston Jewish organization, spearheaded by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, signed onto a community statement that called on the ADL national office to “reconsider their position on this issue.”
Many local Jewish leaders welcomed the change from national ADL.
“This is a huge step forward,” said Nancy K. Kaufman, executive director of the JCRC. “The key issue here was the issue of genocide, and the change is important and positive.”
Those close to the matter said it was unusual for Jewish organizations to break ranks and publicly condemn a fellow Jewish group. JCRC’s community statement represented a shift in handling ideological disputes.
“I thought that was so hurtful and destructive,” said Foxman of the community statement. “I didn’t know any other way to stop this avalanche, which will undermine the Jewish community.”
Foxman’s new position on the term genocide, however, did not include a shift in the organization’s stance on a congressional resolution surrounding the genocide, which Foxman described as “counterproductive.”
“The significance of putting [the congressional resolution] on the national agenda is it provides an opportunity to discuss the resolution,” said Rudolph. “Personally, I’ve learned that the resolution is a very complex issue. It will be debated nationally.”
One of the recent challenges for the ADL has been reconciling its mission statement, which reads, “To stop the defamation of the Jewish people … to secure justice and fair treatment to all,” with its real-life policy. Prior to his dramatic reversal, critics called Foxman’s stance hypocritical, since he protects the memory of the Holocaust but refused to acknowledge the genocide of another people.
“Sometimes these missions are in conflict,” said Foxman.
Board Member Jason Chudnofsky suggested that Foxman needs to clarify the mission of the ADL.
“He’s gotten himself into a real challenge right now on his own mission statement,” said Chudnofsky.
Regardless of how Wednesday’s resolutions are handled by the national office, this controversy represented a blow to the ADL, according to Jonathan Sarna, professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University.
“I think this issue will weaken both the local and national organizations and will be looked upon as a case study of how not to deal with an issue of this sort,” said Sarna.
Meanwhile, Newton, Lowell and Arlington may follow Watertown’s lead in severing ties with the ADL-sponsored program No Place for Hate.
Khatchig Mouradian, editor of the Armenian Weekly Newspaper, said ADL’s new stance will have little impact on improving relations between the Armenian community and the human rights organization.
“There’s still a lot of outrage,” said Mouradian.
But what shouldn’t go unnoticed, he added, is the role of the Jewish community in prompting ADL’s changed stance.
“This recognition would not have been possible without the support of many righteous Jews and the Jewish community in general,” said Mouradian. “I hope this support continues until the ADL starts working for the resolution or at least stops working against it. I don’t want to give Abe Foxman a medal for recognizing the Armenian genocide after so many years of denying it.”
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Commemorating the Armenian Genocide
Commemorating the Armenian Genocide
by Khatchig Mouradian
ZNet
April 23, 2006
“Today I bow down before the memory of all Armenians who lost their lives and look forward to the day when the souls of their grandchildren will finally be at peace. In order for our souls, however, to be at peace, and for this country [Turkey] to account for this crime against humanity, I guess people have to make many more journeys to the past to see the truth,” says Turkish Human Rights activist Nese Ozan. She is referring to the deportation and massacre of the Armenians in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire, a genocide commemorated every year on April 24 by their descendents around the world.
Although the Armenian Genocide is acknowledged by most genocide scholars and many parliaments around the world, the Turkish state continues to vehemently deny that there was a state-sponsored annihilation process that took the lives of approximately 1.5 million Armenians living in their ancestral lands. The Armenians were, it argues, the victims of ethnic strife or war and starvation, just like many Muslims living in the Ottoman Empire during WWI. Moreover, according to the official historiography in Turkey, the number of the Armenians that died due to these “unfortunate events” is exaggerated.
Ozan, a metallurgy engineer by education, recounts to me how two years ago, she embarked on a “journey to the past” to find what is left of the Sourp Sarkis Church and the Mesropian School, two of the countless reminders in modern day Turkey of the destruction that befell upon the Armenians in 1915. “When you asked me to write what I feel about April 24, I remembered how we stood watching, engulfed in a deep sorrow, the ruins, hiding in them the memory of the long lost lives,” says Ozan.
A growing number of intellectuals and activists in Turkey are, like Ozan, speaking up about the importance of facing the past and recognizing the horrors committed against the Armenians. In a country shaped with a predominantly nationalist ideology, in a country where human rights violations and oppression of minorities had become the norm for the better part of the 20th century, speaking about one of the greatest taboos in Turkey could get one in all sorts of troubles. Examples abound. In 1994, for the first time in Turkey, a book affirming the Armenian Genocide was printed by publisher Ragip Zarakolu. Soon afterwards, his editorial office was bombed. More recently, world renowned Turkish author Orhan Pamuk was taken to court for “denigrating Turkish identity” by telling the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger in February 2005 that “30,000 Kurds and one million Armenians were killed in these lands [Turkey].” The court case was eventually dropped. Many similar cases, however, are pending, and many others have concluded in prison sentences and fines. Turkish scholars like Halil Berktay and Murat Belge, who publish and speak in Turkey about the mass annihilation of the Armenians, are bombarded with hate-mail and are subjected to slanders by Turkish nationalists.
Mujgan Arpat, a Turkish TV reporter and Human Rights activist, also commemorates the Armenian Genocide. “For me too, April 24 is the date marking the start of the Armenian Genocide planned by the leaders of Committee of Union and Progress (CUP),” she tells me.
In 1908, the CUP gained control in the Ottoman Empire, with promises of sweeping reforms and equal rights to all peoples of the empire. However, in 1913, the nationalist faction of the CUP, keen on cleansing Turkey from non-Muslim peoples, gained control of the CUP and, under the guise of World War I, embarked on the deportation and the massacre of the Armenians living in the Empire. “The Armenian Genocide was largely a by-product of the First World war –as far as its successful execution is concerned. But the preconditions were already created through an ideology that aimed at transforming the troublesome heterogeneous social structure of the Ottoman Empire into a more or less homogeneous one,” explains Taner Akcam, the first Turkish Scholar to publicly acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, in his book “From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide” ( Zed Books, 2004).
However, this was not the first round of mass- killings against the Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire. As Arpat recounts, “In the pre-Genocide period, the perpetrators of the 1894-96 pogroms and 1909 massacres, also known as “Hamidiye massacres”, had gone unpunished and this was one of the factors that encouraged the perpetrators of the Genocide.”
“What stands in the way of Turkey’s confronting its past is the fact that the Turkish Republic was founded by the very same figures who were in leading positions in the Committee of Union and Progress,” notes Arpat.
According to many historians, the Turkish Republic was built on genocide and the Turkish state understands that recognizing the Armenian Genocide would shake its foundations. In an interview, Turkish sociologist Fatma Muge Gocek, an Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Michigan, agrees with them. However, “If there is a foundation and you know there are problems with it, would you live in that house?” she asks. “You would know that at one point, it's going to cause trouble. You know you'll eventually have to fix the foundation. Otherwise, the whole thing will collapse,” she notes.
Gocek herself had the following to say to the Armenians commemorating the 91st anniversary of the Armenian Genocide this year: “I want you to know that as an ethnic Turk I am not guilty, but I am responsible for the wounds that have been inflicted upon you, Armenians, for the last century and a half. I am responsible for the wounds that were first delivered upon you through an unjust deportation from your ancestral lands and through massacres in the hands of a government that should have been there to protect you. I am also responsible for the wounds caused by the Turkish state’s denial to this day of what happened to you back then. I am responsible because all of this occurred and still occurs in the country of which I am a citizen. Yet I want to tell you that I personally travel every year to your ancestral lands to envision what was once there and what is not now. When I am there, I realize again and again how much your departure has broken the human spirit and warped the land and the people. I become more and more aware of the darkness that has set in since the disappearance of so many lives, minds, hopes and dreams.”
Ayse Gunaysu, an activist from the Istanbul Branch of the Human Rights Association of Turkey, wrote the following when I asked her about her thoughts on the Armenian Genocide: “Asia Minor never found peace, happiness and well-being after the Armenian Genocide. A big curse fell upon this land. The settlements where once artisans, manufacturers, and tradesmen produced and traded goods, where theatres and schools disseminated knowledge and aesthetic fulfillment, where churches and monasteries refined the souls, where beautiful architecture embodied a great, ancient culture; in short, a civilized, lively urban world was turned into a rural area of vast, barren, silent, uninhabited land and settlements marked by buildings without a history and without a personality.”
Gunaysu continued that, “Governments brought highways and electricity and water supply systems, which are the symbols of civilization but the land didn’t even become half as civilized as it was a century ago. The history of the homeland of Armenians since then has always been marked with bloodshed. Kurdish uprisings, their violent suppression, massacres never ended. No democracy prevails; no hope for the future is nurtured. Yes, the Armenian Genocide left these lands damned. Only agony, deprivation, conflicts, killings, unsolved murders, disappearances under custody, rapes linger. Bloodshed continues. It will continue until the day Turkey surrenders to the call of conscience, sense of justice, and honest confrontation with its past.”
Unfortunately, 91 years after the Armenian Genocide, there are very few survivors of the horrors of 1915 who are still alive and who could be comforted by the words of courageous Turkish-born individuals who acknowledge their suffering and apologize. The descendents of those survivors, however, will lay wreaths on genocide memorials around the world today, knowing that a minority of Turks are also commemorating-- in their own way-- with them, in a country that will, hopefully, one day build its own memorials of the Armenian Genocide.
by Khatchig Mouradian
ZNet
April 23, 2006
“Today I bow down before the memory of all Armenians who lost their lives and look forward to the day when the souls of their grandchildren will finally be at peace. In order for our souls, however, to be at peace, and for this country [Turkey] to account for this crime against humanity, I guess people have to make many more journeys to the past to see the truth,” says Turkish Human Rights activist Nese Ozan. She is referring to the deportation and massacre of the Armenians in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire, a genocide commemorated every year on April 24 by their descendents around the world.
Although the Armenian Genocide is acknowledged by most genocide scholars and many parliaments around the world, the Turkish state continues to vehemently deny that there was a state-sponsored annihilation process that took the lives of approximately 1.5 million Armenians living in their ancestral lands. The Armenians were, it argues, the victims of ethnic strife or war and starvation, just like many Muslims living in the Ottoman Empire during WWI. Moreover, according to the official historiography in Turkey, the number of the Armenians that died due to these “unfortunate events” is exaggerated.
Ozan, a metallurgy engineer by education, recounts to me how two years ago, she embarked on a “journey to the past” to find what is left of the Sourp Sarkis Church and the Mesropian School, two of the countless reminders in modern day Turkey of the destruction that befell upon the Armenians in 1915. “When you asked me to write what I feel about April 24, I remembered how we stood watching, engulfed in a deep sorrow, the ruins, hiding in them the memory of the long lost lives,” says Ozan.
A growing number of intellectuals and activists in Turkey are, like Ozan, speaking up about the importance of facing the past and recognizing the horrors committed against the Armenians. In a country shaped with a predominantly nationalist ideology, in a country where human rights violations and oppression of minorities had become the norm for the better part of the 20th century, speaking about one of the greatest taboos in Turkey could get one in all sorts of troubles. Examples abound. In 1994, for the first time in Turkey, a book affirming the Armenian Genocide was printed by publisher Ragip Zarakolu. Soon afterwards, his editorial office was bombed. More recently, world renowned Turkish author Orhan Pamuk was taken to court for “denigrating Turkish identity” by telling the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger in February 2005 that “30,000 Kurds and one million Armenians were killed in these lands [Turkey].” The court case was eventually dropped. Many similar cases, however, are pending, and many others have concluded in prison sentences and fines. Turkish scholars like Halil Berktay and Murat Belge, who publish and speak in Turkey about the mass annihilation of the Armenians, are bombarded with hate-mail and are subjected to slanders by Turkish nationalists.
Mujgan Arpat, a Turkish TV reporter and Human Rights activist, also commemorates the Armenian Genocide. “For me too, April 24 is the date marking the start of the Armenian Genocide planned by the leaders of Committee of Union and Progress (CUP),” she tells me.
In 1908, the CUP gained control in the Ottoman Empire, with promises of sweeping reforms and equal rights to all peoples of the empire. However, in 1913, the nationalist faction of the CUP, keen on cleansing Turkey from non-Muslim peoples, gained control of the CUP and, under the guise of World War I, embarked on the deportation and the massacre of the Armenians living in the Empire. “The Armenian Genocide was largely a by-product of the First World war –as far as its successful execution is concerned. But the preconditions were already created through an ideology that aimed at transforming the troublesome heterogeneous social structure of the Ottoman Empire into a more or less homogeneous one,” explains Taner Akcam, the first Turkish Scholar to publicly acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, in his book “From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide” ( Zed Books, 2004).
However, this was not the first round of mass- killings against the Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire. As Arpat recounts, “In the pre-Genocide period, the perpetrators of the 1894-96 pogroms and 1909 massacres, also known as “Hamidiye massacres”, had gone unpunished and this was one of the factors that encouraged the perpetrators of the Genocide.”
“What stands in the way of Turkey’s confronting its past is the fact that the Turkish Republic was founded by the very same figures who were in leading positions in the Committee of Union and Progress,” notes Arpat.
According to many historians, the Turkish Republic was built on genocide and the Turkish state understands that recognizing the Armenian Genocide would shake its foundations. In an interview, Turkish sociologist Fatma Muge Gocek, an Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Michigan, agrees with them. However, “If there is a foundation and you know there are problems with it, would you live in that house?” she asks. “You would know that at one point, it's going to cause trouble. You know you'll eventually have to fix the foundation. Otherwise, the whole thing will collapse,” she notes.
Gocek herself had the following to say to the Armenians commemorating the 91st anniversary of the Armenian Genocide this year: “I want you to know that as an ethnic Turk I am not guilty, but I am responsible for the wounds that have been inflicted upon you, Armenians, for the last century and a half. I am responsible for the wounds that were first delivered upon you through an unjust deportation from your ancestral lands and through massacres in the hands of a government that should have been there to protect you. I am also responsible for the wounds caused by the Turkish state’s denial to this day of what happened to you back then. I am responsible because all of this occurred and still occurs in the country of which I am a citizen. Yet I want to tell you that I personally travel every year to your ancestral lands to envision what was once there and what is not now. When I am there, I realize again and again how much your departure has broken the human spirit and warped the land and the people. I become more and more aware of the darkness that has set in since the disappearance of so many lives, minds, hopes and dreams.”
Ayse Gunaysu, an activist from the Istanbul Branch of the Human Rights Association of Turkey, wrote the following when I asked her about her thoughts on the Armenian Genocide: “Asia Minor never found peace, happiness and well-being after the Armenian Genocide. A big curse fell upon this land. The settlements where once artisans, manufacturers, and tradesmen produced and traded goods, where theatres and schools disseminated knowledge and aesthetic fulfillment, where churches and monasteries refined the souls, where beautiful architecture embodied a great, ancient culture; in short, a civilized, lively urban world was turned into a rural area of vast, barren, silent, uninhabited land and settlements marked by buildings without a history and without a personality.”
Gunaysu continued that, “Governments brought highways and electricity and water supply systems, which are the symbols of civilization but the land didn’t even become half as civilized as it was a century ago. The history of the homeland of Armenians since then has always been marked with bloodshed. Kurdish uprisings, their violent suppression, massacres never ended. No democracy prevails; no hope for the future is nurtured. Yes, the Armenian Genocide left these lands damned. Only agony, deprivation, conflicts, killings, unsolved murders, disappearances under custody, rapes linger. Bloodshed continues. It will continue until the day Turkey surrenders to the call of conscience, sense of justice, and honest confrontation with its past.”
Unfortunately, 91 years after the Armenian Genocide, there are very few survivors of the horrors of 1915 who are still alive and who could be comforted by the words of courageous Turkish-born individuals who acknowledge their suffering and apologize. The descendents of those survivors, however, will lay wreaths on genocide memorials around the world today, knowing that a minority of Turks are also commemorating-- in their own way-- with them, in a country that will, hopefully, one day build its own memorials of the Armenian Genocide.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
A Storyteller's Quest
A Storyteller's Quest
by Khatchig Mouradian
ZNet
March 14, 2006
"Anatolia has always been a mosaic of flowers,
filling the world with flowers and light.
I want it to be the same today"
Yasar Kemal
The Anatolia Yasar Kemal, arguably the greatest Turkish author of the 20th century, wants to see and the Anatolia he can actually see today cannot possibly be considered the same region of Turkey. What was a century ago a mosaic of ethnic and religious groups (Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, Turks, Kurds, etc.) is now almost homogenized through blood and destruction, and the memory of many of the peoples that once dwelled in the region of Eastern Turkey is being negligently allowed to pass into oblivion.
A number of Turkish intellectuals are striving to push Turkey to face its past and recognize the "mosaic of flowers" that Anatolia once was. Will their vision one day become reality? Much depends on the changes currently taking place in Turkey. Novelist Elif Shafak, one of the courageous intellectuals struggling today for the preservation of memory and recognition of cultural diversity, spoke to me of Turkey today and the Turkey she would like to see tomorrow.
The Two Faces of Turkey
"I feel connected to so many things in Turkey, especially in Istanbul. The city, the people, the customs of women, the enchanting world of superstitions, my grandmother's almost magical cosmos, my mother's humanism, and the warmth, the sincerity of the people," Shafak tells me, speaking of her native country. "At the same time I feel no connection whatsoever to its main ideology, its state structure and army," she notes.
Turkey is the country of opposites which oftentimes, defying the laws of physics, repel one another. Eastern and Western, Islamic and secular at the same time, the country is torn between democracy and dictatorship, memory and amnesia. These dualities, bordering on schizophrenia, are unsettling for Shafak, an author of five published novels. "I think there are two undercurrents in Turkey, both very old. One is nationalist, exclusivist, xenophobic and reactionary. The other is cosmopolitan, Sufi, humanist, embracing. It is the second tide that I feel connected to," she says.
Not surprisingly, the first tide she mentions is not at all happy with her line of conduct. Hate-mail and accusations of being a traitor to her country have become commonplace for the young writer.
"The nationalist discourse in Turkey-- just like the Republicans in the USA-- is that if you are criticizing your government, you do not like your nation. This is a lie. Only and only if you care about something you will reflect upon it, give it further thought. I care about Turkey. It hurts me to be accused of hating my country," she explains.
However, Elif Shafak, who spent most of her childhood and adolescence in Europe and later moved to Turkey to pursue her studies, is anything but wrong when she points out that her country has come a long way in the last few years. "There are very important changes underway in Turkey. Sometimes, in the West, Turkey looks more black-and-white than it really is, but the fact remains that Turkey's civil society is multifaceted and very dynamic. Especially over the past two decades there have been fundamental transformations," she says.
"The bigger the change, the deeper the panic of those who want to preserve the status quo," she adds.
A cornered tiger is the fiercest, however, as an Eastern proverb says. This is why the prospect of membership to the European Union (EU) is deemed necessary by the country’s cosmopolitan undercurrent, which is struggling against the status quo. For decades, those, who have dared to challenge the official rhetoric on a wide spectrum of issues, have faced oppression, persecution, and imprisonment, and they know well that the only way not to take the country back in time is to keep it going in the direction of the EU. Shafak herself believes that Turkey's bid to join the EU "is an important process for progressive forces both within and outside the country". She adds: "Definitely the whole process will reinforce democracy, human rights and minority rights. It will diminish the role of the state apparatuses, and most importantly the shadow of the military in the political arena."
Dealing with the Turkish Society's 'Underbelly'
"For me, the recognition of 1915 is connected to my love for democracy and human rights," says Shafak. 1915 is the year when the Turkish government embarked on a genocidal campaign to exterminate the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire. This topic remained the greatest of all taboos in Turkey until very recently.
Although the Armenian genocide is acknowledged by most genocide scholars and many parliaments around the world, the Turkish government's official stand maintains that the Armenians were not subjected to a state sponsored annihilation process that killed more than a million and a half people in 1915-16. The Armenians were, the Turkish official viewpoint argues, the victims of ethnic strife or war and starvation, just like many Muslims living in the Ottoman Empire during WWI. Moreover, according to the official historiography in Turkey, the number of the Armenians that died due to these "unfortunate events" is exaggerated.
Like a growing number of fellow Turkish intellectuals, it is against this policy of denial that Elif Shafak rages. "If we had been able to face the atrocities committed against the Armenians in Anatolia, it would have been more difficult for the Turkish state to commit atrocities against the Kurds," she argues.
"A society based on amnesia cannot have a mature democracy," she adds.
Why did she choose to tackle this very sensitive issue, knowing well that harassment and threats were inevitable? "I am a storyteller. If I cannot "feel" other people's pain and grief, I better quit what I am doing. So there is an emotional aspect for me in that I have always felt connected to those pushed to the margins and silenced rather than those at the center", she notes. "This is the pattern in each and every one of my novels; I deal with Turkish society's underbelly."
Her upcoming novel, "The Bastard of Istanbul", is no exception. The Turkish translation of the novel, titled “Baba ve Pic” was released in Turkey on March 8, 2006. The original novel in English will be released in the U.S. in January 2007 out of Penguin/Viking press. "The novel is highly critical of the sexist and nationalist fabric of Turkish society. It is the story of four generations of women in Istanbul. At some point their stories converge with the story of an Armenian woman and, thereby, an Armenian-American family. I have used this family in San Francisco and the family in Istanbul as mirrors," she explains. "Basically, the novel testifies to the struggle of amnesia and memory. It deals with painful pasts both at the individual and collective level," she adds.
The Turkey she would like to see in 2015, a century after the Armenian genocide, stands in deep contrast to the Turkey the world has known for the better part of the past century. It is "a Turkey that is part of EU, a Turkey where women do not get killed on the basis of "family honor", a Turkey where there is no gender discrimination, no violations against minorities; a Turkey which is not xenophobic, homophobic, where each and every individual is treated as valuably as the reflection of the Jamal side of God, its beauty."
It would be hard to disagree with Shafak that only in the Turkey she envisions can cosmopolitism overshadow nationalism and remembrance emerge victorious over denial.
by Khatchig Mouradian
ZNet
March 14, 2006
"Anatolia has always been a mosaic of flowers,
filling the world with flowers and light.
I want it to be the same today"
Yasar Kemal
The Anatolia Yasar Kemal, arguably the greatest Turkish author of the 20th century, wants to see and the Anatolia he can actually see today cannot possibly be considered the same region of Turkey. What was a century ago a mosaic of ethnic and religious groups (Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, Turks, Kurds, etc.) is now almost homogenized through blood and destruction, and the memory of many of the peoples that once dwelled in the region of Eastern Turkey is being negligently allowed to pass into oblivion.
A number of Turkish intellectuals are striving to push Turkey to face its past and recognize the "mosaic of flowers" that Anatolia once was. Will their vision one day become reality? Much depends on the changes currently taking place in Turkey. Novelist Elif Shafak, one of the courageous intellectuals struggling today for the preservation of memory and recognition of cultural diversity, spoke to me of Turkey today and the Turkey she would like to see tomorrow.
The Two Faces of Turkey
"I feel connected to so many things in Turkey, especially in Istanbul. The city, the people, the customs of women, the enchanting world of superstitions, my grandmother's almost magical cosmos, my mother's humanism, and the warmth, the sincerity of the people," Shafak tells me, speaking of her native country. "At the same time I feel no connection whatsoever to its main ideology, its state structure and army," she notes.
Turkey is the country of opposites which oftentimes, defying the laws of physics, repel one another. Eastern and Western, Islamic and secular at the same time, the country is torn between democracy and dictatorship, memory and amnesia. These dualities, bordering on schizophrenia, are unsettling for Shafak, an author of five published novels. "I think there are two undercurrents in Turkey, both very old. One is nationalist, exclusivist, xenophobic and reactionary. The other is cosmopolitan, Sufi, humanist, embracing. It is the second tide that I feel connected to," she says.
Not surprisingly, the first tide she mentions is not at all happy with her line of conduct. Hate-mail and accusations of being a traitor to her country have become commonplace for the young writer.
"The nationalist discourse in Turkey-- just like the Republicans in the USA-- is that if you are criticizing your government, you do not like your nation. This is a lie. Only and only if you care about something you will reflect upon it, give it further thought. I care about Turkey. It hurts me to be accused of hating my country," she explains.
However, Elif Shafak, who spent most of her childhood and adolescence in Europe and later moved to Turkey to pursue her studies, is anything but wrong when she points out that her country has come a long way in the last few years. "There are very important changes underway in Turkey. Sometimes, in the West, Turkey looks more black-and-white than it really is, but the fact remains that Turkey's civil society is multifaceted and very dynamic. Especially over the past two decades there have been fundamental transformations," she says.
"The bigger the change, the deeper the panic of those who want to preserve the status quo," she adds.
A cornered tiger is the fiercest, however, as an Eastern proverb says. This is why the prospect of membership to the European Union (EU) is deemed necessary by the country’s cosmopolitan undercurrent, which is struggling against the status quo. For decades, those, who have dared to challenge the official rhetoric on a wide spectrum of issues, have faced oppression, persecution, and imprisonment, and they know well that the only way not to take the country back in time is to keep it going in the direction of the EU. Shafak herself believes that Turkey's bid to join the EU "is an important process for progressive forces both within and outside the country". She adds: "Definitely the whole process will reinforce democracy, human rights and minority rights. It will diminish the role of the state apparatuses, and most importantly the shadow of the military in the political arena."
Dealing with the Turkish Society's 'Underbelly'
"For me, the recognition of 1915 is connected to my love for democracy and human rights," says Shafak. 1915 is the year when the Turkish government embarked on a genocidal campaign to exterminate the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire. This topic remained the greatest of all taboos in Turkey until very recently.
Although the Armenian genocide is acknowledged by most genocide scholars and many parliaments around the world, the Turkish government's official stand maintains that the Armenians were not subjected to a state sponsored annihilation process that killed more than a million and a half people in 1915-16. The Armenians were, the Turkish official viewpoint argues, the victims of ethnic strife or war and starvation, just like many Muslims living in the Ottoman Empire during WWI. Moreover, according to the official historiography in Turkey, the number of the Armenians that died due to these "unfortunate events" is exaggerated.
Like a growing number of fellow Turkish intellectuals, it is against this policy of denial that Elif Shafak rages. "If we had been able to face the atrocities committed against the Armenians in Anatolia, it would have been more difficult for the Turkish state to commit atrocities against the Kurds," she argues.
"A society based on amnesia cannot have a mature democracy," she adds.
Why did she choose to tackle this very sensitive issue, knowing well that harassment and threats were inevitable? "I am a storyteller. If I cannot "feel" other people's pain and grief, I better quit what I am doing. So there is an emotional aspect for me in that I have always felt connected to those pushed to the margins and silenced rather than those at the center", she notes. "This is the pattern in each and every one of my novels; I deal with Turkish society's underbelly."
Her upcoming novel, "The Bastard of Istanbul", is no exception. The Turkish translation of the novel, titled “Baba ve Pic” was released in Turkey on March 8, 2006. The original novel in English will be released in the U.S. in January 2007 out of Penguin/Viking press. "The novel is highly critical of the sexist and nationalist fabric of Turkish society. It is the story of four generations of women in Istanbul. At some point their stories converge with the story of an Armenian woman and, thereby, an Armenian-American family. I have used this family in San Francisco and the family in Istanbul as mirrors," she explains. "Basically, the novel testifies to the struggle of amnesia and memory. It deals with painful pasts both at the individual and collective level," she adds.
The Turkey she would like to see in 2015, a century after the Armenian genocide, stands in deep contrast to the Turkey the world has known for the better part of the past century. It is "a Turkey that is part of EU, a Turkey where women do not get killed on the basis of "family honor", a Turkey where there is no gender discrimination, no violations against minorities; a Turkey which is not xenophobic, homophobic, where each and every individual is treated as valuably as the reflection of the Jamal side of God, its beauty."
It would be hard to disagree with Shafak that only in the Turkey she envisions can cosmopolitism overshadow nationalism and remembrance emerge victorious over denial.
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