A friend of mine challenged me to let five people know today about the Armenian Genocide.

I will refer you five (and let me hope there are more than five) to the writer I consider most reliable in assessing genocides and democides of the 20th Century, Rudy Rummel. He writes of the entire panoply of genocides, not just the largest one begun this day in 1915. My grandparents left Turkey -- grandfather to America with his older brother, grandmother to a Lutheran orphanage in Beirut -- before the Young Turks came to power in 1909. They were casualties or collateral damage of the massacres of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, the last Ottoman leader. (A stub of the story is still up on my family website written several years ago. I've not gotten around to reposting the rest of it.)

I have many stories to tell about marking today, which is known among Armenians as Genocide Day or Martyrs' Day. But perhaps the only thing that matters is that it eventually led a great woman, my medz mayr, to come to Dover NH, to create a family that included my father, who used to sing songs to me as a child that were Armenian and German, which I could only understand by learning about her life. And through it the tragedy of her family, her dead husband's family (my grandfather died when my dad was four), and a family tree that I've spent the last ten years trying to reconstruct. The records are gone -- they were in the Armenian churches that we are now told never existed -- and the older ones who remember are mostly gone. Remembering the martyrs is not about remembering murder and destruction; it's about remembering where you came from.

Labels: Armenia

Following the example set by Nazarian (whose blog is a must read for the events ongoing in Armenia, h/t: Kouba), I will ask this bow be placed on blogs to commemorate the deaths of eight persons in Armenia on March 1st as a result of violence surrounding the presidential elections held there February 19th. Some video at The Armenia Blog.

The Economist provides coverage. Notes from Hairenik details ongoing fighting in Karabagh that may be an attempt by long-time antagonists to use the unrest in Yerevan to their advantage.

I haven't posted more about this because it's hard to get a read on the situation, largely because suppression of the press is leading to a warped information flow. For example, there's this curious post on Neeka's Backlog that says the protesters are targeting property held by the ruling party and supporting oligarchs. But the press reports everything said about the protesters as a provocation engineered by Kocharian/Sargsyan. I think Neeka could be right, but how do I know? I find this post at Armenia Now perhaps the best expressing the view that democracy isn't well served by either candidate winning.

What I do know is eight people are dead; I'd like to think not in vain, but too many trips, too many disillusionments leave me doubtful.

Labels: Armenia

Gary emailed me something very funny this morning, from Saturday's Vikings press conference announcing the signing of WR Bernard Berrian.

Then a few words about Bernard Berrian; i, a, n, you know there is a large Armenian population in Fresno, some of you may or may not know. Bernard is not Armenian however with the i, a, n at the end of his name. We talked about heritage last night, right? We had a great visit here and had to keep him busy all day long with video games, etc., a lot of different things going through his head.

Childress must have been watching the news from Armenia, where it goes from bad to worse. A few bloggers are getting word out:

• Raffi at Cilicia;
• The Armenia Blog is down but the Google cache has some interesting footage of what's happened in the last couple of weeks;
• Blogrel is posting up a storm;
• The Armenian Observer is reporting internet censorship;
• and Oneworld has its usual excellent photojournalistic reporting.

Labels: Armenia, sports

I appreciate very much Captain Ed's post about my thoughts on the genocide resolution question last night. He hasn't backed down from his position on the resolution in Congress (unlike Speaker Pelosi, it appears):

Congress does not exist to validate genocides. If it wants to start, it has plenty of nations on which to focus before it gets to Armenia, which I listed the other day. The Irish genocide not only preceded the Armenian, it had more direct impact on America. And that's the problem with demanding these resolutions; it creates a demand for Congress to address every insult to ethnic groups. Our ancestors came here to get away from those concerns, not to indulge them.

Congress exists to protect American interests. Period. And Congress hasn't even done its own job this session; it should do that before venturing into academic investigations.

The last thing we need is an argument about what are the A-list genocides, the B-list genocides, etc. Besides, communism killed even more of its own people than the Irish and Armenian genocides; should that one go first? It's a silly argument we should avoid.

But suffice to say that signaling is costly, and at times more costly than others. The Turkish government has repeatedly made signaling expensive regarding its own history; it is not an act of cowardice for the U.S. to react to that expense with an eye first and foremost to its own sons and daughters in the field. And it is not an act of disloyalty for Armenians to say in response, "well then, when?"

Rudy Rummel says it well: Sometimes we have to accept the less-bad, when no good is available:

We can be satisfied with scholars and media accepting that the genocide occurred, without putting an official stamp on it. I want to do this. I want all genocides and democides to be recognized by democracies so that in world opinion, thug regimes are recognized for the murder they commit. And those so murdered did not die in vain. But life is a balance of values, I am sorry to say.

Patience wears thin sometimes, frustration fills one with grief. At some point, I can only hope, the balance will shift.

Labels: Armenia

King has posted about the Armenian genocide committed by the Ottoman Turks after WW I. It was an example of atrocious, murderous behavior by one ethnic group towards another.

Upon rereading some of King's posts, I was struck by a key point about education that King made. Most western nations over the centuries have practiced one kind of self criticism or another. Whether it's the Judea-Christian heritage and the concept of sin, forgiveness, and change that causes the self criticism, I don't know. But, I'm willing to bet this kind of self-criticism does not exist in very many cultures.

The US, through its MSM and much education, has taken self criticism to an extreme, to the point where our children often only hear of our errors, mistakes, etc. but not the incredible achievements we have made. What other country has gone to war, against itself, to free a part of its population? You can debate the main causes of the Civil War but one key result was slavery was outlawed. We still struggled but our ancestors fought, died, and outlawed one of humanity's most degrading practices.

This paragraph from King's post says a lot. I did once attend a commemoration at Claremont for the 80th anniversary of April 24, what we call Martyrs Day. Armenian-American students whom I was advising organized a panel, emceed by Mrs. Scholar -- while I held our infant Littlest in the back -- and to which we had brought a survivor who was 85 by this time and was six during the march to Der el-Zor. While he spoke we got treated to people with their own placards and shouts. Tempers flared as they said we were liars. My aunt, who lives in southern California and was in attendance, became very angry. But instead we talked with these Turkish students, who said they were told about this meeting not by our signs around campus but by letter. They never said who sent it, but I have a guess. When asked what they know about the history of the Armenians and Greeks of their country during and after World War I, they said they did not really know the stories, they were not taught. We eventually settled down, shook hands and went on our way, we back to our memories and parents telling us stories, and they back to their fatherland and ... nothing.

What is very important in this paragraph is that these anti-Armenian protesters, by their own admission, WERE NOT TAUGHT the murderous parts of their history. Ethnic groups will be around forever and all have their embarrassing and often cruel practices in their history. Ignoring horrendous acts against others by ancestors or current representatives is wrong and bodes poorly for peace or any other positive development for human kind.

All ethnic groups or nations cheat their societies when they teach only the negative or the positive. When people are denied the chance to learn true history, the good and the bad, all lose. If and when those mistaught learn the truth, as ugly or enlightening as it may be, they can rightly question everything else they were taught.

Labels: Armenia, education, higher education

Knowing that we have fathers on either side of the Armenian-Turkish question (I did not know his mother was not Turkish; my mother is what we call back home "an old Yankee"), I had wondered when the WSJ's James Taranto would weigh in on the question of the genocide resolution. He does so today, and the result is actually quite good, containing tough medicine for both sides to swallow.

I have many Armenian friends, of whom several are of the type that still bring placards and shout angry words at Turkish officials when they visit the United States. When you are brought up in an Armenian (or even half-Armenian) household, you are taught over and again about the genocide, about the denial TO THIS DAY of it by the Turkish government, etc. When I read bloggers and columnists making the distinction between the current government and the Ittihad who then criticize the Congress for not being good judges of history, I wonder how many of them know that Ataturk himself was at one time a member of the Young Turks who later gave the orders to exterminate Armenians? Luckily, I guess, Mustafa Kemal was not in the top circle. Taner Akcam of the University of Minnesota has given an accounting.

So fine, I grew up with the history drilled into me, and Taranto says "this column is with Jack Murtha in acknowledging that we don't know enough to have an informed opinion." Yet when I read yesterday the quotes of some people -- including my friends -- who say "we all know it was a genocide," how do we know they know enough to have an informed opinion? And if they do not, are they in the slightest embarrassed by their ignorance?

That said, I have not stood with the placards and shouted the shouts. I have spent years with friends who are Turkish, most of whom acknowledge what happened and what we all know to be true -- many people who say they are Turkish can go back in their own family trees and find Armenians as well as Greeks and Kurds and Jews. Turkey wasn't always for the Turks. At one time, it was as multicultural a place as anywhere in the Middle East. The persons defending Turkey from the charges of genocide today may in fact be partly Armenian. Turkey for the Turks wasn't always the watchword.

I did once attend a commemoration at Claremont for the 80th anniversary of April 24, what we call Martyrs Day. Armenian-American students whom I was advising organized a panel, emceed by Mrs. Scholar -- while I held our infant Littlest in the back -- and to which we had brought a survivor who was 85 by this time and was six during the march to Der el-Zor. While he spoke we got treated to people with their own placards and shouts. Tempers flared as they said we were liars. My aunt, who lives in southern California and was in attendance, became very angry. But instead we talked with these Turkish students, who said they were told about this meeting not by our signs around campus but by letter. They never said who sent it, but I have a guess. When asked what they know about the history of the Armenians and Greeks of their country during and after World War I, they said they did not really know the stories, they were not taught. We eventually settled down, shook hands and went on our way, we back to our memories and parents telling us stories, and they back to their fatherland and ... nothing.

So Ataturk made a great nation, we are told, and its grandchildren do not know enough to form a good opinion. But this does not prevent Taranto from saying the right thing to Turkey:

Ankara's petulant threats, over what is after all only a piece of paper, seem to us to display a certain national immaturity. The Turks feel insulted by this resolution? Poor babies. America endures all manner of insults from allies, enemies and neutrals, including our friends the Turks. A great nation needs a thick skin.

Imposing injury in retaliation for insult is the Turkish way, at least as far as its World War I history is concerned. As the Guardian reported last week:

Aram Dink, and Serkis Seropyan, both editors at the Turkish-Armenian daily Agos, were each given a one-year suspended sentence under Turkey's controversial law on insulting "Turkishness," their lawyer, Erdal Dogan, said.

The case against Hrant Dink--for calling the killings of Armenians during the first world war a genocide--was dropped when he was shot dead in January, but the court continued with the prosecution of the other men under article 301 of Turkish law. Hrant Dink had been convicted and was appealing against the decision when he was killed by a Turkish youth.

Other journalists and historians have actually spent time in prison for "insulting Turkishness." Wherever one stands on the underlying question of whether the events of 1915 constitute genocide--and this column is with Jack Murtha in acknowledging that we don't know enough to have an informed opinion--Ankara's illiberal treatment of dissenters is hard to defend.

So it is not just a ninety-plus year old event. Hrant Dink died this past January. Had the world acted sooner in leading Turkey to a table of reconciliation and forgiveness -- which at this point is all that can happen, though some Armenians still think there can be more -- would he still be alive? Or was his it Dink's own fault -- was his statement "counterproductive"?

Labels: Armenia

I wrote early on about the passage of the Armenian genocide resolution, and while I had hoped the issue might go away, it has not. The focus is on the incompetence or darker motives of the Democrats that have pushed this issue. This Investors Business Daily editorial is exemplar:

...House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has decided to let HR 106, a nonbinding resolution that declares the Turkish Ottomans' murder of Armenians as genocide, to go forward.

The Turks are angered at the intentional insult leveled at them by Congress for a crime that's now 92 years old. They've threatened to stop cooperating with the U.S. in Iraq.

This behavior is consistent with Turkey's history of reactions to "insult." My reaction is to wonder why this is considered an "insult". Even those critical of the Democrats, such as Michael Rubin, at least have the decency to say that "[t]here is no doubt that up to a million Armenians died during World War I..." But in the very same sentence,

...although historians still debate whether their deaths constitute deliberate genocide or are collateral casualties of war.

Is this really necessary, to enter doubt over the mass murder itself? What's with "deliberate genocide"? Can Rubin cite an example of "accidental genocide"? Richard Cohen goes even further:

Of even that, I have some doubt. The congressional resolution repeatedly employs the word genocide, a term used by many scholars. But Raphael Lemkin, the Polish-Jewish emigre who coined the term in 1943, clearly had what the Nazis were doing to the Jews in mind. If that is the standard — and it need not be — then what happened in the collapsing Ottoman Empire in 1915 was something short of genocide.

It was plenty bad — maybe as many as 1.5 million Armenians perished, many of them outright murdered — but not all Armenians everywhere in what was then Turkey were as calamitously affected. The substantial Armenian communities in Constantinople, Smyrna and Aleppo were largely spared. No German city could make that statement about its Jews.

Is it acceptable for someone to claim that, because some members of the Armenian community fought with Russians in World War I, it was acceptable to call a whole people "a fifth column"? The International Center for Transnational Justice has offered an analysis of the events of that time. The key question is whether the intent of the Young Turks was to destroy the Armenian community, in whole or in part. That last sentence -- it's not a genocide because the Turks left a few communities alone -- is frankly an insult.

Scholars have been refused the opportunity to even debate the issue in Turkey by a court decree, forced to change plans. When the seminar went forward, protests were held outside. There is never going to be a time in the foreseeable future a good time to declare support for the Armenian claim, and Cohen at least comes around to saying it is "unacceptable" for Turkey to control the statement of history. There has never been a time in the past where it was sufficiently convenient for members of either party to make a statement of history -- witness Bill Clinton's request to squelch a Republican move to recognize the genocide in 2000. When Denny Hastert agreed to the request, the Turks were delighted. The author of the genocide bill that year, Republican Jim Rogan of Burbank, subsequently lost to Democrat Adam Schiff. Unsurprisingly, the bill before the House right now is authored by Schiff. As the New Republic reported in July (unprotected full version),

With Rogan's seat on the line in 2000, a first-ever vote on a genocide resolution seemed a sure thing--that is, until the Turkish government mobilized its lobbying team, led by former Republican House Speaker Bob Livingston, its $700,000 man in the field. In a state of affairs one furious Republican described to Roll Call as "ridiculous," Livingston found himself battling a measure meant to protect the very House majority he had briefly presided over just two years earlier. A Turkish threat to cancel military contracts, including a $4.5 billion helicopter deal with a Fort Worthbased company, ensured the opposition of powerful Texas Republicans like Tom DeLay. Hastert was cornered. But he found cover in Bill Clinton, who warned that Turkey might shut down its American-run Incirlik air base, from which the United States patrolled the no-fly zone over northern Iraq. Citing Clinton's objections, Hastert pulled the bill. Rogan tried to accuse Clinton of playing politics, and someone sent out a last-minute mailer featuring Schiff next to a Turkish flag. But it wasn't enough, and Schiff beat Rogan by nine percentage points.

Sound familiar? Think the Turks aren't playing games with this again?

Maybe I can respect those, such as John McCain on Ed's show yesterday, who are willing to say "I know it was genocide but the timing is very bad." And of course you cannot promise to bring it up later, as that is of course unlikely to appease Turkey. But McCain and other not-now'ers are boxed in by their logic; they cannot make a credible commitment to ever recognize the genocide by an official non-binding declaration. How will they ever acknowledge the history they all claim to know?

And it needs acknowledgment. As Youssef Ibrahim says, how can one expect Turkey to join the ranks of civil society, which must include respect for ethnic minorities, if it cannot recognize its own transition from an uncivil past?

As George Bush once said, "Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe."

Ninety-two years in our case, Mr. President. And counting.

Labels: Armenia

The House Foreign Affairs Committee has voted 27-21 to move H Res 106, the resolution on recognition of the Armenian genocide, for a vote of the full House. Based on email I'm getting, the reaction of most Armenians is ecstatic. The Turks, meanwhile, have moved to recall their ambassador for "consultations".

Ed thinks this is wasting time and pointless, and the White House is in full damage control. I talked about earlier efforts here. The truth is that Armenian-Americans understand the value of being fickled voters (just as sports economists have hypothesized that teams are more likely to put winners on the field when their fans are more fickled about showing up only for winners.) As the story Ed linked shows, bill sponsor Adam Schiff only got his position after Armenians flipped on his Republican predecessor after the Republicans had pulled back a previous genocide bill for a vote. People and politicians respond to incentives, and the Armenian lobby has been quite effective in this regard. (Please note, the interest of full disclosure, that my last name is Armenian and I work on economic issues in Armenia.)

I do not think one can say that the current government is faultless in the genocide when it continues to fund deniers. This isn't much different than the Saudi funding of centers which many have criticized. One might ask whether, if the issue was not being fought by the Turkish government currently elected, why the reaction to a simple committee vote?

No doubt the US would like to have good relations with Turkey for geopolitical reasons, and no doubt too that Armenia neither offers the same strategic advantages, nor should consider this the most pressing issue. (Again, for full disclosure, I have been part of a conference discussing the value of opening the border to trade between the two countries, something that I still feel would be beneficial to each side.) Still, recognition of injustice is part of the step of reconciliation, and having the West say that at some point reconciliation is needed seems sound foreign policy, regardless of which party supports it.

Labels: Armenia, politics

Readers might remember my trip to Armenia last January, in which I wrote:

The purpose of the conference I spoke at was to assess the economic and social consequences of opening the border between Armenia and Turkey, closed by Turkey as a response to the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in 1993. Closing the border is a political decision. Now my job was just to talk about what the effect on foreign investment would be in Armenia if the border was re-opened -- the opening would be, in my view, a representation that the risk of external conflict was reduced in the region. But we were told that we could not talk about politics at all. There was the acting ambassador here to make sure we didn't and when he left the local USAID guy kept watch on the proceedings. The local community is upset that the issue cannot be raised. Worse, the Turkish scholars here -- who either didn't get the memo or weren't obeying it -- tried to say something about how to solve the political issue. For this, they have been hammered by the more nationalistic Armenians here. In one sense I feel bad for them, but frankly there's one that keeps putting his foot in his mouth, so to heck with him. Yet if the US government wasn't so nervous as to place an imperfect gag order, none of that would have happened. They would have debated, and at the end hopefully we all have food and drink.

A few weeks ago people believed Speaker Nancy Pelosi might bring a bill to the floor of the U.S. House that would recognize the massacres in 1915 in Turkey of Armenians as a genocide. Executive branches for years have begged Congress not to pass these rules, as Karoun Demirjian notes in today's Chicago Tribune, and this year is no different.

In a letter to Pelosi and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) last month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote that Turkey -- which borders Syria, Iraq and Iran -- is "a linchpin in the transshipment of vital cargo and fuel" to U.S. troops in the Middle East.

A negative reaction from Turkey to a resolution on the Armenian genocide "could harm American troops in the field, constrain our ability to supply our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and significantly damage our efforts to promote reconciliation between Armenia and Turkey," Rice and Gates wrote.

That letter included this remark:

Efforts such as the recent USAID-supported conference in Yerevan entitled "The Economic and Social Consequences of Opening the Armenian-Turkish Border," which was attended by both Armenian and Turkish civil society representatives, demonstrated that the U.S. approach to this difficult issue is, indeed, working.

That was the conference I was at. The board of the organizing research group (of which I am a fellow, but not a board member) responded that the letter was wrong,

With the full agreement and insistence of the U.S. government donor supporting it (USAID), all political issues were intentionally kept off of the conference agenda, and the proceedings were run in a manner to maintain an exclusive focus on non-political issues. Therefore, as an apolitical academic event that deliberately avoided the topic of Genocide recognition, the conference cannot legitimately be described as a component of a process of reconciliation. That process must fundamentally address a number of political issues for which the conference was not designed.

It's intriguing to get caught as a pawn in this game. But it's mostly sad. Today marks the 92nd anniversary of the day when 250 Armenian intellectuals were rounded up in Istanbul, marched out of the city and shot. The systematic massacres began the next month. (I note that my father's family roots by this time had left Turkey; my grandfather had fled to America for four years already, and my grandmother to a Beirut orphanage after losing her father in an earlier pogrom.) Regrettably the condemnation of Jewish Holocaust deniers has never been visited on a worldwide scale on those who deny the Armenian genocide (type the last two words into Google and you'll find denial sites quite easily.) Indeed, in the interest of Israeli-Turkish relations, even the Knesset has rejected a statement of recognition.

Regrettable even more is that a topic that should be left to historians and archaeologists has instead become a "process" that "must fundamentally address a number of political issues". Letting politicians decide history is how we got into this mess; hard to believe there's no other way out.

Labels: Armenia, politics

A tradition in Armenian households is the dying of eggs for Easter, traditionally using purple onions to get a dark red hue. That's not unusual, most families here in the States dye their eggs. But the difference between cultures comes when I explain Easter egg fights.

Saint Grigor of Tatev wrote in 14 th century about dying eggs red: "We dye eggs red on Easter and its symbolism is that the egg is a model of the world and as wise men say, the egg shell is the earth, the membrane is air, the egg white is water, the yolk is fire. And the red dye symbolizes that the entire world was bought at the price of Christ's blood. And we, when taking the red egg into our hands, proclaim our salvation. That is why we first eat the red egg and then the other dishes."

Almost everyone has egg fights on Easter, but children love this tradition most of all. Before a fight they test the egg's hardness by gently cracking it against their teeth. They find different tricks to win the fights. To fight, they crack the eggs against each other with either end, and the winner is the one whose egg cracks the opponent's egg.

I've heard stories of kids using a small pin to extract the yolk and egg white from their garmeer havgeet then injecting the shell with epoxy to make an impregnable weapon. My father used the more common trick of exposing as little of his egg as possible when you were to strike his egg. (He won a disproportionate number of Easters.)

I wish all readers a happy Easter. I'm off to make choereg, if Mrs. S will let me in the kitchen. NARN is on its "best of" behavior. See you Monday. Krisdos haryatz ee merelotz!

Labels: Armenia