Geoffrey Robertson and the Armenian Genocide in Australian Television

Australian barrister, writer and former international judge Geoffrey Robertson, who lives in London and wrote a devastating critique of the British government's recent attitude towards the issue of the Armenian genocide (2009), has recently authored An Inconvenient Genocide: Who Now Remembers the Armenians. He was interviewed by "Lateline," the ABC (Australian Broadcast Corporation) program on October 20, about his efforts to return the Elgin Marbles to Greece, his views on the Armenian genocide, and the Islamic State atrocities and killings in Iraq and Syria. Below is the excerpt of the interview that deals with the Armenian genocide.

What I Choose It to Mean: On ‘Yeghern’ as the Armenian Translation of ‘Genocide’

Vartan Matiossian

 

“The term Yeghern, or Medz Yeghern, is the only word that really captures the essence of what happened in 1915. The survivors used that word. It is the only word that could really explain what happened in 1915. In a world without genocide denial, it would be the best word.”
–Khatchig Mouradian (2009)¹

 

‘Medz Yeghern’: the Proper Name of the Genocide

In the concluding installment of this study on the semantics, history, and politics of the phrase Medz Yeghern, it is crucial to underscore that the exhausting search for recognition should not block the use of the words that our ancestors have bequeathed us. It has been argued that recognition has been sufficiently ensured by two resolutions of the House of Representatives, 3 federal court rulings, 42 state declarations by legislation or proclamation, a sentence in a document filed in 1951 by the U.S. government to the International Court of Justice and another sentence in Ronald Reagan’s proclamation,² along with official declarations by 20 countries and statements of a host of scholars. “We don’t say that this is the end and the work of recognition has been done; simply, the emphasis should be put on reparation and the rights,” Giro Manoyan, the head of the ARF Bureau Armenian Cause office, declared recently.³

Armenians should not be obfuscated by denial, whether mainstream or from a lunatic fringe, which will probably be as lasting as affirmation. Another worrisome trend—misuse—should not obfuscate them either.

The Great Crime that Was Brewing: The Meaning of ‘Medz Yeghern’ before 1915

Vartan Matiossian

 



We want to believe in the victory of Freedom and of tomorrow’s brotherhood,

we want to enjoy smiles, we want to strengthen our faith

that famine is not eternal, blood is not eternal, yeghern is not eternal.
E. Aknuni (1910)¹

The meaning of yeghern in Classical Armenian (“evil,” “crime,” and “calamity”) may seem to give some credence to claims that Medz Yeghern does indeed mean “Great Calamity.” However, before we accept these claims, we must first verify whether those three meanings have survived in Modern Armenian. Their survival is contingent not only on their presence in dictionaries, but also on their actual usagein literature. As translators know firsthand, dictionaries may give definitions, but the key to using them effectively depends on one’s ability to place a given literal definition within its proper context.

In this study, we will first overview the definitions of yeghern in Modern Armenian dictionaries, both monolingual and multilingual, published before and after 1915, to validate the accuracy of the “Great Calamity” translation.

The Evil That We Do Not Know: "Medz Yeghern" and the "Old Language"

Then he stopped and announced, ‘You know, there was on this land a medz yeghern,
a great cataclysm,’ as the survivors called the genocide.

—Aris Janigian (2009)¹

The following spring, the Armenian and Turkish ministries announced that they had agreed on a plan of good relations, which allowed President Barack Obama, in his anticipated April 24 address, to refer to the events of 1915 not by the desired designation but by an Armenian alternative: Medz Yeghern, meaning ‘great calamity.’

—Garin Hovannisian (2010)²

If you are not Armenian, you probably know little about the deportations and the massacres:
the death of a million and a half civilians. Meds Yeghern. The Great Catastrophe.

—Chris Bohjalian (2012)³

Above are quotes from Armenian-American fiction and non-fiction writers. These excerpts indicate that “Great Calamity” and similar terms have become a common translation for “Medz Yeghern.” The trend has also been seen in academia, where non-Armenian academics have used the term. Among them is diaspora theorist William Safran, who wrote, “These events took place in the homeland, but they served to mark the ethnonational consciousness in the diaspora as well, especially events of a negative nature, such as…the Armenian yeghern (catastrophe), the Turkish genocide…”⁴ Of course, the dominant discourse of the Turkish mainstream, be it as “Great Calamity”⁵ or as “Great Catastrophe,” is seen in books authored or co-authored by Turkish and Turkish-Armenian writers and scholars.⁶We may assume that the latter either follow the flow or are genuinely convinced that this is the actual translation of the phrase.

However, an internet search may also yield many English-language Armenian outlets that translate Medz Yeghern as “Great Calamity,” or, sometimes, “Great Crime.” There is a duality that makes necessary, after the survey of Armenian-Turkish and Armenian-English vocabularies, to explore their ultimate source: the Armenian language.

When Dictionaries Are Left Unopened: How ‘Medz Yeghern’ Turned into Terminology of Denial

You may want to know that ‘Meds Yeghern’ does not mean genocide;
it means “Great Calamity.” Armenians used that term before the word
‘genocide’ was coined by Raphael Lemkin in the 1940′s.

–Harut Sassounian¹

These explanatory words appeared after President Barack Obama used “Medz Yeghern” in his April 2009 statement: “The Meds Yeghern must live on in our memories, just as it lives on in the hearts of the Armenian people. … Nothing can bring back those who were lost in the Meds Yeghern.”² He repeated Medz Yeghern twice or three times—always without translation—in each of his April 24 statements between 2009 and 2012.

In this article, we will discuss the use of the phrase and some of the reactions it triggered in Armenian and Turkish quarters, and in one of the many realms of public debate: Wikipedia.