The Genocide of the Armenian People, Three Flies, and Pierre Nora

Varoujan Sirapian

Translated by Vartan Matiossian
 

Last June 24, the Committee of Culture of the [French] Senate heard Mr. Pierre Nora, director of studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales [EHESS], member of the French Academy, to have him give his advice on the reform of high school programs of history within the frame of a project of reform led by Minister of Education Mrs. Najat Vallaud-Belkacem.

Mr. Nora is naturally opposed, in coincidence with his previous standpoints, to the proposal of the Higher Council of Programs to include the question of the genocide of Armenians in the more general subject of World War I. He repeats, thus, in this occasion his principled opposition to any "intrusion of politics in the qualification of the past. [Because] in democracy, history belongs to historians."

The Armenian Genocide and the Politics of Knowledge

Christine Philliou

 

In this centennial year since the Armenian Genocide, countless conferences, meetings, and commemorations are underway across the globe. While they have all been peaceful so far, they come at the end of a century of violence. I refer not just to the events of 1915–17, but also the waves of violence spurred by memory, recognition, and denial ever since. First came the killings, at the hands of individual Armenians, of two of the leading perpetrators of the violence, Talaat and Cemal Pashas in Berlin and Tiflis, respectively, in the 1920s. Then came the nearly 50 people, many of them Turkish diplomats, killed, and the hundreds more injured, across the globe by the Armenian organization ASALA in the 1970s to protest Turkey’s continuing refusal to recognize the genocide.

Who believes in genocides?

Arda Eksigil

 

April 24 has a highly symbolic meaning for us, Turkish citizens. It is a day of national reunification – a national rebirth of sorts. To a nation deeply polarized over discussions on Islamism and secularism, corruption scandals, political assassinations, and the ‘Kurdish problem,’ April 24 presents itself as the perfect opportunity to rekindle Turkey’s lost national fervor. On the day when Canada and the world commemorate the mass murder of nearly 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915, we defy the collective memory of the entire world and simply refuse to remember.

Of course there was an Armenian genocide: Why Benny Ziffer is just plain wrong

Daniel Baltman

 

Since the end of World War II, scholars have been trying to understand a recurrent historical phenomenon that has been appearing for thousands of years: What causes one group of Homo sapiens to attack another with utter murderousness and attempt to wipe it off the face of the earth?
Raphael Lemkin, the Polish-Jewish jurist who coined the definition for this phenomenon and made it an international crime that requires punishment, laid the foundation for the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide that was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948.

Denial of the Armenian Genocide Is Brutalizing the World

Stefan Ihrig

 

I have this imaginary Armenian kid sister. Well, actually, she is your kid sister, too -- in the same way we all have this imaginary 8-year-old in Syria who has been afraid for her life for the past few years. We are all humans after all.

My imaginary Armenian kid sister is 4 and a 1/2; talks too much; is easily distracted; for reasons beyond me, does not like raisin cookies; and, for reasons even further beyond me, died in early 1916. Nobody put a pistol to her head and executed her. Her parents were killed, and she simply had no food, no care and no proper shelter. She just wasted away. I cannot get over her death and her suffering, even though I want to, and I need to. I need to remember her and honor her memory, her life and her death. And I also have that Syrian kid to worry about -- or to purposely ignore. 

Turkish Academia and the Armenian Genocide

Orhan Kemal Cengiz

Translated by Sibel Utku Bila

 

Thousands of master’s theses and Ph.D. dissertations in the social sciences are written each year in Turkey. The Higher Education Board (YOK) keeps an electronic database of their topics and titles. A search in the database of dissertations on the Armenian genocide returns a striking result: Only four theses have been written on the issue and, as their titles immediately suggest, they all reflect Turkey’s official position on the massacres.

The Internment Plot Thickens

Gary Antourian

Demonstrating “tolerance” toward others is an essential quality which every person and society should practice, but tolerance should be extended to people who have the courage to admit their crimes and repent for them. To demonstrate tolerance to the Turkish government and its denial machine is disservice not only to the victims of the Armenian Genocide but also to all victims of genocides. Various Turkish governments and their denial industries not only did not recognize their predecessors' crime against the Armenian nation but instead inflicted upon subsequent generations of Armenians the most heinous, inhuman, and cruel experience through a farcical denial policy. By extending tolerance, without atonement and compensation, we set a precedent and send a message to the perpetrators of Genocide, Holocaust, and crimes against humanity that if a criminal persists in denying his crime he can get away with it. As many Genocide scholars have stated, the last act of genocide is its denial.

A Controversial Genocide

Robert Ellis

 

The Danish Royal Library has, together with the Armenian embassy, held an exhibition on “The Armenian genocide and the Scandinavian reaction” though due to protests from the Turkish embassy, the library’s director, Erland Kolding Nielsen, has agreed to hold an alternative exhibition titled, “The so-called Armenian genocide.”
This decision has caused widespread debate and 37 Turkish intellectuals, including Taner Akçam, Cengiz Aktar, Murat Belge, Baskın Oran and İpek and Oral Çalışlar, have in an open letter in Denmark’s leading daily Berlingske called on the library’s director to reconsider his decision. In their view, the Turkish government has followed a policy of denial for more than 90 years, culminating in the murder of Hrant Dink in 2007. To allow the Turkish government to arrange an alternative exhibition will only support this policy.

97 Years Later, on the Road to Ayash…

Pinar Ogunc

The following article was published in the Turkish daily "Radikal" on 24 April 2012. The author accompanied historian Ara Sarafian on a trip to Ayash, on the trail of around 85 Armenian political prisoners who were sent there following the arrests in Constantinople on 24 April 1915. According to Sarafian, 70 of these prisoners were killed in the following few months. His trip was part of a broader project examining these arrests and the ultimate fate of the prisoners concerned.

France Criminalizes Denial of the Armenian Genocide

(BBC, The Jerusalem Post).- The French Senate, after 10 hours of debate, approved the law Boyer to criminalize denial of the Armenian Genocide on Monday, January 23, 2012 by 127 votes against 86.

On Tuesday, France urged Turkey not to overreact. Speaking on Canal+, Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, who was personally against the move, said the new law was "ill-timed," but called on Ankara to remain calm.
The lower house had backed it in December, prompting Ankara to cancel all economic, political and military meetings with Paris and recall its ambassador for consultations.
"We need good relations with it and we need to get through this excessive phase," Juppe said. "We have very important economic and trade ties. I hope the reality of the situation will not be usurped by emotions."
President Nicolas Sarkozy is expected to sign the bill into law before the end of February. It is reasonable to ask whether Juppe would remain on his post given his public opposition to a law impulsed by the president himself.

Freedom of Ignorant Speech?

Vartan Matiossian

 

The December 21 editorial of The Los Angeles Times, "France Considers Armenian Genocide Bill," continues the American time-honored tradition of taking the First Amendment to the utmost extreme and senselessly complaining about those narrow-minded and headstrong Europeans who do not understand the gist of it.