Nobody can repair the past:
That's just the truth. But the sense nags that without atonement,
in any sense of the word, the present and the future are precarious
and fragile. It's why we say that an apology has to mean something.
Sunday Herald, UK
Watch The New Tears of Araxes on You Tube :
Featuring a never-seen-before satellite image of a vandalized medieval cemetery at the Iranian-Azerbaijani border, 'The New Tears of Araxes', a five-minute film, tells the tragic story of thousands of ancient Armenian headstones flattened to the ground by the Azerbaijani authorities in Djulfa (Jugha), Nakhichevan. On December 15, 2005, eyewitnesses across the River Araxes videotaped Azeri soldiers destroying Armenian burial monuments - khachkars (cross stones) -some as old as 1,500 years. Azerbaijani officials denied the vandalism, but banned European Parliament members from visiting the site in March of 2006. Only a few outside news sources tried to publicize the tragedy. 'The New Tears of Araxes' is written by Sarah Pickman, a University of Chicago student, who was the only American reporter to cover the tragedy when she interned for Archaeology Magazine. Producer and narrator Simon Maghakyan, who is among America's top 20 college students according to USA TODAY (April 24, 2006), hopes the film will break a year of ignorance and silence. When asked why others should care, Maghakyan quotes Martin Luther King Jr. as saying 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.'
Music by Djivan Gasparian (Gladiator, The Passion of the Christ, Munich, Syriana); Digital sound track production by Transtar Entertainment Group; Photographs by Research on Armenian Architecture, and Argam Ayvazian; Footage of 2005 destruction by Tabriz's Armenian Church, Iran; Satellite image by Digital Globe; Map by The Times, London.
As I mentioned in my What's in a Motto? post, You Tube has some interesting video clips on many aspects of concern to Armenians and Armenia and this moving tribute to Hrant Dink has been specifically drawn to my attention.
Turkey's Armenian dilemma
Turkey did not always deny the mass killing of Armenians. As the US House of Representatives prepares to vote on recognising the 1915 massacres as genocide, journalist and historian Bruce Clark looks at how and why Turkish attitudes have changed over the past 90 years.
"The more foreign parliaments insist that our forebears committed crimes against humanity, the less likely anybody in Turkey is to face up to the hardest moments in history."
That, roughly speaking, is the message being delivered by Turkey's hard-pressed intelligentsia as the legislators in one country after another vote for resolutions which insist that the killing of hundreds of thousands of Ottoman Armenians in 1915 amounted to genocide.
"Will the adoption [of a resolution] help to inform the Turkish public... on the great tragedy which befell the Ottoman Armenians?
"No, it can hardly be expected to... broaden the debate on the history of the Ottoman Empire's final period."
So writes Sahin Alpay, a liberal-minded Turkish academic, in a recent column in Zaman newspaper.
What such appeals reflect, of course, is an elementary fact of human psychology: the phenomenon of individual and collective defensiveness.
When people feel completely secure, and among friends, they can be very frank about misdeeds which they, or people close to them, have committed.
But hackles will go up again as soon as they become insecure, because they feel their accusers are acting in bad faith, or that accepting their accusations will have bad consequences.
On the defensive
In recent years, liberal Turkish scholars have expressed the hope that membership, or even prospective membership of the European Union, will give the country enough confidence to discuss the Armenian tragedy without threatening those who use the "g-word" with prosecution.
Sceptics may retort that in recent years, things have been moving in the opposite direction: the revised Turkish penal code and its preamble, adopted in 2005, make even more explicit the principle that people may be prosecuted if they "insult Turkishness" - a crime which, as the preamble makes clear, includes the assertion that the Ottoman Armenians suffered genocide.
It is certainly true that Turkish defensiveness - the sort of defensiveness which can treat open discussion as verging on treachery - has been running high since the 1960s when the Armenians round the world began lobbying for an explicit acceptance, by governments and parliaments, that their people suffered genocide in 1915.
A campaign of violence launched by Armenian militants in the 1970s, who mainly attacked Turkish diplomatic targets and claimed over 50 lives, raised hackles even higher.
All that raises a question: has there ever been a moment, since the events of 1915, when the Turkish authorities might, conceivably, have acknowledged or even freely discussed the view that almost every Armenians regards as self-evident: the view that in addition to relocating the entire ethnic Armenian population of eastern Anatolia, the "Committee of Union and Progress" (CUP) which wielded effective power in the Ottoman empire also gave secret orders to make sure that as few as possible of the deportees survived the experience?
In fact, there was such a moment: the immediate aftermath of World War I.
Tried and executed
At that time the Ottoman government was intact but dependent for its survival on the good graces of the victorious British Empire.
The sultan's regime was desperately trying to distance itself from the actions of the CUP, the "state within a state" which in 1915 had masterminded the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Armenians - and is alleged to have given secret "extermination" orders at the same time.
During the early months of 1919, few people in Anatolia publicly doubted that Armenians had suffered atrocities that were egregious even by the standards of a terrible war.
The sultan and his foreign minister were at pains to reassure the British of their determination to punish the perpetrators of these atrocities, and they held four big and revealing trials whose proceedings were published in the government gazette.
In April 1919 a local governor, Mehmed Kemal, was found guilty and hanged for the mass killing of Armenians in the Ankara district.
But the climate shifted rapidly after May 1919, when Greek troops were authorised by the victorious Entente powers to occupy the Aegean port of Izmir and, in another part of Anatolia, Mustafa Kemal - later known as Ataturk - began his campaign to make the Turks masters in their own land.
Nationalist feeling
Turkish rage over the Greek landing lent fuel to the Kemalist cause, and discredited the Ottoman government.
With every passing month, the British government's leverage over the Ottoman authorities waned, and so did British enthusiasm for the conduct of war crimes trials.
In 1921, the British government made a pragmatic deal to release a group of Turkish prisoners it had been holding in Malta on suspicion (among other things) of crimes against the Armenians.
They were freed in exchange for Britons being held by the Turks.
In Turkish lore, this release is held up as proof that no serious evidence against the captives existed.
What it certainly proves is that British zeal for investigating the past was waning, even as the Kemalist cause gained strength and the British-influenced Ottoman regime faded into oblivion.
In any case, the officially cherished version of the Turkish state's beginnings now insists since the empire's British adversaries and occupiers were the main promoters of war crimes trials, those trials themselves must have been worthless or malicious.
A new state
But in the midst of all this nationalist discourse, something rather important is often obscured, and there are just a few Turkish historians who dare to point this out.
The atrocities against the Armenians were committed by an Ottoman government, albeit a shadowy sub-section of that government.
There is no logical reason why a new republican administration, established in October 1923 in an act of revolutionary defiance of Ottoman power, should consider itself responsible for things done under the previous regime.
In fact, when the nationalist movement was founded in 1 919, the climate of revulsion over the sufferings of the Armenians was so general that even the neo-nationalists were keen to distinguish themselves from the CUP.
Some see significance in the fact that the nationalist movement chose to rally round an army officer, Mustafa Kemal, who had never been anywhere near the places where the Armenians met their fate.
The very fact that the Turkish republic bears no formal responsibility for eliminating the Armenian presence in eastern Anatolia (for the simple reason that the republic did not exist when the atrocities occurred) has given some Turkish historians a flicker of hope: one day, the leaders of the republic will be able to face up to history's toughest questions about the Armenians, without feeling that to do so would undermine the very existence of their state.
Fatma Muge Gocek, a Turkish-born sociologist who now works as professor in America, has said there are - or will be - three phases in her country's attitude to the fate of the Armenians: a spirit of "investigation" in the final Ottoman years, a spirit of defensiveness under the Turkish republic, and a new, post-nationalist attitude to history that will prevail if and when Turkey secures a places in Europe.
That makes perfect psychological sense, even if the immediate prospects for a move from phase two to phase three do not look very bright.
Bruce Clark is international news editor of the Economist newspaper.
The first Armenian Ecumenical Celebration was held in Eglwys Dewi Sant Church, on the 23 February 2003, in Cardiff Wales. What follows below are the speeches of some of the participants at the event and the article that appeared in Nor Serount.
Bishop Nathan Hovhannisian
Your Excellencies, Reverend Fathers, Brothers & Sisters in Christ:
Let me first and foremost welcome you all today to this House of God in Cardiff. As some of you might well recall, I - along with a number of friends from both Wales and England - got together at the Welsh National Assembly on 30th October of last year. We all came to Cardiff to celebrate the Statement of Opinion that had won a majority of signatures as a persuasive moral authority from the highest legislature in Wales recognising the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Indeed, you have just heard one of the co-sponsors of that Statement of Opinion, Plaid Cymru Assembly Member Mr Cynog Dafis, articulating his opinion from this Church. You have also heard our Ecumenical Officer, Dr Harry Hagopian, who works also with the Campaign for Recognition of the Armenian Genocide as he placed the horrendous reality of the Armenian Genocide on a moral platform.
During that event last year, I had announced the institution of an annual Armenian Service that would draw the Welsh and Armenian peoples closer together. This Ecumenical Celebration today is the start-up for that Christian fellowship. It sits comfortably with the readings from Scripture in that it encourages us to forego our man-made ructions, divisions and rivalries. Indeed, it also raises some questions! Must we not learn at long last how to rid ourselves of hypocrisy so that we can re-assemble with integrity and self-belief the Christian body? Should that effort not therefore attempt to secure a unity that celebrates diversity and ultimately seeks harmony and peace? Today, as the world is perched on the edge of a fratricidal and spurious war, that Christian unity and peace are more vital than ever. So let us look at ourselves with critical honesty, and let us learn how to love our neighbour - whether that neighbour is the 'other' sitting beside us in the pews or the 'other' in any far-off country.
But our Ecumenical Celebration today will not be complete if we do not also remember in our prayers all those Armenian victims of the genocide of 1915. Scores upon scores of Armenian children, women and men - around 1.5 million of them - met their death in the cruellest of circumstances and manners. They died simply for being Armenian! Yet, the world - and that clearly as much as painfully includes our Christian world - stood idly by and allowed those atrocities to take place.
Today, as we seek our authentic and inorganic unity and pray for genuine peace, do we not also honour the memory of all those innocent victims whose blood has etched one of the painful pages of Armenian history? After all, they too are our renewal of faith and our testimonial to faith.
I would like to thank The Rt Revd Barry Morgan, Bishop of Llandaff, as well as The Revd Meurig Williams, pastor of this church, for welcoming us this evening to their spiritual home. I also thank the members of the Armenian Community and Church Council of Great Britain and members of the St Sarkis and St Yeghiche Churches. I thank the Welsh Assembly Members as much as the Chair and Board of the Campaign for Recognition of the Armenian Genocide. Finally, I thank the Welsh and Armenian choirs for lifting up this celebration with their singing, as I do all our Welsh and Armenian friends who are our neighbours in Christ and who showed their solidarity today with their presence in our midst for this Armenian Ecumenical Celebration.
St Paul, addressing the Ephesians during the days of the Early Church, exhorted them to seek the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace. May this celebration today be no less than another milestone that honours our faith, our fellowship and our memories by leading us all toward the goal of unity!
+ Bishop Nathan Hovhannisian
Prelate of the Armenian Apostolic Church and Pontifical Legate to the See of Canterbury
Member of the Welsh National Assembly Cynog Dafis
It is a great privilege to me to say a few words at this moving event as a Member of the National Assembly for Wales.
The Assembly has no responsibility for international matters but it does have the power to discuss anything that is relevant to the people of Wales. There is an Armenian community in Wales as well as a Wales-Armenia Solidarity Association and this has made it possible to raise the issue of the Armenian genocide in the Assembly. This has been done in two ways. The first Statement of Opinion was tabled, following a number of events held at the Assembly, including an exhibition concerning the genocide and a meeting attended by members of the Armenian community, including the Ambassador. These events were well attended and a number of Assembly members felt strongly that they wished to express their support for recognition.
Following the tabling of the Statement of Opinion, I held a special debate in which I was able to present the evidence for genocide and emphasised the vital importance of recognition. The result of these activities is that a clear majority of Assembly Members have signed the Statement of Opinion. Were it not for the fact that many Members believe that the Assembly should avoid discussing international affairs, I am confident that the majority would be overwhelming. At least one Government Minister, Jenny Randerson, is on the record as recognising the genocide and as a Minister she was not able to sign the Statement of Opinion. I would also like to quote from the words of Carwyn Jones who responded to my speech in the special debate:
.........."I cannot ignore the fact that there is strong evidence to suggest that such a massacre or genocide took place. I cannot ignore the fact that so many national and regional parliaments, including those of France, Belgium, Sweden and the European Parliament, have taken the same view. Most importantly, the Lebanese Parliament also shares that view...........
....The Turkish Government needs to reconsider carefully what happened in the years after the first world war."..
Some people would argue that recognition of the Armenian genocide by a majority of the Members of the National Assembly for Wales is a matter of small significance. I do not agree. Neither does the Government of Turkey who have taken the trouble of expressing their displeasure to all Members who signed the Statement of Opinion and have presented them with a book purporting to present evidence denying the genocide. Members will know better than to pay any attention to this correspondence from the Government of Turkey.
I am delighted to help out to ensure that the National Assembly for Wales has played a part in an international process of bearing witness to what was a terrible event - an event that could be described as genocide.
Cynog Dafis AM Mid and West region
Article in Nor Serount
An Armenian Ecumenical Celebration, a first in many ways for most Armenian and Welsh peoples in the United Kingdom, was held on Sunday, 23 February 2003, at Eglwys Dewi Sant - Saint David's Church in the centre of Cardiff, the regional capital of Wales. Built in 1880, this church has been a spiritual home for Welsh-speaking Anglicans and learners for almost fifty years. It is run by The Revd Meurig Llwyd Williams, a young pastor who is as comfortable in English and French as he is in his native Welsh.
Well over 350 Welsh, English and Armenian friends and supporters from Wales and England attended the ecumenical celebration. Bishop Nathan Hovhannisian of the Armenian Orthodox Church presided over the event that was organised jointly by the Armenian Church and the Campaign for Recognition of the Armenian Genocide (CRAG). Also present were The Rt Revd Barry Morgan, Bishop of Llandaff (in Welsh denoting the Church near the River Taff), as well as religious leaders from other denominations in Wales and Members of the Welsh National Assembly and the Welsh Ecumenical Choir.
The original idea for such an event came about as a follow-up to the Statement of Opinion of 30 October 2002 that won a majority of signatures in the Welsh National Assembly as a persuasive moral authority from the highest legislature in Wales recognising the Armenian Genocide of 1915.
In his sermon before the Requiem Service in memory of the Armenian victims of the genocide, Bishop Nathan recalled the 'scores upon scores of Armenian children, women and men - around 1.5 million of them - who met their death in the cruellest of circumstances and manners. They died simply for being Armenian! Yet, the world - and that clearly as much as painfully includes our Christian world - stood idly by and allowed those atrocities to take place.' Picking up on the theme of the unity of the Churches, the Primate of the Armenian Church in Great Britain also asked, 'Do we not also honour today the memory of all those innocent victims whose blood has etched one of the painful pages of Armenian history? After all, they too are our renewal of faith and our testimonial to faith.'
Earlier during the celebration, Mr Cynog Dafis, Assembly Member for the Welsh Nationalist Plaid Cymru Party, had said during his address, "Some people would argue that recognition of the Armenian genocide by a majority of the Members of the National Assembly for Wales is a matter of small significance. I do not agree. Neither does the Government of Turkey who have taken the trouble of expressing their displeasure to all Members who signed the Statement of Opinion and have presented them with a book purporting to present evidence denying the genocide. Members will know better than to pay attention to this correspondence from the Government of Turkey."
In his intercession, Dr Harry Hagopian, Executive Consultant to CRAG, established the link between such an ecumenical celebration in Cardiff with a memorial service for the victims of the Armenian Genocide. He stressed that 'one of the unyielding missions of the Church is to lay the moral platform, the moral argument, and to offer it to the politicians as an alternative focus.' He added, "This celebration, led by an Armenian bishop in a Welsh church, attempts to awaken historical morality from its slumber. What some Caesars of this world have tried so hard to block out, and what narrow-minded definitions of nationalism world-wide have endeavoured to handcuff, this Christian service helps to liberate from an untruthful denial by silence.'
After the ecumenical celebration, The Revd Meurig Williams commented, "I thought it was a very moving occasion. On a personal level, I found it inspiring, not least because my ministry at Eglwys Dewi Sant is tied mostly to one linguistic and denominational expression. But yesterday was a true ecumenical foretaste of heaven! And I think we managed to bridge many cultural and ecclesial idioms."
Church unity and the recognition of the Armenian Genocide are two issues in the United Kingdom that are fraught with difficulty. Yet, this ecumenical event showed the way forward - in the hope that others would follow too so that the common bonds of humanity become stronger, clearer and more truthful.
© hbv-H @ 4 March 2003
EU CRITICAL OF TURKISH GOV'S STANCE ON ARTICLE 301
Servet Yanatma Brussels
Today's Zaman, Turkey
Feb 21 2007
The European Union has expressed concern over the Turkish government's stance on possible amendments to a controversial article of the penal code, saying refusal to change the article in the hope that no one will end up in jail in the end is unacceptable.
The EU is pressuring candidate Turkey to change or, better yet, abolish Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, saying it restricts freedom of expression. Criticism of the law increased when Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, who had been tried and convicted for "insulting Turkishness" under Article 301, was gunned down by a teenage assailant on Jan. 19 in Ýstanbul. EU sources said the Turkish government holds that the article is harmless since those who have
been tried under it are eventually acquitted of charges.
EU sources added that this approach is causing concern because the problem with Article 301 is actually a problem of mentality. The same sources pointed out killing of Dink after he had been tried under Article 301.
According to the EU sources, the article restricts freedom of expression and needs substantial revision and amendment. Recalling that the EU is not in a position to dictate a specific text, the sources underline that their job is to point to the flaws that constitute threat to the enjoyment of freedom of expression.
The government has said it was open to the idea of amendments to Article 301 but insists that it needs proposals from the non-governmental organizations since amending the law requires a social consensus.
On Monday, a Cabinet meeting originally expected to tackle possible amendments to he law was again fruitless, with government spokesman Cemil Cicek saying after the lengthy talks that proposals coming from the NGOs were as "vague" as the text of the article.
EU sources said government's attempts to get proposals from the NGOs were "interesting" but added that it was up to governments to push for legal amendments, not the NGOs.
.....
ARTICLE 301 STILL ON ANKARA'S AGENDA
Today's Zaman, Turkey
Feb 20 2007
Turkish Press Council Chairman Oktay Ekºi submitted the amendments proposed by the Council concerning Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code (TPC) to Justice Minister Cemil Cicek.
This is the second time the Council has delivered the same proposal to Cicek. Ekºi stated that they added a legal basis to their proposal and they tried to ensure that the amendments to the article would increase freedom of speech in Turkey. The Council's proposal replaces the word "Turkishness" with "Turkish Nation" and the word "denigration" with "insult."
In the legal basis section, it is maintained that the word "denigration" is problematic as it leaves too excessive room for the interpretation of the article. The proposal also argues for a re-introduction of the practice of "obtaining consent from the Justice Minister to launch a probe on charges insulting Turkishness" as stipulated under former Article 159, which was replaced by Article 301.The Council also asks for a reduction of the upper and lower limits of prison sentences in the article.
....
IMPOSSIBLE TO ESCAPE FROM 301:
Turkish Daily News
Feb 21 2007
Daily Radikal reported that Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK), which is in the spotlight once again after Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink's murder, continues to be "impossible to escape." In 21 months, 12 people received a sentence based on the article and there are still 18 cases pending. While the Republican People's Party (CHP) refuses any change to the law and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) does not propose anything concrete, 301 remains a barrier to freedom of speech.
Article 301 forbids humiliating "Turkishness," the Turkish Parliament and the government. The first person sentenced under the law was Ýbrahim Guclu, the spokesperson of Kurd-der, a Kurdish organization. His sentence was one-and-a-half years in prison.
The latest victim of the law is Aydýn Engin, a writer for the AGOS newspaper. He is being tried for saying, "I want to go to Paris and say 'there is no Armenian genocide' and return to Turkey to say an 'Armenian genocide was committed.'" Yesterday, Engin made a deposition to the Þiþli Prosecutor.
Engin, after his statement, said that he was sad that the prosecutor has taken the accusation seriously because it was evident that what he said was no crime. "I thought that the prosecutor would throw the accusation away," he said. According to Engin, cases against journalists, especially coming from a group who does this as a job, is a shame.
