Waltzing Around Denial: A Response to Jirair Libaridian‏ - The Armenian Weekly

Tuesday, July 30, 2013 Recent Articles from the Armenian Weekly... Waltzing Around Denial: A Response to Jirair Libaridian Two Syrian Armenian Children Abducted Senate Appropriations Committee Prioritizes Aid to Karabagh 1943 US Intelligence Report: All Armenians Demand Return of Lands from Turkey Did the Armenian Writers Conference Walk the Talk? Libaridian: Scholars and the Politics of Genocide Recognition Search Armenian Weekly Waltzing Around Denial: A Response to Jirair Libaridian In early June, a conference held in Tbilisi, Georgia, generated great controversy. The individual and organization at the heart of this conference have, for much of the past decade, been actively engaged in efforts to extend the denial of the Armenian Genocide into academia as well as in the political realm in North America. The Armenian Weekly published a report outlining the problem as we saw it, quoting five scholars who weighed in on the issue. We also reprinted Asbarez Editor Ara Khatchatourian’s editorial on the subject, and a letter to the editor from George Aghjayan, in our opinion pages. Almost all of the scholars from Armenia who were scheduled to speak at the conference subsequently withdrew. Also in early June, Prof. Jirair Libaridian, who was scheduled to deliver a keynote speech at the Tbilisi conference, contacted the Weekly asking for the opportunity to respond. We received and published his six-page response, which was incidentally much longer than the articles he... Read More »      • Email to a friend • Article Search • Two Syrian Armenian Children Abducted ALEPPO, Syria—Syrian rebels abducted two Syrian-Armenian children on the border of Syrian and Turkey on July 28, as a bus carrying three Armenia families, 7 women and two children, was forced to stop at the border, reported the Aleppo-based Gandzasar newspaper. The rebels kidnapped the 12-year-old and 14-year-old children and set the women free. According to sources close to the Gandzasar newspaper, the women are now at the Turkish border. On July 25, Aleppo resident Marita Amirkhanian was found dead in her apartment. Reportedly, the elderly woman was injured by sniper fire while on her balcony. Relatives discovered her body two days later when they went to her apartment to check up on her. The situation in Aleppo has been deteriorating with a blockade of access routes by the rebels, making basic necessities scarce. Armenians living in Aleppo have also endured grave losses. A bus carrying passengers from Aleppo to Beirut was attacked a week earlier, resulting in the death of one... Read More »      • Email to a friend • Article Search • Senate Appropriations Committee Prioritizes Aid to Karabagh Senate Measure Remains Silent on Specific Funding Levels for Caucasus WASHINGTON—The Senate Appropriations Committee on July 25 adopted a Fiscal Year 2014 (FY14) foreign aid bill that prioritizes continued U.S. assistance for Nagorno-Karabagh, reported the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA). Senator Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) In a legislative report, which accompanies and explains the foreign aid bill, the committee “recommends assistance for victims of the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict in amounts consistent with prior years and for ongoing needs related to the conflict. The Committee urges a peaceful resolution of the conflict.” Similar to a parallel measure moving through the U.S. House, the Senate FY14 foreign aid bill was silent on specific funding levels to Armenia or any of the other Caucasus countries. “We want to thank Senator Mark Kirk and his colleagues on the State-Foreign Operations Subcommittee and the full Appropriations Committee for adopting a FY14... Read More »      • Email to a friend • Article Search • 1943 US Intelligence Report: All Armenians Demand Return of Lands from Turkey The recently announced demand for lands from Turkey by the Prosecutor General of Armenia attracted much attention from Armenians worldwide and harsh criticism from the Turkish government. While this was the first time that an Armenian official had raised this issue since the country’s independence in 1991, the demand itself is not new. Armenians have been seeking the return of their historic territories from Turkey for decades. A confidential 1943 document, declassified by the Central Intelligence Agency, reveals that the US government was well aware of the Armenian demands for recognition of the “atrocities” and return of Turkish occupied “provinces.” The document dated December 13, 1943, authored by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor of the CIA, stated: “All the Armenian press in the United States is active in keeping the Turkish Armenian massacres fresh in the minds of its readers. Fearful that the Axis atrocities of the present war [World War II]... Read More »      • Email to a friend • Article Search • Did the Armenian Writers Conference Walk the Talk? Armenian writers who, as a result of bitter fate, create in foreign languages are not foreigners, but faithful and dedicated ambassadors of their Armenian blood and spirit in non-Armenian surroundings.–Sarkis Guiragossian, Aztag daily newspaper, 2005 There are several schools of thought about how to behave in a foreign country. “When in Rome, do as the Romans do,” is one such advisory. But—and I’m really thinking of Armenia-diaspora relations—what about a self-identifying Roman whose family has been in exile for several generations? What if this individual often visited Rome and participated in its culture with an eye on solidarity with its people? And what if Rome was in economic and political turmoil, and the people were leaving in droves? Could one then afford to merely “do as the Romans do?” Such questions arose in my mind during my recent 40-day stay in Armenia and Artsakh (Karabagh), which concluded with my participation in the Fifth Conference of... Read More »      • Email to a friend • Article Search • Libaridian: Scholars and the Politics of Genocide Recognition A Response to articles in the Asbarez and the Armenian Weekly by Jirair Libaridian To read the Armenian Weekly’s response to this article, click here. I read with much interest Mr. Ara Khachatourian’s article titled “Armenian Scholars at the Center of Genocide Denial” (Asbarez, June 5, 2013, reproduced in the Armenian Weekly), and “The Case Against Legitimizing Genocide Deniers: Scholars Speak Up” by the staff of the Armenian Weekly (June 7, 2013), reproduced in Asbarez. The fundamental point raised in these two articles and by the five scholars quoted in the latter is the following: By participating in an academic conference in early June in Tbilisi organized by a denialist academic, Professor Hakan Yavuz, and sponsored partially by the Turkish Coalition of America (TCA, an organization accused of being at the forefront of denialist efforts in American academia), Armenian scholars are legitimizing the denialist position of that scholar and organization. I... Read More »