Excalibur Online, Canada
March 9 2005

A partial silence, yet an indifferent quiet
Written by Chris Krikorian – Contributor

At the moment, April 24, 2005 may signify nothing to you; it is most
likely just a point of time somewhere in the future. However, you are
hereby forewarned that this date is one that points to a very dark
past in human history.

April 24, 2005 will mark the 90th anniversary of the Armenian
Genocide. It will signify 90 years of remembrance, 90 years of denial
and, worst of all, 90 years of indifference.

As an Armenian it is my duty to speak for those who were not given
the chance and to remember those whom the world has forgotten. As a
Canadian Armenian student at York, I have the opportunity to do that
here, with you, right now.

The Armenian Genocide was the first genocide of the twentieth
century. Over 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered at the hands of
the Turkish government. Many Armenians died of dehydration during the
long death marches through the Syrian Desert. These death marches
lasted for days – most of the victims had nothing more than the
clothes on their backs. They were beaten and killed along the way,
while their routes were littered with the bodies of fallen Armenians
baking in the hot sun.

Other accounts report of fires being started at the foot of caves,
creating a gas chamber, asphyxiating the Armenians inside. Armenians
took refuge in churches while Turkish forces waited outside, setting
fire to the roof and the walls, cremating hundreds and thousands of
Armenians at once. Children were kidnapped and women were raped. Very
few Armenians evaded the government-issued order of their
annihilation. These were deliberate acts of genocide – and near
successful ones too.

The Turkish denial of the atrocities that were committed against the
Armenian people of 1915 has only fanned the flame of ambition and
determination within the hearts of Armenians worldwide. Turkish
denial has strengthened Armenian resolve, but the indifference that
exists around the world threatens to destroy the Armenian cause and
the memories of those whose lives were lost in the most gruesome and
inhuman manner.

The topic of the Armenian Genocide is a very personal one to me: My
great-grandmother was a survivor of the genocide. She was a young
woman at the time, her life saved by a Turkish family that gave her
and her sister shelter. The rest of her family was brutally murdered
and she and her sister were the only ones left. They later moved to
Syria where my great-grandmother married and had a son (my
grandfather).

It is common to think of Turks and Armenians as enemies, but they are
not and this is a point that cannot be stressed enough. If not for
that Turkish family, my great-grandmother would have died, along with
her future family as well.

The Armenians are not the only victims of the Armenian Genocide. The
Turkish government’s campaign of denial is a crime not only to
Armenians, but to modern-day Turks who often speak up about the
Armenian Genocide and are ostracized by the Turkish government.

Turkey ‘s best-selling novelist, Orhan Pamuk, has been credited with
numerous awards for his works. As a world-class writer of Turkish
descent, he has received much criticism for his February 2005
statements in newspapers.

“Thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in
Turkey,” he states. “Almost no one dares speak but me and the
nationalists hate me for that.”

The nationalists he speaks of are the Ulku Ocaklari paramilitary
group, also known as the Grey Wolves. A statement on their web site
reads: “It is time to disallow him from breathing air in this
country.”

“If the anger of God doesn’t descend upon people like him, they will
face a higher anger – the Turkish lightning.”

Turkish historian Hilal Berktay of Sabanji University, Istanbul,
defended the statements made by Pamuk. Berktay praised the author as
an honest intellectual who courageously addressed an issue that many
Turks avoid. Berktay faced similar criticism in 2001 when he
expressed his views on the Armenian Genocide.

“As more and more honest and sincere historians and intellectuals of
integrity keep speaking up,” he said, “this dam will be breached …
this will be a fundamental dimension of internal democratization of
Turkish society.”

The Armenian Genocide foreshadowed many things to come in human
history. Many eyewitness accounts are reminiscent of the intolerable
acts perpetrated against the Jews during the Holocaust, and more
recently the Tutsi of Rwanda. The following accounts are those of
Vartan Hartounian and Sam Kadorian, who were young children during
the time of the Genocide. It is likely that they have now passed away
as these events occurred 90 years ago, but their memories and
testimony will live on with us.

“We were hiding in a church that we thought was protected from the
Turks,” starts Hartunian, “and they were attacking building after
building. There was another church not far away in which there were
two thousand Armenians and I and my father and others witnessed the
Turks surrounding that church, applying gasoline soaked rags by pole
to the roof and starting a fire and standing around to shoot anyone
who ran out of the building. As a child, I witnessed and I will never
forget the screams of those people and one woman who ran out and got
shot by the Turks. The entire building burned and everyone in the
building perished.”

Kadorian remembers the silence that saved his own life. “Gendarmes
came and picked up all the boys between five and 10 years old, threw
us into a pile and I happened to be one of the first ones and I was
at the bottom of the pile. After they had all the boys in this pile,
they started with their swords and bayonets killing us boys and one
of the bayonets just hit me in my right cheek here and the blood was
streaming, not only the blood from my cheek, but the blood from those
dead boys. That hot blood coming all over me and I couldn’t scream
and I couldn’t cry for fear that they would finish the job.”

Still, despite these and many other eyewitness accounts of the
Armenian Genocide, the Turkish government refuses to admit its guilt.
The Turkish government denies the existence of the Armenian Genocide
and has repeatedly threatened world governments from condemning the
Genocide of 1915. The line between history and politics becomes
blurred once countries around the world are economically threatened
by Turkey.

Canada did not bow to the threats of the Turkish government and in
April of 2004 enacted bill M-380. Prior to this, Turkey threatened to
cancel contracts with Bombardier and claimed that the affirmation of
the Armenian Genocide would be detrimental to trade negotiations with
Canada.

These claims were threats and nothing else.

The Canadian government passed bill M-380 and officially recognized
the genocide. Unfortunately, other countries like the United States
that have a large interest in Turkey, economically and militarily,
have stopped short of internationally recognizing the Armenian
genocide. Other examples of government-sponsored denial include
various bribes offered to American universities to prevent discourse
about the genocide of 1915.

An article in the Independent, a UK newspaper read: “Turkey’s effort
to erase the memory of its genocide of the Armenians has suffered a
setback in the United States.
The University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) has refused to allow
Ankara to fund a chair in Ottoman studies, because the Turkish
government attached conditions to their $1m offer that would have
forced scholars to ignore the 1915 massacres.” On the surface this
seems like good news, but the bad news is that the article continues
by explaining that other American universities like Princeton,
Georgetown, Indiana and the University of Chicago have accepted
offers from the Turkish government and have agreed to forget the
genocide at the cost of their academic integrity.

Why is this important? Why should we care about what happened 90
years ago? Well imagine if someone told you that slavery never
occurred, or that Canada had no inhabitants before the settlers
arrived, or that the Holocaust is an elaborate conspiracy. Are these
claims to which you would choose to be indifferent?

Dr. Gregory H. Stanton, president of Genocide Watch, defines the
eight stages of genocide: Classification, symbolization,
dehumanization, organization, polarization, identification,
extermination and denial. The Armenian genocide is not an isolated
event that occurred in the distant past, it is still happening to
this day. This forgotten genocide is still happening right now behind
our very backs, it has remained suspended in the eighth stage of
genocide for 90 long years.

These accounts have been documented along with many others and can be
watched at Within this web site there is an
accurate timeline of the events surrounding the Armenian genocide and
an ABC special that can be viewed online. For those of you who are
interested in this overlooked piece of history this web site is a
valuable beginner’s resource.

– For more information, the ASA will be hosting a discussion about
the psychological effects of the genocide on March 12 from 11am-2pm
at Stedman Lecture Hall D.