North Shore Sunday, MA
April 29 2006

See no evil

By Barbara Taormina/ Staff Writer
Friday, April 28, 2006 – Updated: 07:01 PM EST

People might not always know how to define genocide, but they know it
when they see it.

And yet, there have always been problems with the Armenian
genocide, a brutal stretch of early 20th century history during which
1.5 million Armenians were beaten, shot, hung and herded on long
death marches into the Syrian desert by a Turkish government bent on
seizing a strategic piece of land and creating a Pan-Turkish empire.

Armenian genocide

The Turks talk back

The Turks say it never happened. They admit the Armenians
suffered a huge death toll between 1915 and 1918, but they say the
deaths were due to a civil rebellion and the vast destruction left in
the wake of World War I. Despite the photographs, the news reports,
the eyewitness accounts and the stories of survivors, the Turks have
fought the charge of genocide since the United Nations accepted the
term and declared it an international crime in 1948.

Those denials were stepped up last week as Armenians the world
over held commemorative services to mark the 91st anniversary of the
genocide and to remember those who died and those who survived. And
in Massachusetts, people are watching the debate on the Armenian
genocide play out on a local, state and federal level.

Apo Torosyan, an Armenian artist and filmmaker who now lives in
Peabody, says Turkey has buried the truth of what happened to the
Armenians because they don’t want the national stigma.

“They are trying to cover up their shame,” says Torosyan, whose
grandparents died of starvation during the genocide. “I would be very
ashamed. This was a very systematic murder.”

Torosyan and others also feel the Turkish government is
determined not to acknowledge anything that could leave it open to a
flood of lawsuits seeking billions of dollars in reparations.

And because Turkey now plays a strategic role in a turbulent part
of the world, few people, particularly those in the U.S. government,
want to rock the boat by demanding that Turkey accept responsibility.

Torosyan understands that politics have dictated how the story of
the Armenian genocide is being told. But like others, he believes
denial is the final act of any genocide. And like others he believes
the truth about Armenia and those who died will eventually be
acknowledged and accepted.

The politics of denial

As a kid, Mary Foley remembers people she didn’t know would
sometimes visit her home to talk with her parents.

“My mother used to tell me go into the bedroom and play,” recalls
Foley, the sister of former Peabody Mayor Peter Torigian

As she grew older, Foley realized the visitors were Armenian
immigrants looking for clues or scraps of information about people
who may have escaped Turkey and survived the genocide.

Foley’s father left Armenia for the United States in 1912, the
year before the killings and deportations started. Her mother, who
was a child at the time, lost her family and managed to survive with
the help of Turkish families who took in and hid Armenian orphans.

But those Turks who helped took a huge risk, says Foley. Homes
were searched and if any Armenians were found, the entire household
would be killed.

Years later, when she was 94 and suffering from Alzheimer’s
disease, Foley says her mother would sometimes call out in Armenian,
“They came, they came, they came.” The tears would roll down her
cheeks as she relived the terror of hiding from Turkish death squads.

“These aren’t stories that people can make up,” says Foley. “How
could the Turks deny these things happened?”

But Foley knows that politics have interfered with the way
history is being remembered and told. For years, American political
leaders have been walking a fine line between acknowledging the
suffering of the Armenians and placating the Turkish government by
going easy on the blame. It’s a difficult balancing act.

Just ask Deval Patrick, a Democratic candidate for governor, who
took a visible seat at an Armenian memorial service at the State
House last week. Patrick made sure he had time to attend after the
Boston Herald reported he had ties to lobbyist Bernie Robinson, whose
Washington-based firm, the Livingston Group, has been working for the
Republic of Turkey on its campaign to deny or downplay the Armenian
genocide.

According to the watchdog group Public Citizen, the Turks have paid
the Livingston Group more than $9 million to fight a congressional
amendment recognizing the Armenian genocide and to help steer $1
billion in U.S. aid to Turkey, even though American troops are barred
from using Turkish soil as a staging area for Iraq.

Patrick’s Democratic opponent Tom Reilly wasted no time racking
up a few political miles with the incident.

“Anyone who would try and undermine the history and the truth of
what happened to the Armenian population, I certainly would be
disappointed in that. I certainly would not want to have anything to
do with that,” Reilly said.

On a national level, the Armenian sidestepping has been
bi-partisan. Both presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush have
refused to sign on to the Armenian Genocide Resolution, which would
formally recognize the suffering of the Armenians.

“There are congressmen and senators who support the Armenian
people,” says Foley. “But on the whole, America likes to ignore it
because the Turks have been allies for many years.”

Not only did the United States have military bases in Turkey
during the Cold War, the country’s strategic location and its role as
a moderate Muslim country make it a critical ally to American
interests in the Middle East.

“It’s wrong, but no one want to make enemies of the Turks,” says
Foley.

And while the American stand against acknowledging the Armenian
genocide is difficult, Torosyan says it’s not only the national
response that Armenians find troubling.

Israel, which also depends on alliance with Turkey, has also
refused to formally recognize the genocide, says Torosyan.

The Israeli position has been that the question of the Armenians
should be left to the historians, not the politicians.

Spinning the story

Denying or rewriting history takes some effort, but it seems the
Turks are doing their best and succeeding, at least inside of Turkey.

“This history has been fabricated by the Turkish government,”
says Torosyan. “Their history has been written by the politicians,
not the historians. They are rewriting history to their own benefit,
not to the benefit of humanity.”

According to Torosyan, the Turkish government archives have been
purged and all documents that trace the official program of
deportation and killing are gone.

“It’s like a jigsaw puzzle where all the pieces in the middle are
missing,” says Torosyan. “There are a few pieces on the sides, but
that’s all that’s left.”

As for events that captured the world’s attention, the Turkish
government has done its best to spin them. For example, the Turks say
episodes during which Armenian professionals and intellectuals were
rounded up and killed were a necessary step to quell an internal
rebellion.

The Turks also brush off the post-war trials of those who led the
Armenian genocide. Although several key Turkish leaders were tried
and executed for their role in the Armenian genocide, the Turks now
say those trials were political showmanship, the result of political
infighting between the pre- and post-war government.

And the Turks don’t appear satisfied with rewriting just their
own history books.

Late last year, the Assembly of Turkish American Associations, a
student and two teachers sued the Massachusetts Board of Education,
claiming it had censored history and interfered with the right of
speech. The state has curriculum guidelines for teaching students
about human rights and genocide. But it has refused to include in its
material links to Turkish government-sponsored Web sites that deny
the Armenian genocide.

According to Harvey Silverglate, a Boston civil rights lawyer
representing the plaintiffs, the suit isn’t about being on one side
or the other – it’s about censorship. Silverglate says students
should be able to look at different historical sources and come to
their own conclusions about what happened to the Armenians.

Members of the state board of education have argued that the Web
sites in question are not academic sites.

Torosyan agrees and says those Web sites are just Turkish
propaganda. He believes the information that has survived speaks for
itself.

“Denials are denials,” he says. “You could never have a
curriculum that denies the Holocaust. People have a right to speak up
and not tell lies and not tell man-made history.”

But Torosyan, who is a member of the International Association of
Genocide Scholars, is also doing his part to contribute to the
history through his artwork and through two short films, “Discovering
My Father’s Village – Edinick” and “Witness,” both of which feature
survivors of the Armenian genocide and an analysis of events.

The Turkish government hasn’t taken kindly to those who buck
their trend of retelling the story. In recent years, there have been
several high-profile cases of writers and journalists who have been
imprisoned for publishing accounts of the Armenian genocide.

Torosyan, who had a display of his artwork at the annual memorial
service in Peabody for Holocaust survivors this week, explained the
cost of telling his stories to those who stopped by his exhibit.

“This,” he said as he pointed to copies of his films, “is why I
can never go back.”

Boston Herald report Kevin Rothstein contributed to this story.
E-Mail Barbara Taormina at btaormin@cnc.com.