RAFFI HOVANNISIAN PANDERS TO TURKEY
By Appo Jabarian, Executive Publisher/Managing Editor USA ARMENIAN LIFE Magazine

AZG Armenian Daily
01/03/2008

At the Cost of Political Bankruptcy

August 29, 2007, Armenia’s Heritage Party leader Raffi K. Hovannisian
sent a letter of congratulations to the then newly elected Turkish
president Abdullah Gul.

He wrote: "The deep divides between our countries, be they of
contemporary character or part of the legacy of the Great Armenian
Dispossession, must be overcome and resolved in truth, with integrity,
and through the partnership of the two new leaders and their fellow
citizens of good faith and conscience."

Soon after the content of the letter was revealed, the highly
insulting term "Great Armenian Dispossession" used in lieu of the
words "The Armenian Genocide" sent political shockwaves in Armenia
and the Diaspora.

Heritage Party officials hoped the issue would disappear with the
flow of time. But the exact opposite happened.

On February 13, Armen Tsaturyan of "Hayots Ashkhar" (The Armenian
World) wrote a scathing commentary against Hovannisian. He stated:
"If we set aside all the political major and minor likability and
non-likability issues and are guided by cool logic, we can not define
Raffi Hovannisian’s action except with one word: ‘Treason.’"

Tsaturyan reported that Hovannisian pandered to Turkey as follows: "It
is to be hoped that, during your tenure and that of the next Armenian
president to be elected in several months’ time, Turkish-Armenian
relations will enter a wholly new phase of reflection, exploration,
discovery, and ultimate normalization."

"It turns out that the son of historian Richard Hovannisian, a notable
heir to the victims of the Armenian Genocide, needs further ‘studies’
on the issue of the Armenian Genocide. With his outlandish proposal to
co-initiate ‘studies,’ he is furthering the Turkish obvious goal to
establish a joint commission of historians. And that is the shortest
route to subjecting the facts of the Armenian genocide to suspicion,"
concluded Tsaturyan.

On February 16, according to Noyan Tapan news agency, in an open
letter to the Heritage Party, the chairman of the Armenian community
of Slovakia Ashot Grigorian blasted Hovannisian: "No doubt, Raffi
Hovannisian should have been well aware of the political value of the
term ‘genocide,’ whose importance is hard to overestimate today. Turkey
is ready to pay dearly if the Armenians agree to replace the term
‘genocide’ with any other word. … In his letter, Hovannisian replaced
voluntarily the term ‘genocide’ with another term more acceptable to
Turks, thus ruining the work we have done for years and decades. This
calls into question today the result of the huge and hard work on
passing the resolution on the genocide in the National Assembly of
Slovakia. The resolutions passed by the parliaments of about twenty
countries have also been deprived of meaning."

An Armenian activist underlined: "As the saying goes, one should not
change horses in mid-stream, Armenians have invested decades of effort
to get the words Armenian Genocide recognized. There is no reason
to abandon that and start using another word. In fact, the smart
thing to do would have been to use all sorts of words like ‘forced
deportation’, ‘mass killings’, ‘ethnic cleansing’, ‘dispossession’,
but use these words in addition to ‘genocide’, NOT in its place.

Also, why is Raffi congratulating Gul? He is neither the President
nor the Foreign Minister of Armenia!"

One wonders, what’s going on in the Hovannisian households in Los
Angeles and Yerevan?

In early 2006, the grandfather Prof. Richard Hovannisian of UCLA,
reportedly told RFE/RL that "in some respects Armenia is now an
even less democratic state than Turkey, its historical foe regularly
castigated by the West for its poor human and civil rights record."

On July 30, 2007, on the eve of the passage by U.S. House Foreign
Relations Committee of the Armenian Genocide resolution 106,
Raffi’s son and the elder Hovannisian’s grandson Garin wrote in
the Washington Times: "… Bad congressional resolutions might well
begin to sound like good Philip Larkin: ‘Sexual intercourse began
/In nineteen sixty-three. …/ Between the end of the Chatterley ban
/And the Beatles’ first LP.’" This was not the first time that the
second junior Hovannisian has ridiculed and poked fun at his martyred
Armenian ancestor’s Cause.

And now, his father, Raffi, all too willingly attempts to jeopardize
the Armenian Cause in return of personal political gains.

In 1992, the Raffi Hovannisian the Armenians knew and respected was
the steadfast Foreign Minister of Armenia who clearly uttered the
words Armenian Genocide in Turkey. He was fired by the then president
of Armenia, Mr. Levon Ter Petrossyan ironically for having been
honest. Then, Raffi remained in Armenia and pursued the objective to
become the next president of Armenia. His efforts were blocked. When
that didn’t materialize, his father, Prof. Hovannisian slapped
Armenia in the face by preferring Turkey as a "better Democracy"
than Armenia. What a change for the worse!

Then Raffi’s son Garin "punished" Armenia. So if Turkey is a better
democracy than Armenia, how come he is not relocating to what is now
called Turkey and pursue his political ambitions there by presenting
his candidacy for the presidency of Turkey?

By having pandered to Turkey, Hovannisian overdrew on what was left
of his political capital in Armenia-Artsakh and around the world. He
effectively antagonized literally millions of Armenians. Every year
millions of survivors and their descendants flock to the Armenian
Genocide monuments in Yerevan and elsewhere. Hundreds of thousands
mobilize in marches condemning Turkey’s continued denial of the
Genocide and the wholesale forced occupation of the Armenian lands.

Hovannisian has de facto attempted to torpedo the justice pursued by
the clear majority of Armenians.

But in fact he torpedoed his own political career.

The overwhelming majority of Armenians in the homeland and the
Diaspora would prefer to see their beloved republics of Armenia and
Artsakh transform their soviet-era corrupt bureaucracies into healthy,
fully functioning government bodies. But that desire, along with the
urge to seek personal political gain, does not give the Hovannisians
or anyone else a green light to make erroneous statements, unfairly
belittling, and even worse undermine their fledgling new republics
and provide damaging ammunition to the enemy.