Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin
Armenians won’t forget; neither should the world
November 23, 2008
I am an orchardist. I hope my new orchard fares better than my previous
efforts at growing fruit trees. Maybe they will, because I’m not actually
growing them. They aren’t even mine, when you get down to it.
They’re mine in name only, thanks to the generosity of Dr. Garabed Fattal
and his fellow parishioners at St. Gregory the Illuminator Church in
Binghamton.
The trees, 10 of them, are planted somewhere in Armenia, which means I’ll
probably never get to see them. But I find comfort in knowing that they are
there and might someday mature and help beautify a land that has seen more
than its share of abuse.
Armenia was the first Christian state (you could look it up) which may
account for the fact that throughout history it has endured more than its
share of persecution. First known as Uratu, it came into existence as a
sixth century B.C. Persian province. It was later conquered by Alexander the
Great and subsequently by Byzantines, Huns, Khazars, Arabs and Turks.
For a brief period during the ninth to 14th centuries A.D., the Armenians
enjoyed independence, having divided into Little Armenia and Greater
Armenia. Then, in 1375, the Mamelukes conquered Little Armenia, and a decade
later Tamerlane took Greater Armenia and slaughtered a large part of its
population in the process. And so it went.
The trees I mentioned earlier were the church members’ way of thanking me
for writing about the 20th century Armenian genocide, which actually had its
roots in the 1890s but reached its peak in 1915. That was in the early days
of World War I, when the Ottoman Turks, allied with Germany, accused Armenia
of helping Russia.
Some 2 million Armenians were killed or driven into exile to Syria, Lebanon
and other Middle Eastern countries.
But not according to the Turks. They denied it then, despite eyewitness
accounts of Europeans and others, and they continue to deny it, officially,
to this day. And they are getting away with it, politically, in large part
because of Turkey’s strategic location.
Successive American administrations have gone along with the fiction,
especially during the Cold War and the Cool War that has followed the
dissolution of the People’s Paradise, otherwise known as the Soviet Union.
Even despite that accommodation, Turkey denied United States and other
coalition forces access to Iraq through its territory at the start of the
Second Bush Oil War. The United States, on the other hand, did not intervene
when Turkish forces subsequently attacked Kurds inside Iraq.
The inconsistencies hardly end there. There are countries in Europe where
you can be imprisoned for denying the World War II Holocaust that took the
lives of an estimated 6 million, Jews, gypsies and others. In this country,
we settle for pariahhood.
But in Turkey you can be jailed or worse, killed, for claiming publicly that
the Armenian genocide occurred.
And in American Academia, including Binghamton University, where political
correctness is the order of the day, the welcome mat is out to all things
Turkish, no questions asked.
Go figure.