PROTESTING TURKISH CULTURAL WEEK- DEMANDING RECOGNITION OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

Arab Media Comunity
ersonal-account-protesting
April 28, 2009

On Tuesday, April 28, 2009, a group of around 20 feminist activists
staged a sit-in at the UNESCO palace in Beirut in protest of the
opening of the Turkish Cultural Week only days after the commemoration
of the Armenian genocide. Demonstrators argued that the event was
an "insult" to the Armenian Genocide and a "sign of disrespect to
its memory". As the group dropped a giant banner reading "Recognize
the Armenian Genocide" before the surprised faces of diplomats and
politicians that had gathered at the UNESCO for the inauguration
ceremony of the Turkish Cultural week, fifteen of the activists were
detained by the Lebanese police. They were transferred to a police
station near the UNESCO and were held there for 3 hours until the
ceremony had ended.

Detained demonstrator "Shantal P" sent this personal account and
photos of the sit-in to MENASSAT:

"April 24th marked the commemoration of the Armenian genocide on the
hands of the Ottoman empire. April 24th also marked 94 years of denial
by the Turkish government that such a thing ever happened. They called
it casualties of war…

I go to work and it’s a regular Tuesday, so I log onto Gmail and my
friend Lynn sends me the link to an article in the press praising
the Turkish cultural week. I do not understand this. Two days ago
marked one of the harshest days in the year for me. Two days ago I was
wallowing in transgenerational trauma and reading William Saroyan. I
got angry and confused and after a conversation with my friends,
I realized that Martyr’s day is in a week and it all made sense…

How perfect to put a cultural event in the middle and diverge the
minds and thoughts of everybody from Turkey’s past and denial.

So my friend Lynn tells me: "let’s do something. Let’s hold up a
banner in a very peaceful manner". I go with the idea and we tell
another friend, Jay, and he makes a page on Facebook. Then we start
calling people we know, updating our statuses online, and telling
more friends about our plan.

At 7.30 pm we are around 17 people and we head to UNESCO. We walk
in under a banner that reads something along the lines with "Turkey
Nation of Peace". I laugh . Lynn had brought a camera. I take it. We
start dispersing. My friends Ali and Sara go up the stairs and the rest
follow. Then they drop the banner and my friends start shouting : "Hey
up here!" So everyone looks up and I start taking photos hysterically
because we know that the photos are what will mean most along with
the banner.

A TV cameraman turns his lens upwards. I hear the security guy say :
"check which TV station that is and stop them." A moukhabarat (security
forces) guy goes up and rips the banner. He starts yelling at Ali
and Sara. They take us outside. In the meantime, we manage to give
the camera to our friend and tell her to just leave with the photos
just in case they take it from us inside.

We stick together and are eventually led to the Makhfar ( police
station ) all 15 of us.

The faces of the officers were priceless, I guess seeing 14 girls
and a guy in their twenties walking into the makhfar is not something
you see everyday here.

Inside the Makhfar, they asked us for our IDs and some had left them
in the car and had to call our friends to get them for us. To be
very honest, what they ended up charging us with was walking around
without identification which is quite hilarious and very George
Orwell fiction-like.

Anyhow, they took those without IDs to another room where a small
television was sitting in the corner. The officers were watching
football. We sat there and a bit later they changed the channel and
names in the Turkish alphabet started popping up on the screen. We
just looked at each other and smiled.

They thought we were all Armenian. We were in some metaphorical
way. I should have reminded them of the day Hrant Dink was murdered
in Istanbul and the Turkish crowd gathered in the streets shouting :
"We are all Armenians". However, on paper, of the 15 people arrested,
only 4 were Armenians.

The officers didn’t like this much. They didn’t really understand
why a bunch of our friends were with the cause. They kept asking us :
"enno, you hate the turks is that it?" We do not hate the Turks. I do
not hate Turks, I hate any government or power who denies others the
right to live and oppresses them. I hate any government or power who
chokes ideas and freedom ( Orhan Pamuk and Hrant Dink anyone? ). I
hate any government of power whose basic value is denial of caused
pain and anguish and its past. I hate any government or power whose
morals are to spread their culture by erasing that of others ( no need
to let you know what is happening to the historical Armenian landmarks
in eastern Anatolia ). I have nothing against the brainwashed masses,
they are brainwashed, lobotomized and ashamed, one can only try to
speak out and break the silence and the walls.

The head of UNESCO came to tell us how hurt he was, I snickered and
Sarag, my friend, told him, "well my people have been hurting for 94
years and this is what you care about? A diplomatic affair? Before your
fellow citizens"? We shamed them, they said. I wonder if he realized
how much he shamed me as a citizen when he disrespected my culture,
our dead, our memory.

We sat there waiting for the event to end so they’d release us. A
phone call told us that people outside had gathered, around 200 of
them, from parties and universities. They were not related to us,
but knowing they were outside made us all the more proud and we felt
strong. We called our friends to let them know we are inside. We
changed Facebook statuses. Nadine, one of the detained activists,
managed to update hers from within the police office. There was just
something so powerful to be inside a room with friends and colleagues
and people who were there to support a cause you always deemed yours
and that had suddenly become theirs as well.

They released us around 11.40 p.m. We walked out from the same place
we entered from, in front of all the officers and the UNESCO main
entrance. Some diplomats were still leaving. I was smiling.

We gathered at a friend’s house and got some beer. It was very
emotional to say the least. Sarag came up to me before leaving. She
automatically realized what i was thinking about. We had discussed
our identity so many times before. At the risk of sounding sappy,
we hugged, we couldn’t help but cry. It all made sense, made real
sense. The banner, the arrest, our friends supporting our case,
the feminists supporting a human issue, it all made perfect sense.

The next morning my mom called to ask me if I heard about the
protest. I said "yeah". She told me :" your dad wished he was there." I
replied, :"mom I was there, it was our idea." She was shocked. She
finally asked: "were you arrested? " I said yes. She laughed and told
me she was proud. I thought of the police officer that kept nagging
and wanting to be right about all of us being Armenian and IANs and
I felt like saying, my mom isn’t and what makes her special is that
she gets it. She gets the cause, our cause and like my friends views
it as something beyond race and ethnicity, as something fundamentally
righteous, fundamentally human.