AZG DAILY #5, 16-01-2010

Armenian Genocide

Update: 2010-01-16 01:56:12 (GMT +04:00)

HRANT DINK’S VOICE AT THE GENOCIDE MONUMENT

By Hasan Cemal, Armenian Mirror Spectator

I remember, Hrant Dink once said "let’s first show respect to each
other’s pain and sorrow." Maybe these words of Hrant and the pain he
experienced was what brought me, for the first time in my life, to
Armenia, and made me experience at day-break a hurricane of emotions
in front of the Genocide Monument.

Mount Ararat appears and disappears in the fog. It looks sorrowful.
How noble, how delicate it looks with its peak in snow. You feel you
can catch it if you reach out.

I am alone with Hrant in front of the monument, thinking of the pain
and sorrow. I think of respecting the pain. Understanding the other’s
pain. And I think of sharing the pain. In the strange silence of the
daybreak, I am alone with Hrant. And Rakel’s cry is in my ear…

The tragic pain experienced by the Armenian nation and by him had
matured Hrant. Maybe this pain helped him to speak and write in the
language of his conscience. One always learns something from others.
So I learned from Hrant, in his life and in his death. I learned that
one cannot escape history. At the crystal clear silence of the
morning, I thought once more, with Hrant in my mind, how meaningless
it is to deny the history, and at the same time, how risky it is to be
a slave of history and pains and sorrows. My maternal uncle’s voice
came from afar: "Roots don’t disappear, my son!" He was a Circassian,
of the Gabarday tribe. But he didn’t mention his Circassian identity;
he made clear he didn’t enjoyed talking of the "roots." This was our
"fear of the state." When I insisted, he would say "don’t mention
these things." But near to his death he whispered in my ear: "Still,
the roots won’t disappear, Hasan my son!"

People’s roots, the land they have their roots in, are very important.
As it is a crime against humanity to separate people from their
language and identity so it is an equally great crime to separate
people from their roots and lands. And to find an excuse for these
actions is an inseparable part of the crime. Armenians experienced
that great pain. They experienced it when they were uprooted from
Anatolia. They experienced it in 1915, in 1916. And the longing for
Anatolia never stopped in their soul. Turks had experienced the same
pain, too. They experienced pain when they were uprooted from the
Balkans and the Caucasus, and at the time of war in Anatolia. Kurds
experienced the pain, too. They experienced pain when their language
and identity was denied, when they were expelled from their lands.

I don’t compare pain and sorrow. That would be wrong. Pain and sorrow
can’t be compared. Hrant’s voice is in my ear: "Let’s first show
respect to each other’s pain."

Hrant tells silently his own pain: "I know what happened to my
ancestors. Some of you call it `a massacre,’ some `a genocide,’ some
`forced evacuation’ and yet some `a tragedy.’ My ancestors had called
it, in the Anatolian way of speaking, `a butchery.’ "If a state
uproots its own citizens from their homes and lands, and without
distinguishing even the most defenseless among them, the kids, women
and elderly, expels them to unknown and endless roads, and if as a
result of this, a great part of them disappear, how can we justify our
deliberations to choose between words to characterize this event. Is
there a human way of explaining this?

"If we keep juggling `do we call this genocide or evacuation’ if we
can’t condemn both in an equal measure, how will choosing either
genocide or evacuation help to save our honor." Is it necessary to
qualify the pain, to categorize it? Of course, it is not unimportant,
insignificant. But I don’t think it’s a must. The genocide debate
locks a lot of things, especially when it becomes a part of the
equation among Turks and Armenians, Turkey and Armenia and the
Armenian Diaspora.

History gets entangled. Reason and common sense get entangled.
Dialogue gets locked. And this entanglement helps "the fanatics." It
becomes easier to produce hate and enmity out of the pages of history.
Yet, what we need is to make the fanatics’ job more difficult. We have
to find a way to walk down the road of love and peace without becoming
a slave of history, without becoming a hostage of past pain and
sorrow.

At a foggy morning, in front of the Genocide Monument, I listen to the
voice of Hrant Dink. He asks: "Do we behave like the perpetrators of
the great tragedy in the past, or are we going to write the new pages
like civilized people by taking lessons from those mistakes?" Let’s
first understand each other’s pain, share it and show respect to it.
Things will follow. Won’t it, my dear Hrant? You always said "not
confession, nor denial, first understanding." And you knew, as you
knew your own name, that understanding was only possible through
democracy and freedom.

My dear brother; The sun rises like a red orange in Yerevan. In the
beautiful silence of the morning, I lay white carnations at the
monument. You and your pain and sorrow brought me to this part of the
world. Yes, let’s first show respect to each other’s pain and sorrow.

(Columnist Hasan Cemal is the grandson of Cemal Pasha, one of the
perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide. He wrote this commentary in
2008 after visiting the Armenian Genocide Monument in Yerevan).