St. Joseph News-Press, Kansas
March 6 2010

Vartabedian weighs in on congressional panel’s decision

WWI-era mass killings labeled `genocide’

By Jimmy Myers
Saturday, March 6, 2010

A congressional panel’s vote to label the World War I-era mass
killings by Turkish troops as `genocide’ caused a ripple in the
international relations world Thursday. A local man with Armenian
roots weighs in.

Dr. Bob Vartabedian’s grandparents escaped Armenia before the mass
killings began. His grandfather, who arrived in America in 1906 as a
16-year-old, sent money home and was planning to return one day, but
the village was wiped out. An estimated 1.5 million Armenians were
killed beginning in 1915.

Dr. Vartabedian, who is president at Missouri Western State
University, spoke to the News-Press as a private citizen not
representing the college.

`It’s difficult for me to be unbiased about it,’ he said of growing up
hearing his grandfather’s stories about what he dealt with in Armenia,
how he escaped, and how difficult it was for him to experience the
death of his family. His grandmother’s father, a minister, was one of
the early victims of violence against Christians, leaving the rest of
the family (his grandmother had four younger sisters) to escape to
America on their own.

Dr. Vartabedian, who has several friends who are Turkish, took a
couple of courses in Armenian history, which he said were more
objective than his grandfather’s `tragic commentary.’ But what he came
away with would still clash with his Turkish friends’ interpretation.

`I’m sure from the Turkish perspective, it’s digging up old wounds,’
he said of the congressional panel’s action, which prompted Turkey to
pull their ambassador in Washington, D.C. `I certainly would not want
any of this to reflect badly on today’s Turkish people.’

Dr. Vartabedian said it’s an issue more for the historians than those
who can’t be objective about it. It’s a very `perceptual thing,’ he
said, of how Armenians and Turks view the situation.

`You can’t forget history,’ he said of the typical Armenian response.
`Certain things happened in history that can’t be forgotten and can’t
be swept under the rug. From a Turkish perspective, it could be that
the past is the past and we have to move on.’

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