BE AS BRAVE AS KIM KARDASHIAN AND THE POPE, MR. PRESIDENT: CALL THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE A ‘GENOCIDE.’
Washington Post
April 14 2015
A century after more than 1 million Armenians were killed by the
Ottomans, Obama should call this atrocity what it was.
By Chris Bohjalian
It sounds like the set-up for a joke in a late-night talk show host’s
opening monologue:
“So, Kim Kardashian and the pope were the biggest news stories last
Sunday.”
But it’s no laughing matter. Kardashian and Pope Francis made
headlines in recent days in ways that were poignant, powerful and —
speaking as an Armenian American and descendant of survivors of the
Armenian Genocide — game-changing. Last week, Kardashian, easily
the most famous Armenian American, along with husband Kanye West and
daughter North, visited the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan,
Armenia, and on Sunday night, Kanye gave a free concert at Swan Lake
in the city center. This week, during Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica,
the pope called out the Ottoman Empire’s systematic annihilation of
an estimated 1.5 million Armenians as “genocide,” and went on to say
that “Concealing and denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep
bleeding without bandaging it.”
Now, I hope President Obama follows their lead and takes the
opportunity, at last, to fulfill his 2008 campaign promise and
do the same. Because for seven years, he’s put realpolitik before
righteousness, avoiding the word “genocide” in an effort to appease an
American military ally — Turkey — that offers very little in return.
For most of the world, the Armenian Genocide is — to paraphrase
a character in one of my novels — the slaughter you know next to
nothing about. But every year on April 24, Genocide Remembrance
Day, we Armenians remember the injustice of a crime that is rarely
acknowledged and often flatly denied. It was April 24, 1915, when the
Armenian intellectuals, professionals, editors and religious leaders
in Constantinople were rounded up by the Ottoman authorities — and
almost all of them executed. During World War I, the Ottoman Empire
killed three of every four of its Armenian citizens. The majority of
Armenians alive today are descendants of the few survivors.
And for the last hundred years, Turkish leaders have endeavored to deny
the genocide by falsifying the historical record, despite the fact that
the International Association of Genocide Scholars unanimously calls
it genocide. In February, a Kurdish member of the Turkish Parliament,
Ahmet Turk, acknowledged his Kurdish ancestors’ role in the killing
and apologized to the Armenians for the “blood on their hands.” Even
the first postwar Turkish government convicted the three architects
of the genocide for their crimes against the Armenians in 1919 and
sentenced them to death in absentia. It wasn’t until the second postwar
government took over in 1924 — the government led by Mustafa Kemal
Ataturk — that Turkey began to rewrite the history of this atrocity.
Kim Kardashian walks in Victory Park while filming in Yerevan, Armenia
on Thursday, April 9, 2015. While in Armenia, she met with Prime
Minister Hovik Abrahamyan. (AP photo/Artur Harutyunyan, PAN Photo)
They’ve gotten away with it, in part, because many Western nations
viewed Turkey as the last stop against Soviet expansion during the
Cold War, and later as a moderate ally in the Middle East. The United
States has certainly been an enabler. Washington is so fearful of
Ankara that we’ve never passed a resolution here condemning the
Armenian Genocide. While campaigning in 2008, then-candidate Barack
Obama said, “America deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about
the Armenian Genocide and responds forcefully to all genocides. I
intend to be that president.” As a U.S. Senator, he supported passage
of an Armenian Genocide resolution. But for the last six years as
president, every April 24, he finds a euphemism for the “G” word to
avoid angering Turkey.
But it hasn’t helped him. Turkey, a NATO member, won’t authorize
American military flights from the U.S. Air Force’s Incirlik Air Base
for strikes against ISIS. ISIS black market oil flows through Turkey.
It is a transshipment point for weapons going to al-Qaeda affiliates,
while becoming a new hub for Hamas. Internally, Turkey has cracked
down so hard on journalists that Reporters Without Borders ranks them
149th on the World Press Freedom Index — below Myanmar and barely
above Russia.
Turkey’s leaders bristle when it comes to discussing the Ottoman
Empire’s crimes. Immediately after Pope Francis spoke, Turkey
recalled its Vatican ambassador, and its foreign minister raged,
“The pope’s statement, which is far from historic and legal truths,
is unacceptable.” But the truth hurts, and decades of scholarship
about the genocide, sometimes by Turkish scholars, has illustrated
this painful truth. So has the activism of Armenians around the world,
frustrated by the way our ancestors were massacred and our homeland
was taken from us. Now we’re a century from the start of the genocide,
and we must no longer enable Turkish efforts to sweep this mass murder
under the rug. Most years, April 24 passes without much recognition
beyond Armenian communities. But not this year. It is the centennial,
the world has taken notice of this grim milestone and Turkey has
proven itself to be an unreliable ally.
In a year that both the most visible leader in the Christian faith and
the ubiquitous face of the Kardashian empire both stood up to demand
accountability, the world, including our country, has to recognize,
mourn and condemn this atrocity.
My hope today is that the president will cement his legacy as a
statesman possessing an accurate moral compass, speak what has
previously been unspeakable, show the same courage as the pope and
call our tragedy what it is: genocide.
Chris Bohjalian is the author of 18 books, including his novel of
the Armenian Genocide, The Sandcastle Girls.