Author: Topchian Jane

NALBANDIAN BEAT FEDERER TO WIN THE MADRID MASTERS

armradio.am
22.10.2007 15:02

David Nalbandian defeated top-ranked Roger Federer in the final of
tennis Madrid Masters and attained his first title since May 2006.

The world No. 25 from Argentina won 1-6, 6-3, 6-3 to end a run of four
straight defeats against Switzerland’s Federer, who he last beat in
the Masters Cup in Shanghai two years ago.

Nalbandian, who hadn’t been past a quarterfinal this year before
Madrid, also beat No. 2 Rafael Nadal and third-ranked Novak Djokovic
this week.

Specialists say this was the greatest success in Nalbandian’s career.

Gaining 100 rating points, he considerably improved the standing in
the ranking list.

Panorama.am

18:16 19/10/2007

UNCOMPETITIVE ARRANGEMENT

Economic competition protection state committee session unveiled today
that the economic subjects have violated law by raising the prices of
natural oil and butter. In accordance with the committee decision,
those companies which have violated the law must pay a fine of 2% of
their profit from oil in 2006. The committee issued no decision on
lowering the prices of the mentioned products.

The sharp rise in natural oil was caused by an uncompetitive
arrangement reached among companies. `Compared to the international
prices, in our republic the prices went up several times more. That’s
why we had to take up measures,’ Committee Chairman Ashot Shahnazaryan
said.

Source: Panorama.am

New York Times
Oct 19 2007

Armenian Issue Presents a Dilemma for U.S. Jews

By NEELA BANERJEE
Published: October 19, 2007

LEXINGTON, Mass., Oct. 17 – On the docket for the weekly selectmen’s
meeting here on Monday were the location of park benches, a liquor
license for Vinny T’s restaurant and, not for the first time, the
killing of 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey 90 years ago.

Raised in Turkey, Hovannes Minasian, center, was among many Armenians
attending the town meeting in Lexington.
The debate in this affluent Boston suburb, home to many Jews and
Armenians, centered on a local program to increase awareness of bias.
The issue was not the program itself, but its sponsor, the
Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish advocacy group, which has taken a
stand against a proposed Congressional resolution condemning the
Armenians’ deaths as genocide.

`If you deny one genocide,’ said Dr. Jack Nusan Porter, a child of
Holocaust survivors and a genocide studies scholar who attended the
meeting, `you deny all genocides.’

The Congressional resolution has created an international furor and
deeply offended the Turkish government, both a key ally of Israel’s
and a crucial logistics player for the American presence in Iraq. But
as events in Boston suburbs in recent months have shown, it has also
put American Jews in an anguished dilemma as they try to reconcile
their support of Israel with their commitment to fighting genocide.
In the end, the Board of Selectmen here voted unanimously to cut ties
with the Anti-Defamation League, as did three other Boston suburbs
this week. Three other towns had already done so, with more
considering the option.

For many Jews, the issue has involved much soul-searching.

`It’s hard to talk about it because there are two things or more in
conflict here,’ said Rabbi David Lerner of Temple Emunah in
Lexington. `Israel is in a very vulnerable position in the world, and
Turkey is its only friend in the Middle East. Genocide is a burning
issue for us, now and in the past. It’s something of who we are.’

The House resolution condemning the killings of Armenians as genocide
is nonbinding and largely symbolic, but Turkey’s reaction has been
swift and furious. It has recalled its ambassador from Washington and
threatened to withdraw critical logistical support for the Iraq war.

For Patrick Mehr, a Lexington resident who spoke at the meeting
Monday, the overriding priority is condemning the killings,
regardless of Turkey’s response.

The next day at his home, Mr. Mehr, the son of a Holocaust survivor,
voiced the anger many Jews and Armenians feel toward Abraham H.
Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League’s national director. `Abe Foxman,
like George W. Bush, is mumbling that it may not have been genocide,’
Mr. Mehr said. `Foxman talks about commissions of scholars who should
study this. That, to me, rang exactly like Ahmadinejad saying, `Let’s
have a committee to study the Holocaust.’ Give me a break.’

Jewish leaders have long sought to focus attention on the killings of
Armenians, starting with the American ambassador to Turkey in 1915,
Henry Morgenthau Sr., who wrote in a cable that the Turkish violence
against Armenians was `an effort to exterminate the race.’ Several
members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who voted for the
resolution, including a key sponsor, Representative Adam B. Schiff,
Democrat of California, are Jewish.

Several major Jewish groups, like the American Jewish Committee,
oppose the resolution, arguing that it is not the best way to
persuade the Turks to examine their past.

Mr. Foxman argues that Turkey is the only friend Israel has in the
Muslim world, and it has been hospitable to Jews since giving them
refuge after they were driven from Europe during the Inquisition.

`Israel’s relationship with Turkey is the second most important,
after its relationship with the United States,’ Mr. Foxman said. `All
this in a world that isolates Israel, and all this can’t simply be
waved away.’

Widespread attention to the Anti-Defamation League’s opposition to
the resolution came in July, when David Boyajian, an
Armenian-American resident of Newton, Mass., wrote to a local
newspaper saying that the town’s anti-bigotry program, known as No
Place for Hate, was tarnished because of its sponsorship by the
Anti-Defamation League.

He wrote that the A.D.L. `has made the Holocaust and its denial key
pieces’ of the program, `while at the same time hypocritically
working with Turkey to oppose recognition of the Armenian genocide of
1915-23.’

The news shocked most local Jews, many of whom have long been active
in campaigns against killings in Bosnia, Rwanda and, most recently,
Sudan. By mid-August, Watertown, Mass., had decided to end its
affiliation with the Anti-Defamation League’s program. On Aug. 17,
the board of the New England Anti-Defamation League passed a
resolution calling for the national organization to recognize the
Armenian genocide. Its regional director, Andrew Tarsy, was fired by
the national group the next day.

The clampdown on the local chapter infuriated many Jews in the Boston
area. Two members of the New England board resigned, although one has
since returned, and many local leaders criticized Mr. Foxman. Newton,
whose population is heavily Jewish, voted to sever ties with the
Anti-Defamation League unless it changed its position on the
resolution.

Mr. Foxman quickly rehired Mr. Tarsy and issued a statement intended
to heal what he said were dangerous rifts in the Boston Jewish
community at a time when Jewish unity was crucial. The statement did
not support the House resolution. The killings of Armenians, Mr.
Foxman wrote, were `tantamount to genocide.’

He added, `If the word genocide had existed then, they would have
called it genocide.’

Some Jews praised Mr. Foxman, whose reappraisal, they said, was
uncharacteristic. But other Jews and Armenians said he did not go far
enough.

`It denies the intentionality of genocide,’ said Joey Kurtzman,
executive editor of the online magazine Jewcy.com. Janet Tassel, a
congregant at Temple Isaiah in Lexington, said she did not like Mr.
Foxman but could not understand how Jews could be fighting over the
word genocide when Israeli and American interests are at stake.

`If this resolution goes through, it’s goodbye Charlie for Israel,
for U.S. troops in Iraq,’ Ms. Tassel said. `It will lead to more
anti-Semitism. I’m conflicted about what’s right.’

Dr. Porter, the genocide scholar, said the differing views among Jews
on the resolution stemmed in part from whether they saw Israel as
particularly vulnerable. `I see Israel as a strong nation,’ Dr.
Porter said, after speaking for cutting ties to the Anti-Defamation
League at the Lexington meeting. `Jews are strong. They don’t have to
be intimidated by politics.’

The complex of considerations weighed heavily on Rabbi Howard L.
Jaffe of Temple Isaiah, who after weeks of thought decided to back
the genocide resolution. `It’s very hard for me to support a position
that could be detrimental to Israel,’ he said. `But for me as a Jew,
I have to take seriously Jewish values, and they require us to do
what is right and righteous.’

At the Lexington meeting, nearly everyone praised the No Place for
Hate program, which has worked with hundreds of residents in the past
seven years.

Some Jewish residents pointed out that the local Anti-Defamation
League chapter took a stand for the resolution and should not be
punished for the national leadership’s policy; but Vicki Blier,
another member of Temple Isaiah, said in a phone interview that the
Anti-Defamation League had to be held accountable for its views.

`If this were an organization that were denying the Holocaust, would
they be allowed to do anything in town, even if what they are doing
is the most beneficial of programs?’ Ms. Blier said. `In my
experience, Jews are at the forefront in the recognition of
injustice. Jews have always stuck their neck out for others.’

enocide.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5087&em&e n=1a0f5f7ce99248b9&ex=1192939200

PanARMENIAN.Net

UNESCO should send monitors to South Caucasus, specifically to Nakhijevan
19.10.2007 14:03 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ `Armenia appreciates and respects the
historical-cultural heritage of national minorities, which are within
its territory,’ Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian said when
addressing the 34th session UNESCO’s General Conference.

`The destruction of timeless monuments in the Soviet period –
monuments belonging to all religions, not just our ancient Christian
churches and monasteries, but also mosques – cannot be undone. We can
only take pride in what we have and protect and preserve them. In
fact, the Cemetery of Riataza, belonging to Armenia’s Yezidi
non-Christian minority, Armenian sites on the Great Silk Road and
Yerevan’s exquisite, recently restored Blue Mosque are on the waiting
list for inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

In our region, borders have changed frequently and peoples have moved
and been moved repeatedly. Armenia’s ancient civilization has
established settlements, left behind traces of living communities –
fountains and bridges, churches and massive religious and artistic
sculptures. The fate of those monuments is important for their own
sake, for the sake of artists and historians, but even more so, for
the sake of a world that must remember its history, must remember the
legacy of peoples who have come and gone.

Our interest therefore in the world’s cultural heritage is not just
philosophical. It is very much personal. Our history is indeed
intertwined with the history of our neighbors, with their history. We
are dismayed at attempts to ignore this history. We are appalled at
attempts to undo this history.

We are not the only ones who have said from this podium that the
destruction of a people’s patrimony is tantamount to destroying their
memory, their history, their identity. Unfortunately, we have
neighbors who have built today’s identity on a less than real
history. And we see the trauma and instability that results.

Once again, we urge UNESCO to send monitors to our region,
specifically to Nakhijevan, to see and appropriately judge the
intentional destruction in areas far removed from war and
confrontation,’ the Minister said, the RA MFA press office reported

Robert Gates: Passage of the enocide Resolution could hurt US-Turkey
relations

armradio.am
19.10.2007 17:25

Congressional passage of a resolution labeling as genocide the mass
killings of Armenians by Turks a century ago would hurt US relations
with Turkey, "perhaps beyond repair," Defense Secretary Robert Gates
said, according to the Associated Press.

Gates told reporters Thursday that he has encouraged congressional
leaders not to pass the resolution. Earlier, he met at the Pentagon
with Armenian Prime Minister Serge Sargsyan. Gates said neither he nor
his guest raised the subject.

"Having worked this issue in the last Bush administration, I don’t
think the Turks are bluffing. I think it is that meaningful to them,"
Gates said. "I think there is a very real risk of perhaps not shutting
us down," but of at least restricting US access to Turkish airspace for
resupplying US troops in Iraq.

WHY TURKEY OPPOSES THAT TALK OF GENOCIDE
By Brent E. Sasley

Fort Worth Star Telegram, TX
Oct 17 2007

At first glance, one has to wonder why Turkey is so opposed to
labeling the massacres of the Armenians in the early 20th century as
genocide. After all, it was not Turkey but the Ottoman Empire that
committed the atrocities; Turkey as a country was not even around
then. And genocide is such a horrific crime, the worst of humanity’s
inhumanity, that to not recognize it when it is obvious seems callous,
ignorant and immoral.

But national identity infuses all countries’ foreign policies, and
this is made abundantly clear in the case of Turkey and the genocide
resolution recently passed by the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Turkish identity is based on the guiding principles that the
country’s founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, laid out in the
1920s and 1930s. World War I had just ended; the Ottoman Empire was
dissolved; and the new country that was to become Turkey was itself
cut into pieces, with territory given to form a new Armenian state,
an autonomous Kurdish area and Greek, French, and Italian spheres of
influence. In addition, the Allies were set to take control of the
country’s finances.

Kemal led a resistance movement that drove out the Europeans and took
back control over the proposed Armenian and Kurdish territories.

Firmly believing that the survival of the country was dependent on the
Turks’ maintaining an uncompromising set of values, orientations and
borders, Kemal defined the new Turkish identity: strict borders that
would not be compromised (which included giving up Ottoman claims on
the new Arab states) and, more important, citizens who were defined
by their ethnic and linguistic "Turkishness."

Though vague, this formula precluded the Kurds from being recognized
as their own ethno-cultural nation — they were now simply referred
to as "mountain Turks." Equally important, Turkey’s value structure
would no longer be bounded by Islam, as the Ottoman Empire’s had
been; instead, it would be secular, with Islam no longer providing
the framework for political and social organization. Islamic laws,
previously the basis for Ottoman society, were removed and undermined.

Finally, the glory, greatness and near-infallibility of the Turkish
nation — including its pre-Islamic past — were emphasized. All of
these principles were enshrined in the constitution.

It makes sense to ask how this identity can possibly relate to the
question of recognizing the Armenian genocide. It is not the genocide
itself that Turkey fears recognizing (though it is reluctant to
accept what it sees as blame on behalf of the Ottoman Empire) but
rather what the consequences of that recognition might be.

Recognizing the genocide would be an admission of Turkey’s
imperfections. Recognizing that other nations have a claim against the
Turkish state would embolden others to make claims against the state
and lead to its breakup — the very thing that Turks, remembering
their post-World War I experience, fear most.

The Kurds would begin asking for recognition of their cultural
distinctiveness, which would strengthen continuing Kurdish claims for
autonomy in the southeast. Islamist groups would begin demanding that
Islam be allowed back into the public sphere, which would undermine
the secularism that much of the elite believe has made Turkey strong.

Thus, no claim against the state can be tolerated.

But despite this, Turkey will not completely harm its ties with the
U.S., for two reasons.

Turkish identity is complex, and more than just the ethnic-linguistic
make-up of its citizens. It also is based on a Western orientation:
Turkey has, since its creation in 1923, seen itself as part of
the Western world, with societal and political structures that
reflect this. To become a member of civilized international society,
Turkey’s identity had to be Western. This is why Turkey adopted the
Gregorian calendar and the Swiss civil code, enshrined secularism
in the constitution and did what it could to remove Islam from the
public sphere.

The nation has powerful strategic reasons to maintain a close
relationship with the U.S. Washington has been the biggest supporter
of Turkish membership in the European Union; it has provided crucial
diplomatic support for Turkey’s efforts to expand its influence
in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East; and it retains
dominance in international financial institutions, such as the
International Monetary Fund, from which Turkey needs economic aid.

There will be — indeed, already has been — a backlash in Turkey
against the United States. But Turkey cannot harm its ties with the
U.S. too much; both its past orientation and its future needs make
it too difficult to do so.

Brent E. Sasley teaches Middle East politics in the Department of
Political Science at the University of Texas at Arlington.

/270780.html

PROFESSOR M.L. ANDERSON TO DISCUSS 1895-96 ARMENIAN MASSACRES AT UCLA

armradio.am
18.10.2007 10:50

"Down in Turkey far away" — Human Rights, the Armenian Massacres
of 1895-96, and Orientalism in Imperial Germany is the topic of a
lecture to be given by Professor Margaret Lavinia Anderson on Friday,
November 2 at UCLA.

The lecture is sponsored by the UCLA Armenian Studies Program and
Department of History and the National Association for Armenian
Studies and Research.

Margaret Anderson is Professor of History at the University of
California, Berkeley, and an established scholar in Modern German and
European history and in German-Ottoman relations. She will discuss
the responses to the Hamidian massacres, highlighting the differences
between Germany and the rest of the West and the reasons for those
differences.

This is a part of a larger study that Anderson has undertaken on
German-Ottoman/Turkish relations from the Armenian massacres of the
1890s to the 1930s.

NAKED PR AT BRUSSELS STADIUM
Rusan Amirjanyan

A1+
[04:03 pm] 18 October, 2007

A naked man ran into the field in the 60-th minute of the match. The
footballers and the judges were astonished.

About 3000 Armenian football fans with Armenian flags, some even
painted their faces in red-blue-apricot, came to the Brussels football
stadium to watch Belgium-Armenia match.

They came not only from Brussels and various cities of Belgium,
but from France, Holland and Germany.

By the way, A corner tribune tickets were sold to Armenian fans,
where the scene was bad, and people sat very densely, while the fans
of Belgium team were sitting in Eastern and Western tribunes freely
and comfortably.

In order to reach to the A tribune, the Armenian fans had to pass
through the whole territory of the stadium. After walking or running
1-1,5 kilometers Armenians were examined thoroughly and were made to
hand over all metal objects, including metal and wood handles of flags,
umbrellas, perfume and similar extremely dangerous objects.

However, the "Armenian" tribune was actively encouraging the Armenian
National Team.

"Armenia-Armenia" exclamations were heard all the time. The Armenian
football fans were rather active and we could say that the fight was
equal in the first half of the match.

Our footballers were noticeably animated after the break. They missed
3 goal opportunities during the second half. After each attack by the
Armenian team, the Belgium protectors tried to hide their emotions
and stared at each other and took a deep breath.

However everything took place… .

A naked man ran into the field in the 60-th minute of the match. The
footballers and the judges were astonished and the game even stopped
for a while. The security employees were also surprised by this,
while the young man ran to the center of the field ignoring roars of
laughter and whistles. Many thought that it was unexpected and that
was why the man managed to enter the field freely.

The most astonishing was that the security employees did not hurry to
stop the man, and when he had made a circle round the field and wanted
to conclude his march, the security decided to run toward him and threw
him onto the ground. They pinioned the man’s arms and took him away.

It was obvious that the man could not enter the filed without the
"help" of security, since their number was great and they supervised
the stadium very well.

Even in the A tribune, the Armenian fans had no right to breach the
border of the tribune, which was free and the field was seen well.

They could not even stand: "Sit down, please,- the security employees
insisted,-if you have bought the ticket for X place, you should stay
in you place".

They were very attentive and strict toward our fans.

Anyway, after this "trick" our footballers were finally broken. The
Belgium team captured the Armenian gate 3 times during 63-76
minutes. After the first goal they were animated and became more
aggressive, their fans also became active after this. After 80-th
minute some of Armenian fans left the stadium saying to the guards
in French: "You defeated us again".

Those who were still in the stadium said to those who left: "You
should not leave our boys just because they are loosing…"

A RESOLUTION TOO FAR: HOUSE SHOULD SHELVE DECLARATION THAT WILL ALIENATE TURKEY

Rocky Mountain News, CO
Oct 17 2007

The Ottoman Empire slaughtered Armenians between 1915 and 1923 with
a systematic savagery that qualifies for the word "genocide." Of that
there can be no little doubt, although modern-day Turkey, which has no
responsibility for the slaughter, steadfastly refuses to acknowledge
its magnitude or motives.

Turkey’s attitude is sad but unsurprising. What is surprising,
however, is an action taken last week – 90 years after the Armenian
catastrophe – by the House Foreign Affairs Committee. It approved,
27-21, a nonbinding, wholly symbolic resolution condemning the Armenian
deaths as genocide.

The question is what accounts for this belated declaration in the face
of a furious Turkey – a nation that happens to be a vital NATO ally,
a necessary partner in the war on terror, a rare Islamic state that
is both democratic and generally pro-U.S., and the site of an American
airbase critical to supporting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Other
than placating their Armenian-American constituents, it’s hard to
tell what committee members thought they were up to.

Some conservative commentators have claimed that Democrats pushing the
measure actually mean to sabotage the war effort by provoking Turkey
into retaliatory action that will shut off a major avenue of troops
and supplies into Iraq. But this explanation is far too feverish for
our taste. More likely, proponents discount Turkey’s warnings and
growls as mere political bluffs.

Yet Turkey could do far more damage than merely restrict American
access to Iraq through its territory. They are amassing troops,
helicopter gun ships and armor near the border of Iraq. So far they
have only attacked Kurdish rebels on their own side of the border but
they are threatening to go after facilities in Kurdish Iraq that they
say support the rebels. This would destabilize the one tranquil part
of Iraq.

James Fallows, a national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly (and
no conservative), dubs the committee’s vote "insane" and wonders,
sarcastically, why the House doesn’t condemn "China for the millions
who suffered in the Cultural Revolution and the tens of millions
starved during the Great Leap Forward – right as we’re seeking China’s
help on Burma, North Korea, the environment, etc? . . . Why not one
denouncing Russia for the Czarist pogroms, to accompany efforts to
reason with/rein in [Vladimir] Putin? Maybe another condemning England
for its subjugation and slaughter of the Scots, to say nothing of the
Irish – while also asking Gordon Brown to stay the course in Iraq? What
about Australia for its historic treatment of the Aborigines? Or the
current nations of West Africa for their role in the slave trade?"

The genocide resolution should be allowed to quietly languish in the
clerk’s office, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seems determined to
bring it to a vote in the full House. So far, however, no vote has been
scheduled, and it’s possible that some Democrats may be getting cold
feet. If the House could wait 90 years, it can wait a little longer.

torials/article/0,2777,DRMN_23964_5724401,00.html

EDITORIALS IT WON’T GO AWAY WHEN HISTORY CAN’T BE EVADED

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock)
October 16, 2007 Tuesday

"When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations
[of the Armenians], they were merely giving the death warrant to a
whole race; they understood this well, and, in their conversations
with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact. . . .

Practically all of them were atheists, with no more respect for
Mohammedanism than for Christianity, and with them the one motive
was cold-blooded, calculating state policy."

-Henry Morgenthau, U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, 1913-1916.

"For nothing is lost, nothing is ever lost."

-Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men

WHAT WAS it Mr. Faulkner said? The past is never dead. It’s not even
past. The man was on to something. Because his words keep coming
to mind whenever somebody tries to ignore the darker episodes of
man’s history.

Who’s the latest to put on the blinders? Once again, it’s Turkey,
whose leaders have been trying for nigh unto a century to minimize
the massacre of Armenians there during the First World War. This
time, the Turkish denial threatens to turn into an international
incident. With the United States on the other side.

It’s always sad when man cannot or dare not face his past-whether
it’s a person who can’t admit the harm he’s done or a whole country
that avoids owning up. In either case, the one who suffers most is
the denier. Without an admission of responsibility, there can be
no selfforgiveness. Instead, those in denial embark on an endless
series of explanations that don’t explain, excuses that don’t excuse,
or even outright falsehoods, which are soon enough exposed.

In the case of Turkey and the Armenians, by now most of the world
has recognized the terrible thing that happened there: As many as
1,500,000 Armenians, who found themselves an ethnic and religious
minority in the old Ottoman Empire, were systematically led to their
deaths under Turkish rule. Hundreds of thousands more were forcibly
deported. The massacres peaked in 1915-1917. In the pitiless glare
of history, the massacre of the Armenians is rightly regarded as the
first genocide of the 20th Century. Or at least one of the first. (It
wasn’t exactly a bloodless century.) What the world knows, however,
and even knew at the time, the Turkish government has always denied.

Ankara insists that what was done to the Armenians was not genocide.

In the usual tradition of deniers, the Turks say the number of
Armenians who died has been inflated, that the deaths were the result
of civil war and unrest, that there was no deliberate government
policy behind the slaughter and degradation of the Armenians, that
it just happened . . . . Uh-huh. History says otherwise.

A FEW MONTHS ago, the French parliament voted to recognize what was
done to the Armenians as a genocide. France was only the latest
in a long series of countries to do so. Turkey took offense. In
a demonstration of how past events still affect the present, the
French vote raised tensions between Turkey and the European Union,
which Turkey wants to join.

In this country, a committee of the House of Representatives has
approved a bill labeling the Turkish actions against the Armenians
a genocide, sending it on to the full House. In response, Turkey has
recalled its ambassador to Washington for consultations.

The delicate relationship between our two countries is crucial to
the joint war on terror. Turkey is a vital shipping point through
which we supply our troops in Iraq. The Turks’ anger over the truth’s
finally being recognized threatens to complicate our position in Iraq
even further.

William Faulkner wouldn’t have been surprised at Turkey’s reaction.

But its intensity might cause those who know little about the Armenian
massacres to wonder what all the fuss is about at this late date. Does
a vote by outsiders have any relevance today? Modern Turkey isn’t
responsible for what happened 100 years ago, is it? Why burden an
important ally with the presumed guilt of long-ago crimes?

Who cares?

In the midst of his own genocidal career, Adolf Hitler cynically asked
who remembered the Armenians. The German dictator was wrong about a
lot of things. It’s no surprise he was wrong about the Armenians,
too. Long after Adolf Hitler met his end, the world does remember
the Armenians. With good cause: justice. It demands that what was
done to them be recognized, not covered up.

When the injustice is on such an historic scale, the need to
recognize it is all the greater. The crimes against the Armenians
aren’t forgotten because they cannot be forgotten. Truth is its
own justification, and until the truth is recognized, justice isn’t
possible.

Some in Congress and the administration would buckle to Turkey’s
huffing-andpuffing. Mere truth, they seem to be saying, isn’t worth
harming "our national interest," as if this republic’s deepest
interest could ever be served by denying the truth. It’s instructive
that those in Congress who oppose this congressional resolution,
this long delayed act of simple decency, don’t deny the truth of the
Armenian massacres. They prefer to say that now is not the right time
to do the right thing, which is what they’ve been saying for decades.

The nature of the world is such that there will never be a time
when recognizing this truth is convenient, not as long as Turkey is
determined to deny its responsibility for this monumental crime. As
usual, there is no better time than now to do the right thing. Why?

Because recognizing injustice cleanses the soul. It restores peace.

It makes reconciliation possible. That’s what happened in South
Africa, where truth-and-reconciliation committees heard the stories
of the atrocities that were committed during the dark reign of
apartheid. The hearings allowed the guilty and their victims to find
some peace. Notice the connection: Truth and reconciliation. They go
together. Just as justice is thwarted by denial, so reconciliation is
impossible without a full accounting of the wrongs committed.COMING
to terms with the past isn’t always agreeable work. Against all the
evidence, Iran’s fiery president still questions the truth of the
Holocaust. Japan has yet to fully accept its responsibility for the
brutalities carried out by the Japanese empire in the Thirties and
Forties. Did modern Japan commit those war crimes? No. But by refusing
to acknowledge them, the descendants of the criminals take on part of
the guilt that should have been laid to rest with their ancestors. And
so the sins of the fathers are visited on later generations.

All of this remains relevant today. Genocide isn’t just some artifact
of the 20th Century. A genocide is happening right now in Darfur,
where the Sudanese government is as touchy about that damning word
as Turkey remains.

History is one thing, facts are another. History is the way we
arrange the facts, and our perspective constantly changes. As time
goes by, our sense of the past shifts. Each generation interprets it
differently. What doesn’t change are the facts. We may learn more
of them over the years, for our knowledge of the past can never be
complete. The past is too complicated for that. But to attempt to
change the facts themselves is not just another interpretation of
history. It is a crime against human memory.

When we try to deny the plain facts, we cheat ourselves. Because,
let us have faith, the facts will always have the final say. There
will always be someone, some historian or memoirist or survivor or
just plain conscientious observer, who will speak out-and the force
of the facts will make the world listen.

In the end, nations need to work through their history, not evade it,
even for political reasons that seem so important at the moment. What
we ignore in our past will come back to haunt us, as Americans should
well know by now. We’re still working on our own past. And until we
acknowledge what’s been done, the ghosts will linger. Forget the fate
of the Armenians? Impossible. The wound remains raw. It needs to be
recognized, and allowed to heal. Ignored, it festers.