When each and every one of those deaths was a murder, it is even more heartbreaking.
And when a nation categorically denies that any of this even happened, the entire world moves closer to repeating that same disaster.
In 1915, the Ottoman Empire was struggling. The crumbling nation was losing a world war along with much of its territory. The government feared that Armenians living in eastern Anatolia would align with the enemy, Russia, and decided to take swift action to prevent this. That action would be the systematic mass murder of nearly a million and a half Armenians. Many were executed. Many were sent on death marches to Syria on which they starved or died from exposure.
What the Ottoman Empire did can only be defined as a genocide.
Fast-forward to after the war. The Ottoman Empire disintegrates, and a new nation is born: Turkey. Turkey is vastly different from its predecessor. It is a modern, secular, democratic state. It condemns many of the old ways of the Ottomans. Except it still refuses to acknowledge that the Armenian Genocide occurred.
As the 100th anniversary of the killings approaches, Armenian Turks have made plans to stage a gathering in Istanbul's Taksim Square to honor the dead. They are also planning a concert in the square with both Turkish and Armenian musicians. This is what the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, had to say about the upcoming anniversary:
"The Armenian diaspora is trying to instill hatred against Turkey through a worldwide campaign on genocide claims ahead of the centennial anniversary of 1915. If we examine what our nation had to go through over the past 100 to 150 years, we would find far more suffering than what the Armenians went through."As a direct result of Turkish pressure, only 22 nations in the world recognize the Armenian Genocide as a genocide, contrary to the vast majority of historical scholarship. This sets an extremely dangerous precedent.
Following the Holocaust, in which 12 million people were killed at the hands of the Nazi government of Germany, many vowed to "never forget" the atrocities that occurred, for fear that if we forgot, history would repeat itself. Perhaps the Holocaust would not have occurred had the world remembered the Armenian genocide, which occurred only a few decades prior.
But it seems that with enough foreign influence, a nation can cause major world powers including the United States, the United Kingdom, China, India, and dozens of other nations, to reject the notion that the Armenians were the victims of an Ottoman genocidal campaign (although some state governments have passed legislation recognizing the genocide as such). After all, we couldn't possibly risk our trade with Turkey for such a silly thing as recognizing that millions of human beings were killed because of their ethnicity. Who would think such a thing?
It is time to remember, or we risk history repeating itself. Just because a major player in world politics doesn't want to face scrutiny for something they did in the past doesn't mean that they shouldn't. If we allow the Armenian Genocide to go unrecognized, it only shows that the world will look the other way if a nation commits egregious crimes against its own people. It is time for the international community to say that mass murder by state regimes has never been and will never be acceptable.
It is time to remember the Armenian Genocide for our own sakes. If we don't, we could be next.
Further reading:
The New York Times: A Century After Armenian Genocide, Turkey’s Denial Only Deepens
No comments:
Post a Comment