Armenian Genocide Quotes

But history does matter. There is a line connecting the Armenians and the Jews and the Cambodians and the Bosnians and the Rwandans. There are obviously more, but, really, how much genocide can one sentence handle?

Anarchists did not try to carry out genocide against the Armenians in Turkey; they did not deliberately starve millions of Ukrainians; they did not create a system of death camps to kill Jews, gypsies, and Slavs in Europe; they did not fire-bomb scores of large German and Japanese cities and drop nuclear bombs on two of them; they did not carry out a ‘Great Leap Forward’ that killed scores of millions of Chinese; they did not attempt to kill everybody with any appreciable education in Cambodia; they did not launch one aggressive war after another; they did not implement trade sanctions that killed perhaps 500,000 Iraqi children. In debates between anarchists and statists, the burden of proof clearly should rest on those who place their trust in the state. Anarchy’s mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state’s mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous.

But then what is the alternative to trying to tell the truth about the Holocaust, the Famine, the Armenian genocide, the injustice of dispossession in the Americas and Australia? That everyone should be reduced to silence? To pretend that the Holocaust was the work merely of a well-armed minority who didn’t do as much harm as is claimed-and likewise, to argue that the Irish Famine was either an inevitability or the fault of the Irish-is to say that both were mere unreliable rumors, and not the great motors of history they so obviously proved to be. It suited me to think so at the time, but still I believe it to be true, that if there are going to be areas of history which are off-bounds, then in principle we are reduced to fudging, to cosmetic narrative.

Never underestimate the power of good but never ignore evil lurking in the hearts of men. Rose of Life

In general, those who resort to mass murder on a collective scale always put forward the justification that they acted on behalf of the nation.

Let’s stand against the killing of innocent civilians. It is time to make the future better than today. Together we can bring peace and unity to our communities.

But history does matter. There are lines connecting the Armenians and the Jews and the Cambodians and the Serbs and the Rwandans. They are obviously morbid. Really, how much genocide can one sentence handle? You get the point. Besides, my grandparents’ story deserves to be told, regardless of their nationalities.

Being an Armenian is a merciless task and a heroic enterprise. It is a commandment, a mission, and a destiny that history has imposed on us from the depths of centuries. We are the shock troops of the struggle between light and darkness… And we are charged with an awesome responsibility. Gostan Zarian.

The attempt to justify and rationalize the death of a whole nation, including women, children, the old and infirm, must itself be considered a crime against humanity.

As a rule, if a crime is committed by one group against another ethnic or religious group, it is nearly impossible for the perpetrator to punish itself.

It is time to recognize the past and ongoing genocides to prevent new ones. Together we can build a better world!

The few surviving Armenians no longer ask to go home. They do not ask for restitution. They ask simply to have the memory of their obliteration acknowledged. It is a moral obsession, the lonely legacy passed onto the third and fourth generation who no longer speak Armenian but who carry within them the seeds of resentment that will not be quashed.

Do not tell me that it is not God-like to get angry or go into a fit of rage. God himself when enraged will grasp a star and hurl it through the heavens. And at night, you can see bits of the star flashing through the sky, fallen apart merely by the shear force of which it was thrown. Know when He is angry and stay out of His way… And the same holds true for my grandson.” Yervant Yacoubian.

On my desk is an appeal from the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. It asks me to become a sponsor and donor of this soon-to-be-opened institution, while an accompanying leaflet has enticing photographs of Bob Dylan, Betty Friedan, Sandy Koufax, Irving Berlin, Estee Lauder, Barbra Streisand, Albert Einstein, and Isaac Bashevis Singer. There is something faintly kitsch about this, as there is in the habit of those Jewish papers that annually list Jewish prize-winners from the Nobel to the Oscars. (It is apparently true that the London Jewish Chronicle once reported the result of a footrace under the headline 'Goldstein Fifteenth.') However, I think I may send a contribution. Other small 'races' have come from unpromising and hazardous beginnings to achieve great things—no Roman would have believed that the brutish inhabitants of the British Isles could ever amount to much—and other small 'races,' too, like Gypsies and Armenians, have outlived determined attempts to eradicate and exterminate them. But there is something about the persistence, both of the Jews and their persecutors, that does seem to merit a museum of its own.

What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it. —Gabriel García Márquez

The Armenian genocide was a horrific illustration of the convulsions that could seize a multi-ethnic polity trying to mutate from empire into nation state.

Within seven months, more than 600,000 Armenians were massacred. Of the 500,000 deported during that same period, more than 400,000 perished as a result of the brutalities and privations of the southward march into Syria and Mesopotamia. By September as many as a million Armenians were dead, the victims of what later became known as genocide, later still as ethnic cleansing. A further 200,000 were forcibly converted to Islam.

The 20th century merits the name "The Century of Murder." 1915 Turks slaughtered 2 million Armenians. 1933 to 1954 the Soviet government encompassed the death of 20 to 65 million citizens. 1933 to 1945 Nazi Germany murdered more than 25 million people. 1948 Hindus and Muslims engaged in racial and religious strife that claimed more lives than could be reported. 1970 3 million Bangladesh were killed. 1971 Uganda managed the death of 300,000 people. 1975 Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia and murdered up to 3 million people. In recent times more than half a million of Rwanda's 6 million people have been murdered. At present times genocidal strife is underway in Bosnia, Somalia, Burundi and elsewhere. The people of the world have demonstrated themselves to be so capable of forgetting the murderous frenzies in which their fellows have participated that it is essential that one, at least, be remembered and the world be regularly reminded of it. _Consequences of the Holocaust

The Khojaly genocide, which once again exposed the face of Armenian fascism, is a historical crime against not only the people of Azerbaijan but also humanity. It must be condemned by the civilized world in compliance with international law

Muslim crowds massacred thousands of Armenians in the south-eastern city of Adana. The roots of the pogrom dated back to the 1870s. In the course of the First World War, that hostility would metastasize into the first genocide of the twentieth century.

If we compare the 2014-genocide to the Armenian genocide and the Anfal genocide, we will find that, whether religious or secular, the perpetrators of the three genocides have used a specific religion to legalize their crimes. Not even children were spared.

There were two grad students, Burcu and Ulaş, who sometimes came to the club meetings to circulate petitions about the Armenian genocide. They were really stressful people—not just about the petitions, but about everything. You could see exactly what their parents were like.

We all know, either implicitly or explicitly, that all we really have is our place in the memories of others. We exist to the degree that we know and remember one another. Even the most isolated among us. We share a collective understanding that we are all part of a greater whole. Perhaps

Like a child in new boots leaping from puddle to puddle, this view sees history as leapfrogging from one bloodbath to the next, from World War One to World War Two to the Cold War, from the Armenian genocide to the Jewish genocide to the Rwandan genocide, from Robespierre to Lenin to Hitler.

Perhaps we are all living inside a giant computer simulation, Matrix-style. That would contradict all our national, religious and ideological stories. But our mental experiences would still be real. If it turns out that human history is an elaborate simulation run on a super-computer by rat scientists from the planet Zircon, that would be rather embarrassing for Karl Marx and the Islamic State. But these rat scientists would still have to answer for the Armenian genocide and for Auschwitz. How did they get that one past the Zircon University’s ethics committee? Even if the gas chambers were just electric signals in silicon chips, the experiences of pain, fear and despair were not one iota less excruciating for that. Pain is pain, fear is fear, and love is love – even in the matrix. It doesn’t matter if the fear you feel is inspired by a collection of atoms in the outside world or by electrical signals manipulated by a computer. The fear is still real. So if you want to explore the reality of your mind, you can do that inside the matrix as well as outside it.

formal declaration of jihad in Constantinople, followed by well-organized demonstrations on the streets.”32 Proclamations and pamphlets were distributed.

He who kills even one unbeliever of those who rule over us, whether he does it secretly or openly, shall be rewarded by God.

Աշխարհի ամէն կողմերը ցրուած հայութեան մասին, անոր գոյութեան պահպանումին շուրջ ինչ ալ գրենք, ինչ ալ փորձենք՝ անօգուտ է։ Ան դատապարտուած է մեռնելու։

The fallout caused by denial was inherited by later generations of Armenians, linking them to the fateful days of 1915, and compelling them to set the record straight.

We create ourselves to be almost blind walking dead, where we are led by both negative aspects of religion and cultural conformity to gloss over people. We gloss over the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire. We gloss over the Japanese internment camps that most likely would have been far worse had the war continued longer. We often marginalize those besides the ethnic and Jewish descent that died in the Nazi holocaust of World war II.

Working with present-day genocidal regimes doesn’t bother Israel but it has also refused to publicly acknowledge past genocides. The Armenian genocide, formally recognized by US President Joe Biden in 2021, occurred in 1915 and 1916. Due to relations with Turkey, Israel has refused to recognize the Armenian genocide, and declassified documents prove that Israeli officials worked for decades to pressure countries and individuals around the world who wanted to do so.

Despite their continuing efforts of denial and revisionist interpretation, however, there is now widespread recognition that the Turkish destruction of the Armenians between 1915 and 1923 stands as the first “total genocide” of the twentieth century.

Ամբողջ պատմությունը, կրկնում եմ, չի պատմվել ու չի էլ կարելի պատմել։ Մեռելները ոչինչ չեն պատմում, իսկ վերապրողները տակավին մունջ են։ «Մուսա լեոան քառասուն օրը» հայի կողմից չգրվեց։ Վերապրողներս ցրվեցինք աշխարհի չորս ծագերը ու դեռ թաքցնում ենք մեր վերքերը։ Մենք վարպետ ենք ինքնախաբեության մեջ։ Դիմակավորումն անհրաժեշտ է մեր հավասարակշռության և առօրյա գործերի բնականոն ընթացքի համար Լոս֊Անջելոսում կամ Նյու֊Յորքում, Բուենոս֊Այրեսում կամ Սան֊Պաոլոյում, Փարիզում կամ Բեյրութում։ Մենք կարող ենք զայրույթով խոսել օրվա այս կամ այն լուրի առթիվ, բայց ոչնինչ չասել մեզ ամենից ավելի մտատանջող բաների մասին, ծպտուն չհանել։ Տարագիր հայը լի է չասված խոհերով, ու նրա մեջ մեծ լռություններ կան։ Օրինակի համար, երբ Նահատակաց օրը՝ ապրիլի 24֊ին, ամերիկահայերն առ ի բողոք հավաքվում են Սան֊Ֆրանցիսկոյում կամ էլ Միավորված Ազգերի շենքի առաջ, նրանք տողանցում են լուռումունջ։ Եվ այստեղ՝ Արևմուտքում, պետք է ասեմ, մոռացված ագգ ենք մենք։ Վերջերս, երբ Անգլիայից եկած մի գիտնական լսեց, թե հայ եմ, ասաց՝ «Անհետացող մի ցեղ»։ Մի անգամ դիտեցի մի կինոկոմեդիա՝ «Անհետացող հայը», իսկ դա ոչ մի կապ չուներ հայերի հետ։ Պարզապես զավեշտ էր ավազանում լողացող մի մարդու մասին, որ անհետանում էր ջրի տակ ու միշտ խեղդվելու վտանգի մեջ էր, մինչ ավելի մեծ և ուժեղ լողորդներ կռվում էին իրար հետ։ Իսկ դահլիճը ծիծաղում էր ի տես «անհետացող հայի»՝ ջրի երեսը մնալու և չխեղդվելու համար թափած ճիգերի։

Not even children were spared. To see history repeating itself, and the calamities of the past unfolding again, spelled out in the eyes of the victims and survivors, was unbearable. To witness rape and slavery practiced and legitimized, to witness it happen in the 21st century was hideous. Girls as young as 8-9 years old and women all ages were being brutally violated and sold, sometimes for $10. My heart sank with their screams, and we had to do something to help them.

The Blood player could acquire a Rose item, but only by handing over an atrocity, thus leaving himself with less ammunition and the Rose player with more. If he was a skilful player he could attack the Rose side by means of the atrocities in his possession, loot the human achievement, and transfer it to his side of the board. The player who managed to retain the most human achievements by Time’s Up was the winner. With points off, naturally, for achievements destroyed through his own error and folly and cretinous play. The exchange rates – one Mona Lisa equalled Bergen-Belsen, one Armenian genocide equalled the Ninth Symphony plus three Great Pyramids – were suggested, but there was room for haggling. To do this you needed to know the numbers – the total number of corpses for the atrocities, the latest open-market price for the artworks; or, if the artworks had been stolen, the amount paid out by the insurance policy. It was a wicked game.

The 20th century merits the name "The Century of Murder." 1915 Turks slaughtered 2 million Armenians. 1933 to 1954 the Soviet government encompassed the death of 20 to 65 million citizens. 1933 to 1945 Nazi Germany murdered more than 25 million people. 1948 Hindus and Muslims engaged in racial and religious strife that claimed more lives than could be reported. 1970 3 million Bangladesh were killed. 1971 Uganda managed the death of 300,000 people. 1975 Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia and murdered up to 3 million people. In recent times more than half a million of Rwanda's 6 million people have been murdered. At present times genocidal strife is underway in Bosnia, Somalia, Burundi and elsewhere. The people of the world have demonstrated themselves to be so capable of forgetting the murderous frenzies in which their fellows have participated that it is essential that one, at least, be remembered and the world be regularly reminded of it. _Consequences of the Holocaust by Raul Hilberg

[In response to atrocities against Armenians] the British government issued a joint memo with France and Russia on 24 May 1915. The first draft, proposed by Russia, contained the phrase "crimes against Christianity and civilization," but France and Britain feared this would offend their own colonial Muslim populations and succeeded in changing the phrase to "crimes against humanity." This paved the way for the concept to assume its place after the war as one of the most important categories in international law.

Եվ մենք պիտի գոյատևենք, բայց ոչ գաղութներում։ Եվ գիտենք՝ Միացյալ Նահանգներում, Հարավային Ամերիկայով, Միջին Արևելքում, Ֆրանսիայում, Անգլիայում, Հունաստանում և այլուր այս կռիվը, որ մենք մղում ենք պահպանելու մեր մշակութային ինքնությունն իր բոլոր պարտավորություններով, պարտությամբ է վերջանալու, բայց հենց այս կռիվը մի տեսակ հաղթանակ է և մեր կյանքին տալիս է ստեղծագործական մղում, խորություն ու բազմազանություն։ Միջազգային մի ժողովուրդ ենք։ Խոսում ենք շատ լեզուներ։ Եվ պատմական երկարատև ավանդությամբ՝ օղակ ենք Եվրոպայի ու Ասիայի, Արևմուտքի ու Արևելքի, Հյուսիսի ու Հարավի միջև։ Պատմության դասական լուսանցքի մարդն է հայը։ Մի վաղեմի երկփեղկում կա իր հոգում, բայց գեղեցիկ բաներ է ծնել դա։ Այս ներքին լարումներն ունեն իրենց դրական կողմը և հային դարձնում են ստեղծագործ ու բնածին բանաստեղծ, մի տեսակ բնածին արվեստագետ։ Այս ներքին լարումների բերմամբ աշխույժ, զգոն է հայը և առանց դրանց կլճանար նա։ Սփյուռքը, վերջ ի վերջո, դատապարտված է, և, իմ կարծիքով, միակ դարմանը հայրենադարձությունն է։ Սփյուռքն իր դինամիզմն ունի, և տարագրության մեջ կա և՛ տվայտանք, և՛ վեհություն։

When the West overpowered native populations, these actions, no matter how violent, were rationalized as manifestations of the natural order of things. “Manifest destiny” and “social Darwinism” laid the foundation for violent improvement of the world. Europeans saw themselves as superior and naturally born to rule. They believed that their domination of faraway lands brought “civilization” to the natives. In return, the rulers of the empires benefited. “The purpose of colonies was to supply the mother country with raw materials and to provide a market for her manufactured goods,

Before the First World War, in many places military officers who had not taken part directly in operations became liable one way or another under the jurisprudence and military law of their own countries. But the question of prosecuting the political authorities--the people who ran the country--had not yet been considered. Calls during the war to hold the Ottoman political elite and the German kaiser personally responsible for the Armenian massacres and to prosecute them on those grounds heralded a turning point. From that point on, personal responsibility and prosecution--even of those in the political sphere--became one of the most important principles of international law.

Not coincidentally, another who noted their extermination was Hitler, who had a first-hand witness of it among his closest associates in Munich. The former German consul in Erzerum, Max von Scheubner-Richter, reported to his superiors in detail on the ways they were wiped out. A virulent racist, who became manager of the early Nazi Kampfbund and the party’s key liaison with big business, aristocracy and the church, he fell to a shot while holding hands with Hitler in the Beerhall putsch of 1923. ‘Had the bullet which killed Scheubner-Richter been a foot to the right, history would have taken a different course,’ Ian Kershaw remarks. Hitler mourned him as ‘irreplaceable’. Invading Poland 16 years later, he would famously ask his commanders, referring to the Poles, but with obvious implications for the Jews: ‘Who now remembers the Armenians?’ The Third Reich did not need the Turkish precedent for its own genocides. But that Hitler was well aware of it, and cited its success to encourage German operations, is beyond question. Whoever has doubted the comparability of the two, it was not the Nazis themselves.

No actions by gangs or individuals can justify the deaths of eight hundred thousand people.

On all the roads we traversed between Yozgat and Kayseri, about 80 per cent of the Muslims we encountered (there were no Christians left in these parts) were wearing European clothes, bearing on their persons proof of the crimes they had committed. Indeed, it was an absurd sight: overcoats, frock coats, jackets—various men’s and women’s European garments of the finest materials—on villagers who were also wearing sandals and traditional baggy pants [shalvars]. Barefoot Turkish peasant boys wore formal clothes; men sported gold chains and watches. It was reported that the women had confiscated many pieces of diamond jewelry, but [as they were sequestered] we had no way of encountering them.34

Many of those who survived stressed that they did so due to Muslim families like these, or else to the bravery of ordinary “good Turks,” and also Kurds, who protected Armenians. For example, a survivor from Adana said, “We were like brothers. Our Turks said later, ‘Whoever was the cause of this genocide, may God blind his eyes.’ They did not wish our death. In fact if it weren’t for these good Turks, we would all have been killed, too. All the orders came from Istanbul.”38

The AKP government in Turkey, in power since 2002, while not officially abandoning its predecessors’ denialist approach to the issue, has taken a more permissive attitude, allowing alternative histories to be written and read in Turkey itself. This means that, first, the Turkish nationalist (or “denialist”) version of the Armenian Genocide that took root in the 1950s has crumbled in the face of the new scholarship: None of these Turkish nationalist historians has managed to write a full-length book that sets out a coherent “Turkish version” of what happened to the Armenians.

At the heart of each of these mass atrocities, he argues, was a state-building project in which traitorous inconvenient minorities were perceived as a threat and ultimately were destroyed.

But the Dashnak Hairenik Weekly was merciless. Quoting the accounts of a few escapees, it depicted Soviet Armenian as a locus not just of economic misery, but moral degradation:     Godlessness, Atheism, Immorality, Robbery and perpetual spying on one another! There is not a trace of our family sanctities left there. Having repudiated the idea of the existence of a God, the Bolshevik ignores every conception of family standards, every moral principle, every social order. Aram’s wife or watch equally can belong to Hagop, Ali, or Stalin. There is no conception of nationality. A Kurd, a Caucasian, a Georgian, or a Turk have the right to become your son-in-law when they wish it. They have the right to divorce the very next day.26

On the previous day, four Armenian witnesses told the Congressmen how the Bolsheviks had overthrown the Armenian First Republic in 1920. All of them were affiliated with the ARF, and two, Reuben Darbinian and General Dro Kanayan, had served in the government of the First Republic. The Armenian testimonies also appear to have been choreographed with the aim of throwing all possible blame on the Bolsheviks and suppressing the role of other culprits in the fate of the Armenians—in this case, the Turks. So Beglar Navassardian, executive secretary of the still-extant American Committee for the Independence of Armenia (and son of the ARF leader in Egypt), gave a brief excursion through the history of Armenia that surely would have caused apoplexy in his predecessors in that committee in the 1920s.     Navassardian barely mentioned the 1915 Genocide in his testimony. He managed only to say, “Finally during the First World War, the Armenian people made the final and supreme sacrifice. They firmly and squarely sided with the Allies, gave volunteer forces under the Allied Command in the Middle East, on the eastern front and elsewhere. For a people whose numbers had been decimated to less than 4 million, they gave a participation of 250,000, fighting against the Axis Powers.”34     General Dro spoke through an interpreter. The awkward issue of his wartime collaboration with Nazi Germany was not mentioned. The general reminisced about a luncheon in 1921 hosted for him by Stalin, whom he described as an old comrade from the revolution of 1905, at which promises were made and then broken. Dro, a veteran of the Russian-Ottoman war, also conspicuously failed to mention Turkey or 1915. He only spoke about atrocities committed by the Bolsheviks, who, he said, “took over Armenia with a brutality and persecution characteristic of the Middle Ages.”35     A certain kind of Armenia—one that had lost its independence, bravely fighting Soviet Russia—was required by the Cold War American political imagination. Concluding the hearings, the chairman, Representative Michael Feighan, praised General Dro, saying, “Our committee appreciates very much this first-hand testimony from you who have fought so vigorously for the freedom and independence of Armenia.”36

It was eventually named “the sub-commission on the historical dimension to implement a dialogue with the aim to restore mutual confidence between the two nations, including an impartial scientific examination of the historical records and archives to define existing problems and formulate recommendations.

Gökalp gave "the nation" an important mystical component. In his work, "he transferred to the nation the divine qualities he had found in society, replacing the belief in God with the belief in nation: and so nationalism became a religion." The national is deified, thus expanding Durkheim's idea that "society can do as it pleases." So, if a nation perceives itself in danger, it feels no moral responsibility in its response to that danger. The Unionist "scientific approach" gained a "sacred" character through Gökalp's theories.

British prime minister William Gladstone summed up the West’s opinion of “the Turk”: Let me endeavor very briefly to sketch, in the rudest outline, what the Turkish race was and what it is. It is not a question of Mahometanism simply, but of Mahometanism compounded with the peculiar character of a race. They are not the mild Mahometans of India, nor the chivalrous Saladins of Syria, nor the cultured Moors of Spain. They were, upon the whole, from the black day when they first entered Europe, the one great anti-human specimen of humanity. Wherever they went, a broad line of blood marked the track behind them; and, as far as their dominion reached, civilisation disappeared from view.

United

Like many Young Turk leaders, Talat was not ethnically Turkish; rather he was of Pomak descent, that is, native Bulgarian Muslim.

the Young Turks with a complex nationalist ideology replete with ideas such as “in reality there cannot be a common home and fatherland for different peoples.… The new civilization will be created by the Turkish race.”27

Genocide, after all, is an exercise in community-building. —Philip Gourevitch

Adolf von Gordon’s last words at the trial are ironic: “I should be far from passing a final judgment on Talat the man. What can be said objectively I said at the start. But I do wish to state one more thing: like many of his comrades, he certainly worked for the extermination of the Armenian people in order to create a purely pan-Turkish state; he certainly here used means that seem intolerable to us Europeans.

Morgenthau quotes

many devout Muslims, particularly in the east, understood that attacking helpless people, nonbelievers or not, was contrary to the tenets of Islam. Still, a vast number of Muslims saw the pronouncement of jihad as an endorsement for killing and looting.

denial itself was institutionalized as a government function. Since 1923, the Turkish government has spent tens of millions of dollars in a concerted disinformation campaign to delude the world at large and, perhaps more important, its own people.

Legislation was passed that seemed to welcome any surviving Armenians back to their homes, and at least on paper, Christians and Jews were to be treated like any other citizens in Turkey. But this was a very cold and toxic embrace. The Turkish government was no longer engaged in an organized system of deportation, but with Kemal’s endorsement, the ethnic cleansing of Anatolia would continue.

Turkish.” Vocabulary was deleted, new words added. Place-names all over the country were Turkified (for example, “Smyrna” became “Izmir”), which only added confusion and another obfuscating layer to the buildup of historical sediment.

the Turkish language has changed so radically since the time of Kemal’s “Nutuk” that a Turk living today would not be able to understand his actual words. The speech literally has to be translated for contemporary Turkish speakers. Most important, any record, history, or document created prior to 1929 is totally unreadable by all Turks

impact of this makeover has been to significantly impede historical research, and it is one of Ataturk’s most devastating accomplishments.

The struggle within Turkey that continues to this day is the legacy of Kemal Ataturk’s radical reformation,

vision, of the Ittihadists and, by extension, Kemal Ataturk, did not include the non-Muslim population of what was once the Ottoman Empire.

Kemal’s former opponents in the CUP, all dead by 1930, were resuscitated as heroes in the Turkish national consciousness.

rising tide floats all boats. And that includes the full history of the Armenians who lived within and outside the Ottoman Empire.

Turkey. The institutions of the republic, particularly its university system and judiciary, as well as its social life, can no longer exist in concert with manufactured history. The truth is easily accessible, and Turkish scholars and writers, young people using social media, anyone watching television,

Genocide is a word. Like the words “love” or “God,” it seems to be comprehensible. But in fact it cannot be grasped, it cannot be taken in. It is the unspeakable made verbal.

Although they still officially deny it, the Turks used the cover of a news blackout to wipe out much of their Christian Armenian population, mainly on forced death marches in which large numbers died of starvation and exhaustion. It is estimated that between 1 million to 1.5 million Armenians and other ethnic minorities were killed or forced to flee between 1915 and 1923 in what was to be the first of many genocides of the 20th century.

In a report dated 20 February 1894, French ambassador Paul Cambon describes a high-ranking Turkish official telling him that "the Armenian question does not exist, but we shall create it.

Some among the Armenians in the diaspora would never want the Turks to recognize the genocide. If they do so, they'll pull the rug out from under our feet and take the strongest bond that unites us. Just like the Turks have been in the habit of denying their wrongdoing, the Armenians have been in the habit of savoring the cocoon of victim hood. Apparently, there are some old habits that need to be changes on both sides." Baron Baghdassarian

Եւ ողբալիօրէն միամիտ ըլլալ ու ոճրագործօրէն տգէտ՝ յայտնելու համար, որ Թուրքին շահը մենք Հայերս աւելի լաւ կը ճանչնանք եւ անոր հանդէպ աւելի անկեղծ ենք, եւ այդ առնուազն վերջին քառասուն տարիներու պատմութենէն յետոյ, ահա այն մեր յետամնացութիւնը, որի պատասխանատուն մենք ենք, անկախ անկէ բղխող հետեւանքներու ընթացքին օտար ու արտաքին դաւերէն ու խարդաւանանքներէն։ Թուրքին դաս տալէ առաջ՝ անկէ դաս առնելու շատ պէտք ունինք ազգ ստեղծելու գիտութեան մէջ։

On a visit to a mosque that had been formerly been an Armenian church in the town of Antep (now Gaziantep), the current custodian, the imam, happened to be inside. The imam suggested to the bishop that this holy space belonged to both of them and they prayed together. If politicians in Ankara warned that the ordinary population of Eastern Anatolia was still hostile toward Armenians, this was not the impression our group received. On the contrary, many people not only remembered Armenians but seemed to think that their return was a good omen.

Jordan is an ancient intersection for the Silk Road of the Far East and the famed King’s Highway of the Old Testament, and the demographic diversity of Jerash remains visible today. Circassians from the Northern Caucasus live alongside Armenians who settled in the area to escape the genocide perpetrated by the Ottomans in 1915. While the various groups include Christians, an overwhelming majority of residents are Muslim. In the Arab Middle East, about 5 to 10 percent of any given population generally is Christian, but among Jamilla’s Jordanian neighbors, less than half that number claims any allegiance to Jesus Christ.

The Armenian genocide, the massacres of the Pontic Greeks and the agreed ‘exchanges’ of Greek and Turkish populations after the sack of Smyrna illustrated with a terrible clarity the truth of the Archbishop of Aleppo’s warning: when a multi-ethnic empire mutated into a nation state, the result could only be carnage. It was as if, for the sake of a spuriously modern uniformity, the basest instincts of ordinary men were unleashed in a kind of tribal bloodletting.

Kurt was crazy, who wouldn't have been?

The Khojaly genocide, which once again exposed the face of Armenian fascism, is a historical crime against not only the people of Azerbaijan but also humanity. It must be condemned by the civilized world in compliance with international law

I had been privy to some of her intense sensory images, to her telescopic memory, to Genocide flashbacks. This was how she told me about her past. I think it was the only way she knew to speak to me about something she wanted to say, but couldn't say in any other language to a young boy, her eldest grandson.

Had I been a witness to a memory of hers so terrible that it could only be said to me, an eleven-year-old, half delirious with fever, lying in bed between darkness and light? My grandmother had spoken so emphatically that day, in clipped, deliberate speech, as if to say, 'This is a moment to listen.

What did it mean for a whole civilization to be expunged from the earth? What did it mean when a people who loved and worked and built a culture on the land where they had lived for three thousand years were destroyed? What did it mean for the human race?

When a civilization is erased, there is a new darkness on the earth. I could feel dust blowing over dry land, where now blood is part of the rocks, where the water will never run clean again.

The old country. That phrase came up now and then. A phrase that seemed to have a lock on it. I knew it meant Armenia, but it made me uneasy. If I asked about the old country, the adults would change the subject. Once my mother said, ‘It’s an ancient place, it’s not really around anymore.’ Where had it gone? I asked myself.

I realized that in order to touch the woman behind the grandmother I knew, the one who never spoke in a direct way about her past, I had to bring the pain of the past into the landscape of the present.

Since there was no picture of the old country in our house and since I didn't have one etched in my mind, the old country came to mean my grandmother. Whatever it was, she was. Whatever she was, it was.

to its knees.

In his memoirs, Celal Bey recalled what it felt like to witness what were, in effect, death marches. “I was like a person sitting beside a river,” he wrote, but “with no means of rescuing anyone from it”: Instead of water, blood was flowing down the river. Thousands of innocent children, blameless old men, helpless women and strong youngsters were streaming downriver towards oblivion, straight to dust and ashes. Anyone I could hold onto with my bare hands, with my fingernails, I saved. The rest, I believe, went down the river, never to return.

What many people don’t realize about the continued denial of the first genocide of the twentieth century is that the very identity of modern Turkey hinges upon it. The political turmoil in Turkey during the First World War was the ideal backdrop for genocide. Armenians were classic scapegoats; we see it today.

You are here discussing the so-called Armenian genocide when there are hundreds of documents proving that it ever existed. In fact, my ancestors are from the Mardin region, where Armenians committed genocides against us. It’s documented in my family that Armenians came in the night, murdered the men, raped the women, beheaded—

Von Neumann’s remarkable foresight is evident in letters he wrote to Ortvay between 1928 and 1939. ‘There will be a war in Europe in the next decade,’ he told the Hungarian physicist in 1935, further predicting that America would enter the war ‘if England is in trouble’. He feared that during that war, European Jews would suffer a genocide as the Armenians had under the Ottoman Empire. In 1940, he predicted that Britain would be able to hold a German invasion at bay (far from obvious at the time), and that America would join the war the following year (as it did after the bombing of Pearl Harbor).

the commission singled out Turkish massacres and deportations of Armenian civilians as being so grotesque that—although they had not been specifically banned by the Hague and Geneva conventions—these actions were inherently criminal under the most elementary norms of human behavior. This was, they said, a “crime against humanity.

In the first months of World War I the Young Turks instigated a national effort to exterminate the Armenian population under the guise of modernization, suppressing domestic dissent, and securing Turkey’s borders.

Meanwhile, the events of the Armenian Genocide and of the Holocaust also reveal a basic dynamic in the relationship of great powers to mass crimes. The problem is fundamentally structural; it is built into the system and not simply a product of a particularly evil or inept group of men.

Hitler himself repeatedly raised the international community’s failure to do justice in the wake of the Armenian Genocide to explain and justify his own racial theories,

The broad, popular demands that the U.S. take harsh action against those who had committed atrocities collided with the legal professionals at the State Department in much the same way as they had in the wake of the Armenian Genocide of World War I.

Con todo mi apego a la palabra dada, te digo a ti Turquía que mi mano se encuentra extendida para aceptar tu perdón.

… and just as suddenly he was with Stern and it was a night twenty years ago in a city once called Smyrna, once long ago in the century before the age of genocide, before the monstrous massacres had come swirling out of Asia Minor to descend on Smyrna while Stern and Joe were there … the massacres ignored then by most of the world but not by everyone, and not by Hitler, who had triumphantly recalled them only days before his armies invaded Poland to begin the Second World War…. Who after all speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians? The world believes in success alone.

Since 1945 Turkey has, of course, acquired far more importance for the US as a strategic ally, first in the Cold War and now the War on Terror. In the last twenty years, increasing pressure from the Armenian community, today much more salient than in the 1920s, and the emergence of an Armenian scholarship that has pioneered modern study of the exterminations of 1915-16 in the West, have made repression of the question more difficult. After previously unsuccessful attempts to get resolutions on it through Congress, in 2000 the House International Relations Committee voted for a bipartisan resolution condemning the Armenian genocide, while carefully exempting the Turkish Republic from any responsibility for it. Ankara’s response was to threaten withdrawal of American military facilities in Turkey, trade reprisals, and to talk of a risk of violence against Americans in Turkey – the State Department even had to issue a travel advisory – if the resolution were passed by Congress. Characteristically, Clinton intervened in person to prevent the resolution getting to the floor. In Ankara, Ecevit exulted that it was a demonstration of Turkish power.

The Lebanese government has officially recognized the Armenian genocide, but nowhere is there any official memorial to the victims of the World War I famine.

One would think that a cataclysm that reportedly claimed tens of thousands of lives through starvation and disease would have been as traumatic to the Lebanese as genocide was to the Armenians and would have warranted some sort of public memorial.