[Editor’s Note: To provide context and greater understanding for our readers about the raging national debate over whether Congress should officially condemn Turkey’s 1915 slaughter of Armenians as genocide, we turned to our scholarly columnist, an authority on Armenia and its history.]
When I was five years old, two young women in their 20s were living next to our house with their parents. They were beautiful. They always dressed up very fancy and a la mode.
When they passed the hallway, a trail of expensive perfume trailed after them, like the perfume of jasmine flowers filling the air in the early mornings in South France .
They loved me, and sometimes they invited me to their house and gave me little gifts.
I loved watching them putting on their makeup, getting ready for a party.
It was amazing how they became glamorous after putting powder and colors on their face. At the end, they would put on their perfume. To my delight, they used to spray a little on me, too.
A Fateful Day
One day while I was sitting in front of their mirror waiting for them to get dressed up, I was attracted by the beautiful, delicate bottle of their perfume.
Taking it in my hand, the bottle slipped from my tinny fingers. As it fell to the floor and broke, all of the perfume spilled onto my dress.
I was very upset and I was scared.
Immediately I collected the shattered pieces and stuffed them into my pocket.
For the next while, I remained glued on the chair, waiting quietly, fearing the consequences of my actions.
I Told a…
When the girls finished with their makeup and looked for their perfume, they asked if I had seen the bottle.
I hesitated, then denied that I had.
They smiled and did not argue.
When I returned home, my mother asked why I had used so much perfume that it gave her a headache.
The Smell Lingers
I ran out to the yard. But even the fresh air and the bath did not help.
The scent of the perfume was so strong it stayed with me for days. The girls next door continued loving me and spoiling me. I was ashamed of my lie for a long time.
Since I have decided not to lie in my life and I think I have kept my promise well all of these years.
A History Lesson
In the past, the eastern part of Turkey belonged to Armenia. However, between wars and the passage of time, the land became a part of Turkey.
For centuries, Armenians lived in these parts and in most of the large cities of Turkey.
They spoke Armenian at home. But they felt and they behaved as real Turkish citizens in the society.
Armenians were businessmen, craftsmen and farmers. Some were highly educated, either in the country or abroad. They practiced their professions as doctors, lawyers and even ministers in the government offices.
A Change for the Worse
Unfortunately by the end of 1800, the situation had change. The quality and the security of their lives had begun deteriorating.
In 1914, tragedy struck the Armenian Community. The following year brought the imprisonment of intellectuals and the assassinations of community figures.
Then a plan of deportations and relocations of Armenians was put into action and carried out by the Ottoman military under the watchfulness of German advisors.
Armenian citizens were obliged to leave their ancestral homes on short notice. Armenian men and boys were ordered to join the army, but then they were taken away and executed.
The rest of the population scarcely fared better.
No One Was Spared
Elderly Armenians, children and their mothers were forced to walk toward the desert for relocation. Many perished from the harsh weather and bad conditions, hunger, thirst and diseases. Young women and girls were raped and killed.
Eyewitnesses have written about the river smelling and vomiting up human corpses, so many that farmers were unable to irrigate their fields. Even now days there are places where remaining Armenian bones can be seen on the sands.
One and a half million Armenians were killed in this “First Genocide of the Twentieth Century.”
Facing a New Kind of Struggle
Survivors of this genocide struggled physically and psychologically. They tried hard to give meaning and hope to their lives.
They would force themselves to live for the sake of their children or for other relatives. They worked hard to reestablish their lives from the ashes in foreign countries. With empty hands, they had to learn everything all over, from the beginning in adapting to their new environment.
International meetings were organized to find solutions to the Armenian Question. Endlessly, it seemed, government leaders discussed the tragedy. To what end? No country was brave enough to at least give “the first medal of the genocide” to the people who suffered and lost so much.
Peace Is Elusive
It has remained an open wound for more than 90 years.
Armenians carry its pain and its memories every day.
No one has tried to put an end to it so that the remaining survivors, their families and the spirits of the innocent victims could finally find their peace.
Since Modern Turkey never admitted to the past crimes committed by Ottoman Empire — as the Germans did for the Holocaust —Turks still carry the heavy load of their grandparents.
Denial’s Silent Form
They have banned the subject of the genocide of Armenians from their history books.
No historians, reporters or intellectuals are allowed to discuss or write about the genocide.
Should a brave spirit dare to talk about the subject, he or she is silenced by the secular right-wingers.
This was the case with Hrant Dink, who recently was assassinated. (Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk is self exile, apparently fearing for his life after speaking out about the “Armenian question,” as people here euphemistically call it, as Marianne Pearl reported in the October 2007 edition of Glamour magazine.)
Relying on Historic Accounts
It is true that I was not in Turkey in 1915, and I do not know exactly what happened.
But I trust all of the memoirs and the reports I have read in different government archives, clearly pointing the finger to the word: Genocide.
In the “History Place,” we can find the meaning of genocide as follows:
“The term 'Genocide' was coined by a jurist named Raphael Lemkin in 1944 by combining the Greek word 'genos' (race) with the Latin word 'cide' (killing). Genocide, as defined by the United Nations in 1948, means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, including:
(a) killing members of the group,
(b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group,
(c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,
(d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
In those dark periods, circa World War I, many ambassadors and foreign officials who were present in Turkey took photographs. They also forwarded reports along with their concerns to their respective governments, detailing the atrocities in Turkey .
I am just listing two selections of reading materials, both by American diplomats.
Numerous other memoirs were written by French, Dutch, English, German diplomats, others in the diplomatic corps, and missionaries of the time who were present in the country.
- “Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story,” by Henry Morgenthau
“The Slaughterhouse Provence Kharpour,” by Leslie Davis
A Direct Link
My grandmother was a survivor of the Turkish Massacre in Iran in 1918.
This massacre, which took place in the northwestern cities of Persia, is not well known to the general public. The number of victims in the thousands, if not millions.
I have collected many documents and spoken to many historians, witnesses and the survivors who confirmed the massacre committed by the Turks in their neighboring country.
If a government enters in a foreign country and kills only the Christian population, is it not called genocide?
They Were Not Chroniclers of History
Neither my grandmother nor the rest of the few survivors were sophisticated enough, or they did not have the luxury of time and education to play with words.
They saw.
They knew well who killed their husbands, their children and all the member sof their families.
They were not concerned with by what name the act would be called. They never understood how a human being could become so cruel to afflict such acts of brutality on innocent and undefended men, women and children.
Their wounds were so deep that they never talked about it in order not to add more pain to their suffering.
What We Have in Common
They tried to educate their remaining children with dignity. Survivors gave them the best example of their brave spirit.
I am like my grandmother.
I am not looking for sophisticated words.
I am not finger-pointing or seeking revenge. The past has passed. We cannot change it.
We should live the present and prepare a better future for our children.
But if we do not clean up our acts, the coming generation never will have a bright future.
As we see in the statement made by Adolf Hitler to his Army commanders, Aug. 22, 1939:
"Thus for the time being I have sent to the East only my 'Death's Head Units' with the orders to kill without pity or mercy all men, women and children of the Polish race or language. Only in such a way will we win the vital space that we need. Who still talks nowadays about the Armenians?"
If our governments and our parents had condemned the Armenian Genocide immediately afterward, maybe Hitler would not have dared to pronounce those words and repeat those atrocities.
Getting up to Date
It took almost 90 years for Europeans to accept officially that what happened to the Armenians, 1915-17, was genocide. After a House committee in the U.S. Congress last week preliminarily passed a resolution branding the massacre as genocide, the Turkish government recalled its ambassador from Washington.
Now it is finally the time for the U.S to do the right thing.
As CNN reported on Oct. 13, “The U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs passed the (genocide resolution) 27-21 this past Wednesday. President Bush and key Administration figures lobbied hard against the measure, saying it would create unnecessary headaches for U.S. relations with Turkey.”
In the same report, it reported the following newspaper headlines from Turkey:
“Bill of Hatred,” said Hurriyet’s front page. Vatan’s main headline said “27 Foolish Americans.”
(I would like to ask the 21 wise ones if they have had time to read some of the reports existing in the official government documents and files?)
Warning from Turkey
In a letter to President Bush, the Turkish President Abdullah Gul warned:
“In case the American allegations are accepted, there will be serious problems in the relations between the two countries.”
The Turkish Government has been more powerful than anyone else. They have been able to stop and to change the reality of a historic fact that the historian and researchers of a powerful country like the U.S. have been intimidated and been their hostages for 90 years.
Patriotic Obligation?
Where is our First Amendment? How can we accept to be insulted by their newspapers and not dare to protect the truth?
Not long ago, I met a producer, a major figure in the movie industry who told me of horrible experiences years ago during the filming of “The Forty Days of Moussa Dagh.”
Throughout the shooting, they were harassed and were asked to stop production.
Regardless of the pressure, they finished the movie. But when it was scheduled for wide release screenings, the showings abruptly were stopped. Down to today, the film gathers dust on the studio’s storage shelves.
So what are we teaching our children?
That truth is always biased?
Fear Ill-founded?
Now we have the excuse to be in a war with Iraq. Some say passage of the genocide resolution may jeopardize the security of our soldiers.
I do not think anyone would like to see our soldiers in any more danger than they are actually in.
But what was the excuse five years ago, 10 years ago, 90 years ago?
Finally a word to our friends in Turkey:
Believe me no one is blaming you for the acts of your grandparents.
But in order to forgive, the society must stop denying.
The Odious Scent Never Left
The trails of the bad smell of the past follow you continually.
Someone has broken the bottle of the perfume.
Believe me it is much easier to admit and get over the entire headache.
The amount of money spent all these years for lobbying, is more needed by your own population. It will be well spent if you use it on your beautiful country.
Dr. Rosemary Cohen, who lives in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles, is the author of three books. She earned her doctorate in sociology from the Sorbonne in Paris. She moved to Los Angeles with her family 23 years ago. Since 1985, Dr. Cohen has owned and operated an international art business, Atelier de Paris, on Robertson Boulevard.
