Second of three parts
See “Passing a Resolution Is the Wrong Thing”
[Editor’s Note: During the Armenian Genocide (1915-1917), almost 1.5 million Armenians, a minority rival community, were systematically murdered by the rulers of Turkey. For the past 93 years, Turkey successfully has resisted most international attempts to have the massacres officially labeled “genocide” — including by the United States. Recognition remains a delicate, politically charged debate here and elsewhere. Today and Tuesday we will present responses by Dr. Cohen to Friday’s essay by Colby J. Cooper appearing two weeks ago in the Mobile Press-Register and published here last Friday, opposing the notion that America should join the 20 countries of the world who formally label the holocaust “Armenian Genocide.” Dr. Cohen, a longtime contributor to the newspaper, is an expert on the genocide and Armenian history.]
Thank God, America is a free country, and everyone is able to out speak his/her opinions and practice their chosen religion.
Can you imagine living in a country where you were not able to write or express your opinion?
In Friday’s essay, Colby J. Cooper wrote that his “Armenian great grandparents, who came to America, had actually gone through the Armenian Genocide (committed by Ottoman Turks).”
To justify his position against officially calling the despicable act genocide , he took a Shakespearean argument, like Anthony in Julius Caesar: “Brutus is an honorable man, a good Roman. But he killed his friend Caesar!”
Yes, my friends, “my great grandparents experienced the horrors of the Armenian Genocide, but don’t recognize that there was an Armenian Genocide” because if you upset the government of Turkey, our country will suffer.
I would like to ask the question in a simpler, honest way:
“Is it our country that will suffer, or the interests of some ambitious individuals or greedy companies who have promised the government of Turkey to jeopardize the recognition of the Armenian Genocide?”
Many European countries have voted to recognize the Armenian Genocide.
Have they lost their existence and country?
Since the Armenian Genocide, the Turkish government has tried to modernize their country. Now Turkey has applied to join the European Union (because a tiny portion of their land is situated in the West.)
Of course it is admirable to see that their founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkish national leader and founder of modern Turkey, who organized the Turkish National Party in 1919 and served as president of the Turkish Republic, tried to modernize Turkey and brought many changes to his country.
Yet in all his modernizing, he and subsequent presidents forgot a little gesture. They neglected to ask forgiveness by their own Christian citizens and the neighboring Christian population, whom they had afflicted so cruelly.
You see, the Turkish government erased all of these horrific events from their history books so that future generations would not learn about the atrocities that their parents or grandparents had committed to their own neighbors.
For many years the Armenian population restlessly has been without a loud voice. In silence, they have hoped that Turkey and powerful nations would at least show gesture towards them and recognize their sufferings (as the Germans did towards the Holocaust survivors).
Only a handful of books have been written on this subject, but not nearly enough voices have been heard yet. The reason is that unfortunately most of the remaining survivors were children or frightened young women who were either raped or had witnessed the killing of their parents, husbands and children.
After the Genocide they were lonely and hungry. They had lost all their belongings, pride and security.
Some victims even had lost man’s ultimate hope, their fate and their God.
Many survivors who did not have relatives and means to leave the country, were forced to marry a Muslim.
They had no choice but to convert to Islam in order to save themselves or their remaining children. Most survivors were between the ages of 12 to 18 years old. In Muslim countries, the girls married from the age of nine years old. This was true for the Christian population who were forced into arranged marriages after the age of 12. (See my book, “The Survivor.”
The girls did not have proper education. After the Genocide, their main goal was to survive. Writing needs time and concentration; it is a luxury the survivors did not have. Most of the survivors suffered such a deep pain that they never even talked about the atrocities.
This is true in many traumas. I have experienced it first hand. (See my book “Korban — The Sacrifice of Liana.”)
Mr. Cooper, your great grandparents were lucky to be able to emigrate to the United States.
I am not sure if they met or even talked to you, personally, about their past.
Were you enough sensitive? Did you have the time to understand and analyze their pain and attitudes?
You said that your great grandmother refused to travel out of the United States. Do you know the reason? She had finally found freedom and equality that she had never experienced in her life before; I am sure she could never feel secure enough to travel abroad, as she did not want to experience racial and religious discrimination anymore.
Do you know why your great grandfather was proud to join the American army?
For the first time he could carry arms against the face of evil.
You write that around the Armenian Remembrance Day you had to explain why you had chosen the position that you have.
Did you ever participate in one of the memorials? Have you seen the tearful faces of the victims on April 24? Do you understand or are you able to read Armenian poems written for this day?
I lived with my surviving grandmother and mother. I met the rare surviving friends of my grandmother.
They all lived courageously in silence; their tears had dried because their tear pockets were empty.
They never cursed. They never asked for a vote on the Genocide resolution.
They did not need elected politicians in Europe or D.C. to vote and admit, that yes, “it was an Armenian Genocide.”
They had lived it, they had experienced and seen it all.
I do not need their votes, either.
Will my grandparents come back to us if Washington admits that there was an Armenian Genocide?
Will we go back to our childhood and find a normal life, like all of you, by visiting our loved ones with a true smile on their faces on holidays?
Will my grandfather hold his daughter in his arms and show his face to his daughter who did not even know what her father looked like?
Will I be able to kiss his cheeks and call him “grandpa”?
Is Turkey going to give back our ancestral homes and our belongings?
None of this is going to happen if Washington votes positively.
I will never go back and claim my heritage or live there.
Who needs it?
Let them keep and enjoy it all.
At the end, everyone turns to a handful dust. No one takes anything with them.
We only take our good name and good deeds at the end.
Nothing is going to change to what happened 95 years ago.
Even the bones of my grandparents and our relatives have turned to dust by now, as have those of their killers.
Yet, I see my grandmother’s face and hear the voices of all the victims every day who ask for justice not for them but for humanity.
(To be concluded on Tuesday)
