Special for the Armenian Weekly

2014 was the bloodiest year in the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict since the 1990’s. Here, Emil Sanamyan reviews the casualty data for the year and looks at the factors driving the escalation.

Death statistics

An Artsakh Defense Army soldier on the frontline

The grim data for 2014 includes 39 Azerbaijanis and 33 Armenians killed as a result of the conflict, that is, in direct combat, sniper attacks, mine incidents and, in the case of one Armenian civilian, murder in custody. If things continue as they began this year, 2015 may be as bad or worse. By comparison, the previous worst year on record, 2012, included 14 Armenian and 20 Azerbaijani dead.

Of the 39 Azerbaijanis killed last year, 22 were enlisted soldiers (18-19-year-olds), 9 contracted NCOs (nearly all members of Special Forces), 6 officers, and 2 civilians. Of the 33 Armenian names, 13 were enlisted (19-20-year olds), 6 contracted NCOs and privates, 8 officers, and 6 civilians.

Of the 33 Armenian deaths, 17 were from sniper fire, 9 died in direct combat engagements, 4 in mine explosions, and 3 died away from the border (2 murdered by Azerbaijani intruders into Karvachar and one in custody in Shamkhor). Of the 39 Azerbaijani deaths, 16 were killed in direct combat engagements, 14 by sniper fire, and 5 in mine explosions; the causes of death in 4 cases were not clarified.

Table: Total 2014 conflict fatalities by month (military and civilian)*

*These numbers do not include non-combat deaths, such as reported suicides, fratricides, auto accidents, etc., or unconfirmed reports of combat casualties. Following serious casualties sustained by the Azerbaijani Army in August, Aliyev introduced additional military censorship. With the crackdown on its media, there have been no independent reports on the Azerbaijani military from inside the country over the past four months, and there is likely to be under-reporting.

The current level of violence is worse than it was between 1988 and 1991. While credible data for the years immediately following the May 1994 ceasefire have not been published, the statistics available for the years since 2000 make 2014 the worst year on record since the ceasefire.

Drivers of escalation

So what happened in 2014? Three major factors could be identified as driving the escalation. The first two relate to the escalation’s initiator—Azerbaijan—and the third to Armenia and other international players.

On the structural level, Azerbaijan is seeking a military revanche against Armenia. The Aliyev regime has spent an estimated $9 billion on weapons purchases over the past decade. This includes $4 billion worth of weapons from Russia, $1.6 billion from Israel, $600 million from Turkey, $600 million from Belarus, and $400 million from Ukraine. But this arsenal is not yet fully in use and any large-scale military campaign can bring about unpredictable consequences and carries major risks for the Aliyev regime. So for now, both the military spending and low-level escalations on the Line of Contact serve to intimidate Armenians into diplomatic concessions in the Karabagh negotiations.

President Putin, center, mediates talks between Armenian and Azerbaijani Presidents on Aug. 10 in Sochi

Personnel changes in the Azerbaijani military have also made a difference. In November 2013, the former commander of Azerbaijan’s internal security forces, Zakir Hassanov, replaced Safar Abiyev as the minister of defense. Abiyev had been in that role since 1995. While a trend towards escalation was evident even before Abiyev’s replacement, at the time of the Karabagh War the then-frequent changes in Azerbaijan’s military leadership inevitably resulted in escalations at the front. What is also significant is that unlike Abiyev, Hassanov is a member of Azerbaijan’s ruling clan that has its roots in Nakhichevan and Armenia. Key officials that oversee Hassanov in Ilham Aliyev’s office, Vahid Aliyev and Magerram Aliyev, are also members of this clan. All three have no combat experience and are eager to prove their worth.

Finally, there is Armenia and how its government reacts to Azerbaijani attacks. On the one hand, the Armenian military has an established record of responding to every single Azerbaijani attack if it causes Armenian casualties. In 2014, this approach contributed both to the higher casualty tally and to restraining Azerbaijan from conducting additional attacks. Because the Azerbaijani military continued to suffer heavier casualties, particularly during the worst escalation in early August, the Aliyev regime moved to ban any “bad news” related to its forces. In recent months, only limited information on Azerbaijani casualties was made public—and only after leaks in social media. While this reflects the authoritarian nature of Azerbaijan’s regime, it is also an indication of the Azerbaijani public’s sensitivity to its military’s losses. That factor was in large part responsible for Abiyev’s ouster.

On the other hand, the civilian portion of the Armenian government also has an established record—but one of inaction when it comes to any meaningful effort to counter Azerbaijan diplomatically, such as trying to oppose large-scale weapons purchases or making Azerbaijan’s aggressive behavior politically costly. Last week, the mediators from France, Russia, and U.S. finally issued a statement that singled out Azerbaijan for criticism over its lack of commitment towards a peaceful settlement. It is unclear whether there will be any meaningful follow-up to that statement. While formally allied with Armenia, Russia has directly contributed to Azerbaijan’s military build-up in recent years and is now being sanctioned by the two other co-chairs for its aggression in Ukraine. The United States and Europe have so far refused to punish the Aliyev regime for its domestic crackdowns. Any serious action by the three Minsk Group co-chairs to restrain Azerbaijan over its anti-Armenian attacks remains difficult to imagine.

The post Loose Restraints: A Look at the Increasingly Shaky Karabagh Ceasefire appeared first on Armenian Weekly.

Special for the Armenian Weekly

Sait Molla was a lawyer, member of the Turkish Council of State, and founder of the Anglophile Society (Ingiliz Muhipleri Cemiyeti). In 1918, he began to publish a daily paper in Istanbul called Türkçe İstanbul. On March 25, 1919, the newspaper published what it claimed was the Letter of Instruction from the head office of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) to the Special Organization (Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa) units as the deportation of Armenians during the genocide began.

On March 25, 1919, Türkçe İstanbul published what it claimed was the Letter of Instruction from the head office of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP)

The newspaper called it “A Tragic and Dreadful Document,” and noted it was reprinting the document without making any changes. The Letter of Instruction consists of 10 articles that describe the steps to be taken in the deportation process. These are the same steps that scholars like Taner Akçam, Donald Bloxham, and Uğur Ümit Üngör have described as being part of the deportations.

Of course, the authenticity of such a document is not guaranteed. Türkçe Istanbul neglected to mention the source of the letter. Moreover, the archives of the CUP disappeared following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I.

Regardless of these questions, however, it is noteworthy that there were Ottoman Turkish dailies like Türkçe İstanbul, Alemdar, and Peyam, which criticized the CUP and discussed the topic intensively in the wake of World War I.

The text of the newspaper’s piece follows.

‘A tragic and dreadful document’

Article 1. Close all of the Armenian associations by using the third and fourth articles of the Law of Associations; arrest the executive members who were opposing the CUP government, deport them to provinces such as Mosul and Baghdad, and kill them en route or at their final destination.

On March 25, 1919, Türkçe İstanbul published what it claimed was the Letter of Instruction from the head office of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP)

Article 2. Collect all of the weapons of the Armenians.

Article 3. Prepare Muslim public opinion through appropriate means, organize some planned incidents—like Russia did in Baku—in cities such as Van, Erzurum, and Adana, where the Armenians by their own actions have earned the hatred of the Muslims.

Article 4. Leave the implementation totally to the general populace in provinces like Erzurum, Van, Mamuretulaziz, and Bitlis, and use the troops and military forces to appear as if they are preventing the massacres. On the contrary, support Muslims with military force in places like Adana, Sivas, Bursa, İzmit, and İzmir.

Article 5. Apply [measures] of annihilation to school teachers and especially to men below 50. (Leave the women and children to be converted to Islam.)

Article 6. Clear away the families of those who managed to run away and take measures to cut off their ties with their hometowns completely.

Article 7. Discharge all Armenian officials from all government offices and branches by accusing them of spying.

Article 8. Annihilate the men serving in the army by the military in an appropriate fashion.

Article 9. Start all measures at the same time in order to leave no time to prepare means of defense.

Article 10. Keep this letter of instruction private and take utmost care to keep it between one or two persons.

It is a reality that those Armenians who were deported were killed and annihilated in accordance with the letter of instruction written above. While we avoid elaborating on it further, we publish the document exactly the same.

Türkçe İstanbul

March 25, 1919

Editor’s Note: Similar documents were published in the Turkish press during the post-World War I years.

The post Document Reflects CUP’s Deportation Policy appeared first on Armenian Weekly.

Special for the Armenian Weekly

For the first six years of my life, my parents, brother and I lived in my maternal grandparents’ house in Syracuse, N.Y. The six of us were crammed into a small early 20^th-century frame house, with a front porch and tiny back study that served as my bedroom; an enticingly flat roof outside its window overlooked our grape arbor, fruit trees, and strawberry patch where my grandmother caught the thieving bunny she spanked and sent on its way. Our home welcomed many a visiting dignitary. As a small child I sat on the lap of family friend, Hamo Paraghamian, a huge man with a heart to match. My small hands carried a bowl of yogurt and garlic for General Dro sitting in the blue chair in the corner of our living room, who thanked me by intoning in his gruff voice, “This is food for the gods.”

Aaron Sachaklian

Aaron Sachaklian (in Armenian, Aharon), my grandfather, spent most of his days in the red leather chair near the wooden radio he listened to every day, silently smoking his Camels with shaking fingers, perhaps from undiagnosed Parkinson’s that would, years later, steal my mother’s smile and cause her shuffling gait. But when I was three, four, five, this quiet man who wore a three-piece suit nearly every day of his life, who had private sessions with visiting community leaders and battle heroes, bounced me on his foreleg, carried me through the doorways on his shoulders like a queen, and took me outside at dusk to survey the peach, pear, and apple trees beyond our back door. When my grandmother Eliza and I made our weekly trip to Abajian Cleaners three blocks down on South Avenue, I was the one to carry his wool coat, hugging it to my chest, saying, “I love my medz-hairig [grandfather]. I wish he would live forever.”

My grandfather lived to 84, the last few years in mental and visual darkness, his eyesight failing, his prodigious brain’s neurons deadened from a series of strokes. Thinking me his wife as a young woman, he called me Eliza, took my hand in his, stroked it, and held it to his cheek. No one in our family knew until close to 25 years after his death that my grandfather was the bursar and logistical leader of the covert operation—known as “Operation Nemesis”—to assassinate the Ottoman-Turkish architects of the Armenian Genocide.

My four grandparents were survivors of the Armenian massacres that occurred before the genocide of 1915. My maternal grandmother, Eliza, survived both the Hamidian massacres of 1894-96 and the Adana Massacres of 1909, the first because they hid on the roof, and the second because they were able to fight back when the Turks held the town under siege, holding them off long enough for foreign consuls to intervene. The city of Dortyol was saved, but her brother, Mihran, one of the leaders of the resistance—who snuck past Turkish guns to break up the dam the Turks had built in the creek that supplied the town’s water—was imprisoned. When asked why he resisted, he said, “Even a dumb animal will try to protect itself.” As my grandmother wrote in her memoirs, “They silenced him with their beatings.” My grandmother said her mother washed Mihran’s bloody underwear sent home by his jailers with her tears. When my grandmother exhorted me to eat every last pea on my plate, saying, “Remember the starving Armenians,” it had more than rhetorical power. I was raised on my grandmother’s stories of resistance, but my grandfather never spoke of those days, and I, unconsciously respecting his silence, never asked.

In 1990, my family found a large collection of letters in my grandfather’s upstairs study, the room I slept in as a child, the one that overlooked the grape arbor that Aaron had built. The letters were written by Armen Garo, Shahan Natalie, Soghomon Tehlirian, Hamo Paraghamian, Vahan Zakariants, and others involved in Operation Nemesis.

In 1990, my family found a large collection of letters in my grandfather’s upstairs study, the room I slept in as a child, the one that overlooked the grape arbor that Aaron had built. The letters were written by Armen Garo, Shahan Natalie, Soghomon Tehlirian, Hamo Paraghamian, Vahan Zakariants, and others involved in Operation Nemesis. After the war, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) created lists of perpetrators that they gave to the Allies. When the tribunals and courts martial failed to secure justice for the Armenians, they decided to use those lists themselves. At the 1919 World Congress of the ARF, a secret resolution called “Haduk Kordz” (Special Mission) was adopted to seek justice; each regional central committee would be accountable to the congress for its own actions. That allowed the Central Committee of America to assume responsibility for this operation, which they did. These men must have seen Aaron’s study as the safest place for the letters, and indeed he never spoke of them or what they contained to anyone in his family, including his wife.

My mother, knowing immediately what she had discovered in her father’s files, took the letters to her house, boxed, catalogued, and summarized them (for which I am thankful to this day), and placed them on the cement floor in her basement where they were inundated by two floods. Her mother’s memoirs were safely stored in her second-floor study, but these letters, perhaps seen as too radioactive to be allowed upstairs, sat in the damp basement, their contents neatly labeled, waiting for the next flood to wipe out the faint ink. She told me of them with an ounce of pride and three ounces of wonder, but she had no idea what to do with them. Her father was the community’s patriarch, the one called on to calm the hotheads and quiet the querulous.

I realized that these letters, along with her Armenian book collection and artifacts, such as her grandmother’s handwork and the bloody sash taken off Mihran’s dead body after the Turks killed him in 1921, would be left for me to deal with. By the time I pulled the letters out of the basement, some were still damp, others dry but with running ink, and others, thankfully, unscathed. With shaking hands I opened up alternately damp or crackling pages one by one, laid them on the kitchen table, and let the sunlight they had not seen in close to 88 years dry them out.

To give some idea of the secrecy involved, one of the letters is in code; it reads like gibberish, but when a cut-out template is placed on top of the letter, the actual message can be read, one most likely written by Soghomon Tehlirian, using one of his aliases.

My cousin Arsine Oshagan offered her translation talent, and we heard the voices of these extraordinary men that demonstrated poignantly and powerfully the danger, difficulty, and significance of this work. To give some idea of the secrecy involved, one of the letters is in code; it reads like gibberish, but when a cut-out template is placed on top of the letter, the actual message can be read, one most likely written by Soghomon Tehlirian, using one of his aliases. Between 1920 and 1922, at least eight perpetrators were killed, including Talaat Pasha, the “number one nation murderer” as Shahan Natalie called him.

The three leaders of Operation Nemesis were Armen Garo, the soul of Nemesis, and Armenian ambassador to the United States; Shahan Natalie, the heart, and coordinator of operations, whose intensity and fervor are imprinted onto every page he wrote; and Aaron Sachaklian, the head, and finance officer and logistician, who figured out how to fund and organize this massive effort and keep the pieces from coming unglued. The three described their project as “a sacred work of justice.” In my grandfather’s file I found the list of 100 perpetrators on the ARF “hit” list that was written in Natalie’s handwriting, as well as close to 65 photographs of Ottoman-Turkish leaders, including at least 13 from the list of 100. These photographs were sent on to the assassins in the field to ensure that the right target was hit. The prime directive for Operation Nemesis was injure no innocent people, and this was followed, even if it meant aborting an attempt.

I could understand my mother’s reticence regarding what to do with these Nemesis materials: We are not prepared for such revelations. But I was also fascinated by exactly that point: How did it happen that my quiet, careful, controlled, and gentle grandfather was a leader of a plot to assassinate anyone, even these mass murderers?

I could understand my mother’s reticence regarding what to do with these Nemesis materials: We are not prepared for such revelations. But I was also fascinated by exactly that point: How did it happen that my quiet, careful, controlled, and gentle grandfather was a leader of a plot to assassinate anyone, even these mass murderers? When I misbehaved, the worst he ever did was to squeeze my arm. How could his family, his wife, daughters, and son know nothing? As small children they played under the dining room table where these men met and planned. But of course silence was crucial. In 1921, immediately after Tehlirian killed Talaat, the police began looking for Tehlirian’s colleagues, anyone who might have provided assistance. They could not imagine that this sickly young man who barely spoke a word of German could really be in Berlin to study the German language. But no accomplices were found and the defense attorney was able to sustain the fiction that this was not a premeditated murder; the Germans did not work very hard to topple this concept.

Victor Frankl, who survived a Nazi concentration camp, argued that free will appears to enable those who have suffered trauma feel less like victims. The Armenian Genocide was, of course, designed to destroy the Armenians’ personal agency, and the fall of the independent Republic of Armenia removed their political agency. However, the men of Nemesis created a narrative of resistance and justice that provided a measure of pride to the Armenians in the dark days of 1921. After the trial, Vahan Zakariants, who testified at the trial and was the operative Vaza who ascertained that Talaat was indeed living at 4 Hardenbergstrasse, wrote a letter published in Sacred Justice describing the day Tehlirian was acquitted; it showed Tehlirian’s nearly rock-star status at that time:

The whole courtroom had become silent. … Several hundred eyes were directed to the foreman of the jury, and to the written paper in his hand. … [The foreman] very definitive and loud intones, “Nein” [No]. Immediately the courtroom explodes in applause, and silence. I translate that; Soghomon quietly asks, “What are they saying and what does that mean?” “That means, you are free,” I answer. … Everyone exploded; Armenian, German, woman, and girl like a torrent are running toward the cage where Soghomon is and crying, joyous, hugging each other. … Some people are kissing his hand, some his forehead, former landlady is crying; you’d think that she was his mother…”

The trial transcripts were printed and sold many a copy during a time when immigrants had little money to spare.

The author as a child

When I was a small child, our social life was organized around Armenian events. Elderly ladies, dressed in black, who did not dance or laugh, whose signature action was to wring their hands as they echoed the “vakh vakh” that so defined them, were part of our landscape. As a child, I was both drawn to these women and shrank from them. I knew they lived in an inner world that I did not want to know. As children, we absorbed the meaning of the words “vakh vakh” without being told the phrase means “what a shame, what a pity.” But I did not know then that vakh in Armenian means “fear.” We children feared these women because we knew instinctively that we could become them. The effects of genocide do not disappear by an act of will. While research has shown that three-quarters of Armenian survivors interviewed asserted that they did not talk to anyone about their experiences of the genocide for fear of persecution and to protect their children, helplessness and silence can exacerbate the effects of trauma, which children can sense. In addition, epigenetics—genetic changes in response to life events—as well as experiences may affect our behavior, and perhaps that of our children. Perpetrators as well as victims may be affected by these problematic epigenetic changes. We are left with the unsettling premise that not only the sins of the fathers—but their responses from being sinned against—may be visited upon their children. If so, this means that the genocide is still happening—to both perpetrators and their victims.

On Jan. 13, I attended a lecture in Cambridge, Mass., given by the noted Turkish scholar Taner Akcam, who talked about documenting the effort in Aleppo immediately after the genocide to rescue Armenian women and children, a project he is translating into Turkish. After the lecture, he was asked why he does this difficult work. He talked of his family’s dedication to supporting human rights in Turkey and the prison terms that generated. He spoke of his brother’s jailors sending home his bloody underwear to his mother. Turk or Armenian, bloody underwear is the same. Let us hope in this year of the Centennial that the door to truth and freedom begins to open—for both Armenians and Turks. In the meantime, we can thank the men of Nemesis that the architects of the Armenian Genocide did not die in their down beds of old age.

Marian Mesrobian MacCurdy is the author of Sacred Justice: The Voices and Legacy of the Armenian Operation Nemesis, which will be released on Feb. 28.

The post Sacred Justice appeared first on Armenian Weekly.

Special for the Armenian Weekly

Bangkok evokes a myriad of impressions. Some will envision gloriously colored temples, incredible Thai street food, or even the seedy red light districts. Surprisingly, this sizzling city also boasts an Armenian community. Bangkok, a city that bisects the river Chao Phraya, is overflowing with an estimated 9 million residents. Bangkok traces its roots to a small trading post in the 15^th century, which became the capital in the later part of the 18^th century.

The Kingdom of Thailand, formally known as Siam, is a Buddhist country with approximately 95 percent of its citizens recognizing the religion. Thailand is a monarchy ruled by King Rama IX. He is the longest serving monarch in the world and just happened to have been born in Cambridge, Mass. Buddhism plays an extremely important role in society, with the king coming in as a close second.

The city of Bangkok will stifle you with its searing heat and egregious traffic. But when you peel back the layers of its alien culture, you will be charmed and captivated by this city.

The beautiful Wat Arun

The holiest site in Bangkok, the Emerald Buddha Temple

A monk at a temple

Delicious pad thai

On Jan. 10, more than 80 Armenians gathered in Bangkok to celebrate Christmas. The day began with a Mass presided by His Grace Bishop Haigazoun Najarian, Primate of the Armenian Diocese of Australia and New Zealand, and Pontifical Legate of All Armenians in India and the Far East. After the ceremony, the group gathered at the Grand Hyatt Erawan. The event was hosted by the Honorary Consul of the Republic of Armenia to the Kingdom of Thailand, Arto Artinian. His Excellency Gegham Gharibjanian, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Armenia to the United Arab Emirates, was also in attendance. During the reception, time was also spent recognizing the 100^th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

Celebrating Mass

Enjoying the evening

A local backs the cause

Artinian’s ancestors survived the Armenian Genocide, and he was born in Damascus. After schooling, he joined his father in the gem business. During the early 1990’s, he made his first trip to Thailand in search of precious gems. Realizing there were great opportunities in Thailand, he settled in Bangkok in 1997, founding Artinian Co., Ltd. The jewelry products company now boasts over 350 employees.

Armenia and Thailand established diplomatic relations in 1992. In 2011, Artinian was offered the position of honorary consul. “As honorary consul, my primary responsibility is to represent Armenia and its interests in Thailand and to build and maintain strong bilateral diplomatic, economic, cultural, agricultural, and sports ties with Thailand. The consulate organizes three or four yearly gatherings to mark important dates such as Christmas, Easter, Genocide Commemoration Day, and Armenian Independence Day,” said Artinian.

Artinian is a passionate promoter of Armenia and its culture and heritage. Most honorary consuls are business people who are appointed by their country. He finances and supports all the activities of the consulate. Both of these actions are common throughout the diplomatic community.

Honorary Consul Arto Artinian (right)

“Many Armenians started coming to Asia around 300 years ago. At first these were mostly traders settling in India, then moved to Bangladesh, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong.” The community of Armenians in Thailand is “one of the relatively newer communities of the diaspora,” he says. “It is a small yet dynamic community, consisting of career professionals and their families. It is primarily centered in Bangkok, with a notable presence in Pattaya (a beachside town). Most Armenians in Thailand are in the jewelry business either as craftsmen or traders. There are few Thais living in Armenia, perhaps 20 or 30, mostly in the services sector.”

I also had the pleasure of meeting Carl Zeytoon, who is of Armenian descent, having moved to Bangkok in the early 1930’s as a toddler. He was born to his Armenian father and his Eurasian mother in Kolkata. His father moved the family to Bangkok to take part in the textiles business and also worked as a salesperson selling luxury automobiles, such as Rileys and Rovers. Zeytoon is arguably the oldest living ex-pat in Bangkok, and has witnessed history in the making. His family lost its house and business during the Japanese occupation of Bangkok. Since then, he has enjoyed a rich life, spending 20 years in Australia and returning to Bangkok in the 1960’s. He is a sportsman who still swims at the Royal Bangkok Sports Club. He is also an avid traveler, having visited dozens of countries and explored some of them as a member of the Siam Society.

Carl Zeytoon

 Another prominent figure in the Armenian community of Thailand is the late Bob Kevorkian. He arrived in Bangkok in 1989 via Cairo and London. Employing his engineering background, he founded K-Tech Construction in Thailand. Kevorkian was the driving force in the construction of the BTS, Bangkok’s metro system. He defied the critics who believed the system could not be built on Bangkok’s muddy subsoil. Today, over 650,000 people a day ride the BTS. Kevorkian was also the first honorary consul of Bangkok.

In my travels, I always seem to meet Armenians in the least likely of places. Bangkok is not an exception.

The post The Armenians of Bangkok appeared first on Armenian Weekly.

A Missionary Who Saved 3,000 Orphans during the Genocide

By Kamo Mailyan and Wendy Elliott

Special for the Armenian Weekly

“We’re very proud of my great aunt Susan,” said Nancy Moore of Toronto. “She saved thousands of Armenian and Greek children from massacre, but few people even know her name.” On the eve of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, Nancy and her husband Eric are eager to change that. From archival papers in Harvard University, Ohio’s Oberlin College, the Rockefeller Archive Center, and their own collection of personal letters, they have pieced together the remarkable story of Susan Wealthy Orvis.

Susan Wealthy Orvis

Beginning in 1902, Orvis traveled the world as a missionary for the American Congregational Church, and later the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. At the start of World War I, she was asked to go to Gesaria (now Kayseri), Turkey, by the Near East Relief Orphanages. Within a year, she found herself in Tiflis, Russia (now Tbilisi, Georgia). “In the Turkish Empire we were going to try to help the Christian people who had escaped massacre and death by deportation, and had taken refuge in Russia,” she wrote in her manuscript, Through Russia in 1917. “The number of these Armenian refugees was several hundred thousand… In Tiflis only we provided 15,000 orphans with clothing. Other missionaries were unable to arrive on the account of Kurds around the foot of Mount Ararat. They were at Igdir, where there was more trouble than at other places.”

The condition of the refugees was very distressing to Orvis. “We helped ‘home orphans,’ too, who were children that had lost their fathers in the massacres; many of them were with their mothers but destitute. Old people were even more pitiful than the children because they were so cold and miserable and sick and lonely and neglected. Perhaps more forlorn than these ‘old people’ were the ‘blind’ who were being cared for.” Orvis’s frequent references to the “blind,” in quotation marks, throughout her writings were likely coded references to the horrific practice of the Ottomans of gouging out prisoners’ eyes.

It is estimated that one and half million Armenians perished between 1915 and 1923, but their supporters were not treated kindly either. Orvis lived under constant fear of having her belongings checked by the authorities, and perhaps being deported, so she self-censured her words. “It was so depressing to see such utter misery and wretchedness and squalors and need,” she wrote, “and not to know any way to relieve it.”

Her mission was soon forced to move from Tiflis to Alexandropol (currently Gyumri, Armenia) for a short time. “In Alexandropol we tried to care for thousands of refugees who had no other means of existence but only the relief we were able to give. People were dying on the streets every day. I began with looking after the milk depot, and we increased the number of babies fed till we had 300 on our list.”

Soon, they were “ordered out of Alexandropol because the Turks were advancing from Kars. All Armenians had to flee. Many were massacred there and on the way out. They were such helpless people so they were with no friends able to save them from being cut to pieces—men, women, and children.”

“Aunt Susan and her fellow missionaries returned to the Gesaria region in 1919,” Nancy Moore said. “Of course, their aim was to help the orphaned children, but since Gesaria itself was not recognized by other countries, it was hard to get relief supplies in, or to feel any sense of security. She was almost like a prisoner, living for four years under the strict and suspicious supervision of the local government.”

“For months I had my suitcase packed,” Orvis wrote, “and carried money with me, not knowing what might happen any minute. Our great fear was that we might be deported and the thousands of Christian orphan children under our care would then be sent out on the roads to die of starvation and cruel treatment as we saw many others were being treated.”

Our great fear was that we might be deported and the thousands of Christian orphan children under our care would then be sent out on the roads to die of starvation and cruel treatment as we saw many others were being treated.

By now Susan Orvis was accustomed to the harsh conditions of post-World War I refugee camps. But her greatest challenges were yet to come, starting with the Great Fire of Smyrna in 1922.

Smyrna was an important financial and cultural city at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea on the coast of Turkey. It was roughly divided into three quarters: the upper portion was Muslim and Jewish, and the port area was Christian, inhabited by Greeks and Armenians. Since the end of World War I, and what was the beginning of the short-lived Greco-Turkish War, Greece controlled the city. On Sept. 9, 1922, the Turks invaded Smyrna and immediately targeted the Christian district, looting their shops and homes, separating the men from their families, and sexually assaulting the women. Within days the port district was set on fire. It burned for four days, but the systematic destruction of people and buildings went on for two weeks. More than 10,000 Greeks and Armenians, and visiting foreign nationals, were killed. Many people were rescued by offshore foreign navies who did not have the authority to intervene, and who witnessed the massacre of many more on shore.

Orvis raced to Smyrna with the goal of saving as many children as she could. “On my way I met a great company of Greek women and girls who were being deported to Gesaria from the Smyrna region, and who were dropping dead along the road from starvation. I was too much overcome to think of much else. The greatest Thanksgiving dinner I ever shall see was when I was able to try to feed that mob of humanity that was like wild beasts because of hunger. They went crazy at the sight of food. But we fed them out there at the foot of the mountain. And I took some of them with me, but many were beyond help.” This is not surprising because the distance they walked between Smyrna and Gesaria was 800 kilometers.

In November, Orvis organized transportation for 3,000 orphans from Gesaria, south through Tarsus, to get them out of Turkey and into Syria and Greece. Fifteen caravans of covered wagons crossed the mountains to the Baghdad Railway. “It took each caravan five days to get there,” wrote Orvis. “I had charge of all of them to see that they had food and a place to stop where they would be safe at night. I rode back and forth along the line in a R.E.O. truck, and kept track of them on the road.”

One incident stood out for her. “Lifting garments, I uncovered 2 little girls about 12 years old. They were white, staring skeletons, so close to death they could not move… We succeeded in reviving them and obtained permission from the authorities to place them in our orphan caravan. After four and a half days we reached Ouloukishla on the Baghdad railway, where we paid full fare for our children to ride in six inches of snow in open freight cars to Mersine. My last moments in Ouloukishla were devoted to making the strongest representations to the authorities for protection against soldiers who tried to carry off our oldest girls.” Of course, here she used “carry off” as a euphemism for the opportunistic and systematic rape and sexual abuse of women and girls during the mass deportations and massacres.

As Nancy Moore leafed through the letters and photographs of her aunt’s family, she said that Orvis had written an article for the February 1923 edition of “The New Near East,” and had encapsulated her experiences in two sentences: “I have never in my whole experience in the Near East witnessed such human sorrow, distress, and death, as caused by this vast flight, which is depopulating one of Turkey’s richest provinces. It was like a march of terror.”

I have never in my whole experience in the Near East witnessed such human sorrow, distress, and death, as caused by this vast flight, which is depopulating one of Turkey’s richest provinces. It was like a march of terror.

One particular letter in Moore’s collection summed things up. “Aunt Susan wrote to a friend that she was happy to report that, of the 3,000 children she had helped rescue from Ottoman Empire, not one had died on the way. All of them were saved. She was 48 years old at the time. Isn’t that remarkable? I’d like everyone to know her name.”

Susan Wealthy Orvis died in 1941 in Ohio at the age of 67.

The Armenian Genocide has been recognized by Canada, Switzerland, France, and many other countries; however, it still remains unrecognized by others, including the United States, mainly for political reasons. Nevertheless, every year on April 24 Armenians around the world lay flowers at genocide memorials to remember. They may not know who their ancestors were or who saved their lives, but they honor the dead and the saviors.

Kamo Mailyan is a graduate of the Genocide and Human Rights University Program of the International Institute for Genocide & Human Rights Studies (IIGHRS), a division of the Zoryan Institute.

Wendy Elliott is the author of The Dark Triumph of Daniel Sarkisyan, a young adult novel about a boy and his sister, both survivors of the Armenian Genocide.

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Special for the Armenian Weekly

“Thus they shall hear and see the Beauties of nature, and imprint the spirit of the times, not only for the advancement of the present, but for the benefit of generations to come.”

–Zabelle Abdalian, 1934

Zabelle Abdalian, 1886-1962

Wandering through an antique shop in the seaside village of Cayucos, Calif., I stumbled upon an impeccably preserved little book, entitled Scientific Air Possibilities with the Human, by Zabelle Abdalian, 1934. Inspired by the life of a “Madame Mary A. Harper,” whose biography is detailed in the author’s introduction, this theosophical compilation of essays includes thoughts on the “beneficial effects of natural radium in the air,” esoteric views on body, mind, spirit, science, technology, theology, and economics. Intrigued, I descended the sea-washed wooden stairway, bought the book, and walked, face to page, to a bench overlooking the Pacific.

How is it that a woman wrote about another woman in the feminist backwoods of 1934 America? How could anyone extol the health benefits of “radium”? How did the author amass such an interesting array of thoughts so similar to my own? With these questions in mind, I left the sea for Google.

The books Zabelle penned during her lifetime are held within university libraries throughout the country. In addition to Scientific Air Possibilities with the Human (re-issued in 1954 under the title The Amazing Power within You), her published works include “Bow in the Cloud” (1953), a play about world peace set in both New York and Burma; Thy Flame Is Blown (1952), a poetical biography of her father, killed during the massacre of Armenians in 1895; and SA PWH Prince of the Air (1955), Zabelle’s autobiography. I then discovered a small handful of documents referencing her mother Haiganoosh’s claims against the Turkish government, for the death of her husband, Nahabed.

My next find would come to be the door to open all. Via a letter written to the Armenian Observer in 2008, I found Zabelle’s great niece, Pamela Barsam Brown. Pamela’s home is just a stone’s throw from where I received my degree in poetics and Buddhist studies in 1985. In my mind’s eye, I could literally walk to her house. (This small coincidence spoke to a feeling of interconnectedness that would return to me again and again throughout this journey). After the initial timidity of our first phone call, we have developed a lovely friendship centered around Aunty Zabelle, the Abdalian family history, and contemplations on what it feels like to be descendants of wounded lineage. Touched by my interest, Pamela sent everything her Great Aunt had ever published. With Zabelle’s door now open, her story unfolded, revealing a tale of survival, courage, faith, and a little bit of magic. I soon felt as if Zabelle herself had taken me by the hand, and was leading me through a confluence of history, lineage, and mystic memory.

“Aunty Zabelle used to weave garlands for my hair.”

~ Pamela Barsam Brown

Dr. Zabelle Abdalian

Zabelle Abdalian was born on Oct. 6, 1886, at the foot of the Taurus Mountains in Gurin, present-day Turkey. It was during this time that her father, Doctor Nahabed Y. Abdalian (a naturalized U.S. citizen who had received his doctorate in medicine from New York Medical College in 1879 and became the first ordained Armenian-American medical missionary to the Ottoman Empire), had returned to the village of his birth to care for the people of his homeland. Zabelle’s life in Gurin, with her father Nahabed, mother Haiganoosh, and four brothers and sisters was a happy one. Yet, in 1895, Zabelle’s world darkened when her beloved father was killed during the Armenian Massacres. The Turks burned the Abdalian home, looted their belongings, and imprisoned the family. Zabelle’s infant brother died from exposure and starvation. With the assistance of the United States government, the Abdalian family was granted safe passage to America in 1896. Zabelle, with bright mind and sensitive spirit, had a sense of the mystical from a young age. These sensibilities of spirit and imagination helped to carry her across the sea to a new life.

Of her father’s death she wrote, in 1953: “I was overwhelmed, felt as one falling into a bottomless pit of black despair. The passing of his soul was like the transition from raging storm into rare, brilliant sunlight.”

Her first years in America were spent in New York and Rhode Island where she attended public school, sang in St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Choir, and worked in jewelry factories to help provide for her family. For a time the children were separated due to a lack of resources, but when reparations were finally awarded to Zabelle’s mother for claims against the Ottoman-Turkish government in 1903, the Abdalian family was reunited. Haiganoosh moved with her children to Del Ray, Calif., and purchased an olive ranch in partnership with others.

‘I then discovered a small handful of documents referencing her mother Haiganoosh’s claims against the Turkish government, for the death of her husband, Nahabed.’

In addition to working the farm, Zabelle became an accomplished pianist who could play the works of classical masters such as Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Chopin. She sang in the choir, and committed to memory complete operatic scores. She held a position at Shreve and Company, one of the finest jewelers in San Francisco. Here, as the only girl amongst men, she was referred to as “the only flower in the roof garden.” Zabelle served as an instructor in surgical dressing at the Red Cross headquarters during World War I and then returned home to care for her mother. After her mother’s death in 1932, Zabelle moved to Los Angeles to live closer to her sisters. She continued to sing in the choir, write, and pursue spiritual and intellectual interests. Zabelle served her country once again during World War II, working in a garment factory that manufactured uniforms for the Armed Forces. With many of her co-workers being of Mexican descent, Zabelle taught herself how to speak very proficient Spanish.

Whether by virtue of trauma or second sight, Zabelle had an extraordinary mind. Alongside her dedication to the Episcopal Church, her thoughts on consciousness and spirituality sprang from what is known as the New Thought Movement, prevalent in Southern California during the mid 1930’s. After an exhaustive search, I have concluded that the luminary, Madame Mary A. Harper, whom Zabelle so meticulously described in the introduction of Scientific Air Possibilities with the Human, may not have existed in the visible world.

“Zabelle had a large imagination and while I can only conjecture, I would presume that Mary Harper, one of these silent friends (likely invisible), resided in her own mind.”

–Pamela Barsam Brown

 

“Little Zabelle was seeing visions she was fearful of disclosing. She could see her father come through the tiny wax-paper covered window without tearing the paper.”

–Zabelle Abdalian, ‘Thy Flame Is Blown’

My thoughts drifted to Marie Curie, the Nobel Prize recipient in physics for the discovery of radium (who interestingly died the very year that Zabelle published her treatise on the benefits of radium). Ironically, after having worked in the very same jewelry factories creating glow-in-the-dark watches that incited the landmark class action lawsuit known as “The Radium Girls,” Zabelle adopted the early belief that the poisonous element of radium was an organic compound with healing properties found naturally within the air.

I could tell the story about how Zabelle’s father traveled via covered wagon with a group of 30 Armenian immigrants to Fort Bend, Texas, in order to fulfill a promise. Or about how the Abdalian family believes that Zabelle’s older brother was the first registered birth of an Armenian in New York City in 1884. But I’d rather tell you that as a child, my best friend was Armenian. How I remember her parent’s dark, protective eyes. I’d rather tell you about how when driving with my mother through Emerson, N.J., we often passed a memorial commemorating those who had lost their lives in the Armenian Genocide, and how I made a game of reading the inscription as many times as I could before the words were lost to the distance.

In memory of the 2 million Christian Armenians massacred by the Turks 1915-1923      

As a child, my awareness of the Holocaust was derived almost solely via the torch of my own Judaic lineage. I felt burdened by its weight without even knowing I was carrying it. With lineal heart laden with boxes, and a few thousand pages of dreaming, I took the path that Zabelle had taken, to the edge of the western sea. I am the dark in my mother’s eyes, and her unyielding determination. I am my father’s fear of hunger, and his love for the music of rivers.

In the ancient Judaic view known as “The Transmigration of Souls,” “remembering” is felt as a kind of haunting. In Buddhism, “remembering” is recognized as the sign of an awakened mind. “Oy” versus “Ah.”

“Sometimes it happens that the angel of forgetfulness forgets to remove from our memories the records of the former world; and then our senses are haunted by fragmentary recollections of another life. They drift like torn clouds above the hills and valleys of the mind, and weave themselves into the incidents of our current existence. They assert themselves, clothed with reality, in the form of nightmares which visit our beds.”

–Sholem Asch, ‘The Nazarene’; excerpt from ‘The Transmigration of Souls,’ 1939

It is spring 2015 and the Centennial of the Armenian Holocaust. All eyes are watching. All hearts listening. Are we here to remember or are we here to forget? How do we capture the wisdom offered by the past and release that which simply causes more suffering? How do we become beautiful, without even the cry for Justice?

Through her writings, Zabelle Abdalian remembered with tenderness, respect, and hopefulness. Choosing not the shadowed, fisted heart of one burdened by tragedy, she became beauty, empathy, compassion for others, and reverence for the mystery of Spirit. As I sit here, not far from the place where she once stood, it is this grace I find within my own breath. This is her gift.

The post Discovering Zabelle appeared first on Armenian Weekly.

Gorki Theater’s Monumental Role

Special for the Armenian Weekly

BERLIN—In commemorating the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide, the road between Yerevan and Istanbul passes through Berlin.

Every Armenian knows Komitas Vartabed, the great musicologist and composer who founded modern classical Armenian music, and whose works play a prominent role in our culture. However, few perhaps know about the influence Germany had on his work. In the late 1890’s, the great composer studied music at the Humboldt University in Berlin—the very same university where the Nazi authorities organized a book burning campaign in 1933 to “cleanse the nation of ‘un-German’ books and publications,” which also included Franz Werfel’s masterpiece The Forty Days of Musa Dagh.

Between the book-burning site and the building where Komitas lived and studied for years, today stands one of the most influential art foundations in Europe, the Maxim Gorki Theater, which organized a two-month long artistic program dedicated to the Armenian Genocide Centennial. The program, dubbed “It Snows in April,” inspired by a moving Armenian folk song composed by Komitas, was launched on March 7, with the premiere of a magnificent documentary theater play called “Musadagh.”

The program, which ran until April 25, included theater performances, music concerts, film screenings, discussions, and exhibitions. The play “Musadagh” by Hans Werner Kreosinger brings the story of the legendary defense of Musa Dagh to the stage, with documentary material. It testifies to Germany’s role and the structural organization of the mass murder. This thought-provoking play raises the question of what a seemingly old story can teach us about dealing with history today.

The Ottoman-Turkish plan to exterminate Armenians was used as a model for Nazis. Hitler said, “Who remembers now the annihilation of Armenians,” just before invading Poland. A few years later, Werfel’s tale of the besieged Armenians taking control of their destiny captured the imagination of those imprisoned in the Warsaw ghetto. Copies of the novel were shared among members of Jewish youth groups marshaling the courage to revolt, invoking the heroic resistance of Musa Dagh.

Hans Werner Kroesinger is also the name behind another theater performance called “History Tilt.” The play revolves around the assassination of Armenian Genocide mastermind Talaat Pasha by Soghomon Tehlirian at Hardenbergstrasse in Berlin-Charlottenburg. The Ottoman Empire and Germany were allies during World War I, and the German Foreign Office archives are full of “in-house use” documents and reports by German diplomats and the military about the extermination of the Armenians. They are considered one of the most reliable sources about the Armenian Genocide and serve, along with the transcript of the Soghomon Tehlirian’s court case, as the source material for “History Tilt,” a piece about the silence in Germany surrounding the Armenian Genocide.

“Komitas,” a musical play by Marc Sinan, follows the figure of Komitas through a painful maze of memories and the last phase of his life. Komitas sings, performs, speaks—he is the voice of the death of an entire people. The atrocities of the genocide are interwoven with Komitas’s fate, music, and the guilt that comes with survival. A nightmare moves in beauty and terror through the figure of a man over a century and into the present of a region. Where the death marches of 1915 should have ended—in the Syrian desert near Deir ez-Zor—a relentless war now rages devastating entire peoples once again.

Sesede Terziyan, ‘It Snows in April’ poster (Photo: Esra Rotthoff)

Another spectacular performance, called “Auction of Souls,” was presented by Canadian-Armenian actress and director Arsinée Khanjian. In 1918, the film, “Ravished Armenia,” based on the eyewitness accounts of then 18-year-old Aurora Mardiganian, relentlessly described her ordeal and the massacre of the Armenians, and triggered a wave of shock. Only a handful of the scenes and the script have survived from the film version that was created in 1919, with Aurora in the leading role. The copies disappeared just like Aurora, who died penniless and forgotten in Los Angeles at the age of 92. Khanjian reconstructs the story of a desperate attempt to relate the indescribable, and connects Mardiganian’s story with reports from other survivors. The film features outstanding acting performances by German Armenian actress Sesede Terziyan and German Turkish actor Taner Turkyilmaz.

Mardiganian was also the subject of a video installation by Cannes winning director Atom Egoyan, just outside of the theater building, walking past the War Memorial with the sculpture of the mother with her dead son on Unter Den Linden Boulevard. Mardiganian, after being dragged into unexpected and unwanted stardom, had great difficulty meeting the social responsibilities forced upon her to promote the film. As a result, seven Aurora look-alikes were hired to appear with the film during its national distribution campaign in America. The seven “Auroras” appear in Egoyan’s installation, and tell the account of Aurora’s experiences. Although the original film of Mardiganian’s story has been lost (save one 22-minute reel), this installation is an attempt to bring Aurora’s spirit back to the big screen.

The Aurora installation by Atom Egoyan in front of the Maxim Gorki Theater (Photo: Ute Langkafel)

At the foyer of the Gorki Theater an exhibition titled “To Mnemosyne’s Health” by Argentine-born Armenian artist Silvina Der-Meguerditchian. Films depicting stories related to the Armenian Genocide, like Egoyan’s “Ararat,” Fatih Akin’s “The Cut,” and Hovannisian and Mouhibian’s “1915,” were screened; they were followed by discussions with the directors. There were also musical performances by renowned artists Arto Tuncboyaciyan, Vahagn Hayrapetyan, Artyom Manukyan, Vardan Hovsepyan, Ara and Onnik Dinkjian, Yervant Bostanci, Alina Manoukian, Chatschatur Kanajan, and others.

Among more than a dozen in-depth presentations and lectures, perhaps the most thought-provoking, considering the time of year, was the public debate series called “German responsibility.” Germany was a close ally of the Ottoman Empire during World War I, and it was, indirectly and directly, involved in the Armenian Genocide. According to one of the panelists in these series, historian Wolfgang Gust, this subject contains many aspects: the course of the crime, Germany’s role and complicity, and the authenticity of its documents. Gust also discussed the question of whether a German can describe another genocide in which Germany participated without being suspected of thereby concealing or qualifying the Holocaust. Gust is the author of the book The Armenian Genocide in German.

Shermin Langhoff (Photo: Esra Rotthoff)

The artistic director of the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin, Shermin Langhoff, said that it was important to invite Armenian and Turkish artists and intellectuals not only to remember but to think further about human rights and economic and geopolitical interests, today and in the future.

“As a German citizen with a Turkish background, it is important for me to clarify the German perspective on the Armenian Genocide, because Germany was a good friend and ally of the Ottoman Empire, especially during the First World War,” said Langhoff. “There is a bigger importance to talk about it from Germany, knowing that the German Parliament so far only adopted a resolution where they didn’t use the word genocide. The government cited not becoming involved in Turkey-Armenia relations as a reason for that, but I think this is absurd, taking into consideration the connection between the Armenian Genocide and the Shoah—the first was a prologue for the latter.”

I had the honor of delivering the keynote speech at the opening night of the two-month-long program of the Gorki Theater. It was attended by several German politicians and opinion makers. One of them was Cem Ozdemir, co-chairman of the German Alliance ’90/The Greens Party—the party that issued a declaration on the eve of discussions about the Armenian Genocide Resolution in the German Bundestag, and suggested recognizing April 24 as the day of the start of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire. Ozdemir paid his respects to the victims at the Tsitsernakaberd Genocide Memorial in Yerevan earlier in March, and called on the Turkish government to open its borders with Armenia and face its past by recognizing the genocide.

Langhoff suggested that Germany had many links with the Armenian Genocide. “We are also responsible as artists and this is forcing us to dig into the dirt of our history,” she said. Langhoff continued by saying, “The Maxim Gorki Theater is situated between Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office and the German History Museum, and every day, all of these together pose to us the questions of human rights and politics.”

On April 20, the spokesperson for Chancellor Merkel said the government would support the resolution, backing away from its previous position of refusing to use the word genocide. Reuters notes that the coalition government came under pressure from parliamentarians within their own ranks to use the word in the resolution.

“In a major reversal in Turkey’s top trading partner in the European Union and home to millions of Turks, Germany joins other nations and institutions including France, the European Parliament, and Pope Francis in using the term condemned by Turkey,” reported Reuters.

In a parallel development, German President Gauck has chosen to stay in Germany to participate in the Centennial commemorative events for the Armenian Genocide in Berlin. Germany’s Christian churches invited Gauck to participate in the Mass held at the Berlin Cathedral on April 23; he will become the first German president to participate in an Armenian Genocide commemoration event, officially using the word “genocide” to describe the killings, and offering an unusually strong acknowledgement of the German empire’s role in the crime.

Beyond Germany’s shared responsibility in the Armenian Genocide, after sending Talaat Pasha’s funeral to Turkey in 1943 as a friendly gesture, Berlin is still home to the graves of two Young Turk genocidal leaders Behaeddin Shakir and Cemal Azmi, who are buried in the “Muslim Martyrs cemetery” and are revered as heroes with grandiose ceremonies by nationalist and religious circles of the German-Turkish community.

On April 24, the German Bundestag started a debate on a resolution about the Armenian  Genocide. “The fate of the Armenians serves as an example of the history of mass extermination, ethnic cleansings, expulsions, and ultimately the genocides that so dreadfully characterized the 20th century,” said a leaked draft copy of the resolution. However, Germany’s two parliament opposition parties—the Greens and the Left Party—said the wording did not go far enough. At the end of the session the joint resolution was decided to be adopted in the summer, wrote the German daily Die Welt.

On April 25, the Maxim Gorki Theater concluded its program, “It Snows In April,” with a music concert featuring Onnik and Ara Dinkjian. Onnik, an 86-year-old Armenian-American singer who was forced to leave his home Tigranakerd (now Diyarbakir), is celebrated today as the international voice of the Armenian Diaspora at concerts in Europe, the Americas, and the Middle East. He was joined by his son Ara, a world-famous composer and oud player.

The post The Berlin Connection appeared first on Armenian Weekly.

Special for the Armenian Weekly

At the beginning of March, a Requiem was offered for my parents and for the Sevadjian clan, and it transported me back 40 years to when I had last been to a service in the magnificent church of my childhood: the St. George Armenian Apostolic Church in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, holding the Ethiopian flag in 1910. (Photo courtesy of Alain Marcerou)

The church and the cross on its dome stood out against a perfect blue sky. I went in and lit a candle. The altar curtain was pulled across as it was Lent. I looked up at the azure ceiling and the chandeliers. Light was streaming through the stained glass windows into the chorister’s gallery. It was a moving and beautiful experience. The sonorous tones of Vartkes Nalbandian and the clear soprano of Salpi Nalbandian made me very emotional. It was not possible to have a full Badarak as Vartkes is a deacon, and there is no longer an Armenian priest in residence in Ethiopia.

My mother, Dzovinar Sevadjian, dressed as an Armenian noblewoman of the 5th century at the Red Cross Fair, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1961. She is accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Bablanyan.

I stood and listened and prayed. I thought of all the Yetovbahayer who had prayed in that church, who had made up the richest and most vibrant foreign community in Ethiopia, their numbers now dwindled to less than 100 souls. Philanthropists, industrialists, businessmen, talented men and women, and most of all, artisans, artisans, and more artisans. What a great number of them there were!

Boghos Markarian, who arrived in 1866 and supplied goods and arms to the courts of Emperor Yohannes and later Emperor Menelik II, was one of the first Armenians to settle in Ethiopia in modern times. By the late 1960’s, the Armenians numbered some 1,200.

There had been Armenians in Ethiopia long, long before then, as early as the 13^th century, but a real community with significant numbers was only established in the early 1900’s when many left their ancestral homes in the Ottoman Empire and found a safe haven in Christian Ethiopia. Another wave of Armenians arrived in the 1920’s. Thereafter the numbers increased as people married, invited cousins and other relatives to join them from wherever they had ended up—mostly Syria and Lebanon—after the genocide.

Vahe Tilbian, who will be part of the Armenian entry at the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest. (Photo courtesy of Vahe Tilbian)

The Armenians who settled in Ethiopia before the 1920’s, and those who arrived after 1945, were mostly well educated; they were doctors, dentists, chemists, architects, engineers, lawyers, and accountants. Many of those who arrived in the 1920’s as a direct consequence of the genocide were artisans; they were tailors, watchmakers, cobblers, and carpet makers. Thus in almost every trade, profession, and industry, there were Armenians in Addis Ababa. They had come from a very wide area of the Ottoman Empire and brought with them the special expertise of their hometowns.

Addis Ababa boasted a large number of remarkably skilled jewelers. One of the first was Dikran Ebeyan, who had arrived from Constantinople. He had the distinction of making the coronation crowns of Emperors Yohannes in 1881 and Menelik II in 1889.

Should you visit any jewelry shop in Addis Ababa today, you will see filigree work in gold and silver. This skill was introduced and taught to Ethiopian artisans by Armenian craftsmen.

A visit to the Armenian cemetery gives an idea of the origins of the three major waves of Armenian immigrants, mirroring the tragedies that befell their homeland: First came those from Constantinople, Aintab, Arapkir, Kharpert; then Adana and Van; then Marash, Sparta, and Smyrna.

The interior of St. George’s Church, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 2015. (Photo: R.P. Sevadjian)

It is difficult to overestimate the contribution that Armenians made in their 100 years in Ethiopia. Armenians moved with Emperor Menelik II from Harar to Addis Ababa and helped build a modern capital city. There is not enough space here to describe all their important and lasting contributions, in trade, industry, and government, but a few must be mentioned as they are truly exceptional.

Firstly, there were two great philanthropists whose legacies live on today. One was Mihran Mouradian, a merchant, who built the church that was consecrated in 1935. The other was Matig Kevorkoff, who in 1923 built a modern school to unite the two schools that had previously divided the community. Kevorkoff was a French citizen who grew up in Egypt and moved to Djibouti at the age of 29 to pursue a highly successful career as a merchant of tobacco and other commodities. During the fascist occupation of Ethiopia (1936-41), because of his French nationality, all of his assets were confiscated by the Italians as “enemy property.” Kevorkoff died in penury in Marseille in the early 1950’s.

Among a number of amusing stories of the arbitrary ways Armenians ended up in Ethiopia is that of the Darakdjians. Stepan Darakdjian left Kharpert in 1912 and made his way to Egypt, hoping to immigrate to America. A requirement for a visa to America was an examination for trachoma. While waiting to be seen by the eye doctor, he went to an Armenian cafe, where he fell into conversation with a man named Hovhannes Assadourian, who had just returned from Ethiopia. Assadourian said, “You are a tanner. Why go to America? Go to Ethiopia where they need shoes!” So Stepan Darakdjian made his way to Harar and set up a tannery in partnership with another Armenian called Karikian. Later on, his son, Mardiros, moved to Addis Ababa where he founded a modern tannery in Akaki and a shoe factory called Darmar (Darakdjian Mardiros). Later still, he branched out into many other businesses and became very wealthy. The factory and shops still exist with the old sign of a lion (which looks very much like the Metro Goldwyn Mayer one), but the shops are now called Ambassa (lion).

Two of the earliest settlers, Hovsep Behesnilian and Sarkis Terzian, made their fortunes by supplying arms to Emperor Menelik II during his 1896 war against the invading Italians. The Behesnilian name lives on in perhaps the largest and most successful conglomerate in Ethiopia, HAGBES, founded by Hovsep’s nephew, Hagop Behesnilian, still privately owned, and employing some 1,000 people.

The Armenian community leaders of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in the mid-1940’s. (Standing, L-R) Boghos Yeghiaian, Garbis Ebeyan, and Manoug Khoudanian. (Seated, L-R) Amasia Soukiasian, Avedis Sevadjian, Bishop Mampre Sirounian, Samuel Behesnilian, and Haroutioun Nalbandian. (Photo courtesy of Aida Shahbaz)

In 100 years or so, Armenians ran big industries and businesses, as well as departments of government. Because of their loyalty to the emperors—Yohannes, Menelik II, and Haile Selassie—they were entrusted with work in such important government departments as the imperial mint, the treasury, the police force (complete with a secret service), town planning, and the municipality. There was an Armenian deputy governor of province, an officer of the Kbur Zebagna (Imperial Bodyguard), and a deputy mayor of Addis Ababa. Some 50 Armenians found employment at the Imperial Court because of their expertise (for example, as chauffeurs, not only because they could drive, but because they knew how to properly maintain cars).

With the opening up of Ethiopia to foreign embassies and foreign trade by Emperor Menelik II, there was a great need for translators. Armenians, who had been the best dragomans in the Ottoman Empire, became the translators of choice at many embassies and consulates. Matig Kevorkoff became the honorary representative of the French government in Ethiopia, as well as the nascent First Armenian Republic’s ambassador plenipotentiary to Ethiopia.

Early taxi rank in the early 1930’s—Armenian chauffeurs, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. (The buildings in the background are in typical Armenian style.) (Photo courtesy of Varouj Mavlian)

As has been written about in many articles and publications, Ras Tafari, later Emperor Haile Selassie I, was pleased to bring 40 orphans of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 to Ethiopia. In 1923, on his way to Europe, he had seen some of the orphans in Jerusalem and was impressed by the stories of how they came to be there. The Arba Lidjoch—“the Forty Children”—arrived in Addis Ababa in September 1924 on an initial four-year contract to form a marching band, some of them only having learned how to play an instrument en route! In 1930, under the leadership of maestro Kevork Nalbandian, who had composed a new national anthem for Ethiopia, the band played at the coronation of Haile Selassie I. The national anthem of each country that sent a delegation was played upon the entrance of its representative. The band refused to play the national anthem of Turkey—for obvious reasons.

The Ethiopian Revolution of 1974, which deposed Haile Selassie I and installed a Marxist government, devastated the Armenian community. The “Red Terror” meant no one was safe. Life became unbearable. Younger Armenians, who had already left Ethiopia for higher education, did not return. Many of those who were able, took their families and immigrated to other countries. The community was thus scattered to the four corners of the earth, with just a few families staying on, upholding the Yetovbahay traditions.

This year, the Armenians of Ethiopia are being brought to the attention of the world through the unlikely medium of the Eurovision Song Contest. The Republic of Armenia entry will be performed by six Armenian singers: one from the Republic of Armenia plus one from each of the five continents of the Armenian Diaspora. Vahe Tilbian of Ethiopia will be representing the continent of Africa.

Medallion made and donated by B.A. Sevadjian on the occasion of the Commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Armenians Genocide. (Photo: R.P. Sevadjian)

Although few families remain, the Armenian legacy lives on in the name of districts in Addis Ababa: Armen Sefer (Armenian District), Sebara Babour (Broken Steamroller, on account of the steamroller brought in by Sarkis Terzian to build the city’s roads, which broke down and remained in situ for many years), and Serategna Sefer (Worker’s District, on account of my father’s factory). Many of the old houses and hotels built by Armenians in the style of their homes in their ancestral lands have been pulled down. However, there are a few marooned among the new high rises being built everywhere in the city.

If you look carefully, there is something Armenian in many corners of Addis Ababa.

Levon Djerrahian and Varoujean Tilbian contributed to this piece.

R.P. Sevadjian is the author of In the Shadow of the Sultan, a historical novel for young adults.

The post Remembering the Armenians of Ethiopia appeared first on Armenian Weekly.

The Armenian Weekly Magazine
April 2015: A Century of Resistance

This paper is an expansion of remarks given by the author at McGill University and the University of Toronto on March 18 and 20, 2015, respectively.

There is an oft-repeated false truism about genocide, that denial is the final stage of genocide. It is so unquestionably accepted that it has even made its way into formal stage-theories of genocide. It is, unfortunately, quite wrong. Denial is not the final stage of genocide, but rather present throughout most of the genocidal process. When they are doing it, perpetrators almost inevitably deny that what they are doing is genocide. For instance, Talaat and his cronies were adamant that their violence against Armenians was not one-sided mass extermination, but instead a response to Armenian rebellion and violent perfidy in Van and elsewhere. They maintained that the deportations were intended to move Armenians to other areas of the empire, not a means of destroying the Armenian population of village after village, town after town.

The sky above the Armenian Cemetery of Diyarbakir (Photo: Scout Tufankjian)

We see variations on this theme in case after case. The United States did not hunt down Native American groups, did not kill those under their control or force them onto destructive reservations; no, my country fought the so-called “savages” in a series of “Indian Wars.” (One need only look at the historical record of hyper-violence by the U.S. military and general population, which tortured, raped, killed, and then mutilated Native Americans, to see who the real savages have been.) The Tasmanians were killing livestock and even settlers, while the Herero were in revolt. The Jews had a world conspiracy that was out to get decent Aryans and needed to be stopped by the most brutal means possible. Pro-democracy activists in Indonesia were actually a communist insurgency, while Guatemalan Mayans, who appear to have been hardworking people in dire poverty just trying to survive the assaults on them by their government and country’s wealthy elite, were actually communists determined to destroy the good values of their society and impose a horrible political and social order. The Tutsi were hell-bent on dominating the Hutu, who had no choice but to respond, and the Bosnians Muslims, not Serbs were the aggressors, despite the fact that the latter had by far more military power. Today, the supposed rebellion in the Nuba Mountain and Blue Nile regions of Sudan leave “statesman” Omar al-Bashir no choice but to bomb thousands of civilians with Antonov aircraft.

Denial is not a stage of genocide, but part of the commission of genocide, especially as prosecutions have led sophisticated perpetrators to begin their international tribunal defenses while the blood is still flowing.

Denial is not a stage of genocide, but part of the commission of genocide, especially as prosecutions have led sophisticated perpetrators to begin their international tribunal defenses while the blood is still flowing.

Denial is certainly prevalent after genocide, as the false truism does capture correctly. It is not a final stage, however. Indeed, as long as denial persists, we can be sure that the genocidal process is still operating. Denial accompanies this operation, and furthers its goals of “eliminating the consequences” of the genocide for the perpetrator group, even generations and centuries after the violence and destruction. Denial is not the final stage of genocide; consolidation of the genocide is.¹ A genocide is consolidated after the phase of direct destruction—sometimes long after—when the perpetrator group has made final and irrevocable all the various demographic, political, identity, military, cultural, financial, territorial, and other material and symbolic gains achieved through and deriving from the genocide, when the post-genocide state of affairs has become completely, utterly, and irremediably rendered permanent so that, whether the victim group has faded out of existence or still somehow persists, its condition will remain as it is, in the enduring position of victimhood unredeemed and unrepaired. Denial, geopolitically motivated treaties, and other influences all conspire with the passage of time in the process of consolidation. What is striking about consolidation is that, no matter to what extent complex forces can be blamed for the direct phase of a genocide and leave room for repentance by the perpetrator group, consolidation is done with a full understanding of what was done through a genocide and the moral obligation to repair that it has imposed, and in deliberate rejection by the perpetrator group of somehow doing right by the victims.

A genocide deeply ruptures the pre-existing status quo and in particular devastates the victim community. Just because the violence and destruction of a genocide end does not mean that their consequences are mitigated. On the contrary, so long as the impact of a genocide on its victims remains unrepaired, that impact continues devastating them in perpetuity. Despite the wishful thinking of philosophers such as Jeremy Waldron, as Jermaine McCalpin has emphasized,² time does not heal the wounds of genocide. On the contrary, as generation follows generation, more and more people are injured, demeaned, and assaulted by the original violence. With each day that passes without repair, the scope of the destruction increases. The end limit point of this process is not successful denial, but the point at which denial no longer is necessary because the genocide’s impact has become fully irreparable, as the genocide’s consequences become everlastingly secured in the global social, political, and economic status quo. Denial ends not with the success of denial, but the total and complete consolidation of genocide. Genocides are denied because their effects—both material and in terms of historical memory—are, thankfully, still contested. Consolidation can happen through denial, at the point where denial has erased the genocide completely enough that it will never rate contemporary political and legal consideration, but it can also occur when the genocide is fully known yet considered so far removed from present concerns that its results are generally accepted.

‘Still waiting for the fair trial’ (Design and photo: Ruben Malayan)

This is evident through a few examples. The genocides of the Herero, Australian Aborigines, Native Canadians, and Native Americans are still denied actively, precisely because the victim groups still experience the impacts of the injuries of direct massacre, religious and cultural destruction, internment on reservations, family degradation through boarding schools and other forced transfers of children from their home groups, and more, and so a reparative process could actually address these harms. Denial stops reparations. Denial of the Holocaust continues because the evils of anti-Semitism that it maximized horrifically remain vibrant forces in human society across the globe; the Holocaust persists through its legacy of making Jews, already considered fit targets of oppression and violence, the fit targets of mass extermination. Denials of the Bangladesh, East Timor, Cambodian, and other cases continue because perpetrators and survivors yet live, and the deep harm done to each society remains largely unaddressed. The list of denied genocides goes on.

No one denies the genocides of Melos and Carthage, of the Cathars or by Chengis Khan, because the destruction they imparted into the world has long since been completely and irreparably incorporated into the world order. For these and all too many other genocides, utterly and completely “getting away with it” has been the final stage. How many so-called great societies and states celebrated in the present and past are so because of their complete success in consolidating the genocides they committed?

The false truism reflects an important effect of denial. Years of denial after a genocide actually skew the framework through which that genocide is perceived and understood. Faced with a strong denial campaign, survivors and concerned others, including in the perpetrator group, find themselves in a seemingly endless, disheartening, degrading, and exhausting struggle simply to get the truth recognized by enough people that it will not be erased from the annals of human history. Soon enough, the genocide itself is lost in the struggle against denial: The struggle against denial becomes an end in itself. The defeat of denial under such circumstances comes to be seen as justice for the genocide. With this, defeated or not, denial wins the day, by preventing a victim group from seeing that the defeat of denial does not give it justice, but merely gets it back to the starting point from which a justice process can finally be initiated. For long-past genocides, victim groups and others forget that recognition of the genocide against denial does not repair the harms done by the genocide, but merely addresses the secondary problem of denial. Only by directly and substantially engaging those harms through a comprehensive reparations process can the world do what it can to bring justice to the victim group and all of humanity.³

The recent attention on reparations for the Armenian case represents an important move beyond focus on denial. With this in mind, it is clear that 2015, the 100^th anniversary, should not be understood as a culminating point in the post-genocide history of the Ottoman Genocide of Christian Minority Groups. If recognition comes this year, as it could—though I am not holding my breath—it will mean only that finally, after a century, the victim groups and others concerned with human rights can finally start addressing the harms done. But the effects of genocide are not measured in such neat little packages of 10 years, 50 years, or 100 years, which we make special, after all, simply because of the evolutionary accident that has given us 10 fingers to count with. As much as some people, especially those outside of victim communities who need a good story before they are willing to care about a legacy of mass violence, attach significance to such time intervals, the consequences of genocide play out in a complex history of material and social causal chains so that no particular year or date has any great actual meaning. Or, to put it more correctly, every year and, indeed, every day in the long aftermath of a genocide have great importance, until the injuries are addressed in a substantial way that is appropriately transformative for both the victim and perpetrator groups.

Cover of the AGRSG Report on Reparations

Helping to accomplish this shift in focus toward repair has been the Armenian Genocide Reparations Study Group (AGRSG), which in 2007 I formed with renowned international lawyer and legal scholar Alfred de Zayas, former Armenian Ambassador to Canada and treaty expert Ara Papian, and dynamic Jamaican political scientist Jermaine McCalpin. The AGRSG has done a comprehensive study of reparations for the Armenian Genocide. The AGRSG Final Report⁴ analyzes the harms done and the legal, historical, and ethical justifications for repair, and then proposes an innovative transitional justice process to effect it. The report includes determinations of territorial and other restitution that should be made by Turkey and discussion of the ways in which reparations should be used by the Armenian group as a whole to ensure the future viability of its state and its global identity.

The harms done by the Armenian Genocide are very much present today. They include the dramatic demographic impact on the Armenian population through direct and indirect killing as well as forced assimilation that reduced the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire to less than 40 percent of its pre-genocide number, but also the compounding impact on birthrates and retention of members by rape and other torture; rampant poverty; long-term effects of malnutrition; global dispersion; loss of religious, educational, and other institutions necessary for the cohesion of Armenian communities; and much more. To these harms are added the extensive lost property of Armenians. Not only were virtually all land, businesses, farms, warehouse inventories, food stocks, and other such property taken from Armenians, but the mass expropriation reached down to the most trivial items, from kitchen pots and pans to the clothes on deportees’ backs and shoes on their feet. Turkish activist and writer Temel Demirer has stated of this mass theft that it was with this Armenian property that the national economy of the new 1923 Turkish Republic was founded.⁵ What is more, since this time, Armenians have lost all that would have been built on this wealth, which compounds daily, with many living out their lives over the past century impoverished because what was theirs was denied. And this mass of material resources has not just disappeared: Wealthy Turkish families, the government, and average people have received the cumulative benefits of all that this wealth has allowed them to build, its daily compounding interest. In fact, scholars such as Uğur Ümit Üngör and Mehmet Polatel have traced expropriated Armenian property right through to contemporary national and regional elite families, some of whose family fortunes were built with the property pilfered from exterminated Armenians.⁶

The destruction of religious, educational, cultural and artistic, and other aspects of Armenian communal existence, coupled with demographic collapse and global dispersion, have rendered Armenian identity and peoplehood fragile, requiring continual, draining efforts by members of the community just to prevent their erasure. The demographic destruction and individual as well as state territorial expropriations of the 1915-23 period are the most important factor in the verity that today’s Armenian Republic is a small, landlocked country of barely 3 million facing a gigantic, economically and militarily powerful Turkey of 70 million—a hostile Turkey that enjoys tremendous regional power and geopolitical prominence that allows it nearly free reign in its treatment of the Armenian Republic. Even had the genocide occurred but Ataturk’s ultra-nationalist forces not invaded and conquered the bulk of the 1918 Armenian Republic, historian Richard Hovannisian has estimated that the Armenian Republic today would be a much larger and secure state with a population on the order of 20 million.⁷ What would it mean for such an Armenia to face a territorially and demographically smaller Turkey today? Surely Armenians in the republic and around the world would be infinitely more secure and enjoy a level of community well-being that became a fantasy on April 24, 1915.

Armenians in Turkey have borne a great share of the genocide’s impact. After almost a century of suffering in relative silence, the legacy of oppression and violence is now well known. Reflecting on Native Americans in the United States, Mayans in Guatemala, survivors of childhood sexual abuse, and other such groups, it seems clear that the most difficult situation a victim group or individual can find itself, himself, or herself in—even beyond the terrible situation of all victims—is to remain subject to the perpetrator group or individual. Far beyond the painful, demeaning effects of denial for a group that has escaped, the situation of those still under perpetrator hegemony is to be constantly forced to live within the world of violence and power of the original harm, feeling always on the edge of being pushed back into the violence, with no escape from the terror, nor space simply to mourn what happened. And perpetrator groups and individuals seem never content even with that level of continuing harm to their victims but, as we have seen with Turkey, continue with such things as repression of non-Muslim minority foundations and expropriation of their property⁸ and the assassination of Hrant Dink.

Reparations for the Armenian Genocide are certainly legally, historically, and morally justified in abstract terms. But, as the Armenian Republic struggles economically and politically, the Armenian Diaspora expends greater and greater energy to be less and less effective in preserving Armenian identity, and Armenians in Turkey continue to live under threat and oppression, reparations are an absolute need if the Armenian Republic, the Armenian Diaspora, and the Turkish-Armenian community have any future at all, and the 1915 genocide is not to succeed by 2065. The current trends make it a real possibility that the state will fail in the next half century, the Armenian-Turkish community will become a perpetually subjugated group with no hope of true participation as full citizens in their state and its society, and Armenian identity will become a residual and decaying aftereffect of genocide, rather than the vibrant, living community anchor it should be.

The full history of the Armenian Genocide is far from written.

Coupled with this analysis of the need for reparations, it is useful to consider some of the standard objections raised against reparations in a case such as the Armenian Genocide. First, another false truism is that time heals all wounds. Nothing could be more wrong, unless by healing we mean that perpetrator groups and the world in general eventually can forget about a past genocide when the victim group finally fades away in the ultimate triumph of genocide. Unless the harms of a genocide are addressed, then they persist and in fact compound over time, with each generation of the victim group grappling with them.

[A]nother false truism is that time heals all wounds. Nothing could be more wrong, unless by healing we mean that perpetrator groups and the world in general eventually can forget about a past genocide when the victim group finally fades away in the ultimate triumph of genocide. Unless the harms of a genocide are addressed, then they persist and in fact compound over time, with each generation of the victim group grappling with them.

If time is running out, it is running out for the perpetrator groups. As Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks join what I will call the “100-plus Club” of groups whose experience of destruction has endured for more than a century, it is Turkey that should regard the sands flowing down in the hourglass with foreboding and disquiet. As time passes, harms become more difficult to repair, and those in the victim communities who have lived and died without justice can never receive it. Already Japan is on the verge of failing utterly to repair in any way at all the harms done to the Comfort Women—actually, many if not most were underage girls—whom its military government subjected to brutal sexual enslavement in the 1931-45 period. These girls and women were interned in hellish stations and raped sometimes 30 times a day, 6 days a week, for months and even years. Many died, but those who survived have for a quarter century demanded an apology and meaningful atonement through material reparations (necessary for such things as their medical bills as they deal with the life-long effects of their horrific captivity, often without children helping them because of the hysterectomies forced on them). Japan has refused and denied, and now many former Comfort Women have passed on. Japan has already lost the opportunity with them, and as a state and society must bear the taint of this terrible human rights abuse as long as it continues to exist. And once the last former Comfort Woman is gone, the taint will be complete. I have termed this kind of impact an “impossible harm.”⁹

Turkey and other such perpetrators have the benefit that national, ethnic, racial, and religious groups, if they survive attempted annihilation, have identity cohesion over time, and so as long as genocide does not succeed completely, there is always a group that can receive efforts at repair. Of course, Turkey has already irrevocably lost its greatest opportunity to repair the harm to survivors and itself, as there are virtually no direct survivors of the genocide alive today. There is no longer anything to be done about this intentionally lost chance. But much can still be done. Unfortunately, with each passing day the harm grows and there are more and more members of the victim group who have lived and died without repair and who thus represent a growing permanent taint for the perpetrator state and society. Not only have Turkey and states and societies like it so far failed to do right by Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks, and other victim groups, respectively, but they are failing their own future generations by imposing on them the stigma of a more and more irreparable genocide.

Second, even setting aside the legal status of Turkey as the Ottoman Empire’s continuing state and Turkish Republican forces’ perpetration of the second phase of the Armenian Genocide from 1919 to 1923, Turks in the Turkish Republic today do bear responsibility for addressing the harms of the genocide. They are not in any way to blame for it,¹⁰ even when they deny it (though they are separately culpable for denial). But, as their state and society continue to hold the gains made and to benefit from them, and Armenians continue to suffer from the material, political, and identity losses sustained, today’s Turks have an obligation to repair the damage as much as possible. Of course, nothing approaching full repair is possible: They cannot bring back the dead, nor can they turn back the denial clock to erase all the damage done as the harms to Armenians who have lived and died have compounded for a century. But, as the AGRSG Report lays out, significant symbolic and material reparations are very possible today; they require only the political and ethical will to make them. Making them is not unfair to present-day Turks. This is not a burden forced on them by Armenians, who should just go away quietly. On the contrary, the burden of genocide has been forced on present-day Turks and Armenians by the perpetrators of the genocide, who damned their progeny to the moral taint of genocide for this past century and beyond. However extensive a reparations package is made by Turks today, the burden they assume in giving reparations is the barest tiny fraction of the burden of loss and suffering the genocide still imposes on Armenians. The push for reparations is asking Turks today to shoulder just a small part of the burden borne by Armenians, to share just a part of the unfairness history has imposed. If this is a sacrifice for Turks today, this is appropriate: Such a sacrifice confirms the true rehabilitation of the Turkish state and society, which were formed in part by the many genocide perpetrators in the Turkish Republic’s government and military, and which have retained deep within their political culture the same genocidal attitudes toward past victims as drove genocide in the first place. Reparations are necessary for the rehabilitation of the Turkish state and society, as surely the Kurds and those residual Armenian and other communities in Turkey could attest.

[A]s the AGRSG Report lays out, significant symbolic and material reparations are very possible today; they require only the political and ethical will to make them. Making them is not unfair to present-day Turks. This is not a burden forced on them by Armenians, who should just go away quietly. On the contrary, the burden of genocide has been forced on present-day Turks and Armenians by the perpetrators of the genocide, who damned their progeny to the moral taint of genocide for this past century and beyond.

Even a substantial territorial return to the Armenian Republic, which seems to cause an existential crisis for some Turks, is not an absurdly irrational imposition. How dare, many Turks say or think, Armenians demand Turkish land? But that very thought betrays the problem. This land became Turkish through the genocidal ideology that depopulated it of Armenians. Holding that land against what is right means holding on to that genocidal ideology. That is why land reparations are crucial for Turkey’s rehabilitation away from genocide.

Another objection is that the quest for reparations, particularly territorial, is a hopeless pipedream kept alive by deluded so-called “Armenian nationalists” who refuse to live in reality. Realpolitik is the dominant ethic of international relations, and it leaves no room for moral imperatives toward repair. Armenians are too weak to compel reparations, and should focus on what is actually possible. What is more, international law, however much based on the principle that harms should be repaired, simply does not have the legal and procedural mechanisms to deal with the Armenian and other long-standing cases. As the perpetrator groups have held out for so long, they have in fact made law irrelevant. And even where laws and procedures are available, domestic courts usually want no part of such overarching concerns, and international courts are subject to a range of political forces that bring the matter back to realpolitik again. Wherever victim groups such as Armenians turn, the situation seems hopeless.

How dare, many Turks say or think, Armenians demand Turkish land? But that very thought betrays the problem. This land became Turkish through the genocidal ideology that depopulated it of Armenians. Holding that land against what is right means holding on to that genocidal ideology. That is why land reparations are crucial for Turkey’s rehabilitation away from genocide.

This is just what those who know that their power rests on genocide and oppression want them to think. Again and again victim groups, oppressed groups, are told that there is no hope, that they have no power, that realpolitik trumps morality every time. Why do the powerful say this? Because they know that to hold their power and ill-gotten gains, they must convince their victims to believe it. For, once victim groups believe that nothing can change, nothing will change. We must be thankful that slaves and abolitionists in the United States and around the Western world did not believe that the system of slavery of Africans was inevitable and would not fall. Surely countless slave holders in the U.S. South made this claim in 1855, only to see the end of slavery within the decade. And their descendants said the same thing about segregation, but Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and millions of others refused to believe it and continued pressing, until the world did change. Surely Gandhi was told in 1935 that decolonization was a useless pipe dream, and thankfully he refused to bow to such an oppressive “reality.” Nothing in the world is given, and as much as human history is filled with genocide and oppression, it is filled with the efforts of those who oppose and overcome it. However much we might debate the nature of “justice” as a philosophical context, divergent ethical theories all seem to agree that causing others to suffer is wrong and imposes an obligation to help those caused to suffer. Rather than succumbing to the apparent limits of politics and law, if they do not allow justice (though from ancient times promotion of justice has been their sole validation), then we must transform politics and rewrite the law. Politics and law must conform to genuine justice, not dictate to humanity some stunted, anemic shadow of the just.

The examples of King, Gandhi, and others suggest something else we should consider. I have written before about the importance of group reparations for such peoples as Armenians, over individual reparations, which do not contribute to the rebuilding and reconstitution of the people as a whole.¹¹ But now I would like to push these ideas further. The current reality we live in across the globe is a world order formed through the forces of aggressive war, colonialism, slavery, apartheid, economic exploitation, mass rape and sexism, and, of course, genocide.

It might be said that, because the deep-reaching forces of destructive change have been so dramatic and blatant, and their result so often absences that mean there is nothing to see, the denial process inherent in human political arrangements and societies has led us all the more readily to miss the impact of the past on the present. Benedict Anderson might have highlighted the process by which what became nations in Europe and elsewhere were built through a linguistic and conceptual homogenizing process,¹² but as Ernst Renan explained a century before him, this process of nation formation is accomplished through a long period of destruction that can include both the physical elimination of divergent populations and the cultural destruction of competing language, ethnic, and other groups.¹³ Let us not forget that the Christianization of Armenians in the 4^th Century of the Common Era was accomplished through the rampant and now quite regrettable destruction of the religion, culture, and art of the paganism that existed before. To recognize the forces of destructive change that have made the reality we inhabit is not very hard once we know that we are looking for incongruous presences and bright, shining absences. Consider Europe, for instance, with its multitude of cultures; languages; political arrangements; great philosophical, literary, and artistic traditions; and cuisines. Yet, in the midst of our gaze, a nagging twinge at the edge of consciousness and history becomes a full question: Where are the Jews? To answer in Israel or the United States, Canada, or elsewhere begs the question. A conglomerate of groups sharing a religion and sense of identity in areas from Russia to France, this group was a central part of the very fabric of European identity and society for a millennium, but now they are largely gone relative to that prior presence, their great contributions erased through centuries-ago expulsions from England, forced conversions in Spain, pogroms in Russia, and more, and then, of course, the maximal moment of anti-Semitic destruction continent-wide, the Holocaust. The world we have today is the product of this treatment of the Jews.

The absence of European Jewry is inverted in the presence of African Americans in the United States. They are there every day, in the highest echelons of celebrityhood, politics, and business, but also in the great ghettoes that punctuate major and minor U.S. cities, in the U.S. prison system that incarcerates more people than the rest of world combined, and in the anxieties of polite white society. How many thousands of hours of political talk shows and academic and government reports try to sort out why the majority of African Americans are in a place of rampant poverty and violence. Why is such a high percentage of Blacks poor? The answer seems so complex that it is unanswerable. But is it? Perhaps I betray the simple limits of my mind by pointing out what seems obvious, but is not Black poverty the direct result of slavery and Jim Crow segregation and discrimination, or more exactly the fact that the extreme damage done by both has never been repaired? The release of slaves followed generations of legally and violently imposed illiteracy and educational exclusion; of family destruction, torture, rape, and degradation that materially undermined and psychologically traumatized the population; and the loss of 250 years of extorted free labor to build the Colonies and then the United States. While for a brief moment during reconstruction some small repair was made, in the form of the land necessary for former slaves to become working-class citizens, the 40 acres and mule were quickly repossessed by Uncle Sam and the slave owners then compensated for the loss of their property—their property. The vast majority of African Americans were plugged into the already genuinely inhospitable capitalist economy of the United States without capital, training or education, or full recognition as human beings. Is it any wonder they started poor? That they stayed poor? Despite some upward (and downward) mobility in the United States, class is generally constant across generations, for the simple reason of inheritance. Those with money give it to their offspring, who are plugged into the economy with property, while those without it have nothing to offer their children, who end up at the same low level as their parents, and grandparents, and great-grandparents. Add to this the powerful exclusions and discriminations of Jim Crow, which kept Blacks from joining the various Caucasian immigrant groups in their upward economic climb and took away whatever they were able to get, to keep them right where they always had been, and Black poverty today is not just explicable, but inevitable.

While setting right each instance of such a historical wrong is a step in the right direction, this approach to reparations is not simply an aggregation of cases by single groups. Reparations is the process of global transformation through which we can finally begin to rework our world away from the structures resulting from genocide and all these other destructive, terrible forces, toward a vision in which all human beings have dignity and enough to eat, in which all people can live free from violence and degradation. “Solidarity” in its true sense is not just recognizing the similarity of experiences and struggles and lining up different groups together in a mutual support network. It is built on recognition that victim groups are together in a single, unified, shared world formed by genocide, slavery, imperialism, and so on, and that, at the deepest level, they face a common force of oppression and destruction that must be addressed as a whole if the local success of one group will not be cynically balanced by a shift in the structure that will mean victimization of other groups. The problem is so big and individual groups’ parts so interwoven that it can only be solved for each group through a coordinated global approach. As each specific group pursues justice against the legacy of mass violence and oppression it has experienced, it must do so in a way that resonates with and promotes every other group in the struggle for justice across the world.

Explained this way, the task ahead surely appears daunting. If the world has taken more than half a millennium to become what it is today, it is a given that such a broad transformation will not happen overnight through some fantasy of revolution. Fortunately, in the past decade, there has emerged a global reparations movement. Jews, Hereros, African Americans, indigenous North and South Americans, Aborigines, South African Blacks, former Comfort Women, Assyrians, Greeks, a host of other groups, and, yes, Armenians are more and more recognizing their common cause and working toward the great goal of a repaired world. However long it will take, if we are committed to a truly just and good world order, we must all actively participate this struggle.

Notes

[1] This concept and approach are first introduced in Henry C. Theriault, “Denial of Ongoing Atrocities as a Rationale for Not Attempting to Prevent or Intervene,” in Samuel Totten (ed.), Impediments to the Prevention and Intervention of Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review. “Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review” book series, Vol. 9 (New Brunswick, NJ, USA: Transaction Publishers, 2013). pp. 47-75.

2 Jermaine O. McCalpin, “Reparations and the Politics of Avoidance in America,” The Armenian Review 53:1-4 (2012): 11-32.

3 This line of argument is developed in Henry C. Theriault, “From Unfair to Shared Burden: The Armenian Genocide’s Outstanding Damage and the Complexities of Repair,” The Armenian Review 53:1-4 (2012): 121-166.

4 The full report is available at www.armeniangenocidereparations.info.

5 Temel Demirer, presentation, “The ‘Armenian Issue’: What Is and How It Is to Be Done?” panel, “1915 within Its Pre- and Post-historical Periods: Denial and Confrontation” symposium, Ankara, Turkey, April 25, 2010.

6 Uğur Ümit Üngör and Mehmet Polatel, Confiscation and Destruction: The Young Turk Seizure of Armenian Property (London, UK: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011).

7 Richard G. Hovannisian, public lecture, Armenian Relief Society Armenian Summer Studies Program,

Amherst College, July 1991.

8 Sait Ҫetinoğlu, “Foundations of Non-Muslim Communities: The Last Object of Confiscation,” International Criminal Law Review 14:2 (2014): 396-406.

9 Henry C. Theriault, “Repairing the Irreparable: ‘Impossible’ Harms and the Complexities of ‘Justice,’” in José Luis Lanata (ed.), Prácticas Genocidas y Violencia Estatal: en Perspectiva Transdiscipinar (San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina: IIDyPCa-CONICET-UNRN, 2014), pp. 182-215.

[1]⁰ This distinction is informed by George Sher’s treatment of the difference between “blame” and “responsibility” in “Blame for Traits,” plenary address, 28th Conference on Value Inquiry, Lamar University, Beaumont, TX, USA, April 14, 2000.

[1]¹ Henry C. Theriault, “Reparations for Genocide: Group Harm and the Limits of Liberal Individualism,” International Criminal Law Review 14:2 (2014): 441-469.

[1]² Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London, UK: Verso-New Left Books, 1991).

[1]³ Ernest Renan, “What Is a Nation?”, Martin Thom (trans.), in Homi K. Bhabha (ed.), Nation and Narration (New York, NY, USA: Routledge, 1990), pp. 8-22.

The post Theriault: 2015 and Beyond appeared first on Armenian Weekly.

Special for the Armenian Weekly

Komitas
(Soghomon Soghomonian)
(1869-1935)

Soghomon was born to Kevork and Takoohi Soghomonian, a young Armenian Turkish-speaking couple, in Kutahya, Ottoman Turkey. Takoohi composed music, which the couple sang. Soghomon was less than a year old when 17-year-old Takoohi died. His uncle’s wife nursed him with her daughter, Marig, while his grandmother and aunt cared for him until he graduated from the local elementary school. Soghomon spoke only Turkish, yet could sing Armenian hymns, having served on the altar with his father and uncle. Kevork sent him to Brussa to continue his education; however, a few months later, Kevork passed away, and Soghomon returned to Kutahya.

Komitas (1909 photo)

In 1881, his uncle and the Parish Council selected him from among other orphans to be sent to Holy Etchmiadzin to further his education. In 1895, Catholicos Khrimian Hayrig ordained Soghomon—now Komitas Vartabed—a celibate priest. Komitas pursued his passion of collecting and arranging folk music. The Catholicos, recognizing his musical talents, helped him receive a grant to study music in Germany. Upon his return, Komitas continued to teach at Holy Etchmiadzin, collecting and arranging folk music. Over the years, he collected and arranged nearly 4,000 folk songs, including the songs his mother had composed in Turkish, which the elders in Kutahya continued to sing years later.

In 1910, he moved to Constantinople and rented a townhouse with the painter Panos Terlemezian. That house became a cultural center. Komitas taught music, refined and composed church music, held concerts in Kutahya, Constantinople, Izmir, Alexandria, and Paris, and received rave reviews. He continued to visit Germany, Paris, and other European cities, where he lectured and attended conferences of the International Music Society, as a founding member of the Berlin branch. Toward the end of March 1915, he was invited to perform at the Turk Ojak concert hall in Constantinople, where he was showered with praise by leading Turkish intellectuals. Yet less than two weeks later, before dawn on April 23, 1915, he was awakened by Turkish police and taken to the police station, then to the central prison—Mehterhaneh Prison—in Constantinople. There, he saw the more than 200 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders who had also been rounded up and imprisoned.

The following day, on April 24, the prisoners were escorted by armed guards to the central train station without due process or conviction. At the Senjan Koey train station, the prisoners were ordered out of the wagons and separated; 72 were called out to be sent to Ayash Prison, and were executed in the following weeks. Komitas and the rest were escorted toward the Chankiri armory, which had been vacated after an epidemic and not disinfected. Along the way, at a watering hole, the gendarmes gave preference to their animals over the thirsty Armenian prisoners. In Chankiri, after a few weeks, Komitas and a few others received permission from Talaat Pasha to return to Constantinople.

The Master returned to a muted Armenian cultural atmosphere in Constantinople. It had become dangerous to be an Armenian in the city. Armenians there lived in terror, while Komitas suffered from acute stress and survival guilt: He had not been able to save his friends, his people. He had a keen awareness of the long-term cultural impact of this Turkish policy on the Armenian population. He wished to be left alone; he prayed in solitude, read the Bible, avoided policemen. He remarked to a young compatriot, “These people should not be trusted…” His behavior, so atypical of the formerly good-humored, joyous Master, was cause for concern for his friends. Komitas had episodes of anxiety. Although he believed they would pass, people were scared to see such drastic changes in the Master. They did not realize that the trauma of the unfolding genocide could affect a witness’s psyche to the point of preventing him from concentrating on work or writing.

Nevertheless, Komitas continued to compose when physically and mentally able. In 1916, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the date we now know as the start of the genocide, he composed the hymn “Antsink Neviryalk” (Devoted Individuals) and the music of “Moushi Bareh” (The Dance of Moush). Yet, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) prevented him from leading his formerly active life, and his symptoms were not properly understood or diagnosed at the time. He could not teach music, earn a living. When his landlord threatened eviction if he did not pay rent, Komitas’s friends wrongfully decided to place him in the La Paix Turkish military psychiatric hospital,¹ emptied his house, and returned it to the landlord. His 4,000 musical notes and personal items were dispersed, lost; only a third have been retrieved.

At the La Paix Turkish hospital, he complained that he was being given inferior food, that he had found pieces of rope in his soup, and devoured the bread and chocolate his students brought him. The Turkish chief neurologist and psychiatrist received honors for his studies of eugenics and overseeing the castration of mental patients. Komitas remained suspicious and uncooperative. He seems to have been discharged briefly in 1917, but was re-hospitalized. In 1919, his friends, seeing no progress, transferred him to a psychiatric hospital in Paris where a caretaking committee continued to provide the funds for his hospitalization. Since his “mental illness” was not cured, in 1922 he was transferred to an asylum outside of Paris, to Ville Juif, where he would die years later from a foot infection. The French psychiatrist who knew Komitas for 13 years wrote that he was not sure what diagnosis had been given, to legally keep him in the hospital and asylum.

Komitas Vartabed’s attitude remained the same over the 19 years of psychiatric hospitalizations: He accepted visitors he did not know, but refused to see old friends or acquaintances. He conversed with patients, yet refused to speak with psychiatrists. He verbally expressed his anger, demanding the key to his apartment, his musical notes, his belongings, his right to self-determination.

Cover of Karakashian’s ‘Komitas: Victim of the Great Crime ‘

The newly published book Komitas: Victim of the Great Crime² (M. Karakashian, Zangak, 2014) examines the visitor reports on Komitas’s behavior and his conversations, as well as his hospital records, and lets the reader understand the trauma that this great Master endured. He was in need of alternative treatment, such as talk therapy and medication, to alleviate symptoms of trauma—treatments he was deprived of, or that were not available at the time.

Komitas was a Master musicologist, a genius who saved Armenian folk music from extinction. He cleaned up church music from foreign influences, introduced Armenian folk music to European experts, and left a large legacy of musical compositions, church hymns, and liturgy that are sung all over the world today. He is cherished by Armenians.

Komitas Vartabed, a survivor of early orphanhood and poverty, and a sensitive artist, had a predisposition to psychological trauma. During his productive career, he channeled this early trauma and depression through his artistic and creative work. His imprisonment, exile, the degradation he felt, his inability to save his beloved Armenians from extermination, and his possible homelessness shook his sensitivity and caused a break-up of his defenses (i.e., sublimation through artistic work). He exhibited signs of Acute Stress Disorder and PTSD that lasted years before he succumbed to deep depression. Without the proper psychiatric treatment, he was held in institutions for 19 years, where, he said, only his body was being fed.

Komitas Vartabed’s story is of the Armenian who, to this day, is grappling with the devastating effects of psychological trauma passed on through generations of survivors. Since Komitas was a famous individual, a lot has been written about him, and a lot remains to be discovered; the archives that are available point to the severe psychological suffering of survivors.

Komitas’s story is but a symbol of the emotional wounds left behind by human malice and evil, wounds inherited by all Armenians.

Notes

1 A French-owned hospital that was taken over and converted into a military psychiatric hospital.

2 Komitas: Victim of the Great Crime is available through the Hairenik Bookstore by visiting https://hairenik.com/shop/komitas.

The post Komitas: A Genocide Survivor or Victim? appeared first on Armenian Weekly.

The Armenian Weekly Magazine

April 2015: A Century of Resistance

The voice of a sighing heart, its sobs and mournful cries,

I offer up to you, O seer of Secrets,

Placing the fruits of my wavering mind

As a savory sacrifice on the fire of my grieving soul

To be delivered to you in the censer of my will.

—St. Grigor Narekatsi

As I read and look through various books and papers on the Armenian Genocide, I think of the genocide survivors I met and got to know years ago in the Chicago Armenian community. The community elders would say with reverence, “See that lady over there, she is one of the Survivors… That man there, he is one of the Survivors…” There were several of them, and they were always working—serving our Armenian community—in the church, church hall, kitchen, school, and on picnic grounds. Occasionally, one of them would begin singing in the church hall’s kitchen. Within no time, others would join in, and as one voice they would sing, as they diligently prepared Armenian dishes for a community function, as they stayed behind after an event to clean and tidy up.

Though the aromas that wafted from the kitchen or picnic grounds were delightful and inviting, the unwavering enthusiasm and devotion these particular individuals felt for their people and community were awe-inspiring and unforgettable, for they had come from a place where they had suffered and survived unspeakable horrors simply because of who they were—Armenians and Christians. As a result, they had lost everything—family and childhood, home and hearth, hopes and dreams, even their identity at times. Despite the carnage, destruction, and immeasurable loss that had befallen them, they were able not only to overcome their sufferings and go on with their lives in far-away lands, learning new languages, customs, and traditions, but also to give of themselves and enrich the lives of others, especially their Diasporan Armenian communities.

Years ago, during interviews I had conducted with some of these survivors in their homes, I noticed that though each had come from different regions in their homeland, and from different socio-economic standings, when they spoke of the horrors they had suffered they all described similar atrocities. And, when they spoke, each had the same heart-wrenching sorrow in his or her eyes.

I began the interviews first with a male survivor of the 1894-96 Hamidian Massacres. The Ottoman Constitution of 1876 had granted the Armenians certain rights. At last, the Armenians thought, they could allow themselves to look forward to a decent life, free of fear, brutality, and massacres. That sentiment, however, was short lived. During the late 1800’s, sporadic massacres of Armenians were carried out, beginning in Van. Upon learning of the atrocities that had begun soon after the signing of the constitution, Patriarch Khrimian Hayrik “charged that the government was guilty of perpetrating the crime and inciting violence.” In a pamphlet called “Haikouyzh,” the patriarch wrote, “They fell upon and covered Armenian villages and farms like locust and worm, devoured and withered all vegetation and turned fertile villages and towns into barren wastelands” (from The Pillars of the Armenian Church by Dickran H. Boyajian).

Painting of Grigor Narekatsi by artist Arshag Fetvadjian

Mrs. Carlier, the wife of the French Consul in Sepastia, an eyewitness to the massacres and deportations that took place in 1895-96, wrote: “They killed everyone in the market place. Not a single Armenian remains. … Right at this moment they are killing with bayonets. … Since the mob was not armed with weapons, they had grabbed whatever they had found, axes, clubs, stones and shovels. They crushed the heads of the victims… Everywhere there is blood; wherever you step, you step on human brains and scalps. … I saw dogs dragging human body parts in their mouths… blood dripping from their mouths. … The majority of the victims were men. A large number of women and girls were put up for auction by the criminal Turks. … The women and girls were raped with extreme barbarism…” (from Village World [Kiughashkharh] by Vahan Hambartsumian).

The following are brief excerpts from four of the interviews.

The survivor of the 1896 massacres described the day the Turks came in these words: “My family was from Sepastia,

and we Armenians always lived in fear. My father was a priest. I was five years old and playing with my friends

outside, when suddenly we heard a great deal of noise down the street. There was much yelling and screaming. A crowd was coming and they were carrying daggers, pieces of wood, anything with which to kill a person. People were running, and there was blood everywhere. The Turks were killing anyone they could get their hands on. … I ran and hid in a hole in the ground, which was filled with ashes, for about two or three days. When I came out of the hole, I was very thirsty and hungry… Because of what I had witnessed I developed a severe stutter. Nearly 90 now, I still stutter.”

In 1915, four years after immigrating to the United States and making Chicago his home, this survivor, upon learning of the plight of the Armenians in his homeland, left for the Caucasus to join other “gamavors” (volunteers) in fighting the Turks.

A female survivor of the genocide recalled, “I was seven years old when the Turks came to our village in Sepastia. They killed so many Armenians, including my parents, sisters, and brothers—my whole family. I do not know how I survived, but I remember seeing blood everywhere and so many people on the ground. I was walking and walking, calling for my mother, when two gendarmes saw me and hurt me… I was full of blood. Someone carried me to a hospital, where the doctor, who knew my family, wept when he saw me… Later, I was taken to a Turkish couple and I stayed with them.

One day, when I was outside, some Turkish boys and girls screamed and shouted ‘gavour’ [nonbeliever or infidel] at me. As they repeated that word, again and again, they threw rocks at me… You can still see the scar on my face. … After staying with the Turkish couple for a while, I was taken to an orphanage in Marsovan, then to one in Greece, and later, when we orphans were older, some of us were sent to France. So many lost their minds because of what the Turks had done… Whenever I thought of my family, my home… I could not stop crying. … We had such fun playing together, my sisters, brothers, and I.  We had a nice home, and a beautiful church before the Turks did the things they did.”

A female survivor from Dikranagerd told of her ordeal in 1915 as she looked down at her hands resting in her lap. “I was fortunate to only have my fingers cut off of one hand. Some had hands and other body parts cut off, but mostly they were murdered.”

A male survivor from Urfa recalled, “I was 10 years old in 1915 when it happened. I was outside walking down the street, when I saw some Turks killing an Armenian. They were striking him with canes, knives, swords, shovels… I was terrified and found a place to hide. When it was safe I ran back home where I found my uncle dead. They had slaughtered him like a lamb on the steps of our house. His head was down and his feet were up; there was blood everywhere. My father and other Armenian men were taken away. We never saw them again. My older brother, who was 19, had his head smashed. Some of my other relatives were killed. My mother suddenly could not speak and died three days after they took away my father and killed my brother. … The Turks filled our church with Armenians, and they burned them, even the children. They burned them all! I saw it.  I saw a lot. … A Turkish family, the one that had earlier taken away my sister to be a wife, took my little brother and me to their house. There, we were made Turks and given Turkish names. I was called Hasan…  Eventually, when we got older, we left and once again used our Armenian names. … It was God’s miracle that the two of us survived. At times, after all these many years, I still see my dead mother and my brother with his smashed head, and all the others who had been killed, before my eyes.”

Though the survivors I spoke with, and got to know many years ago, have all passed away, their stories—the story of a nation nearly annihilated by another—can still be “heard” via countless pages of printed material. For example, in the Oct. 7, 1896 issue of the Chicago Daily Tribune, an article titled, “Chicago’s Work for the Armenians.” described the efforts of the “Chicago Armenian committee” in collecting $13,000 for the “International committee” in Constantinople to assist destitute Armenians who had survived the 1894-96 massacres. Also mentioned were the efforts of the Salvation Army in preparing to assist these refugees in establishing homes in America once they arrived.

As the sporadic massacres of the later 1800’s continued into the early 1900’s, behind the backdrop of World War I, methodically and with great acumen, the Turkish government, in 1915, began its ultimate endeavor in the total annihilation of the Armenian people and culture. The following are more examples published in the Chicago Daily Tribune, reporting on the plight of the Armenians.

In the May 18, 1915 issue of the Chicago Daily Tribune, a caption on page 4 announced the slaughter of 6,000 Armenians by the Turks, and that aid to Armenia was needed.

In the Jan. 26 1916 issue of the same paper, an article titled, “Chicago Asked to Open Purses for Armenians,” described the dire plight of the Armenians, growing more critical every day because of the countless massacres, as well as the starvation, disease, exposure to the elements, and homelessness they were suffering.

In the Feb. 1, 1919 issue of the Chicago Daily Tribune, an article titled, “5^th Liberty Loan Workers Told of Armenians’ Woe,” outlined a speech given by the former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Abram L. Elkus at the Morrison Hotel in Chicago. The ambassador began his speech by telling the audience that he had no real idea what hunger and poverty were until he saw the devastation of Turkey’s Armenians. He told of the hunger and poverty, the despair and death, and the 400,000 Armenian orphans that crowded into available buildings. He described how he and a friend had counted on the roads of Asia Minor the skeletons of hundreds of Armenians who had been “butchered by Turks.”

In the March 17, 1920 issue of the Chicago Daily Tribune, an article titled, “Evanston Girl One of Three Helping 67,000 Armenians,” described the work of Miss Alice K. Clark of Evanston, Ill., the daughter of the manager of the American Stove Company, and 2 other members of the American Relief Committee in Hadjin, Turkey, caring for 67,000 Armenian refugees.

After all these years—One Hundred—Turkey continues to deny any wrongdoing, stating that the Armenian Genocide never took place and that the issue of the Armenians “should be left to historians.” Yet, as one reads the numerous eyewitness accounts, reports, newspaper articles, and books, one wonders, How can a crime of such magnitude—a government’s systematic annihilation of nearly an entire race—be denied, and for so long? The numerous accounts, reports, and documents do not lie. The bones scattered across the land, the crumbling age-old churches and edifices do not lie.

In New York, the Alliance Weekly: A Journal of Christian Life and Missions published several articles, including eyewitness accounts, of the atrocities against the Armenians from 1909-19. The following are examples.

On Oct. 2, 1915, the Alliance Weekly published a piece titled, “Armenian Atrocities,” describing the condition of the Armenians in Turkey: “An appalling condition prevails in Armenia. A representative committee of Americans have secured and sifted reports from all parts of Turkey. A preliminary statement has been given to the press and a detailed survey will follow in a few days. Atrocities unparalleled in modern history will be revealed. Armenia is being depopulated of its Christian population whether Gregorian or Protestant. At least half a million have perished in massacres or of hunger in the wastes to which they are driven. The missionaries of the American Board at Bitlis, Van, and Diyarbakir have been driven out. …”

On Oct. 23, 1915, the Alliance Weekly published the following: “The Christian world is again shocked by the new story of Armenian atrocities. There, horrid cruelties are on a scale surpassing even the frightful wrongs of other years, which justified the title Mr. Gladstone gave to the Turkish ruler, ‘Abdul, the Assassin.’ The present policy of the Turkish authorities, with the tacit support, it is feared, of their German allies, is the utter extermination of this sturdy and superior race… the entire destruction of the race.”

In the Oct. 30, 1915 issue of the same publication, a returning missionary from Turkey, Dr. McNaughton, reported, “…The missionary work in Asia Minor, under the American Board, has been almost entirely wiped out. … Before the war there were 148 stations, 309 missionaries, 158 organized churches, 1,310 native helpers, 26,000 scholars in 450 schools and colleges, and 60,000 in attendance upon the missions. Today these flocks are scattered, and more than 1,000,000 Armenian Christians appear to have perished. … Is it the last drop in the full cup of Turkish crime?”

Painting of Gomidas, ‘Vercheen Geesher – Debee Aksor’ (‘Final Night – Toward Exile’)

In the Dec. 30, 1916 issue, an article titled, “Famine Horrors in the World War,” by A. E. Thompson describes the Armenian atrocities: “It has not been a conquered province that has suffered, but a subject nation, over which the Turks have ruled for centuries. Abdul Hamid shocked civilization by the massacres of a few thousand Armenians… He probably never conceived such horrors as the Young Turks, who dethroned him, have perpetrated. The report published by the Relief Committee states that out of a total Armenian population of 2,000,000 no less that 850,000 have died in massacres or of disease, exhaustion, and starvation… The report of the Relief Committee reads: ‘Men were led away in groups outside their villages and killed with clubs and axes. The Consul of one of the European nations reported that on one occasion 10,000 Armenians were taken out in boats, batteries of artillery trained upon them, and the entire company killed. Girls and women were reserved for an indescribable fate in terrible marches; in harems, in the houses of officials, or in tents of the wild tribes. Villages and towns by the hundreds were wrecked. The whole Armenian population of large sections deported. Of 450 in one village only one woman lives… Read the most graphic pictures in prophecy of horrors and outrages and you have a mild picture of what has occurred…”

In the Jan. 13, 1917 issue of the Alliance Weekly, an article titled, “The Turkey of Tomorrow,” by an author who signed the piece as “A Missionary Resident For Thirty Years In Turkey,” asks the questions, “What, then about the future? How about the wreck of work for Armenians after the holocaust that has destroyed more than half a million of them, deported and impoverished more than half a million more, forced another quarter million to flee the country? Can the churches ever be revived or the schools reopened? …

When many thousands have been faithful unto death, preferring a martyr’s crown to a Moslem life, the people all see that faith and life are the essentials, rather than creeds and ceremonies. The ancient Armenian Church will come forth from this ordeal ‘tried as by the fire.’”

In the Oct. 6, 1917 issue, an article titled, “The Crimes of Turkey,” begins: “An important conference of the friends of the great movement for Armenian and Syrian relief was held in New York City during Tuesday and Wednesday, September 11^th and 12^th, at which there was a representative attendance from the various churches, charitable and missionary boards and societies. … The Alliance Weekly was represented at this conference…” The article outlines the account of Dr. Frederick Coan, who was “an eyewitness of both tragedies.” He had stated, “the present massacre [1915] far exceeds in loss of life and desolation of land than that of the massacre of 1894-5.” He said he had stood by “a huge trench—the grave of two thousand Armenians, who had sought to defend themselves from the Turks until their ammunition gave out; who on asking at what terms they might surrender, and on being promised their safety (sworn to on the Koran) by the Turks, surrendered, and were immediately given spades and shovels and ordered to dig a trench. When this trench was completed, those 2,000 Armenians were driven into it at the point of bayonets, and there buried.” He told of standing by a pit, “the grave of 1,600 little children who had been gathered together, saturated with oil, and burned alive, while the fanatical Turks beat drums to drown their dying cries,” and “a bridge from which 1,600 young Armenian maidens had plunged to their deaths rather than live as slaves in Turkish harems.”

The piece included Dr. Coan’s appeal to America: “Christian America—help save those who still can be saved. Hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled to Russia. Here they can be reached, and the Russian government will not refuse their relief. Russia has never refused to help us in relief, even handing money to us to be distributed by us as we thought best.” The doctor’s presentation concluded with: “There are Mohammedans who do not approve of this massacre. Over and over again I have heard them say, ‘I wonder that God in heaven does not bring fire down and smite us for these deeds…’” (When the Russian and Armenian volunteer forces liberated Van in May 1915, working along with the American missionary aid workers were the Countess Aleksandra Lvovna Tolstaya, the youngest daughter of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, and her aid workers. See the correspondence of Grace H. Knapp [1895-1916], Mt. Holyoke College Archives & Special Collections.)

The article also includes the account of a 17-year-old boy who had been brought to the United States. At the time of the genocide, he was 15 and had escaped. He told of his harrowing experience: “On March 31^st or April 1^st, 1915, our city was suddenly surrounded by Turkish soldiers. Most of the prominent Armenians were imprisoned, among them my father, who was a professor in a college. They were asked to give up their guns, but as most of them were merchants, doctors, professors, etc., there were few guns among them. Then the officers beat them. The professor of history in our college was first beaten with a stick; his fingers were then burned, then his hair, and finally he was crucified. … The mothers began at once to cut off the hair of the girls, but they could not hide their beautiful eyes. … We were surrounded by other Turkish soldiers. They separated the men from the women and put the men in a great dungeon…in that prison 550 men were weeping. … The women and children were placed in another prison. … The next night 549 men were taken to the nearby mountains and killed one by one… From that group only one boy is living—myself. … Those 2,500 women and children. . . …they took away their clothing … drove them out to the deserts. Children were taken by the Turks…some of the women became Moslems and were spared. Others threw themselves into the river. … The prettiest children were selected by the Turks, especially the boys and girls from ten to twelve years. … Once they were free as birds, now the girls are imprisoned in Turkish harems, buried alive.” The boy’s account ended with: “A whole nation is being killed and deported by the Turks, and those remaining are dying of starvation…”

In the Oct. 25, 1962 issue of Milliyet (Istanbul), an article by Gunay Erinal (Assistant to the Agricultural Inspector) titled, “A Modern Turk on the Armenian Past,” describes what the Turkish people experienced years after the genocide. It begins: “There is a famine in Eastern Turkey. Last winter all the newspapers reported that animals were dying of hunger. … In the beginning of 1962 in Saimbeyli (Hagin), the villagers said: ‘In the days of the Armenians more people lived here; the grapes and their wine were very well known. At that time there was also a college, which disappeared with the Armenians. … In the days of the Armenians here…’ I had heard these words long ago, and I heard them very often recently. … ‘The villages of Hunu and Lorsun…’ Afsin and Elbistan as well… ‘When the Armenians were here there was a dam on the river by virtue of which we had no shortage of water. …’ In Hakkari also I heard Armenians mentioned. … ‘The Armenians, by planting terrace-vineyards on the steep mountain-side, produced grapes, and it was very successful. But it does not exist now. … Our people neglected the land. … In the Catak ‘kaza’ of Van there are thousands of pistachio nut trees, but they are not fertile. …’”

As the Armenian communities throughout the world prepare to commemorate the 100^th Anniversary of the 1915 Genocide, one cannot help but wonder, how has this small nation continued to thrive despite all it has suffered? The answer must lie in the Armenian people’s deep reverence for church, language, heritage, culture, and patriotism.

Author J. Alston Campbell, who was witness to the deplorable conditions and sufferings of the Armenians in Turkey, wrote, “The thousands of Armenians who laid down their lives at the time of the massacres did not die on behalf of a political propaganda, they laid down for the Gospel, as a testimony to the Moslem world of the power of a living Christ. Most of those martyrs, had they wished, might have saved themselves by holding up one little finger as a sign that they accepted Islam. But they chose death rather than deny His Name…” And, of the patriotism of the Armenians, he wrote, “A strong feature in their character, and this, together with a wonderful recuperative power which they possess, has often enabled them to rise phoenix-like from disasters which would have ruined other nations.”

In April, One Hundred Years of Remembering, Praying, Commemorating, and Demanding Justice for the wrongs committed by the perpetrators of the 1915 Genocide of the Armenians will be marked by an historic event in Armenia at Holy Etchmiadzin—the Canonization of our Martyrs. His Holiness Karekin II and His Holiness Aram I will preside together over this momentous ceremony.

As candles burn, choirs sing, and incense fill Armenian churches on our National Day of Remembrance, I will light three candles: One for our Martyrs, One for Armenia, and One for Armenians Everywhere.

“Dour ashkharhis khaghaghoutiun,

Azkis Hayots, ser, mioutiun.

Der voghormia, Der voghormia…”

“Bless the world with peace, and the Armenian Nation with love and unity.

Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy…”

—Gomidas Vartabed

***

References

Boyajian, Dickran H., The Pillars of the Armenian Church. Watertown, Mass.: Baikar Press, 1962.

Campbell, J. Alston, In The Shadow of the Crescent. London: Marshall Brothers, 1906.

Chicago Daily Tribune (now Chicago Tribune).

Chookaszian, Levon, Arshag Fetvadjian. Yerevan: 2011. (Painting of Narekatsi)

Hambartsumian, Vahan, Village World (Kiughashkharah), translated from the Armenian by Murad A. Meneshian. Providence, R.I.: Govdoon Youth of America, 2001.

Narekatsi, St. Grigor, Speaking with God from the Depths of the Heart, translated from the Armenian by Thomas J. Samuelian. Armenia: 2002. (Narekatsi quote)

Knapp, Grace H., “Grace H. Knapp Papers—All Correspondence, 1895-1916.” Mt. Holyoke College Archives & Special Collections. South Hadley, Mass.

Simeonian, Very Rev. Arsen, Gomidas Vartabed. Boston, Mass.: 1969. (Drawing of Gomidas)

The Alliance Weekly: A Journal of Christian Life and Missions (now ALife). Christian and Missionary Alliance, Colorado Springs, Colo. (Archives Department)

***

Note: The author wishes to express her deep appreciation to the following for kindly providing material used in this article:

Christian and Missionary Alliance Archives Department staff

Mt. Holyoke College Archives & Special Collections staff

The post Determined Triumph appeared first on Armenian Weekly.

Being a landlocked country, Armenia has an economy that depends on transport and cross-border access. Armenia has a few railway lines and an extensive road network. While the rate of car ownership has been growing steadily in recent years, it is still relatively low. Public transport plays a critical role, especially in cities. The transportation network capacity is adequate for accommodating estimated demand up to the year 2020, but the infrastructure has deteriorated due to a lack of funds. In recent years, the government has given priority to rehabilitation and reconstruction of the infrastructure. A major issue that hinders transportation in Armenia is severe climate where low temperatures and heavy snowfall in winter limit economic activity.

Roadway System

Roads provide access to employment, markets, education, and health services, and thus are crucial for economic development. Since 1990, road networks have expanded in all developing countries in Asia except Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Tajikistan. China and India account for almost two-thirds of the roads in Asia. Armenia has slightly less than 8,000 kilometers of roads, 94 percent of which are paved; however, some of the paved roads need major rehabilitation.

The number of vehicles has surged in developing Asian countries. In 1990, only 2 countries recorded 100 or more motor vehicles per 1,000 people. In 2010, 19 countries had more than 100 vehicles per 1,000 people. Armenia has 92 registered vehicles per 1,000 people. In comparison, Azerbaijan has 110 and Georgia has 170 per 1,000 people. In developed countries, this number is typically more than 700.

The primary type of vehicle in each country—whether cars and other four-wheeled vehicles, or two- and three-wheeled vehicles—depends on a mix of factors, such as an economy’s level of development and population density as well as sub-regional characteristics. The distribution of registered vehicles by type in Armenia is as follows: cars, SUVs, vans, and light four-wheeled trucks: 83 percent; buses: 12 percent; heavy trucks: 5 percent.

The increase in the number of registered motor vehicles in developing countries has been accompanied by a relatively high incidence of fatal road accidents. The relatively high fatality rates are the result of underdeveloped road networks, mixed traffic, limited availability of traffic engineering expertise, governance issues, and rapid growth of the vehicle fleet.

The death rate per 100,000 people is about 18 in Armenia, which is 3 times higher than in developed countries with good roadway networks. Azerbaijan and Georgia have about the same rate. Measures including safer road construction, better protection for pedestrians, stricter enforcement of traffic regulations, and road safety education typically reduce road deaths.

Rehabilitation of the road network is a top priority for Armenia. Improving roads will increase trade, investment flows, and jobs. Better connectivity aids regional cooperation and integration as well as increases the country’s competitiveness.

The government of Armenia initiated the North-South Road Corridor project, which will be starting from Bavra (a neighboring area of Georgia); continuing to Gyumri, Talin, Yerevan, Goris, and Kapan; and ending in Meghri (next to the border of Iran). The North-South Road Corridor, once completed, will be 556 km. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has agreed to support the government of Armenia in this initiative with initial financing of $500 million. The estimated cost for the entire project is $1.5 billion.

The North-South Road will link to the East-West Highway in Georgia that leads to the ports of Poti and Batumi on the Black Sea, two key shipment points for Armenia.

The government of Armenia initiated the North-South Road Corridor project

Numerous socio-economic improvements are expected in Armenia as a result of the construction of the North-South Corridor; these include:

– doubled Armenian exports and imports;

– increased cross-border traffic (up to 10 billion tons from current 5 billion);

– reduced travel time through the corridor (down to 2 days from 3-4 days);

– doubled average daily traffic (from 3,000 to 6,000 vehicles);

– new jobs and higher incomes; and

– reduced number of accidents, as well as lower road transport and maintenance costs

Presently the first two segments of the North-South roadway from Artashat to Ashtarak and from Ashtarak to Talin are under construction, and the 31-kilometer Artashat to Ashtarak segment is due to open this year. It is estimated that the entire project will be completed by 2019, depending on the availability of funds.

Rail Transportation

Armenia’s railway network plays a crucial role in providing mobility for people and freight. The network includes the metro system that serves commuters in Yerevan. The metro has limited coverage and in recent years has lost some of its market share to minibuses.

Most of Armenia’s railways were built during the Soviet era. Central planning dictated that rail would be the primary mode of transport, so little emphasis was placed on costs and market needs. The system was designed to handle large traffic volumes and in some cases served remote areas. The former Soviet Union rarely updated its railway technology after the 1960’s.

The railway system has seen its operations shrink 10-fold since independence, primarily due to the closing of Armenia’s borders with Azerbaijan and Turkey. The growing mining industry in southern Armenia has become a major market for freight service, as the mine output needs to be transported to ports on the Black Sea.About 370 km. of the 732 km. network are fully operational. Armenia relies on its railway system for about 70 percent of imports and exports, but there used to be a lot more passengers and freight.

The former Soviet Union rarely updated its railway technology after the 1960’s

Since June 2008, a subsidiary of Russian Railways, the South Caucasus Railway, has been operating the Armenian rail system. They have invested more than $250 million in upgrading the infrastructure and modernizing the system.

In 2012, a contract was awarded to Dubai-based Rasia FZE (a Rasia Group investment company) for the feasibility, design, financing, construction, and operation of a new railway link between Armenia and Iran. The Armenia-Iran railway is called the Southern Armenia Railway project. The feasibility study results indicated that the route will be 305 km. long and would cost approximately $3.5 billion to build. As the key missing link in the International North-South Transport Corridor, the Southern Armenia Railway would create the shortest transportation route from the ports of the Black Sea to the ports of the Persian Gulf.

Air Transportation

Air traffic has increased significantly in much of East, South, and Southeast Asia since 1990. There were smaller increases, and even some declines, in air traffic in Central and West Asia and the Pacific. Azerbaijan, the Kyrgyz Republic, and Turkmenistan had lower levels of air traffic in 2012 than in 1990. However, Armenia had a 20 percent growth of air passenger flow in 2014.

Armenia has three main airports: Zvartnots, Shirak, and Erebuni. Zvartnots Airport is the principal gateway to Armenia. The new, two-story terminal building that was built by a private developer for $173 million is able to handle about 3.2 million passengers a year, which should be able to accommodate the ever-growing demand until 2030.

In October 2013, Armenia passed the “open skies” policy for air transportation. According to this policy, the civil aviation in the country is now open to all airlines that meet international standards. It was expected that this policy would spur economic development and the reduction of airfares. However, the latest data indicates that the number of operating air carriers in Armenia has decreased from 35 to 27 since the launch of the “open skies” policy. Czech Airlines and Al Italia are two of the major airlines that stopped flying to Armenia, and Etihad Airlines is planning to discontinue its operation in September 2015.

Moscow airports are become the main air hub for Armenian passengers as a result of three Russian airlines—Aeroflot, Transavia, and S7—providing regular daily flights. Approximately 50 percent of flights from Zvartnots Airport land in the Russian capital.

Key Challenges

Globalization presents both challenges and opportunities. One challenge is the increasing demand for more timely transport services and the need to reduce transport costs. Other major challenges for the transport sector of Armenia include:

– completing road network rehabilitation;

– upgrading the international railway and road infrastructure;

– overcoming urban transport problems, and achieving a sustainable balance between private and public transport;

– successfully implementing railway concession;

– further developing air services;

– reducing the negative impact of increased transport demand; and

– achieving long-term sustainability in transport asset management, particularly in the road network.

The Global Competitiveness Index 2014 ranked Armenia’s infrastructure at 78 out of 144 countries, with the score of 3.83 in a range of 1 (very bad-quality infrastructure) to 7 (very good-quality infrastructure).

The post Transportation Modes in Armenia appeared first on Armenian Weekly.

By Ronald Grigor Suny

“No, young man, you cannot see the library,” the old woman told the eager student.  “I am the only one with the key.  Even I do not allow the archbishop into the library.”  This was the second time that Balint Kovacs, a Hungarian student, had tried to find materials on Armenians in Transylvania. He had hitchhiked from Budapest across the border to the mountain town of Gherla in Transylvania, Romania, only to be turned away by the elders who guarded the Armenian Church in the colony that had been known as Armenopolis or Hayakaghak in the 17^th and 18^th century.  They had sent him on to Elisabethopolis, now Dumbraveni, where he was confronted by the stubborn old woman who refused to let him see the library.  But Balint would not give in or give up.  Perhaps something could be worked out.  The determined woman, whom Balint would later call Marish neni, mentioned that she needed medication for her eyes, and Balint promised to bring it to her from Hungary.  A nephew was called; the key appeared; and Balint Kovacs’ life and work changed in an instant.

Balint Kovacs

In the sacristy of the large Armenian Catholic church they opened a metal door with a complicated antique lock, climbed a winding staircase, and came upon six cabinets filled with old books in Armenian, Hungarian, and Latin.  But there was more:  an archive of early modern manuscripts documenting the past of the Armenians who had come to this town.  As if a light turned on, Balint knew that he had found a treasure.  No one had seen these books and documents for decades, perhaps longer.  He had originally come as a student from Pazmany Peter Catholic University in Budapest to study Hungarian dialects in Cluj Napoca, the capital of Transylvania.  Like many other young Hungarians coming of age after the fall of Communism, he was interested in recovering the heritage of the Hungarian people.  Inspired by the words of Zoltan Kodaly, who had said that Transylvania is the keeper of treasures, the clean source of the historical past, Balint won a scholarship to study in Transylvania.  His teacher in Budapest, Sandor Őze, had asked him to see what he could find on the Armenians while he was in Transylvania since they were planning an exhibition on Armenian history in the Hungarian capital.  Balint had found more than he had been looking for.  When he returned to Budapest and told his mentor what he had uncovered, Sandor told him that he had to make a catalogue of the materials.  Although still an undergraduate, Balint’s life course had taken a new turn, and he would become the principal investigator of the history of the Transylvanian Armenian colonies.

Armenians had crossed from Moldavia, through the Carparthian Mountains, into Transylvania in the 17^th century.  They settled as craftsmen and merchants in four towns:  Elisabethopolis, Armenopolis, Sibviz (Szepviz, Frumoasa), and Gheorgheni (Gyergyószentmiklós, Djurdjov).  There they converted to Catholicism, using an Armenian rite, singing the hymns in Armenian (to this day), and gradually losing their mother language and speaking Hungarian and Romanian.  Their towns grew wealthy, and along the main streets the rich bankers and merchants built their mansions, many of which have been preserved.  Their communities flourished for 300 years, but by the 20^th century they dwindled to a few hundred members.  Locked in closed rooms were the stories of these people, records and books that no one now could read.

Balint Kovacs thumbs through ‘Mirror without Macula,’ perhaps the only manuscript written in Armeno-Hungarian

Balint Kovacs was raised in a small provincial town, Kiscsősz, and first went to a local secondary school in Veszprém.  He soon transferred to Pazmany Peter University where he was encouraged by Sandor Őze.  Balint was a devout Catholic, who shared the patriotism that Hungarians were permitted to express after Communism.  Intellectually curious, he thinks of himself as shy and naïve, but a more accurate description would be modest, innocent, and idealistic. Straightforward and honest, he was disgusted by the careerism and corruption that permeates East-Central Europe.  Finding these lost archives of the Armenians, he came to believe that he had found his mission in life and began the work of organizing and cataloguing the collection in Elisabethopolis.

Soon the priest and community elder in Armenopolis, who earlier had been suspicious of Balint’s intentions, accepted him as a trustworthy researcher and opened up the riches of their library and archive housed in a room above the main altar in the church.  Balint traveled to Germany to Halle and took courses on Armenian studies with Professor Armenuhi Drost Abgarjan.  He then moved on to Armenia where he studied the Armenian language.  He wrote his dissertation at the Peter Pazmany Catholic University in Hungary on the Armenian libraries of Transylvania. Since 2008 he has worked as a research fellow in the Research Center of the University Leipzig on East-Central Europe (GWZO) under the supervision of Professor Stefan Troebst. Catalogues of the Armenian holdings were published in collaboration with his universities.  Through complicated arrangements with the archbishop of the Catholic Armenians, the archives of the four colonies were brought together in a single archive in Armenopolis, where they are now available to researchers, at least to those who can convince the priest that they are serious and worthy of their trust.

For five days in May 2015, as part of our work on the anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, Balint and I traveled by car through Hungary and Transylvania visiting Armenian sites.  After stops at the beautiful Hungarian town of Pecs and the battlefield at Mohacs where the Ottomans defeated the Hungarian king in 1526 and established their rule over Hungary for 150 years, we crossed into Romania.  Our first “Armenian” stop was in Elisabethopolis.  The church was closed; the key unavailable; but the now frail Marish neni was waiting for us with the local liquor and cakes.  She was thrilled to meet another Armenian and took my arm, guiding me into her living room.  It was clear that she adored Balint and depended on him.  The widowed, childless woman considered him her son.

We spent that night in a hotel in the walled castle of Sighisoara.  The area is now living off memorabilia and tourism generated by the figure of Vlad the Impaler, the inspiration for Dracula.  The next morning we drove off to Szepviz, where the Catholic priest impatiently showed us a large manuscript in Armeno-Hungarian.  A translation from the famous Hungarian book Mirror without Macula (Makula nélkül való tükör), it was written in Armenian letters but in the Hungarian language.  No one had known what this was until Balint discovered it, and having learned Armenian in Yerevan, he immediately recognized it as a transliteration, not a translation, of the original Hungarian text, perhaps the only manuscript written in Armeno-Hungarian.

The Armenian Church of Armenopolis

Each of our visits was punctuated by the obligatory lunch of Hungarian or Romanian meat and potatoes, dumplings or goulash soup, followed invariably by the extraordinary pastries for which these nations are renowned.  We moved on to Gheorgheni.  The church was open, and dozens of Hungarian tourists had settled in to hear a lecture about the church and the Armenians of the region from the local authority, who proudly considered himself an Armenian, although the only words he knew were “bari or” (“good day”).  There in the church was a magnificent painting of Grigor Lusavorich baptizing King Trdat.  The inscriptions were in Armenian, Latin, and Hungarian.  The church and congregation clearly were more Catholic than traditionally Armenian, but they clung to their sense of being Armenian.  Their identity as distinct from Latin Catholics was strong even though their numbers were small.  Both the Hungarian and Romanian governments, as members of the European Union, officially recognized the Armenian communities as distinct and supported them financially.  For some this was a long-awaited business opportunity; for others it was the last hope for continuity and the preservation of a fading culture.

Our final stop was Armenopolis.  Besides a smaller, older church, the principal church was enormous.  The priest, Endre Szakács, was gracious and eager to have us stay with him, though we needed to move westward.  The head of the local Armenians, János Esztegar, was our guide.  Vigorous and enthusiastic, with a sharp sense of humor, he showed us the church, the library, and the archive (both of which Balint had organized and catalogued), as well as the Armenian cemetery.  Several hundred Armenian Catholics still attend the church and sing the Badarak in Armenian from a hymnal transliterated into Latin letters.  In the archive, Balint did a bit of research in the old baptismal records that had been sent from Elisabethopolis.  There he confirmed that Ferenc Szalasi, the leader of the infamous Arrow Cross, the Hungarian fascists in the 1930’s and 1940’s, was a descendent of Transylvanian Armenians.  His father had been baptized in the Elisabethopolis church.

Our journey ended but the story goes on.  Balint has become a dedicated investigator of early modern and modern Armenian history.  He organized an exhibition about the Armenians in historical Hungary (“Far Away from Mount Ararat: Armenian Culture in the Carpathian Basin”) in Budapest in 2013, and this year he mounted a joint exhibition about the Armenian Genocide (“Tragedy of the Armenians in World War I”) at the Hungarian National Library.  In May 2015, he organized a conference on the Centenary of the Armenian Genocide at Pazmany Peter University, bringing scholars from a half-dozen different countries (among them myself, Dickran Kouymjian, Yair Auron, Harutyun Marutyan, Elke Hartmann Vahe Tachjian, Yusuf Dogan Çetinkaya, Artem Ohandjanian), as well as from Hungary.  He made possible the publication and translation into Hungarian of my book on the Armenian Genocide (‘They Can Live in the Desert But Nowhere Else’:  A History of the Armenian Genocide [Princeton University Press, 2015]), and put together a special issue of the popular illustrated history magazine Rubicon on the genocide.

Thanks to the work of Balint Kovacs and his colleagues at Pazmany Peter Catholic University, the 100^th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide was commemorated in Hungary, and Hungarians can read about the tragic events that brought a new generation of Armenians to Hungary. Two Armenian communities uneasily coexist in Budapest today:  the descendants of the Transylvanian Armenians, Catholic but without knowledge of the Armenian language; and the more recent immigrants, who know the language.  As in so many other diaspora communities the two sides refuse to cooperate, accuse the other of not being authentic Armenians, and compete for the support of the state.  One of the few unifying forces, able to communicate and work with both sides, is the young scholar Balint Kovacs.

Ronald Grigor Suny is the Charles Tilly Collegiate Professor of Social and Political History at the University of Michigan, and Emeritus Professor of Political Science and History at the University of Chicago

The post The Accidental Historian: Balint Kovacs and the Transylvanian Armenian Diaspora appeared first on Armenian Weekly.

Special for the Armenian Weekly

ISTANBUL (A.W.)—On April 24, 2015, Armenians from all over the world converged in Istanbul to commemorate the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide. In the sea of people, Sevag Balıkçı’s portrait loomed overhead. Who was this young Armenian soldier killed during his military service four years ago, on April 24, 2011?

Ani and Garabet Balıkçı hold a photograph of their son Sevag (Photo: Elsa Landard)

A Century after the Genocide

On April 24, 2015, the sun rose on Istanbul just like any other day. In Kadikoÿ, in the Asian part of the city, the streets were quiet. Shops were open and people were eating breakfast outside. It seemed as though everyone had chosen the same dish: a big white plate with cucumbers, greens, tomatoes, ham, cheese, and olives, and another plate with little compartments filled with jelly, butter, Nutella, and, in the middle, a boiled egg. I grabbed a quick bite and walked to the ferry station to get to the European side of Istanbul. I took the ferry heading in the direction of Eminönü. On the boat, waiters walked around with silver trays, offering orange juice, tea, and paninis to people on board. For 2 Turkish liras—not even $1.50—we could enjoy an apple tea while watching the landscape along the Bosporus.

When I arrived in Eminönü, I could see that we had to walk through a tunnel to get to the other side of the road and into the city. I followed the crowd, past little kids asking for money or selling things. I wondered who they were; someone would later tell me that they were Syrian refugees. In the spice bazaar, I wanted to stop and admire all of the colors in those little stores. But the streets were too small and the crowd was too big. And I needed to move fast. I had to be somewhere in less than 15 minutes.

For the inhabitants of Istanbul, April 24 is a day just like any other. But it is a symbolic day for the more than 40,000 Armenians who live there. This April 24, Armenians the world over united to commemorate the Armenian Genocide Centennial. Politicians headed to Yerevan. But for many Armenians, Istanbul was the place to be. At 11 a.m., the first event of the day took place in front of the Islamic and Turkish Arts Museum. One hundred years before, on April 24, 1915, this had been the Central Prison where 250 Armenian intellectuals were rounded up before being taken to the Haydarpasa Train Station, and then sent to their deaths.

Around 300 people were present this April 24 to commemorate the memory of the intellectuals. Arkan, 28, is Turkish. He was at the demonstration for one reason: “It is important to recognize the genocide of the Armenians. My whole life, it was like a subject we couldn’t talk about. I think it is our responsibility to show some solidarity. We did it. My ancestors did it. And since the genocide is not recognized, I feel ashamed. And until it is recognized, I will be [here]… All Turks should be [here] too.”

This is a feeling shared by human rights lawyer Eren Keskin. “We are the grandchildren of the perpetrators of genocide,” she said. “Perhaps not each and every one of us comes from the lineage of the people who directly participated in the massacres…but we were born into their ethnic and religious identity. We belong to a social group that has unquestioningly benefited from the order and privileges created by the perpetrators of the genocide.”

Hovhannes lives and works in Istanbul. As an Armenian, being in front of this prison is more than symbolic. “It is where it all started. We had to be here,” he told me.

One activist read a statement at the demonstration—“What we are speaking of here is a crime lasting 100 years. A denial lasting 100 years…”—that was signed by Anadolou Kultur; the Human Rights Association; the Committee Against Racism and Discrimination; Nor Zartonk; the Platform for Confronting History; the Turabdin Assyrians Platform; and the Zan Foundation for Social, Political, and Economic Research.

Some people wore a pin or a T-shirt with the design of the forget-me-not flower, and the words “Project 2015.” Inna is 25, and she came from Ankara. “I’ve been waiting a long time to wear this badge here in Istanbul. This flower means lots of things, but the most important for us is: ‘Don’t forget me.’ We will never forget,” she told me.

Many demonstrators held up portraits of the arrested intellectuals of 1915: Daniel Varoujan, Krikor Zohrab, Hagop Terzian, Roupen Zartarian… And in the middle of these old pictures, one was more recent than the others. It bore the words: “SEVAG, unutturmayacağız,” which translates to “Sevag, we won’t forget you.” Sevag Balıkçı was a young Armenian soldier who was killed on April 24, 2011, during his military service in the Turkish Army.

On the way to the ferry, to go to the next step of the commemoration, Benoît Marquaille, Regional Council of the Ile-de-France region, expressed his commitment to the recognition of the genocide. “I came with Benjamin Abtan, president of the Anti-racist European Movement. They are doing such an amazing job. I think I am the only French politician here today because they are all in Yerevan for the commemoration. It is symbolic to be here in Istanbul. It is where everything started. It is here that everything has to be played,” he said.

After 30 minutes on the boat, we got off at the Haydarpasa Train Station. As we had witnessed in front of the museum, people stood up in front of the station holding portraits of victims of the genocide, as well as signs that read, “This building is a crime scene,” “Genocide! Compensate!” and “Genocide! Recognize!” Some also came with portraits of their ancestors or with a red flower with the names of the intellectuals who were arrested and later killed. The train station is on the Asian side of Istanbul. The intellectuals were taken there to be deported to their deaths. And still, in the middle of the crowd, Sevag’s face stared back.

A demonstrator holds a poster of Sevag’s face and the words, ‘Sevag, we won’t forget you.’ (Photo: Elsa Landard)

At the end of the day, Istiklal Street, the longest street in Istanbul near Taksim Square, was filled with protesters, still holding pictures of the intellectuals and other victims of the genocide. They shouted slogans calling for unity, marking this day as only the beginning, and vowing to continue the struggle for recognition. Demonstrations are usually forbidden in Taksim Square, but Nesrin Goksungur, who is my translator, says the police can’t do anything in front of the French Consulate. “France recognized the genocide. In front of the consulate, we are normally safe. Normally. When there is a demonstration here, usually the police let it happen for about half an hour, just to let people say what they have to say. But after, we have to scatter. If we don’t, the police could intervene, and it won’t be fun,” she explained.

Turkish and Armenian songs were heard during the evening demonstration. Between the speeches, we could hear noise coming from the streets behind. No one around me could say with certainty if the approaching noise was coming from ultranationalist protesters. In fact, earlier that day, ultranationalists had held speeches in front of the French Consulate claiming that the Turks did not commit genocide, that they defended their native land.

Yervart Danzikyan, the editor in chief of Agos, told the Armenian Weekly that black flowers had been placed in front of the newspaper’s offices that very same day. “Being an Armenian journalist and especially writing about this issue is not easy. Sometimes, we can be fearful, but if there is no hope there is no life. So we hope things are going to change,” he said.

And everywhere along Istiklal Street, we still see Sevag’s portrait.

Who Was Sevag?

I am in a cab with my translator, Nesrin. Martin, who will record the interview, and Elsa, who will photograph, are also with us. Nesrin is on the phone with Ani Balıkçı, Sevag’s mother. The driver decided to drop us off early; thankfully, we are on the right street, but not the right number. Ani tells us where to go. Walking down this street, we can see a woman, wearing black clothes, on the phone on the terrace of an apartment building. Located on a quiet street of Kadıköy, the Balıkçıs’ apartment is on the last floor of the building. Ani motions to us to come up. She welcomes us. As do her cat and her dog. Nesrin is not very comfortable since she is afraid of cats and dogs—very ironic in a city where cats are everywhere and are often cherished. Ani reassures her: “We took him in because he was crying on the street. But I don’t like the cat hair.” Ani invites us to take a seat around her living room table. She sits. Behind her, a portrait of Sevag is on the mantel. Ani takes a deep breath. She knows I want her to tell me about her son.

On April 1, 1986, Ani Balıkçı is taken to the hospital. She is 7 months and 2 weeks pregnant. She and Garabet (Garbis), her husband, think they still have time before the birth of their son. However, she delivers the child early. She names him Sevag. The name is a tribute to Roupen Sevag, the famous Armenian poet who was arrested on April 24, 1915, and later executed. It is also a tribute to Sevag’s eyes, as “sev ag” means “black eyes” in Armenian.

After 20 days of hospitalization, the steep hospital bills weigh on Ani. Her son is in stable condition, and she wants to go home. The doctors insist that she stay. The hygiene of the premature infant is important, they say. They fear for the baby. Ani is a teacher in an Armenian school. She has to be present for an event she has organized with her pupils. April 23 is a holiday in Turkey: National Sovereignty and Children’s Day. Every year on that day, Turks mark the birth of the Turkish Republic. Children are at the center of this event, and speeches are delivered in schools. Ani remembers the long weeks of preparation: “I thought I still had weeks before delivering my baby. I had prepared the celebrations with my pupils. I could not miss it.”

Even though Ani was a teacher in an Armenian school, the event was compulsory. In Istanbul, around 3,000 Armenian students attend 16 Armenian schools. Teachers work hard to keep the Armenian language and culture alive. But students must follow the Turkish school program. Armenian children live between two cultures, and the Turkish one is dominant. But Ani loves to teach and to pass on her values. On April 23, 1986, she leaves Sevag home with his grandmother. The celebration goes well as planned, but the following day, on April 24, 1986, Sevag turns purple. Ani has to call the doctor and bring Sevag to the hospital. His lips are blue, his life in danger. Doctors don’t have any hope and tell Ani she should be prepared to lose him. That same day, Sevag’s heart stops beating. “A few minutes after they told me this, we heard the sound of a baby. It was Sevag. I’ve never felt so happy in my entire life. How could I know that I would lose him the exact same day, 25 years later?” she asks.

Sevag is a good child; he smiles a lot. He is also close to his sister, Lerna, who is like a second mother to him. He is roguish and full of joy and life. He loves to smile when people point the camera at him. He is also very sociable. The Balıkçıs are a normal family. And like in other families, meals are occasions to talk about neighbors or acquaintances. The Balıkçıs sometimes talk about people they don’t appreciate. Sevag, on the other hand, eats and listens but remains disinterested in these conversations Unlike his friends, Sevag does not like to fight. He is against violence. Except once. “I’d never seen him get into a fight with his friends. But one time, he came back home with his clothes completely torn. I asked him what happened and he told me that he had a fight to defend a girl that others had offended,” Ani remembers.

One day the Balıkçıs go on vacation in Cappadocia. This area in the center of Turkey is protected as a World Heritage Site. It is a volcanic region with rock formations called “fairy chimneys” that were sculpted by the wind, and dot the landscape. The subterranean cities are everywhere. Centuries ago, men dug in the rock to protect themselves from potential invasion.

Sevag is 8 years old when he discovers this area. He has a revelation when he sees the ceramics produced in the region: When he is older, he will become a ceramist. Fascinated by the arts, he decides to study plastic arts in high school, and then ceramic art in college. When he is a teenager, he makes a sculpture. His parents are very proud and display his art in the street. The sculpture disappears, though, and no one knows where it ended up. The Balıkçıs keep a picture of Sevag with his sculpture—it is precious for them.

Sevag loves to walk. During the summer, his family goes to the Prince Islands—more specifically, the Kınalıada Island, the fourth biggest island of the Prince Islands. The family spends their vacations there, where cars and other motor vehicles are forbidden.

When he is in Istanbul, Sevag likes to walk in Kadıköy, and more particularly in Moda. “After his death, we found Sevag’s pictures. Most of them were taken in Kadıköy,” says Ani. This district is located in the Asian part of Istanbul, and has become a cultural hub. Kadıköy’s center has many car-free streets. Simit sellers are everywhere, as are fresh juice sellers. Even if they are common in Istanbul, they make Kadıköy seem like a village, unlike the European part of the city where crowds are constantly present. The center of the district welcomes artists, writers, and second-hand booksellers. Soccer-lovers go to this area when there is a game at the Fernerbahçe Stadium. The area also has a reputation of being more liberal. It is where students like to go out, where people from all over the world like to live. In Moda, the parks offer a view to the Marmara Sea. There are many playgrounds for children. Along the walkway, couples sit looking at the sea.

Ani Balıkçı looks at photographs of her son in what was intended to be his bedroom in their new home (Photo: Elsa Landard)

It is here that Sevag likes to walk with his girlfriend, Melani Kumruyan. Sevag wants to marry her. He has a ring for her. He likes this area so much that his parents decide to move to there while Sevag does his military service. They know their son will be very pleased by this. They even set up a room for him.

Sevag’s room is bright. The walls are white. One bed is set up on the right corner of the room, in front of the door. At the bed end, there is a little table made of wood and glass. There is a soccer cup, shaped like a plate. Next to the table, there is a piece of furniture, built in the shape of a glass bottle. Ani is proud: “Sevag made this.” His pictures are everywhere in the room. We can see his baptism, but also Sevag with his friends and family. Ani smiles as she looks at a picture of her dancing with Sevag. But Sevag never saw his bedroom. He died 20 days after his parents moved here.

A Deliberate Execution?

Sevag starts his military service in February 2010. His family tries to convince him to change his mind. If he signs up for another year of school, he could postpone his compulsory military service. In fact, the military service has to be completed before a person’s 38^th birthday. At that time, in 2010, military service lasted 15 months—nowadays, it ends after 12. But in Turkey, men who have not completed their military service can’t do much else: They can’t get married; they can’t have a job. Military service is written on CVs, and is, almost always, a condition for employment. Being exempted is also not a good option. In fact, those who are exempted are called “kurut” in Turkish, which means “rotten.” The “kurut” are, for example, homosexuals. Homosexuality is not forbidden in Turkey, but it is considered a psychosexual disorder. Conscientious objection is not a good idea either, because it is considered as a crime for which you can go to jail. Ani remembers when she tried to convince him: “I told him to register at a college again, but he answered ‘I am sick of it. I want to do it, to end it, and I’ll be all set for the rest of my life.”

Military service has two parts. First, there is the learning portion. Sevag is sent to Bilejik, in the west of Turkey. When he takes the uniform, the army gives him a gun. Ani remembers their first phone call: “He told me, ‘Mum, they gave me a gun. What am I going to do with a gun?’” Ani tries to reassure him, telling him that he probably won’t have to use it. Even when he was a kid, Sevag never played with guns. “He neither liked weapons, nor the army. He has been raised in an anti-military way. He never had any plastic weapons as toys.”

After some time, Sevag is sent to the Batman area, in the southeast of the country, less than 100 kilometers from the Syrian border. The area is dangerous mainly because of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) who claim the area. Kurdish identity is rejected, the Kurdish language is forbidden. The Turkish Army bombards them, and the PKK strikes back. One more time, Sevag’s family asks him to request a transfer to somewhere else. But Sevag does not want to. In Batman, he can make phone calls, which is not the case in all the bases. He asks his mother to send him colorful clothes since he dislikes the army uniform. Ani smiles as she remembers how happy Sevag was when he received his clothes. He calls often but does not tell his parents what’s really going on at the base.

Nothing makes them think that things are going wrong with the other soldiers. Pictures show Sevag on good terms with the others, even with the man who shot him. But some incidents worried the family. Sevag’s father, Garbis, has to go to the Batman base. Sevag was beaten by non-commissioned officers. One soldier said that Sevag stole from him. Garbis wants to protect his son, and tells Sevag they will pay for the missing items. Sevag is angry. Ani explains: “He was very angry. He said, ‘I don’t want us to pay for something I did not do.’” Sevag protects his parents from the truth; he just talks to his girlfriend. She tells Ani and Garbis that at Sevag’s base, there are fascists and ultra-nationalists.

The army claims Sevag’s death was an accident. But the “accident” occurred on April 24, 2011, the day of commemoration of the Armenian Genocide. Coincidence or not, the family and the Armenian community have doubts regarding the army’s explanation.

For Ani, April 24 is the day she lost her son. (Photo: Elsa Landard)

Ani asks if she can light a cigarette. I can feel that talking about her son brings forth many emotions. She tries to channel them. Tears are coming. She looks at the large glass of water in front of her, and takes a minute. She is going to tell me the day she learned about Sevag’s death.

April 24, 2011: It is a Sunday. The Balıkçıs are ready to celebrate Easter. They are not very religious but Garbis likes to go to church sometimes. This day is also the 96th commemoration of the Armenian Genocide. It is a symbolic day and a double occasion for Sevag’s father to go to church. On Easter morning, Ani calls Sevag to remind him that today, it is a holiday. Sevag asks if she can send him some pastries. Ani remembers: “I used around 7 kilograms of flour to make as much cake as I could.” She wants to please Sevag, but also the other soldiers of his unit. Sevag asks for clothes. He specifically wants white clothes. The post office is not too far from the apartment. Ani prepares the package and mails it to him. She wants her son to receive it as soon as possible. He only has around 20 more days to spend in the army before coming back home. Ani knows that very soon, he will be home and that he can eat as much cake as he wants. He will also go back to work at his father’s jewelry shop, not very far from the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul.

The day moves forward. Garbis is still at church. Ani receives a call. Her husband is calling. He seems worried. He tells her that a friend told him something was written about Sevag on Facebook. He asks Ani to look into it. Ani is not very familiar with social networks. “I wondered how I will find something about it. And I did some [online] search about the Batman area and the military [base] over there. I found a post in which I read that a soldier had been killed while joking with a friend. It was Sevag.” That is how she learned of her son’s death. The army tried to reach her but since the Balıkçıs had recently moved, they did not have time to notify the family. Ani couldn’t believe it. Sevag’s grandmother loses consciousness. She is still at the hospital—she hasn’t been the same since. During the funeral, officers from the Turkish Army are present in the Armenian church of Feriköy, in the Şişli area. Sevag’s coffin is covered with the Turkish flag. For the army, Sevag died a martyr.

Ani can’t talk anymore. Around the table, we can feel the emotion. Everyone is emotional. It was four years ago and I have the sense that it just happened. Ani has tears in her eyes. She asks if we want some coffee. We say yes without thinking about the fact that Turkish coffee is one of the strongest coffees in the world. Ani offers some chocolate to eat with the coffee. Garbis walks into the living room. He sits on the sofa and listens.

Symbol of a Community

When she learns about the death of her son, Ani is in shock. She tells the media that Sevag’s death has nothing to do with the Armenian Genocide. The soldier who killed Sevag was a friend of his. “I regret that. At that time I was in shock, and for me it was impossible to believe that he was killed intentionally. But he died on April 24.”

Melani and Sevag

A week after Sevag passed away, a delegation of officers appears at their doorstep. They say, again, that it was an accident. That Sevag and Kıvanç Ağaoğlu, the shooter, were friends. That the two young men were joking around and that it was a single shot that killed him. This is also the version of the defendant. The army offers to take the family to where the shooting happened. It pays for the trip. Soldiers welcome the Balıkçıs in Batman. After a 15-minute helicopter ride they arrive at the base and meet the soldiers who were present the day of Sevag’s death, including Ağaoğlu. When it happened, Sevag and a few other members of the unit were fixing the fence around their station. They were not supposed to be armed, except for Ağaoğlu who was supposed to protect the unit in case of an attack. The area is on alert. On this day, no officer is present, which is unusual. For Ani, the incident was planned. “There was no officer, only soldiers are witnesses. One of them was shaking when we went over there. He was still afraid.” Ani asked him why he was so fearful. He said that he saw the shooter aim at Sevag. In court, the witness gets cold feet and on the day of the trial changes his story. Sevag’s family is now convinced: Their son was murdered.

The trial begins in the Diyarbakir Military Court, in eastern Turkey, a few weeks after the murder. Ağaoğlu is investigated. The Balıkçıs’ lawyer, Cem Halavurt, through an investigation of Ağaoğlu’s presence on various social media—especially Facebook—shows that he is a supporter of the nationalist politician Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu and of the hit man Abdullah Çatlı, who was responsible for bombing the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Altfortville, France, in 1984. Ağaoğlu’s Facebook page also shows that he is a member of the Great Union Party, an extreme right-wing Islamist political party.

Another fact intrigues the family. During the first hearing on July 24, 2011, a witness declares that Ağaoğlu threatened Sevag, saying, “I’ll kill you fatty.” But the witness later changes his story.

Melani Kumruyan, Sevag’s fiancée, tells the family that Sevag told her more than once that he was being threatened. She says that a soldier told him once, “If there is a war with Armenia, you will be the first I kill.”

Because of witnesses’ unwillingness to come forward, Ağaoğlu is still a free man. The trial went on for three years; at each hearing, Ani and Garbis had to move to a different city. For Ani, this was “a way to make us give up. They wanted us to get tired of it.”

Since April 24, 2011, Sevag has become a symbol for the Armenian community. April 24 is not only the day of the commemoration of the Armenian Genocide, it is also the day a 25-year-old Armenian was killed. It is what Garbis and Ani have been commemorating for the past 4 years now.

“We don’t commemorate April 24 as the day of the genocide, but as the day we lost our son,” says Ani. Last year, the Balıkçıs went to Paris to visit family members. It was on April 24. The French Armenian community was commemorating the genocide. Ani saw many portraits of Sevag held up high by the demonstrators on the Champs-Elysées. She is touched, but asks herself why her son’s picture is in the crowd. She wonders that on every April 24. It is a fate in the middle of history. Sevag’s fate. Between the insights provided by his family and the lack of evidence that continues to obstruct justice, Sevag’s family and the rest of the world will have to wait many more months, or perhaps years, before the truth comes out.

Until then, Ani and Garbis Balıkçı will keep wearing white on every April 24—the color Sevag mentioned when he last asked for new clothes. And every April 24, Sevag’s dark eyes will stare back at them from the crowd of demonstrators. Until justice is done.

The post Remembering Sevag Balıkçı on April 24 in Istanbul appeared first on Armenian Weekly.

Special for the Armenian Weekly 

Dolma. I was not expecting that. Nearly 80 percent of the restaurants listed in Trip Advisor in Venice are categorized as Italian. After gobbling pizza and pasta ad infinitum, the last thing I was expecting to see being advertised at the restaurant adjacent to my hotel was homemade dolma.

Bogos Yaghoubian

Dolma advertised in a restaurant window in Venice

I poked my head into the restaurant. I stared at the bartender. I knew immediately. “Parev dzez,” I offered. A smile grew on his face. I had just met Bogos Yaghoubian, Venetian resident, originally from Iran. He had ended up in Venice as a student at the Armenian College. After school, he settled in this former city-state. Once a month, Bogos would cook up a fresh batch of dolma as a special at the Italian restaurant.

After learning about Bogos’s background, I followed the map on a 30-minute walk to the Moorat-Raphael College of Venice, which Bogos attended upon arriving in Venice. The college rests on one of Venice’s many canals. The stately structure was built in Baroque style that dates to 1690. The college was funded by two Armenians from India in 1836 and is currently closed.

The Moorat-Raphael College of Venice

The Moorat-Raphael College of Venice

A luxury leather works store named Serapian

Of course, with some additional wanderings I discovered two additional Armenian businesses. A luxury leather works store named Serapian. And in the heart of St. Mark’s Square, a jeweler and watchmaker, Tokatzian.

Armenians started arriving in Italy as early as the 6^th century, but Armenian communities began to take shape in the 12^th and 13^th century in Venice. Venice was a powerful city-state that traded throughout the Mediterranean Sea. One of its trading partners was the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia. Treaties were signed that allowed for Armenians to settle and build businesses in Venice.

In the Armenian community, Venice is best known as home of San Lazzaro degli Armeni. The Venetian Senate ceded this small island in 1717 to allow for the creation of an Armenian monastery that is still in use today. Mkhitar Sebastatsi of Anatolia founded the Mekhitarist Order (named in his honor at his death) in 1701. The order was dedicated to raising the educational and spiritual levels of Armenians. Escaping from persecution in the Ottoman Empire, he and his order had made their way to Venice and established the monastery.

Approaching the island

During my recent stay in Venice, I took time to visit this square-shaped island. A quick and efficient vaporetto (water taxi) ride from San Marco brought me to the pier of San Lazzaro. I immediately recognized I was on Armenian terra firma. A blue sailboat stood at attention, appropriately named Armenia with the Armenian cross displayed on the bow. The sign that greeted me on the pier was written in the Armenian alphabet.

The pier of San Lazzaro

My tour started promptly with a multilingual monk who hailed from Syria. And over the next 90 minutes I became acquainted with San Lazzaro degli Armeni. What originally began as a leper colony during the Middle Ages has blossomed into a center of Armenian learning and scholarship. “For more than two centuries this island has been an Armenian oasis transplanted to the Venetian lagoon” wrote the New York Times in 1919. Today, more than 30 residents make their home here, including monks, seminarians, and students.

The library has the third largest collection of Armenian manuscripts numbering 3,000-4,000

The monastery has a vast library that was first built in 1740. The library contains more than 150,000 books and periodicals. And it has the third largest collection of Armenian manuscripts numbering 3,000-4,000. The largest collections can be found at the Matenadaran in Yerevan and the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem. The tour was brought to the library to admire some of these ancient works. A publishing house was established in 1789 on the island. In fact, the printing press located here is the oldest continuously operating publishing house in the Armenian world.

The visit came to an abrupt end. I only had moments to catch the last boat to Venice. An Armenian oasis in Venice.

San Lazzaro degli Armeni

The library

The post Visiting Armenian Venice appeared first on Armenian Weekly.

The Monastery of St. Magar, or Magaravank as it is better known to Armenians, is situated high in the Kyrenia Range of North (Turkish-occupied) Cyprus. The annual pilgrimage to the monastery was suspended in 1974 when the island was invaded by Turkey, and the north of the island cut off from the south.

Magaravank in the 1940s (Photo by kind permission of Mrs. Marie Nishanian)

Magaravank, where Nicosia Armenians retreated in the heat of the summer, for idyllic picnics and long summer vacations en famille, and in groups from schools, holds a very dear, not to say sacred, place in the memories of many Armenians who lived in Cyprus before the 1974 invasion. It is remembered with a nostalgia and fondness verging on adoration.

For more than 35 years this important spiritual site for the Armenians of Cyprus, and indeed of Cilicia, remained inaccessible to them, and they were unable to maintain the monastery buildings. However, thanks to the efforts of the Armenian Prelature of Cyprus, Vartkes Mahdessian (representative of the Armenian community in the Cyprus House of Representatives), and the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP), the annual pilgrimage was revived in 2007.

This year, on May 10, I made my first pilgrimage to Magaravank, which in my imagination had taken on mythical proportions due to the stories I had heard about it over the years. Some 40 of us, including Vartkes Mahdessian and Der Momig Habeshian (pastor of Nicosia), drove up in two minibuses. The way is narrow and steep, and not suitable for large coaches. We crossed at the check-point from the South (Greek) to the North (Turkish). The Turkish border guards checked our passports and a U.N. escort arrived to follow us up to the monastery.

The view from Magaravank across the Mediterranean and far into Turkey – May 2015

At first the way is through the suburbs of North Nicosia, much of it familiar to my fellow pilgrims many of whom had lived there until the invasion. “Look at that, another church turned into a mosque!” was a comment I heard a few times. “Isn’t that where your uncle/aunt/cousin lived?” was another. Soon, we were in the plains of the Mesaoria, once known as the bread basket of Cyprus and in antiquity, that of Egypt. A flat and fertile plain separated from the sea by the Pentadaktylos Mountains in the North and the Troodos Mountains in the South. The corn had been gathered in and the fields were neat and tidy, with just enough green, from olives and carobs, to make it interesting. Soon we started our climb towards Halevga (Turkish Alevkayasi) right beneath the ‘five fingers’ of the Pentadaktylos. I was dismayed to see that this beautiful slope has been scarred by huge quarries to provide materials for the unrelenting building work which is going on in the North of the island.

We drove through pine and conifer woods, up and around steep bends, to finally arrive at the entrance of the grounds of the monastery. Soldiers opened the barriers to let us through. One gets glimpses of the sea from here through the trees and the wild rhododendrons and rose bushes. Finally, we arrived and were told that we had one hour to say prayers and complete our visit.

We walked down steep steps to enter the monastery, with its courtyards, guest houses, fountain, chapel, and bell tower all in ruins, overgrown with cowslips and dog roses. The air was fragrant with pine, wild basil, wild sage, and marjoram. The beautiful old tiles on the floors were broken; possibly not one roof tile remains in place. We hurried into the chapel to hear Der Momig’s prayers and sermon, to sing “Our Father” and “Giligia,” and to light our candles.

Restored precincts, Sourp Asdvadzadzin Church – May 2015

Situated about 500 meters above sea level, the quiet and ruined monastery sits in one of the best positions in Cyprus. Nothing had prepared me for the sleeping beauty that this place has become. The building is narrower at the valley head and broadens as the valley widens. The view is stupendous, all the way across the Mediterranean to the coastline of Turkey and beyond to the Taurus Mountains. It made me catch my breath.

There have been holy people at Magaravank since the 4th century A.D. when St. Magar (or Makarios), a hermit, took up residence in one of the caves in the mountainside. Monks arrived to settle there, and the present monastery dates from around 1000 A.D. The Armenians took over in 1425, or possibly earlier. The main occupation of the Armenian monks was copying old manuscripts and writing histories, works that began under the Lusignans, during their tenure of the island. Happily the ancient manuscripts were taken to the Armenian Church in Nicosia, and to the Catholicossate of Cilicia at Antelias, Lebanon, some time ago, and have not been lost. The property, which is vast, comprising some 10,000 donums (about 5,000 acres) of fertile land, still belongs to the Armenian Prelature of Cyprus, at least nominally.

No monks have resided at Magaravank since the 1800’s, but even so, it has been considered an important religious center, serving as a resting post for pilgrims on their way to and from Jerusalem. The monastery served as a place of safety for the Catholicosate of Cilicia, when it had to leave its ancient Seat at Sis (present-day Turkey) in 1918, until it moved to its new home at Antelias. It is of note that Abbot Mekhitar of Sebastia rested at Magaravank before going on to establish the Mekhitarist Order at St. Lazarus in Venice.

Very soon, our hour was up and we were encouraged by the Turkish soldiers to say goodbye to this lovely, broken place for one more year, and return to our present lives. On the drive down the mountain, it felt as if I were waking from a deep and pleasant dream into a harsher reality.

My second pilgrimage was to the Armenian Church of Sourp Asdvadzadzin on Victoria Street, North (Turkish) Nicosia. For many years since the 1974 invasion, this sweet church and its precincts, which housed the Armenian Prelature and schools, were left in ruins and vandalized to within an inch of existence. Happily it has recently been restored by UNDP-ACT with the sponsorship of USAID, winning a 2015 Europa Nostra Award.

Restored interior, taken from the gallery, Sourp Advadzadzin Church – May 2015

I remember visiting the church in 2004 and coming away saddened and repelled by the state of it: The altar vandalized and daubed with unpleasant graffiti, littered with broken bottles and human excrement. The roof broken. The gallery broken. The windows broken. Outside, the once clean and airy buildings were occupied by recently arrived mainland Turks.

Again with the help of Vartkes Mahdessian, we were able to gain access to this now spick and span compound that houses a course of the “Eastern Mediterranean University.” My fellow pilgrims this time, who graciously allowed me to tag along, were all ex-Melikian-Ouzounian Varjaran pupils—that is to say, those who had been to kindergarten and primary school in the cathedral precinct in the 1950’s.

This church is unusual in that it was not built by Armenians, but by Franks as a convent for Carthusian nuns around 1192. A number of religious orders resided there until the great earthquake of 1303, which completely destroyed the convent. It was rebuilt in the Gothic manner in 1308 and became known as the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Tyre, or Notre Dame de Tortosa, after those Orders.

Sometime around 1491, after yet another big earthquake, the cathedral became Armenian. The Ottoman conquest of Nicosia in 1570 saw it used as a salt store, before it was returned to the Armenians by a Firman in 1571, serving the Armenian community until the Cyprus troubles of 1964.

During the deportations of Armenians from Turkey in 1915-23, the cathedral served as a sort of refugee center, with some families taking up temporary residence under its arches for lack of other accommodations. Later a monument was built to the Armenian Genocide. The precincts were used as barracks for the Turkish Cypriot militia and Turkish soldiers until an earthquake in 1998, when they were abandoned by the military.

Magaravank – May 2015

Today it is a lovely space—an oasis among the dilapidated buildings of North Nicosia, clean and cool. We were let in by a Turkish soldier who stayed with us the entire time and was rather fascinated to hear the stories and reminiscences of the former Melikians, many of whom spoke fluent Turkish, having lived in what was the Armenian Quarter in the mainly Turkish area of Nicosia. The school buildings are pristine, the fountain clean, the Grecian column of the Genocide Monument still in its place, albeit broken and without its plaque or cross. It is a pity that the Melikian Mansion, which is believed to be the original monastery building and was home to the Armenian Prelature until the late 18th century, is completely derelict and in danger of falling down.

On Sun., May 11, 2013, the first Holy Liturgy since 1964 was heard, and the church re-consecrated. On Sun., Nov. 30, 2014, the new Catholicossal Vicar, His Eminence Archbishop Nareg, presided over the second Holy Liturgy. Mass is now celebrated at the Armenian Church of Sourp Asdvadzadzin once every three months. Should you find yourself in Nicosia on one of those days, be sure to go and be part of the history of this important building.

R.P. Sevadjian is the author of In the Shadow of the Sultan, a historical coming of age novel set during the Hamidian Massacres of 1896. Her book is available from amazon.co.uk.

The post Two Pilgrimages in Cyprus appeared first on Armenian Weekly.

Special for the Armenian Weekly 

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on July 14 released a comprehensive report on the inadequate treatment provided to terminally ill cancer patients in Armenia, where palliative care, which “seeks…to prevent suffering and improve quality of life,” remains largely unavailable. The treatment provided in Armenia diverges greatly from the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO), leaving thousands of cancer patients without the proper care. Around 8,000 people die from cancer each year in Armenia, and more than 50 percent of cancer patients receive their diagnoses at a late stage. According to the 86-page report, titled, “‘All I Can Do Is Cry’: Cancer and the Struggle for Palliative Care in Armenia,” “Almost half of Armenia’s cancer patients are at stage 3 or 4 of the disease when they receive their initial diagnosis.” They are left in severe pain, which remains untreated or undertreated for the remainder of their lives. In recent years, Armenia has taken steps to develop palliative care; however, much more remains to be done.

On July 14, HRW released a comprehensive report on the inadequate treatment provided to terminally ill cancer patients in Armenia, where palliative care, which ‘seeks…to prevent suffering and improve quality of life,’ remains largely unavailable.

Morphine is used to treat chronic pain in cancer patients, but in Armenia, oral morphine is not a registered medication. The WHO designates morphine as an essential medication that should be made available to all patients who need it; however, morphine is difficult to obtain in Armenia. The standard for palliative care there deviates from the principles and guidelines set by the WHO. The WHO estimates that 80 percent of people with cancer develop moderate to severe pain “and will require morphine for an average period of 90 days before death.” Yet, from 2010-12, Armenia only consumed enough morphine to adequately treat moderate to severe pain in about 3 percent of those who needed such treatment. The HRW traveled to Yerevan and many villages in Armenia to conduct its study on the need for palliative care.

According to the WHO, medication should be given by mouth whenever possible. However, in Armenia, oral morphine remains unavailable. Furthermore, doctors are only able to administer morphine through intramuscular injections. This method can be dangerous for patients who are frail and who have little muscle tissue, and the medication from an injection only lasts up to four hours. Standard care in Armenia is to provide only one to two shots per day, leaving patients in pain for the majority of the day.

One of the WHO’s principles for cancer pain treatment states that medication should be taken “by the clock.” Even when morphine is prescribed in Armenia, it is at painfully conservative doses; there is an unofficial rule that doctors only prescribe one to two ampoules of morphine for a patient. Doctors interviewed by the HRW explained that they will only increase the prescription from one ampoule to two ampoules after two weeks, even if it was clear from the beginning that one was not sufficient.

Sixty one-year-old Lyudmila was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007 and developed pain starting in 2010. When she was interviewed 2 years after first developing chronic cancer pain in 2012, she was still suffering from severe pain 22 hours of the day. “During the day I endure pain. What else can I do? I have a prescription only for one ampoule. I take it the way it’s prescribed,” she told HRW.

The WHO’s guidelines explain how the prescription for pain medication should be handled. Doctors should operate “by the ladder”: When a non-opioid is not sufficient in strength, an opioid for mild to moderate pain should be prescribed, in addition. If the non-opioid in combination with the stronger medication fail to relieve the pain, an even stronger opioid should be prescribed in place of the other medication.

“We start with one ampoule of morphine and increase later if need be,” one doctor told HRW. “In about 2 weeks or 20 days we usually increase the dosage. This might not be very humane, but that’s how it is. We know that 1 ampoule is enough for 4 to 6 hours, but we always start with 1 ampoule and give other painkillers too. I might not agree with it, but that’s how it is.”

Other doctors justified their actions by explaining that the pain not alleviated by the one ampoule of morphine could be offset with other medications. “One ampoule is not enough, we know. But we combine opioids with other analgesics, like Ketonal, Diclofenac, and others,” said one physician. These other medications, however, are weaker and less effective, sometimes still leaving patients in agonizing pain.

Medication should be administered at regular intervals. According to the WHO, “Most, if not all, pain due to cancer could be relieved if we implemented existing medical knowledge and treatments.” The WHO’s guideline emphasizes that “the use of morphine should be dictated by the intensity of pain, not by life expectancy”; however, in Armenia, morphine is only prescribed to cancer patients within the last month of their illness. As a result, many cancer patients suffer severe chronic pain for weeks, months, or years before they are prescribed the correct medication.

The HRW found that “Armenia’s drug regulations are at the heart of problems with availability and accessibility of palliative care and pain management.” The complex process of prescribing opioids is monitored closely by the police and requires written monthly reports from doctors that include the patient’s name, address, ID number, diagnosis, prescribed dosage, and information on whoever procures the prescription. Pharmacies also give similar reports. This practice violates patients’ right to privacy and confidentiality, which is an essential element of the right to health. Furthermore, the HRW found that police often survey establishments that fill opioid prescriptions and that, according to one pharmacy employee, “police regularly check prescriptions the pharmacy fills.”

Police involvement in the prescription process “generates a sense of trepidation among oncologists and pharmacists. As one former Health Ministry official explained, ‘one of the main problems in our system is that doctors are afraid to prescribe opioids or prescribe [inappropriately] low dosages.’”

Many pharmacies avoid seeking licenses to fill prescriptions for morphine; only a few clinics with pharmacies and one pharmacy in Yerevan have such a license. It is expensive to implement security measures, and the HRW observes that “Scrutiny by police and potential criminal liability may further serve to dissuade pharmacies and clinics from seeking licenses.” One health care personnel who deals with opioids told HRW, “[Y]ou lose one ampoule and prison is waiting for you…”

Regarding the prescription procedure in Armenia, medical personnel explained that “sometimes the procedures are so burdensome and take such a long time that by the time it is all cleared there is no need for it anymore. Needs are great for pain medications like opioids, but the amount of paper-pushing associated with it is not often worth it.”

Several doctors in addition to the oncologist, including the polyclinic’s chief, chief nurse, general practitioner, and at times others, are required to sign off on the decision to prescribe morphine. The HRW says that oncologists “must record each opioid prescription transaction in several different registries, including one that must be kept in a fireproof safe.”

The process for prescribing opioids is long and complicated, and “patients sometimes die in agonizing pain before opioids are prescribed.” The HRW interviewed Anahit Garibyan, whose father, Sergey, died in September 2012, a month after he was diagnosed with a stage four lung tumor. “My father was in agonizing pain,” she said. “He kept screaming for six or eight hours before he died.” She added that when she went to see the oncologist, “he told me that it was not that easy to prescribe opioids, and that a standing commission was to visit [my father] first. When I asked him to initiate the process, he told me that a tramadol injection should be prescribed first, which I got, but it did not help much, and [my father] died in pain.”

Armenia’s restrictive regulation and excessive police involvement “goes against WHO guidance on nationally controlled substance policies, which says that ‘when balancing drug control legislation and policies, it is wise to leave medical decisions up to those who are knowledgeable on medical issues.’”

Cancer patients (or their relatives) must at times travel far to secure their prescription. There are only a select few locations where patients can acquire morphine, and empty ampoules are required to refill the prescription. Oncologists will only prescribe opioids to last for 24 or 48 hours at a time; the prescription sometimes has to be refilled every day.

Doctors are only able to prescribe medication to a patient whose cancer diagnosis has been confirmed through a biopsy. In order to get the diagnosis confirmed, a patient must travel to one of three medical centers. If patients are too weak or cannot afford to travel, they will not be registered as cancer patients and therefore will be denied access to the proper medication. According to HRW, “Of 5,581 patients who died of cancer in 2013, 1,274 were diagnosed post-mortem, according to the data provided by the National Oncology Center. None of these people received a formal confirmed diagnosis yet a large percentage of them are likely to have had serious pain.”

Only about eight percent of cancer patients with chronic pain have access to the appropriate pain medication. Some oncologists interviewed by the HRW explained that they were fearful of their patients becoming drug-dependent, hence their reluctance to prescribe morphine. The WHO maintains that these fears are scientifically unfounded, and yet oncologists continue to prescribe weaker pills instead of morphine even with the consequence of severe pain for their patients.

In 2014, the World Health Assembly declared the provision of palliative care an “ethical responsibility of health systems.” The WHO recommends that all countries establish a standard for palliative care. In 2009, Armenia recognized palliative care as a medical service; however, oncologists still follow the 1994 directive and not the 2002 law.

Recommendations

The HRW issued a number of recommendations, one of which encourages Armenia to take steps that will lead to the availability of oral painkillers. The HRW recommends that oral opioids be registered to allow physicians—not only oncologists—to prescribe them. The HRW also advocates the abolition of restrictions associated with procuring opioids for late-stage cancer patients, including the requirement for biopsy-confirmed cancer.

The HRW also advises Armenia to cease excessive police involvement in the prescription process, simplify record-keeping, and eliminate the need for multiple doctors’ signatures on a prescription form. Patients should be allowed to collect a supply of opioids lasting 14 days. The HRW urges Armenia to establish a wide range of palliative care as well as a home-based palliative care system.

In developing a national strategy action plan, the HRW recommends reforms that will introduce palliative care as a subject of teaching in medical schools and will inform medical staff on the proper administration. The HRW proposes that Armenia appeal to the World Health Assembly for assistance. The HRW also calls upon several international organizations, including the WHO, the European Union, the Council of Europe, and the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), to assist Armenia in developing its palliative care system.

I wish to thank Vural Genç, Cihangir Gündoğdu, George Leylegian, Khatchig Mouradian, and the staff at the Ottoman archives (Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi). Each was instrumental in assisting me in gathering and transcribing the data. In addition, I wish to thank Margaret Papazian for her encouragement as well as for bringing to light new information on my family I never imagined existed. All errors are, of course, my own.

A few months ago, I was visiting my parents in Rhode Island when my mother’s cousin Margaret Papazian called from New Jersey. I happened to pick up the phone and, as my mother had stepped out, we chatted a bit. The conversation touched on my numerous travels in Western Armenia and other research interests.

Sakrat, in the district of Palu, was a small village with an Armenian population of 650 in 75 households on the eve of the genocide. Margaret’s family was from the same village as my grandfather. In truth, we were not even sure how we were related other than my great-grandmother, Khachkatoun Yazujian, shared the same surname as Margaret’s ancestors from Sakrat.

Aghjayan (in blue) with his aunt and an Armenian Genocide survivor in Sakrat in 1996.

Eventually, our conversation came around to the family roots. In a previous article, I had detailed finding my grandfather’s family in the 1840 Ottoman census of Sakrat and I mentioned to Margaret that, if she knew family members alive in 1840, I could check the census.

I was amazed to learn from Margaret that a native of the village of Sakrat, Khachig Yazujian, had written a book about the village and the Yazujian clan. Khachig was the brother of Margaret’s grandfather. Hishadagaran was published in 1951 by Asbarez Press and it included details on the Yazujian family tree dating back to the early 19^th century.

Khachig was born in 1878 in Sakrat, the youngest of five children born to Ohan and Gulvart Yazujian. The book details a fascinating life and the experiences of one family in one small village throughout the catastrophes that befell the Armenian people over a 30-year period. Khachig’s father and grandfather were killed during the 1894-96 massacres, and three of his siblings and countless other relatives were killed during the genocide. Further tragedy struck when he lost both of his sons in battle during World War II. The book was dedicated to the memory of his sons, Hovhannes and Garabed (Garo).

As Margaret read off the names of those mentioned in the book, I was quickly checking ancestry.com and found that someone had posted a portion of the family tree from the book.

The story begins with Nerses, who in the late 18^th century migrates from Kharpert to Sakrat. After establishing himself in farming, three sons are born to Nerses and his wife. The first born son, Antreas, remains in the village and marries. The second son, Asadour, goes to work in Constantinople and, while there, learns to read and write. He returns to Sakrat an educated man and marries. The youngest son, Hairabed, also travels to Constantinople in search of work, but leads a much more colorful, if unsavory, life.

The Ottoman census does not contain last names per se, most often the family identifier is simply the name of the father. Thus, it can be challenging to identify a family definitively. In this case, though, only 23 Armenian families were recorded in Sakrat in the 1840 (1256) census. I had already identified one family as the Der Manouelian family of priests. Of the remaining 22 families, only one contained the same names as recorded in Khachig’s book—voila, the Yazujians!

The household (the 9^th listed) was recorded as follows; note that only males were included:

Nerses, son of Ohan, middle income, tall height, white beard, farmer, age 68

Astour, son of Nerses, middle income, tall height, black mustache, age 24

Hairabed, son of Nerses, age 9

Ohan, grandson of Nerses, son of Astour, age 4

Simo, brother of Nerses, middle income, medium height, white beard, age 67

Abryaz, son of Simo, middle income, tall height, black mustache, age 36, away in Constantinople

The census is consistent with Khachig’s book on a number of points. The name of the patriarch of the family was Nerses and he had sons named Astour (Asadour) and Hairabed. In addition, Asadour had a son named Ohan.

However, Khachig had not mentioned Simo (Simon), brother of Nerses. Nor did Khachig mention a person named Abryaz, an unusual spelling, In addition, Antreas, the third son of Nerses, is missing from the census. I have records from one other census for Palu from 1847 (1263).

The 1847 census contains much less detail; only the name of the person and the guarantor of his tax obligation are listed. By this time both Simon and Nerses had passed away. Asadour was now the head of the household.

Even though the 1847 census does not contain the same level of detail as the 1840 census, it is still apparent that Abryaz was a misspelling of Antreas. Yet, Khachig states that Antreas was a son of Nerses. The 1847 census references Antreas both as a son of Simon and a brother to Hairabed. My inclination is to consider Antreas as the son of Simon. Since Antreas left no offspring, after the death of his father he was possibly treated as an elder brother to Hairabed and Asadour. However, since Antreas was away in Constantinople during the census taking in 1840, it could be that the relationship was recorded in error by the census taker along with the spelling of the name.

There is also the matter of dating the census. Even though the census book was dated 1840, it is most likely not the date the information was gathered. If we are to take the dates in Khachig’s book literally, then we have some inconsistencies to address. Khachig states that his father, Ohan, was born in 1838, which means he would have been only 2 years old in 1840 (not 4 years old as recorded in the census). Khachig also states that the patriarch of the family, Nerses, passed away in 1837. Yet, Nerses was recorded as still alive in the 1840 census.

Finally, Hairabed was much younger in the census than indicated by Khachig. My first thought was that his age was possibly recorded incorrectly in the census. However, Hairabed was not given a tax classification that is consistent with his recorded age. Thus, I am apt to retain the age as recorded in the census.

It is impossible to reconcile all of the inconsistencies in dates. However, I think it reasonable to assume that the 1840 census was recorded sometime between 1836 and 1838 and probably on the later side of that time period. Asadour was said to have married in 1833 and if Ohan was born soon thereafter, then he would have been 4 years old in 1838.

In short, I have been able to identify another part of my family as recorded in the Ottoman records. A crude family tree can be written as follows with year of approximate birth:

1 Ohan (b. prior to 1750)

2 Nerses (b. 1770)

3 Asadour (b. 1814)

4 Ohan (b. 1834)

5 Nerses (b. 1860)

5 Manoug (b. 1863)

5 Garabed (b. 1866)

5 Khachkatoun (b. 1875)

5 Khachig (b. 1878)

3 Hairabed (b. 1829)

4 Simon

5 Khachkatoun

4 Avedis

2 Simon (b.1771)

3 Antreas (b. 1802)

I do not have the complete tree for Hairabed’s branch of the family, but I am descended from his son Simon.

Khachig, in his book, related another interesting story. The family had been known as Nersesian, clearly just an indication that the patriarch had been Nerses. But sometime after Asadour had returned from Constantinople, the village had grown to 15 households and the government wanted to have a representative there. Asadour was chosen because of his ability to read and write. Yazuji is a scribe or clerk, and from then on the family was known as Yazujian.

As I indicated, the 1840 census shows 23 households. Oral history often contains facts masked by vague traditions confused over time. However, I cannot help but wonder if it was for the purpose of census taking that the government needed a scribe or representative in the village.

With equal parts luck and tenaciousness, I have been fortunate to be able to recreate so much of my family’s history. I consider the rupture with one’s past to be one of the least talked about components of the crime of genocide. I suppose that is why I have been so unwilling to relinquish mine.

A comprehensive global competitiveness study has been conducted by the World Economic Forum utilizing various indicators to rank 144 countries in different areas, including “Health and Primary Education,” “Technological Readiness,” and “Innovation.” This report is a short summary of the findings of that comprehensive study with an emphasis on Armenia and its neighboring countries. The study was done at a time when the global economy seems to have finally left behind the worst and longest-lasting financial and economic crisis of the past 80 years.

Much of the growth in recent years has occurred because of the extraordinary and bold monetary policies in such countries as the United States, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Overall, growth prospects in advanced economies are better than they have been in recent years, albeit very unevenly distributed. The recovery in the United States seems to be well grounded with strong output and employment figures. In Europe the picture is more mixed, with many countries now recording stronger growth, although some continue to suffer from weak growth, high unemployment, and financial fragmentation.

Competitiveness has been defined as the set of institutions, policies, and factors that determine the level of productivity of a country. The level of productivity, in turn, sets the level of prosperity that can be reached by an economy. The productivity level also determines the rates of return obtained by investments in an economy, which in turn are the fundamental drivers of its growth rates. In other words, a more competitive economy is one that is likely to grow faster over time.

The components of determining competitiveness were grouped into the following 12 main areas by the World Economic Forum study.

Institutions: The institutional environment is determined by the legal and administrative frameworks within which individuals, firms, and governments interact to generate wealth. The importance of a sound and fair institutional environment has become all the more apparent during the recent economic and financial crisis, and is especially crucial for further solidifying the fragile recovery.

Infrastructure: Extensive and efficient infrastructure is important for ensuring the effective functioning of an economy. Well-developed infrastructure reduces the effect of distance between regions by integrating the national market and connecting it at low cost to markets in other countries and regions.

Macroeconomic Environment: The stability of economic conditions are important for business, and are therefore crucial for the overall competitiveness of a country. An economy cannot grow in a sustainable manner unless the macroeconomic environment is stable.

Health and Primary Education: A healthy workforce is vital to a country’s competitiveness and productivity. Basic education increases the efficiency of each individual worker.

Higher Education and Training: Quality higher education and training is crucial for economies that want to move up the value chain, beyond simple production processes and products.

Goods Market Efficiency: Countries with efficient goods markets are well positioned to produce the right mix of products and services given their particular supply and demand conditions, as well as to ensure that these goods can be most effectively traded in the economy.

Labor Market Efficiency: The efficiency and flexibility of the labor market are critical for ensuring that workers are allocated to their most effective use in the economy and provided with incentives to give their best effort in their jobs.

Financial Market Development: An efficient financial sector allocates the resources saved by a nation’s citizens, as well as those entering the economy from abroad, to their most productive uses.

Technological Readiness: In today’s globalized world, technology is increasingly essential for firms to compete and prosper.

Market Size: The size of the market affects productivity since large markets allow firms to exploit economies of scale.

Business Sophistication: There is no doubt that sophisticated business practices are conducive to higher efficiency in the production of goods and services.

Innovation: Innovation can emerge from new technological and non-technological knowledge. Although less-advanced countries can still improve their productivity by adopting existing technologies or making incremental improvements in other areas, for those that have reached the innovation stage of development this is no longer sufficient for increasing productivity. Firms in these countries must design and develop cutting-edge products and processes to maintain a competitive edge and move toward even higher value-added activities.

While all of the indicators described above are required for all economies, they will affect different economies in different ways. The best way for Armenia to improve its competitiveness is not the same as for France. This is because Armenia is considered a Stage 2 development country. In a Stage 2 economy, as a country becomes more competitive, productivity will increase and wages will rise with advancing development. Countries will then move into the efficiency-driven stage of development, when they must begin to develop more efficient production processes and increase product quality. At this point, competitiveness is increasingly driven by higher education and training, efficient goods markets, well-functioning labor markets, developed financial markets, the ability to harness the benefits of existing technologies, and a large domestic or foreign market.

 Table 1: 2015 Global Competitiveness Overall Rankings

The Global Competitiveness Index has been used as an important tool by policymakers in many countries over the years, and is widely recognized as one of the key assessments of global competitiveness. Table 1 provides the rankings of Armenia, the Russian Federation, and Armenia’s neighbors, along with names of the top six ranked countries.

Normally, the economic size of any country has a direct relationship with different social and justice issues. Therefore, one needs to compare the Armenian economy to other countries. The United States, with a gross domestic product (GDP) of $16,800 billion (2013), is the largest economy in the world; it is followed by China with $9,181 billion, and Japan with $4,900 billion. Armenia’s GDP in 2013 was only $10.5 billion, which makes it 120^th country among 144 countries.

GDP per capita is also an important indicator. In 2013, the GDP of Luxembourg, Norway, and Qatar was $100,000. The U.S. was 9^th with $53,100. In comparison, Armenia’s GDP per capita was just $3,200, ranking 100^th among 144 countries. Table 2 shows the GDP of Armenia and its neighbors.

In today’s global market economy, different countries compete for providing services and goods to other countries and multinational corporations. The competitiveness of each country is measured by indicators in 12 different areas, as explained above. Institutions are the first indicator that needs to be considered. Table 3 shows where Armenia stands in comparison to its neighbors as well as with the U.S. and Russia for different institutional indicators.

Table 2: Gross Domestic Products

Table 3: Rankings of Institutional Indicators

List of Institutional Indicators

1. Property rights: How strong is the protection of property rights, including financial assets?
2. Intellectual property protection: How strong is the protection of intellectual property, including anti-counterfeiting measures?
3. Diversion of public funds: How common is diversion of public funds to companies, individuals, or groups due to corruption?
4. Public trust in politicians: How are the ethical standards of politicians?
5. Irregular payments and bribes: How common is it for firms to make undocumented additional payments or bribes?
6. Judicial independence: To what extent is the judiciary independent from influences of members of government, citizens, or firms?
7. Favoritism in decisions of government officials: To what extent do government officials show favoritism to well-connected firms and individuals?
8. Wastefulness of government spending: How efficiently does the government spend public revenue?
9. Burden of government regulation: How burdensome is it for businesses to comply with governmental administrative requirements?
10. Efficiency of legal framework in settling disputes: How efficient is the legal framework for private businesses in settling disputes?
11. Transparency of government policymaking: How easy is it for businesses to obtain information about changes in government policies and regulations affecting their activities?
12. Organized crime: To what extent does organized crime impose costs on businesses?
13. Reliability of police services: To what extent can police services be relied upon to enforce law and order?
14. Ethical behavior of firms: How is the corporate ethical behavior in interactions with public officials, politicians, and other firms?
15. Strength of investor protection

The results show that the Russian Federation is the worst ranking among the seven countries shown, with Iran being a close second. Between Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan, it seems Georgia has the best rankings and Armenia the worst. Azerbaijan’s ranking of 46 for public trust in politicians is better than the U.S.’s ranking of 48. This may not be right based on the many published incidents of abuse of power in Azerbaijan. Armenia’s worst ranking is in relation to judiciary independence.

Numerous indicators are used to determine the overall rankings of each country. Table 4 provides Armenia’s ranking in selected areas. The results indicate that brain drain is a major issue; as Armenia’s economy is not capable of retaining and utilizing talents, the main effect is mass emigration.

Table 4: Armenia’s Rankings in Different Areas

The following chart shows the most problematic factors for doing business in Armenia. Clearly corruption, financing, and tax regulations are hindering business in Armenia.

Special for the Armenian Weekly

Every Armenian family has the same story: persecution, fear, robbery, rape, murder … genocide … and the unknown. They say there can never be closure without the ability to mourn over the grave of a loved one. The denial of the Armenian Genocide by the Turkish government surely hinders closure, but for the survivors, never knowing what had happened to those left behind or lost during the death marches into the Syrian desert remained an equally harmful open wound.

My maternal grandmother had four sisters. One rescued my grandmother from the six years she had been living as a slave and the two of them ultimately found their way to the United States. Another sister starved to death in an orphanage. The two remaining sisters, one 17 and one an infant, were sent to the Syrian desert with their mother, and none were ever heard from again.

Nayiri Arzoumanian, Sarah Aghjayan, and the author in Burunkishla, May 2013 (Photo: Khatchig Mouradian)

Each time I travel to Western Armenia, I meet hidden Armenians—“remnants of the sword”—and many are searching for relatives thought to have escaped to the United States or elsewhere. Unfortunately, most often all that is known is a name: Garabed, Mariam, etc. Much too vague to allow for any connection to be made, even in the rare case where a village of origin is known. Most don’t even know the village, as their mother or grandmother was plucked from the caravans and only knew they were from Kharpert or Palu or some other region.

A year and a half ago, I joined the Armenian DNA Project through Family Tree DNA. While I was interested in my ancient DNA and the migration of man out of Africa, what really motivated me was the hope of connecting with descendants thought murdered during the genocide. Possibly descendants of the sisters my grandmother never heard from after they were sent to the desert. I wanted to bring them back from the dead.

In DNA testing, relationships are measured in shared centiMorgans (cMs), a way to quantify the probabilities. Both the total shared cMs and the longest segment are considered when determining the most likely relationship between two people. Segments longer than 10 shared cMs are generally thought to be indicative of a common ancestor.

For example, through testing, it has been shown that grandchildren have shared cMs with their grandparent that range from 875-2,365, with an average of 1,760. At the same time, a person could have shared cMs of 236-1,301 with a great aunt or uncle. So, based solely on that, if you were to have shared cMs of 900 with someone, their relationship to you could be anywhere from a grandchild/grandparent to a first cousin, once removed.

When I first received my DNA results, there were a handful of people who were identified as distant relatives by Family Tree DNA—as 4^th or 5^th cousins. Our shared cM was generally in the range of 30-40, with the longest segment of between 10 and 15. I contacted a few of these people and our knowledge was too scant to determine with any certainty how we might be related. Regardless, the common ancestor was very distant.

Last summer, while traveling in Western Armenia with the Arzoumanian family who also happened to hail from my grandfather’s village of Burunkishla in the Boghazliyan district of Yozgat, we discussed our possible relationship. They decided to have their father, Hrair, tested. The results showed we were 2^nd or 3^rd cousins; our shared cM was 132 with numerous segments over 15 cM and the longest 30 cM. Clearly, we were very closely related, which was not a complete surprise, although it was exciting to finally confirm a previously unknown relationship.

Based on our combined knowledge of family history, we believe Hrair’s maternal grandmother was a sibling to one of my great-grandparents. Again, so much family history was lost during the genocide that it is impossible to determine exactly at this time.

Then, about a month ago, the moment I had been hoping for: I received a hit on my DNA that was either a 1^st or 2^nd cousin, and it was someone living in Turkey! For perspective, our total shared cMs were 400 with a longest common segment of 90. This was a much closer relative and someone I knew nothing about. Could it be a descendant of my grandmother’s sisters?

I sent an e-mail to the man and waited impatiently for four days. Then, the response: The mother of the man tested was known to be Armenian. I was conversing with his son and this is the story he told.

In 1915, two sisters from Maden begin the march to certain death. The older of the sisters is a beautiful and clever young girl. Along the way, a cavalry officer desires to marry her. She agrees to do this in order to save her little sister. In fact, she demands that the younger sister be protected and live with them. Thus begins their new lives in Chermoug as Muslims.

While living with her older sister, a Muslim man sees the younger sister and falls in love. They marry and live in Chungush. Soon, three children are born. However, the husband dies young. The dead man’s brother marries his Armenian widow sister-in-law to care for his orphaned niece and nephews, and they have three additional sons together. The man whose DNA was tested was a son from this second marriage.

The older sister would have a son who died young. She died soon thereafter, leaving no surviving offspring.

Nevart (3rd from the left) with Angel (2nd from the right)

While the story would seem to match what might have become of my grandmother’s sisters, the places and names did not match that side of my family. Instead, the names of the parents of those two orphan Armenian girls matched the names of my father’s great-grandparents. In addition, my great-grandmother was born in Maden.

I wrote the story of my great-grandmother, Nevart Antreassian, in an article on the Georgetown Girls. Nevart’s sister, Angel, also survived and came to the United States. 25 years ago, when I first started researching my family history, I spoke to Angel’s husband, Khoren Krikorian, and an aunt about what was known of the family. I do not know how Angel survived 1915, but it was most likely through an orphanage in Kharpert, since in 1920 she graduated from Yeprad Varjaran. Around 1922, she left for Lebanon in the final wave of missionaries, orphans, and other desperate remnants.

As for my great-grandmother, Nevart, by the time of these events she was already married and living in Diyarbakir with children of her own. Her husband conscripted into the Ottoman army and presumed dead, Nevart endured the march to Aleppo with her two young children.

In looking through my folder from 25 years ago, I found a page of handwritten notes from a phone conversation with my aunt about Nevart’s family. It was sparse, fragments here and there: father was a horseshoer, etc.

Then, two words written at the bottom: “another sister.” In talking with my parents, they knew nothing of this, but of course so much time has gone by. But what is now known is that the woman in question was my great-grandmother’s sister.

Lost sister of Nevart and Angel

So many questions remain and most likely will never be answered.

Why the mention of only one sister? Could the older sister really have been the mother trying to protect her daughter? How could Angel have been in Kharpert until 1922 and not known her sister was alive in Chungush? Was this a situation, like so many others, where after forced marriage, conversion to Islam, and children, these “remnants of the sword” considered themselves dead to their Armenian families and were treated as such by the Armenian community?

Nevart and Khachig Garabedian

Not surprisingly, my newfound relatives in Turkey have another Armenian grandmother in the family. She was born in the village of Havav in Palu and as late as the 1930’s she was still in correspondence with her brother in New York. Based on a letter written in Ottoman Turkish in 1934, I have identified this family as well.

It is said that the two Armenian girls, now sisters-in-law, were very close and their families’ love for them is evident.

Angel and Khoren Krikorian

Our mutual excitement at having found lost relatives after 100 years knows no bounds. Over the past month, we have been sharing pictures and stories and anxiously await the day when we can meet in person. Interestingly, based on where and when I have traveled through Western Armenia, it seems we know some of the same people and may have actually been together without ever knowing our family connection.

The people in this story remain victims of genocide, but they no longer are tallied in the dead. The 1.5 million has been reduced by 2.

For those wishing to learn more about the Armenian DNA Project, visit https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/armeniadnaproject/about/background.