Exposé of Armenian Genocide by Halil Berktay

[MJ]

Dear Ali,

 

I am anxiously waiting for the rest of the material. I feel like it is better for me not to make any comments at this time, so that not to disrupt your writing process and force you to respond to my comments.

 

We can discuss the relevant arguments after you finish the material.

[aurguplu]

Dear everybody,

 

I have been to a closed-circle discussion with Professor Halil Berktay (public enemy number one since he acknowledges the Genocide as a Genocide) last night (20/02/2001) and share my impressions with you.

 

As the (all Turkish) audience was already prone to acknowledging the Genocide, he did not have to munch his words and pronounced the G-word. There was no hysteria.

 

He went on to discuss the Genocide, various Armenian and Turkish positions, the consequences of Genocide recognition and relevance of the issue to the present. I shall deal with each of them in turn, but first a warning/disclaimer: my version of his position appears here without his knowledge or consent, and does not bind him in any way (he never implied that I shouldn’t use his views in such a discussion, though). I have also woven in my interpretations and extrapolations, often without notice. I am saying this because I do not want to “put words into his mouth”, and also I want to avoid claiming the whole material as mine. Now down to business:

 

His analysis of the issue can be read under these headings (these are mine):

 

1. Turkish and Armenian Positions

2. Context of Genocide

3. Fact of Genocide

4. Aftermath

5. What is a Genocide and What Not?

6. On CUP members concerned

7. On Turkish stance

8. Possible Consequences of Recognising the Genocide

9. The Changing Attitude of the Turkish Authorities

10. Conclusions

 

1. Turkish and Armenian Positions: As the issue is long polarised, most historians on both parties belong to the extreme stances. The Armenian extreme stance is “event not context”, and the Turkish one(s) are “context and event”, which tends to degenerate into “context not event”, or, worse still “context, no event”.

Event not context: Those Armenian historians who hold this position see the Genocide issue first as a criminal and only then a historical issue. To them there is only the “event”, and the “context” in which it appears is largely irrelevant, as no “context” ever justifies or legitimises such an “event”, and they see in any attempt to analyse the “event” within the framework of a “context” a hidden apologetism, or worse still, denialism. In plain English, their position is this: “The Turks carried out a genocide of the Armenians. This is a crime before it is a historical [and therefore analysable] phenomenon. There can be no reason for a Genocide, and the very thought of such a reason is tantamount to the crime itself. Thus, the proper place to discuss the Genocide is not a university, forum or panel, but the courtroom. And any attempt to sit down at the same table to talk with the Turks is treason, for it automatically implies a revision of our stance.”

 

This is the most extreme of a variety of similar positions.

 

Context and/not/no event: Most Turkish historians, and quite a few western historians, hold the first position. It goes without saying that most Turkish historians who hold this position are apologists or worse, denialists, they are no scholars in the true sense of the word, but the propagandists of the official Turkish position for a variety of reasons. Such Turkish historians usually degenerate into the second and third versions (not/no) of this position.

 

Most western historians, however, see that they must analyse the issue within the framework of the context in which it occurred, because nothing comes out of nothing: there must have been things that must have led to the genocide, and to say that is one thing, to condone or justify the crime is wholly another. After all, the prosecution first collects the evidence, and then seeks the motives behind the murder before pronouncing the verdict. In this, they attempt to follow the same logic they apply when dealing with the Jewish Holocaust.

 

The event not context stance precludes any possibility of dialogue as a result of its inherent conviction that any attention paid to the context and not the event might – intentionally or not – serve the denialist stance.

 

The context not/no event stances, especially the latter one; also preclude the possibility of honest dialogue, in fact, there is little point in engaging such a dialogue, as these stances are primarily designed to deny the Genocide. If they cannot do it by relying on facts (and they can’t), then they attempt to drown the issue within the context and deliberately distract attention from the main topic at hand.

 

The way out is obviously a middle ground: context and event. Turkish and Armenian historians with a solid technical knowledge of both the context and the event, an open mind, academic integrity (read honesty), and above all, courage, must meet in “security zones” where they would not be pushed by their governments to propagate the official versions and not harrassed by intellectual terrorism to discuss the issue.

 

Turkish historians should not use the context to defend an apologetic stance, and Armenian historians should not abstract the issue from its context to present it as explicable only by the criminality of the perpetrators. One could perhaps draw a parallel between the current analyses of the Jewish Holocaust, where it is acknowledged that the humiliation of Gemany in WW1, the imposition of a weak Weimar Republic upon a people with no experience of democracy, the extremely inflationary environment of German economics, and the success of Hitler in reviving it by militarising it, must also have played a significant role in addition to the endemic Anti-Semitism in Germany (and Europe) and the personal evil of Hitler and the Nazis (The parallel with the Jewish Holocaust is my addition).

 

Berktay had recently attended a conference where both Armenian, Azeri and Turkish historians, Foreign Office members, and other state officals were present, where he had made the above suggestion, and it was hailed by the Armenians and Turks alike as the only way out of the current impasse. “This matter can only be resolved the way Professor Berktay proposes” and Armenian historian said.

 

Berktay also referred to Grigor Suny and Libaridian, both of whom seem to have said very interesting things: one said that the attitude of most Armenian historians who refuse to talk to Turks, and who brand anyone who does so as a traitor created an impasse, and the other said that there were those who had a problem, who wanted to analyse it, and find a solution to it, and there were also those who “loved the problem (Libaridian’s phrase)”, and made it their raison d'etre (this last remark is my wording). I think he referred there to those who had carved out a living out of the Genocide (academic career, books, etc.), though I couldn’t find the opportunity to check this with him.

 

This concludes my survey of his version of the Turkish and Armenian positions.

 

2. Context of Genocide: The Armenian Genocide took place in 1915, when the Ottoman Empire was in its death throes. The Empire had been losing ground (literally) to the West, and there had been a constant loss of territory since the late 17th Century. One outcome of this, but not immediately apparent in a cursory glance at the issue, was the plight of the millions of Muslims who had lived in these lands for a few centuries already as Ottoman subjects. These people were subjected to the most awful treatment by the new victors, the Christian local populations who had just gained their independence and exacted their vengeance of the Ottomans on the remaining Muslims on “their” territory, and most of these Muslims then had to flee these lands to the safety of the ever-shrinking Ottoman Empire. The huge numbers that came in created great economic, social, and to a certain extent, political stress in the decaying Empire; and these people also brought to Anatolia a hatred of the Christians that was by and large not present there at all: Muslims and non-Muslims had been living side by side without any major quarrels, and the state of the non-Muslims in the Empire was perceptibly better than that of the Jews in Europe or the Indians or Blacks in the Americas.

 

Their self-worth largely destroyed by an unending stream of defeats at the hands of the Europeans, economically and socially traumatised by incessant warfare, persecutions, forced conversions, deportations, massacres, and last by not least, the prejudice on the part of the local Anatolian Muslim population they encountered in their “safe haven” (this last is mine), these new arrivals were filled with hatred toward the Christians whom they saw as the reason for all the evils that befell them; which they passed onto the Anatolian Muslims. Berktay quoted an English poet, W. H. Auden, who was in New York at the start of WW2, and who wrote the following lines as he heard the news of German troops invading Poland:

 

I and the general public know

What all schoolchildren learn

Those to whom evil is done

Do evil in return

 

(How well do these lines express the sentiments of both Turks and Armenians!)

 

This state of affairs carried on throughout the 18th and espacially the 19th Centuries, by the middle of which the imminent disintegration of the Empire was an open secret. All thinking men, and there were many, thought of just one thing: how to save what was left of the Empire.

 

It is in this context that we see the likes of Enver and Talat emerge. They were, in Berktay’s words, “rootless and ruthless”, all Balkan (mostly Macedonian) refugees, who got an inkling of the western mind through the military education they had (mostly in the Balkans) and could see the birth, growth and nature of nationalism there. Berktay quoted passages from two stories of Omer Seyfeddin. The first is about a young Ottoman Turkish officer stationed in Bulgaria, who had developed a sort of a platonic relationship with a beautiful Bulgarian girl across the street where he was stationed: the girl would hang washing in the balcony and cast long, smouldering looks at the young officer, singing a beautiful song. This eye-to-eye platonic “romance”, as the officer sees it, lasts until the officer finally decides to seek the intermediacy of a Bulgarian to meet with her, upon which the Bulgarian (the Good Bulgarian of the story) says she is no good for him, for she is the daughter of a guerilla leader who was hanged by the Ottomans the year before, and the song she sang (which the young officer had mistakenly reasoned to be a love song) turned out to be “nash nash tsarigrad nash” (ours, ours, Istanbul shall become). Upon this, he is shocked, but cannot help admire her unyielding stance and adherence to her nation’s cause, and despise his weakness for having even contemplated a romantic relationship with a girl from the enemy camp for sheer lack of national consciousness!

 

The second story, the plot of which is irrelevant, centers on a group of young officers on their way to Anatolia, talking about how Anatolia is the last refuge of the Turkish nation, and that that was the land they should have developed etc., the real revelation of the story comes with the emergence of the fact that not one of them had even been to Anatolia before! This was the atmosphere in which the last Ottoman officers’ world view was developing.

 

The likes of Talat and Enver had grown up and lived in an almost unbroken episode of violence: 1908: deposition of Abdulhamid II, the “Red Sultan”, 1909: the Good Event: the Revolution of the reactionaries and the interference of the military, 1912 through 1915: the Balkan, Libyan and World wars, and finally, the Genocide.

 

These people knew violence as the only means of reaching their goals, and they had only one goal: to grab a piece of the decaying Empire for the Turkish nation, the only candidate for which was Anatolia. They had only one goal and one way to reach it: violence. They had no Plan B. That union of means and ends made them incapable of doing anything but violence (the last two lines are my addition). One man, however, differed from them in one radical fashion: Mustafa Kemal. He saw a means in violence to reach the end, but violence was not the only means he was open to, and very early on he started to think that violence could not be the the only way to have what you got: you have to want what you can keep yours through other means than violence. That was probably the main reason why he concentrated on Anatolia as the future homeland of the Turks, and not concentrated any effort to salvage any other part of the Empire, and paid no heed to the pan-Islamic and pan-Turkic dreams of Talat and Enver. Of him more later.

 

I related to Berktay the Armenian theory that Talat and Enver wanted to get rid of the Armenians that were on their way to Central Asia, and Berktay said that he did not agree with it: he thought that there were so many things that made the Armenian Genocide an inevitability (no justification intended) that one did not need to invoke that. Besides, he thought, that the pan-Turanian ideal grew stronger in Enver after his escape, i.e. after the Genocide.

 

His opinion was that there was already so much accumulated hatred that the slightest spark would cause an explosion of gigantic proportions: “Armenians were left holding the bag (his phrase)” of this accumulated hatred of Christians, and when it exploded, it was far more severe than anything that had preceded it.

 

Berktay was asked what he thought of Armenian separatism and terrorism that had preceded the deportations, and he said that he did not think all that much of that: there were not nearly a million Turks killed (as claimed by denialist or apologetic Turkish historians) by the Armenians, first of all considering the then population of that part of Anatolia (which he estimated at about three million in all, at any rate below five million), there could not have been that many Muslim deaths, or else, how do you explain the population of the area after the foundation of the Republic? Besides, the Armenians were never nowhere near so strong as to carry out a massacre of these proportions. Besides, the Armenian gangs attacked villages whose male population was out in the fighting fronts of the Empire, and there are usually not more than fifty to a hundred people in a typical Anatolian village of that area, so they had to destroy at least a thousand villages to hit the million mark! He said that the Muslim deaths at the hands of the Armenians in Anatolia amounted to a few thousands at the most. (I agree with his reasoning, but strongly disagree with the number. One reason for this is that the Armenian gangs frequently acted together with the Russian and French regular forces. So all these people killed were not necessarily killed by ethnic Armenians, but by multinational forces of which Armenian gangs were a part. A comparison can be made here with the numbers of Jews killed by the Germans: Germans frequently used local collaborators to carry out their acts, and even formed military units of them. Anyway, I myself think that the actual numbers killed by the Armenians are in the realm of a few tens of thousands to slightly over a million. I guess we shall never know as no exact toll of the dead was ever taken.)

 

So the Armenian Genocide appears as something that could be seen from a mile away.

 

This concludes my survey of his version of the Context. I shall post the remaining portions as I complete them. Remember that this is my interpretation of his exposé with my additions (which I have diligently sought to identify as such wherever they appear), and does not claim to be an authoritative version of his position.

 

[ February 23, 2001: Message edited by: aurguplu ]

[Guest Fadi]

Ali, your post is interesting. But I remarked something "vague" in your comment, and I need some clarifications.

 

When you talk about the Jews serving for the Germans for the excution of their plan(this is what you were implying I think) were you refering to the Jewish KAPO, that were serving in the concentration camps, the Jews that served for Hitler army before their general desertions, the Jews forced to serve as first front or more generaly, the Jews that served ?

 

I want to know this since your point of peoples used for other armies is a little disturbing. From my point of view when you have an army serving for a government, we can not calcul the victimes made based on the ethnicity of members of this army, if you do this to make a calculi of how much Armenians killed, I think you are not fair. Because I could return this and also talk about the Jews that served by tens of thousands, in the Soviet army during WWII, we can not take the number of people killed here and place them as who killed them, the Jews, this is don ion no history book, it's don only in the case of the Armenians. Thousands of Jews served in the British army, in US army, what makes then the Russian Armenians that served for Russia any different ? Of course Ottoman Armenians some served as irregulars, but what makes them any different then the Jews rescaped of Europe, and even Germany, that were directed in the British Army ?

 

You can not count the numbers of killed by taking it by ethnicity, unless the killers were bands or rebellious perons, and were attacking. This is what Berktay is refering too I think, when he say that the numbers of killed by the Armenians are not more then some thousands.

 

Regards.

[aurguplu]

hi everybody,

 

i have been away for a while - over three months, in fact. well, it's famous - or infamous - by now that we have had our xth financial crisis and the imf and world bank are asked to clean up the mess again. meanwhile, almost half of the financial sector in istanbul is out of job, including half of my department. we were quite busy for a while taking things over from guys - ladies in fact - who had to go and only now found some respite.

 

i shall be back with more comments, but i am not sure whether i should try to complete my expose of berktay, since it is less fresh on my memory now and i dont any more remember very clearly which were his ideas and which mine. i can give it a try if people are still interested, but there are other new developments that are just as interesting. i suggest those who know turkish to check out the last issue of Atlas - a travel magazine, sort of turkish national geographic (with a blue cover). there was an extensive treatment of 1915 in the last issue.

 

also, some 150 americans of armenian descent are now in turkey. they have been to the sites in istanbul and are now in kayseri to commemorate the 1700th anniversary of armenian christianity. a friend of mine from a political organisation is with them, unfortunately i cant join because i am tied to that goddamned office.

 

anyway just let me know if you are still out there and intersted in new postings.

 

regards,

 

ali suat

[aurguplu]

dear Domino,

 

re numbers & presence of various ethnic groups in an army.

 

in general i agree with your point. but i think the misunderstandng stems from my inadequate exposure of the matter:

 

in ww1, there were a number of ottoman armenians from eastern anatolia who had joined the ranks of the russian forces mostly to serve as scouts and guides in the anatolian terrain. they were not particularly numerous, nor did they by and large form the backbone of any unit, but they were instrumental in the guiding of the russian forces in anatolia. they did not only know the natural features, but also the ethnic setting, which settlement was muslim and which christian etc.

 

they themselves might directly have killed very few people, but they made it possible for the russians to create enormous havoc in anatolia.

 

now i would fully agree with you if you protested that the deeds of a few cannot be used to blame - much less punish - a whole nation, this is a stance we frequently encounter in turkey and protest just as strongly, but i hope you understand that in wartime conditions such things do not really help improve relations between feuding peoples.

 

i still stress the fact that this does not in any way justify the genocide or turn it into anything else. they clique within the c.u.p. appears to have acted with a premeditated aim of getting rid of you guys to pave the way for a culturally uniform (=read culturally impoverished) state. such states are easy to rule, like an army column.

 

anyway, waiting for your reply,

 

yours,

 

ali suat

[THOTH]

Aurguplu -

 

I thank you for your refreshing commentary. And yes I would be interesting in hearing more. You seem to have a very balanced and knowledgeble perspective concerning (as you call it) the events of 1915.

 

If you don't mind my asking - how did you aquire such knowledge and perspective and have you lived outside of Turkey as well. (and do you work in the government? How is it that you can do so yet commuicate with Bektay etc?) I am curious as my experience in Turkey showed me that some Turks do understand - basically - what happened - though not always with great details. Those who think they know a lot tend to regurgitate the party line and be anti-Armenian (not all are this way of course and I have met several [impressively] well informed Turks on the internet. Nice info on the Diaspora Armenians in Turkey. We are looking forward on more about this (from some others who are there I think) and concering Berktay and other aspects of "our" issue as it plays in Turkey.

 

Pleased to meet you by the way...I am new here since you last posted.

 

[ June 08, 2001: Message edited by: THOTH ]

[MJ]

Hello Ali,

 

Good to see you back. We missed you here.

 

Hope things are well with you in all fronts.

[aurguplu]

dear thoth,

 

i have been to this forum before under different headings that discussed the issue of genocide. mosjan, mj, levonyeshilian, berj, raffiaharonian and surorus were amongst those with whom i exchanged views.

 

i am 34 (soon), lived in the west for 7 years and in egypt for one, studied oriental studies at oxford, returned home to be an academician in 1990, put an end to my academic career in 1993 (after a year at istanbul university) and have been mostly in business ever since. i am not working for the government - i dont work for people i dont respect if i can help it - and you can contact prof. berktay and survive the encounter - he does not bite, sting, vomit venom, fart noxious fumes, or cause damage otherwise. nor does the government seem to care much for whatever he says.

 

since i was originally trained as a historian (a linguistic historian, to be more precise), i was invariably exposed to the armenia genocide issue. my famly also had some experiences with the issue: my grand-grand father was in the ottoman government in 1915, and was apparently one of the few who realised what talat and enver were up to and tried to stop it - without success unfortunately. my father's wet nurse was an armenian who had lost both of her sons in the killings. i had an armenian desk mate at high school in turkey and so on and so on.

 

but all said and done, i know something terrible happened back then and feel that both you and we have to develop an attitude toward the issue that will enable us to draw the necessary lessons, make sure it will never repeat itself, and will not stand in our way toward peace and understanding as neighbours. i dont want my children to grow up hating or being hated by people simply because one is a turk and the other armenian.

 

attitudes are changing in this country, and the internet is a great help - their recent attempts to restrict it wont work. the block headed blokes are not as smart as some internet buffs out there. we have a new generation of people who - although unfortunately not great readers - are not buying government bullshit anymore. and many turks have been and still are abroad. there they get exposed to stuff they cannot hope to encounter at home. all these change people.

 

i hope you guys understand one thing: it is true that our ancestors did horrible things to your ancestors, but that does not make demons out of an entire nation. after all, the things that the whites did in africa, america and australia do not make one proud, do they? 1915 is a black page in my nation's history. every nation's history is full of them. as they say: "happy is the nation whose history annals are blank".

 

i suggest we open up a discussion somewhere in hye forum on how to get together the more sociable members of our communities. what do you say?

 

regards,

 

ali suat

[THOTH]

Ali

 

I agree with everything you have said (and even some not said I think...for the most part) 100%. There is a forum that tried to do what you suggest - The Turkish Armenian Communications Team (TACT) - with mixed success. Like any of these forums it has recently been invaded by hateful children and there is little real activity anymore (though I think it could perhaps start up again as it appears that at least some of the regulars do check in on occasion).

 

I must say that what you report is very good news and provides us with some hope for the future. I beleive what you say is basically true and have heard such from others. I am not without my concerns however because the mob (particualrly when backed by the Governemnt) can always hold sway over a few enlightned intellectuals and the like. So the key of course is more exposure/information/education and interchange (IMO). Would you say that among those whom you are in contact with in Istanbul (likely a more educated cross section then the average) are of like or near like mind as you? Is there common awareness and does anyone really care?

 

I am very much looking foreward to reading more of your comments and perhaps I will look into the archives to see what you have said to others here in the past (and what they have said to you - hopefully they were polite...)

 

cheers

 

Winston

 

[ June 08, 2001: Message edited by: THOTH ]

[aurguplu]

dear winston,

 

i was the first turkish student of the united world college of the adriatic, a member of the united world colleges whose patron saint is prince charles. the idea belonged to dr. lester b. pearson, if i recall correctly and it runs something like this "how can there be peace without people loving eachother and how can that be if they dont know eachother". so the idea was to bring together students of the last two years of high school and make them live together for two years in a campus. particular attention was given to put together students from "conflicting races". so jews and palestinians, south african whites and blacks, chinese & japanese, indians and pakistanis etc. would end up in the same room, and of course there was a code of conduct at the school (love eachother or else).

 

when these conflicting races were first put together they were like the novice lion tamer who had never tamed a lion before and the novice lion which was never tamed before. only the two were of equal strength, so we could have wonderful fights to watch if only the supervisors had allowed it. they didn't, damnit.

 

anyway, we were all human, and however we might hate, dislike, despise, mistrust etc. eachother, we would all unite against the common enemy the aliens (the supervisor/teacher/headmaster/cook etc.) like in the movie series by sigourney weaver. this made us overcome differences and some of these guys became great friends. it was by far the most enriching experience of my whole life.

 

i think something similar might bring the turks and armenians together again. i suspect that the most hateful remarks from both sides emanate from turks who had never seen an armenian before and from armenians who had never seen a turk before. my father's wet nurse was an armenian, my desk mate at high school was an armenian, i had once dated a woman who was part armenian, i had a turkish armenian intern at my office for a month or two, so i have a built-in "brake" if you like it when i talk to or about armenians. i dont like statements that start "you armenians ..." because they include people whom i know and love. before the genocide, there was a human dimension in turkish-armenian relations. after all, we did live together largely in peace for over eight hundred years, didn't we, and it wasnt simply because we were militarily strong and you were weak. here are two sayings: "i have learnt that you can conquer a country on horseback, but you cannot rule it on horseback (Kublai Khan)", and "a state is destroyed by cruelty and oppression, and not by picks and shovels".

 

i am disappointed, but not surprised, that the TACt experience came down in flames. in any fight, the most vicious attacks are levelled by the cowards far away from the battlefield, and they are in words, not deeds. people who face one another are instinctively compelled to be more polite to eachother.

 

i am thinking about bringing people together physically, like these 150 armenian americans visiting turkey. would anyone have any ideas about that?

 

regards,

 

(and sorry about my typing)

[aurguplu]

dear mj

 

thanx for the welcome. we had some tough times over here. times are still tough, but we are getting used. i am all right.

 

check out my idea on getting the lion tamer and the lion together and see if anything can be done if you please.

 

take care,

[MJ]

We have a couple of members participating in that event. Hopefully, early next week we would know about that experience.

[THOTH]

Ali -

 

you said it all I think. What a great experience for you (of course your Government is likely not sending students there now - eh? after seeing what a bunch of subversives returned...LOL)

 

Yes - the human dimension - often/ussually is lacking in discussions or statements concerning/with "other" peoples on these sort of issues. Turks and Armenians have too much of this generalizing that is clear. You cannot imagine how many times I have been branded traitor & Turk lover & anti-Armenian and the like because of my stated views and known contacts with Turks. What can I say - I am not wired that other way and my background too gave me exposure to various Turks - in high school (where my sister's best friend was Turkish and I had two Turkish classmates) and after. In two weeks our family will be vacationing in Puerto Rico and we just found out that a good (French/American)Turkish friend of ours will be able to join us. Additionally I have been to Turkey (and told nearly everyone I met that I was Armenian...to mostly good response...LOL...drank much Raki bought for me by friendly Turks who wished to talk & talk & talk...LOL). And I think that I am doing my part here in the States and I maintain friendly relations with a number of Turks (some of whom are very suprised when I do not breath fire down upon them...LOL). I should warn you though that I am in reality much more of an American than Armenian - I am more or less fully assimilated, don't even speak the language and have little real day-to-day contact with Armenians (outside of the internet) - so I am not rerally a good indicator or spokesperson for Armenians per se...

 

Anyway I am glad for Turks such as yourself and hope you can perhaps pull off something as you are considering with exchange/meeting etc. I am already planning a return visit to Turkey (but not likely anytime real soon - though there is some possibility).

 

I hope TACT is not dead - but on temporary hiatus (as has happened before). It had a remarkable run of civility and freedom from polemic. It was mostly ruined I think by some of the same folks who were recently banned here (good move moderators) - the same ones who have infested and destroyed the Armenian Diaspora forum. Of course there were/are some equally ugly Turks involved...as always. The internet has done wonders for communication and information etc ...but it has also brought many out of the woodwork who normally would be shunned for and alone in their hateful views....

 

take care

 

Winston

[aurguplu]

dear winston,

 

thanx for your encouragement in your last post. allow me to clarify one think in one of my earlier posts today: this is re atlas magazine. i dont call 1915 "1915". it's atlas' last issue that has a separate volume on that year labelled 1915. i myself call 1915 1915 and the armenian genocide the armenian genocide.

 

it's a pity that you dont speak any armenian. people shouldnt forget their language just because they live in america. i have cousins in california, first generation americans, and the eldest speaks and writes pretty well, the middle one gets by in speech but has trouble reading, and the youngest one barely strings a sentence together. it's a pity, cause living in this world and only speaking one language is like living in a castle and not getting out of your one room.

 

it hurts me particularly because i have a lifelong interest in languages, speak a few of them, but dont speak greek because my grandmother and grandaunt would switch to turkish whenever we entered the room.

 

by the way, i hope the government is still sending students there. i think they are changing a bit, too. dont forget that its almost nine decades now, both the victims and the criminals are long gone. thirty years ago it would still have been difficult because some of those old sharks were still alive. today they have no-one alive to protect.

 

i will carry the discusion further starting monday, but have to dash off now.

 

take care,

[Boghos]

Dear Ali,

I was the first diaspora Armenian (I am Brazilian by nationality) on the Armand Hammer UWC class of 87´. I have been reading your posts. I was sure that the UWC experience would eventually get to this.

By the way, we should honour Lord Mountbatten he was really the guy that started the whole thing. I am sure we have common friends.

[THOTH]

quote:

---

Originally posted by aurguplu:
dear winston,

thanx for your encouragement in your last post. allow me to clarify one think in one of my earlier posts today: this is re atlas magazine. i dont call 1915 "1915". it's atlas' last issue that has a separate volume on that year labelled 1915. i myself call 1915 1915 and the armenian genocide the armenian genocide.

---

Understood - perhaps it was a little dig on my part and feeling you out a bit - sorry

quote

it's a pity that you dont speak any armenian. people shouldnt forget their language just because they live in america. i have cousins in california, first generation americans, and the eldest speaks and writes pretty well, the middle one gets by in speech but has trouble reading, and the youngest one barely strings a sentence together. it's a pity, cause living in this world and only speaking one language is like living in a castle and not getting out of your one room.

Totally agree. Mine is an interesting (and in this case unfortunate) situation. I am a third generation Armenian (well 1/2 Armenian through my mother). My mother grew up in an area where there was a mixed immagrant community and there were few Armenians. She suffered discrimination due to being Armenian and - not wanting the same for her children - intentionally brought us up as "American" only (in a nutshell - more to this of course)...so interesting as well because of my Grandfather's very heavy Dashnak involvement (though he warned all of us from politics). I was interested in learning Armenian as a child and was interested in my heritage - but my mother discouraged such - and we lived near no Armenians and had no contact with Armenians outside of my family.

Additionally - I am very poor at languages...an understatement really. True story: I took four years of French in school...finally made it to French 2. I would make a very poor Anthropologists I think - no? (that is my undergraduate degree) LOL

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it hurts me particularly because i have a lifelong interest in languages, speak a few of them, but dont speak greek because my grandmother and grandaunt would switch to turkish whenever we entered the room.

Yea I understand. My Grandmother spoke seven languages fluently. Armenian, Turkish, Greek, Russian, Italian, French and English. Of course she was from a very wealthy and privaleged family - growing up in Istanbul - with money and connections and being tutored as she was (in both language and music...from Gomidas himself...if you know who he was...). Though she ran away from home at age 16...just after the Genocide/WWI (to escape an arranged maraige) - went to France (learned the language after she arrived) - lived the party life on the Left Bank in Paris during the 1920's, then left for America (where she learned English) (was listed as French when she arrived through Ellis Island) and preceeded to meet and marry my Grandfather - who had been from a remote village in the Sivas region (and who was the only survivor from his large family and escaped Turkey when 12 years old) - etc etc etc (I wish I knew more details of their story - I would love to write a book...). Anyway, as an addendum, when I brought my Grandmother to a Greek restaurant where I once worked she began conversing with the Greeks in Greek (after 30+ years of non-use she said) and they were amazed - claiming she spoke perfectly with no foreign accent whatsoever. The elders in our family did speak Armenian together(and even some Turkish...when they didn't want their children to undersdtand..LOL)...but mostly (my parents generation) spoke English (though they all did speak Armenian as well)...so my exposure to Armenian was actually quite limited. Even when I lived in "Little Armenia" in Los Angeles CA and was hounded by Armenians there to learn the language (and of course meet a "nice" Armenian girl!) I failed to pick up much....argh - I do share your disapointment and very much understand your point concerning living in a castle and not getting out...but I cannot see doing anything about it at this point. (I'm too lazy for one, don't have regular access to people to use it on/with and I have kids now, etc...who take up my time...) It is my loss - and it makes it difficult to comprehend some things I know - and I lose out on a sigificant portion of my heritage.

quote:

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by the way, i hope the government is still sending students there. i think they are changing a bit, too. dont forget that its almost nine decades now, both the victims and the criminals are long gone. thirty years ago it would still have been difficult because some of those old sharks were still alive. today they have no-one alive to protect.

i will carry the discusion further starting monday, but have to dash off now.

take care,

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Yes, perhaps you are right (I was joking mostly though). I fear though that even those in power in Turkey today feel a great need to protect the ghosts of the past and obscure the truth. (I liked your comment about not working for those you do not respect - BTW) When we see the type of pronouncements and positions taken by your government it is very clear that they very much fear exposure of the past (and I can think of/see many reasons why they would) and there is still the intense hold of/on Kemalism which channels thier actions in a great many ways. I think we must look from channels outside the Government for progress...

I would be interested (some time in the future) to hear your prospective of the impact on and relation between the Nationalists and the CUP...many Turks attempt to deny this (very apparent to me) relationship...though I understand the various aspects of Kemals break with the Ottoman past/philosophy/government etc...and the differences between nationalist and CUP/Young Turk philosophies...though the Nationalist did very well (for the most part) complete the CUP begun "solution" to the ethnic "problems" did they not? (wither the Kurd?)

have a great weekend, talk to you later (hope I wasn't too boring)

Winston

[Berj]

Hi Ali,

 

Nice to see you back!

[THOTH]

Some legacy - fantastic! (poor Mounbatten, eh?). Perhaps you two (and other Armenians, Turks, Greeks? etc who have benefited from such a program can find a way to use its approach in a more broadly applied manner (in terms of reach between our specific peoples)....

 

quote:

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Originally posted by Boghos:

 

Dear Ali,

 

I was the first diaspora Armenian (I am Brazilian by nationality) on the Armand Hammer UWC class of 87´. I have been reading your posts. I was sure that the UWC experience would eventually get to this.

 

By the way, we should honour Lord Mountbatten he was really the guy that started the whole thing. I am sure we have common friends.

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[Mike77]

To my dear Winston, Your Grandfather was a hero and survivor. He fought and won. He had to leave for the land of Egypt when he discovered the Turks placed reward on his head so great he could no longer trust his own people. Thank God he left. The Turks murdered his entire family. They hanged them in public. And yes he was an original Dashnagh. I have an old book with certain stamps in it. It is 85 or more years old.

You have not seen this. Your Great Grandfather's name means freedom in Turkish and Farsi. As we will be FREE! Forever!

[ThornyRose]

Ali, I have to admit, I have been very excited, reading your writing!

I myself was away in Kayseri on Friday. I have met bellthecat/Steve from this forum and we have given our accounts. I have also gotten in touch with a member of staff from Agos.

Just one thing: what are the problems that we as individual citizens may face in our acceptance of the genocide, on an official/legal level? You don’t seem to fear all that much, given the way you do not spare information about yourself (I try to refrain from providing too much)... And yet we know what happened to Yusuf Akbulut... Is it a matter of luck, coincidence, etc.? More to do with not knowing how you will be struck because of de facto everything (existence of laws where there shouldn’t be, lack of laws [or their implementation thereof] where there should be, etc.) and less about what you say in an interview? Any-any-any comments would help.

Here is where Steve and I have talked about our little visit to Sourp Krikor Lusavorich Church in Kayseri:

http://armenians.com/cgi-bin/forum/ultimat...ic&f=8&t=000079

 

I am a recent member here (and I see you haven’t “grown” out of “junior member” status, yet – I’m fast, yep!), so I guess that if you want to know anything about me, you can refer to this thread:

http://armenians.com/cgi-bin/forum/ultimat...ic&f=1&t=000319

 

Thoth and I have introduced Ceyhun in here, and I don’t know if he has read anything of yours, but I am sure he would be interested.

 

I hope to get my photos of Kayseri done some time!

[THOTH]

Mike, I am familiar with this story and of course there is more. What interests me is that you know his story - etc LOL. I am sure that we will discuss more about this in the future. He had some words of wisdom on this issues for us as well - do you recall? Much of his lesson is fundemental to my philosophy on these matters. Take care.

 

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Originally posted by Mike77:

To my dear Winston, Your Grandfather was a hero and survivor. He fought and won. He had to leave for the land of Egypt when he discovered the Turks placed reward on his head so great he could no longer trust his own people. Thank God he left. The Turks murdered his entire family. They hanged them in public. And yes he was an original Dashnagh. I have an old book with certain stamps in it. It is 85 or more years old.

You have not seen this. Your Great Grandfather's name means freedom in Turkish and Farsi. As we will be FREE! Forever!

---

[nairakev]

THOTH:

I know what do you feel by having grown up an American.

My mother is Russian (armenian but from Russia). My father Armenian born in Yerevan.

From both sides I have grandparents who were the survivors or the kids of survivors of Armenian genocide in Turkey.

My mother didn't speak Armenian as people in Armenia do, she had a dialect called "hamshen" armenian dialect which mixed version of turkish and armenian very weird language than no armenian will understand. She tought me Russian and in my family we spoke a lot Russian. My father was working often in different parts of USSR from Uzbekistan, Siberia, Ukraine, Northen Caucasus. I've changed 15 schools before graduating from High School in Armenia.

I have a feeling that I more Russian speaking than Armenian, though I do speak French now and the most bizzare and "scary" that I think in French sometimes. That's something new!

[ThornyRose]

My mommy knows/knew a little bit of Kabardian and Abkhazian (though mostly Kabardian, I understand), but she forgot as she grew older and didn't teach me anything, though I do remember some weird songs before sleep, which she probably remembered from her own childhood. I am fifth generation here with respect to my grandfather and fourth w.r.t. grandmother.

[Berj]

[nairakev]

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