More on the city of Ani

[bellthecat]

Has anyone here read the original source of the following article? Were there any comments, etc, that accompanied it? Does anyone know the author? Personally, I think the whole story is a fake.

 

Steve

 

Glendale News-Press

Monday, February 19, 2001

 

Letter - Steven D. Kamajian

The truth is not for sale

 

In August 1995, I traveled to the Gumri, Armenia to do

volunteer medical work. While there, I asked local physicians about

ancient churches in the vicinity and I was taken to see some that

had been built in 900 A.D. When I marveled at these ancient

architectural treasures, I was told that all the really old

churches were in the city of Ani, which now is inside Turkey.

A few days later, a Russian military officer was brought to me

as a patient. The Russian military still has a large garrison in

Gumri and the Russians were still staffing the border stations

between Armenia and Turkey. As is the custom of that part of the

world, after I had provided medical services to the Russian

officer, he asked me what he could do for me. I told him I would

like to go to Ani.

 

I had my U.S. Passport.

 

The Russian Officer told me that he could do this for me if I

kept quiet about the excursion into Turkey as it was not legal for

him and I could get him into trouble with both the Turkish and the

Russian governments.

 

Two days later, he picked me up at the clinic and we drove 1

1/2 hours to the Turkish-Armenian border. We parked his car inside

of the third outermost ring of barbed wire and walked to a guard

tower overlooking the Arax River. We faced Ani's ancient

Cathedral. We then hiked down to the riverbed and took a small boat

over the river to the base of the cliffs. We came to Turkey up

under an old fort he identified as the Queens Prison. Turkish

Shepherds greeted us -- apparently it was not unusual for a man

wearing a Russian military uniform to walk up the hills into the

village of Ani.

 

The village of Ani is now mostly low mud huts. That is the

best I could describe the primitive dusty town I walked

through. Outside of the village, the Turks had planted grain and

the fields that were beautiful and just ready for an August

Harvest.

 

Standing like a lone centennial in the margins of the city was

the massive Cathedral of Ani. A beautiful rectangular cathedral. As

I walked to it I was amazed at how simple, how beautiful and how

intact the cathedral was. All the windows were still in perfect

alignment and the roof was largely intact. As we walked to the

cathedral, I was surprised to see that the base of the church was

being excavated.

 

I was greeted by a French archeologist. I wish I had kept his

card. He introduced himself and his Turkish assistants and asked

me what I was doing there with a Russian officer. I told him I was

there to look at the Armenian Cathedral.

He laughed and said he too was there for the cathedral as he

was writing a paper of the Turkish Churches of Ani.

I asked him to repeat what he had just said.

"The Turkish Churches of Ani" he repeated.

 

I stopped the conversation cold and said, "Look, this is a

church, the Turkish people do not build churches." Then I went on

to try to point out to him that he was wrong with a half dozen

arguments.

Look, I said, not only do the Turks not build churches, this

church has Armenian writing on the walls, both inside and outside

of the building. And this cathedral predated the Ottoman Turk

invasion of Anatolia by almost 600 years. I then pointed out that

the cemetery I had walked past still clearly had Armenian grave

markers flat on the ground and that the city name of Ani is an

Armenian name. I pointed out that all of the other geographic land

marks around him and all the other ruins were carved with Armenian

crosses, Armenian words and that he was just simply wrong, that

this was not a Turkish church (a term that does not exist) but an

Armenian cathedral and a historic monument.

 

He laughed at me.

"Look" he said, "the Turks are paying for me to be here. The

Turks are paying for the excavation. As long as they are paying and

as long as they tell me what to find, this is a Turkish church."

I could not believe it. A man of science and archeologist

willing to be so pathologically manipulated.

The Russian officer and I departed a few minutes later and

retired to the Armenian side of the border.

 

Years have gone by.

 

I am not an Archeologist, but I am sure somewhere in an

Archeology Journal an article was published on the "Turkish

Churches of Ani." Probably, that article was later referenced in

another Turkish-sponsored archeology article and so the process of

building a paper trail of lies begins. He who pays the piper calls

the tunes.

 

So it goes with the Turks and the Armenians. Picture what

would have happened to U.S. History if Germany and or Japan had won

World War II. Where would we find references to Pearl Harbor? Or

to concentration death camps? The victor writes history. But, the

Turks eliminated all of the Armenians in Eastern Anatolia. They

achieved their goals. They won.

Why then is there any historical mention of the genocide? The

very number of international witnesses and the number of children

who survived have prevented this piece of history from being buried

under a pile of lies. This is why we all still know that the

Genocide occurred. The Turks could not destroy the international

record of these events.

 

Truth is truth and facts are facts. There are thousands of

documents in dozens of countries about the Armenian Cathedral of

Ani written before 1200 A.D. You can lie about facts but you can

not change the truth.

 

Unfortunately, the Turkish government, and paid Turkish

sponsored "historians" have built a paper trial of lies about the

genocide of Armenians. Reading their stories reminds one of the

simple-mindedness of those modern Nazi's who deny the Jewish

Genocide of World War II. Articles cross-reference each other to

try to establish the "new truth." It is simple to trace each

article to the sponsored author.

 

Yes, there was genocide of the Armenian People. Yes, Hitler

did refer to it as an example of what he thought he could get away

with. No, this genocide is not taught in Turkish schools, so I do

not anticipate that an adult Turk would know about it. No, the

Armenians did not participate in a genocide. Yes, the Ottoman

Empire was falling apart and all of the subjugated people were

trying to form new counties.

 

Ask Arabs, Egyptians, Greeks, Assyrians, Kurds and

Armenians. Turkey to this day has no neighbor country as

friends. It was not just the Armenians trying to break free from an

oppressive empire. Freedom was the motivation.

Think of all the empires that have collapsed in our lifetime

(Soviet Union, Japanese, Nazi, etc); as Americans we recognize

freedom's motivation.

To those who suggest that there are just too many Armenians

throughout the world in far and distant counties and that these

Armenians are influencing all of these distant governments, ask

yourself why a people indigenous to central Anatolia for 4,000

years would move? Yes, the answer is simple: Genocide. That is why.

Let us do this exercise one more time. You are different from

me. I do not like the difference. I am uncomfortable with the

differences, and I want you to change. You will not. You enjoy the

difference. I start to think of you as less than me. At some point

I think of you as less than human. Then it is OK for me to

exterminate you. That is how genocide takes place.

For all of those in this community that are angry with their

neighbors, who are different, open your hearts and your minds as

you are on a slippery slope.

 

Truth is Truth. Paid archeologist, paid historians and paid

politicians can lie as much as they choose. But they can not change

the truth.

 

The churches in Ani are Armenian.

 

There was genocide of Armenians by the Turkish Ottoman Government.

 

Steven D. Kamajian.

Montrose

[MJ]

There is a material in today's Critical Corner of Groong by Eddie Arnavoudian on Ani. I am not pasting it here due to Copyright issues that Groong maintains for that section of its Digest. You can find material at http://groong.usc.edu/news/msg27623.html .