The Armenian imperative

A century ago today, 250 prominent Armenians – poets, doctors, bankers and a member of the Ottoman parliament – were arrested in Istanbul.

They were split up into groups, loaded onto trains, shipped off to remote prisons, and eventually murdered.

As World War I raged and the Ottoman Empire fought on the side of Germany, Turks rounded up hundreds of thousands of Armenians, particularly in Turkey’s eastern Anatolia region. The men were separated from the women and children and summarily executed.

Those who remained alive were forced to begin a death march to the Syrian Desert.

The Turkish soldiers who accompanied the Armenians on the march either participated in the murder or allowed marauding Kurds to kill indiscriminately. When ammunition was in short supply, killing squads relied on whatever weapons were at hand – axes, cleavers, even shovels. Adults were hacked to pieces, infants dashed against the rocks. In the Black Sea region, Armenians were loaded onto boats and thrown overboard. In the area around Lake Hazar, they were tossed over cliffs.

It was the destruction of a civilization built up over four millennia. And it was committed with the full knowledge of high-ranking German officials.

To this day, much of the world – including Israel and the US – has yet to officially recognize what the Turks did to the Armenians. Neither country wants to jeopardize its strategic military relations with Ankara.

Ahead of the Armenian Day of Remembrance, The Jerusalem Post’s editorial staff met with leading members of Israel’s tiny Armenian community, which numbers about 10,000. We wanted to hear firsthand about the attempts to convince the country’s political leadership to finally recognize the Armenian genocide.

ACCORDING TO Kevork Hintlian, a garrulous historian of about 50 with smiling eyes and long sideburns, three factors have come together this year to give Armenians hope.

First was Pope Francis’s rousing speech during Sunday Mass last week at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican.

“As you know, he made a major statement, if you paid attention, when he spoke in Italian. He’s someone they [the Turks] can’t retaliate against,” says Hintlian.

Francis, who referred clearly to the 1915 massacre of the Armenians at the hands of the Turks as a genocide, linked that genocide – perpetrated by Muslims against Christians – with contemporary persecution and massacres of Christians in the Middle East, Africa and Asia at the hands of zealous Muslims.

Hintlian says the pope’s comments sparked discussion in Turkey, but no contrition.

“I listen to Turkish television every day,” Hintlian says. “And [the pope’s statements] got more coverage than anything else. It’s hours and hours of panels. At first, I didn’t believe it, but they are saying that it’s an international plot [and] the pope is part of it.”

There is a nearly across-the-board consensus in Turkey that there was no Armenian genocide. It’s not just that Turks don’t want their forefathers to be placed in the same category as Germany’s Nazis, Stalinist Russia and Cambodia under Pol Pot. The Turkish narrative claims the Armenians were a fifth column that joined forces with the Russians against Turkey during World War I, and like all false narratives, this one has a kernel of truth to it.

But the pope’s speech has had influence outside Turkey. Last Wednesday, the European Parliament joined the pope in urging Turkey to recognize the Armenian genocide.

The European Parliament has done this before, first in 1987 and again in 2005.

“But this time was symbolic,” Hintlian says. “Now they [the Turks] are saying the European Union is rewriting history.”

IN ADDITION to the pope and the EU, he continues, there is a third factor boosting world consciousness about the Armenian genocide, and that factor is Kim Kardashian.

“The pope has several million Twitter followers. Kim Kardashian has 31 million,” he says.

Earlier this month, the reality TV star – easily the most famous Armenian American – along with husband Kanye West and daughter North, visited the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan, Armenia. West gave a free concert at Swan Lake in the city center. Kardashian also visited the Armenian community in Jerusalem’s Old City, as part of her whirlwind tour of the Holy Land.

But will the activism by the EU, the pope and Kardashian change attitudes in Israel? Dr. Georgette Avakian, chairwoman of the Armenian Action Committee, has been working for years to get Israel to recognize the genocide officially.

When a motion is raised in the Knesset, Avakian says, “every MK – regardless of political party – votes in favor. But at the last minute someone comes from the Foreign Ministry and halts the matter and asks to send it to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee for review.

That’s the last we hear of it.”

Israel’s warming relations with Azerbaijan further complicate an official recognition of the Armenian genocide.

The Azeris hate the Armenians, in part because they lost a war to them in 1994. In addition, the Azeris have close cultural and linguistic ties with Turkey. Israel has sold Azerbaijan billions of dollars in arms, including drones and anti-aircraft and missile defense systems. The IAF might also be preparing to use Azerbaijan’s Sitalchay Military Airbase, which is 500 km. from the Iranian border, for air strikes against nuclear installations and programs in the Islamic Republic.

STILL, THE circumstances of its establishment endow the Jewish state with a particular obligation.

Founded in the shadow of the Holocaust, the State of Israel is a living testament to the unreliability of the international community when it comes to preventing genocide. It was largely out of international recognition of the world’s moral failure that legitimacy for a Jewish state with its own armed forces and sovereignty was born.

Israel has a responsibility to live up to that legacy by using its political sovereignty to prevent genocide not just against Jews, but against any group.

As a minority religious group living in a predominantly Muslim Middle East, the Jewish people are the natural allies of the region’s Christians. The Armenian genocide is a chilling reminder of the dangers that Christians, Jews and other religious and ethnic minorities face in this part of the world.

The chances of a future genocide are greater in the Middle East than anywhere. Those who deny genocide tend to be those who want to see one happen again. Iran’s mullahs are promoters of Holocaust denial and regularly vow to “wipe Israel off the map.”

Israel, therefore, seems to have a duty to fight denial of genocide of any kind. Will Israel fulfill its Armenian imperative? •

Representatives of the community say three factors have given them hope this year: the pope’s support, the EU’s recognition of their genocide and Kim Kardashian’s visit to Jerusalem and Armenia