The 8th Step of Genocide

As an Armenian, I have been asked several times what Kim, Kanye, North and the rest of the Kardashian family are doing in my little country. The answer is one that is 100 years old.

 April 24 will represent the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Armenian Genocide. On this night in 1915, the Ottoman government started to round up and execute Armenian intellectuals. A golden generation of Armenian writers, composers and artists was slaughtered at the hands of the Ottoman Army.

The resulting genocide, the origin of the term “crime against humanity,” killed around 1.5 million Armenians and displaced one million others.The Ottoman Army drove all the Armenians who lived in the modern nation of Turkey out of lands they had cultivated for thousands of years. Some were drowned in the Black Sea. Some were shot dead after being “drafted” into the Ottoman Army. Some died in the Syrian Desert from starvation, thirst or an impatient army officer. My ancestors, thankfully, made it to Aleppo and eventually Beirut and Baghdad unscathed. Unfortunately, the Armenian Genocide’s perpetrators also got through unscathed. As the Ottoman Empire fell and Mustafa Atatürk rose, the new Turkish nation paid absolutely no restitution or even condolences.

Adolf Hitler remarked 20 years later something along the lines of: “after all, who today remembers the annihilation of the Armenians?” He figured that he could get away with the Holocaust just like the Ottomans before him had with the Armenians. Hitler replicated and perfected Ottoman practices. He took the Ottoman idea of stranding Armenians in closed off caves with fires inside and transformed it into gas chambers. Death marches crisscrossed Anatolia and the Syrian Desert; Hitler found trains more efficient. Some officers who were with the Wehrmacht during the Holocaust 20 years later had trained Ottoman soldiers.

With Ataturk’s aforementioned revolution in Turkey and Armenia’s annexation by the Soviet Union, the Genocide seemed to be forgotten. Nobody went to jail. The Armenian Genocide had entered its last stage.

Scholar Gregory Stanton breaks down genocide into 8 steps, concluding with denial. 100 years later, the Armenian Genocide still continues, as a denialist worldview prevails.

Calling what happened to the Armenians “genocide” is essential. Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined the word “genocide” to define the crime being committed by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. He specifically cited the annihilation of the Armenians as an earlier example of genocide. Genocide implies a coordinated systematic and often state-driven campaign to exterminate a group of people and their culture. This is not your ordinary hate crime.

To this day, the Republic of Turkey denies that genocide occurred. Turkish leaders continually call for a historical commission to look through archival evidence and draw conclusions. President Recep Erdoğan claims that what Armenians call a genocide was really just a tit-for-tat part of World War I. Calling for such a commission is insulting and infuriating. For one, the Turkish Government has not opened up all relevant archives. Second, historians have already looked at the massacres and deportations of Armenians. Any idea how they have concluded? The International Association for Genocide Scholars voted unanimously that the killings of Armenians constituted genocide. Since then, it, along with dozens of Nobel laureates including Elie Wiesel, have called for Turkish recognition of the Genocide.

Erdogan calling for a historical commission trivializes what Armenians went through. Does he want proof beyond scholarly articles? He can look at the mountainesque mass graves in the Syrian Desert where Armenian bones stick out of the ground.

In the United States, external pressure from Turkey has shut up the American government. The United State has around 70 nuclear weapons based in Turkey, as well as two air force bases. The country serves a key stop on the way to Iraq and Afghanistan. In Washington, Turkish lobbyists work tirelessly to ensure that politicians ignore the facts. The Turkish lobby remains one of the strongest national lobbies in Washington. Curiously, Phil Gephardt, Turkey’s top lobbyist, was formerly a supporter of Armenian Genocide legislation in Congress.

Just how powerful is this lobby? In 2008, then-Senator Barack Obama promised to confront Turkish denialism and finally recognize the Armenian Genocide as President of the United States. As you can probably imagine, once elected, Obama quickly retreated. For six years, and I am sure a seventh, Obama has and will refer to the Armenian Genocide with some other euphemism, even though almost 45 states, most of which have negligible Armenian communities, have taken the step of recognition.

Some European countries have started to pass laws prohibiting the denial of the Armenian Genocide. Legal scholars contend that since the Genocide is fact, denial must stem from a deep-sitting racism. This is the same logic that prevents Holocaust denial throughout Europe. But the European Court of Human Rights recently ruled in favor of striking down a genocide denial law in Perinçek v. Switzerland.In this case, Perinçek, a Turkish nationalist leader, had called the Armenian Genocide “an international lie.” This is why the word “genocide” and recognition of the Armenian Genocide as such is so important. The Armenian Genocide happened. Fact. End of story. The case is currently being appealed, with none other than Amal Clooney representing the Swiss and Armenian side.

If Turkey really sees itself joining the European Union one day, perhaps it should take a lesson from Germany. There is no way to “make up” for a crime like the Holocaust or the Armenian Genocide, but at least Germany has tried. Turkey is merely covering their crime up. One of Europe’s biggest Holocaust museums is just outside Berlin, and concentration camps are now powerful memorials. Germany and German companies made reparation payments of over $60 billion to Israel until as recently as 2006. Something tells me Armenia should not be waiting for a big fat check, particularly considering the fact that Turkey has placed an economic blockade on Armenia.

Calling the Armenian Genocide a genocide is long overdue and must be a first step in Armeno-Turkish reconciliation. Instead, the Turkish government blamed Armenians for having Genocide Remembrance Day on the same day as its commemorations for the battle of Gallipoli. Armenian churches have been left in ruins or torn down and used to build residential buildings. In response to Pope Francis’ call for recognition of the Genocide, Turkey recalled its ambassador to the Vatican. And according to Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, which bans insulting of the Turkish nation, it is basically illegal to refer to the events of 1915-1918 as genocide. Turkish authorities went so far as to prosecute Nobel Prize-winning writer Orhan Pamuk under this law. The Turkish government wants its people and the world to forget.

It is quite contradictory for the United States and other western nations to evoke genocide when they have not even confronted the first genocide of the 20th century. Recognizing the Genocide, even if against Turkish wishes, would send a message to the world that the United States clearly believes that genocide is indeed a crime against humanity, and not just an excuse to meddle in another country’s affairs.

On the 24th of this month, Armenians around the world will commemorate the very event that exiled them from their fatherland, their hairenik. From Moscow to Marseilles to Boston to Buenos Aires, Armenians will unite to remember those lost, and honor those surviving, of which there are too few.

Perhaps Armenian-American writer William Saroyan put it best: “I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia. See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.”

So when you wake up on April 24, remember what started 100 years ago. And remember that it continues to this day.