Ninety Years Later:
The Armenian Genocide Continues

By Amir Hassanpour
Special to CTV.ca

Canadians scored a victory last year when our parliament recognized the Armenian genocide. The motion approved in the House of Commons declared: �...this House acknowledges the Armenian genocide of 1915 and condemns this act as a crime against humanity."

However, the struggle of the Armenian people for justice, in Canada and elsewhere, is far from ending.

Ten years ago, on the 80th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, some citizens in Montr�al decided to build a public memorial at the Marcellin-Wilson Park in the city�s north end. In order to prevent the building of the memorial, the Turkish embassy and consulate threatened the government of Qu�bec with retaliation against two Montreal firms, which had major operations in Turkey [1]. This was no less than intervening in the internal affairs of Canada and at the same time, violating the rights and freedoms of Canadian citizens.

The institution of the state is a major perpetrator of genocide. States, including Canada, continue to ignore, deny, and gamble on the Armenian genocide. Prime Minister Paul Martin and his Foreign Affairs minister tried to defeat the motion in the House of Commons, and failing to do so, rejected the decision of the highest organ of Canadian democracy, the parliament. Canada�s �national interest,� i.e., its economic, political, and military ties to this NATO ally, prevailed over the cause of justice.

In what sense is the Armenian genocide a Canadian issue? The Armenian case, like other genocides, is an �international crime.� This implies that perpetrators have committed crime against humanity, and they can be prosecuted beyond their national borders, and under international jurisdiction. Canada has ratified the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and is also a �state party� to the International Criminal Court, which prosecutes perpetrators of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

Genocides do not end. Although there is an exact date, April 24, 1915, for the beginning of the Armenian genocide, this crime was launched by Ottoman Turkey in late nineteenth century, and led to the elimination of the Armenian people in their ancient homeland by the time the Turkish Republic replaced the Ottoman state in 1923.

Ninety years later, the genocide lives not only in the memory of the few survivors, their descendants, and the rest of the Armenian people, but also continues in its denial by the Turkish state. Its denial by other states, including Israel [2] and the United States, also contributes to the perpetuation of the crime.

The genocide also goes on in the policy of the Turkish state to eliminate any trace of Armenian life in a continuing project of ethnic cleansing of the Armenian homeland, its toponymy, monuments, buildings, music, dance, and art, and in archives, libraries, and museums. The genocide continues, in its harshest form, in the museums of Turkish cities such as Van and Kars, where the victims, i.e. Armenians, are depicted as perpetrators of a �genocide of the Turkish people� [3 ].

The Turkish government�s threat of retaliation against the government of Qu�bec must also be considered as the extension of the genocide beyond the borders of Turkey and into the end of the twentieth century.

If the Turkish Republic perpetuates the genocide in Turkey and throughout the world, the struggle against this crime must also be worldwide. We in Canada have a responsibility to ensure that the cabinet endorses the decision of the House of Commons. The burden of this struggle should not be on the shoulders of Armenian-Canadians. All Canadians, especially those of Turkish origin, have a special responsibility to recognize the genocide, and call for justice.

It is known that some Kurds participated in the genocide as accomplices of the Ottoman state. As a Canadian citizen of Kurdish origins, I strongly denounce, without hesitation, all Kurds who participated in this crime as well as the genocide of the Assyrians, which happened in the same period, 1915-1923. Had the accomplices been alive, I would have called for their trial and punishment.

Mark Levene, a historian of genocide, has noted that the Ottoman state turned Eastern Anatolia, which comprises parts of Armenia and Kurdistan, into a modern �zone of genocide� from 1878 to 1923 [4]. The Armenian and Assyrian peoples were wiped out, and the Kurds were deported in hundreds of thousands beginning in 1917, and then subjected to a genocidal campaign in 1937-38.

Genocide has continued in the region and elsewhere in the world, and appeared in its most open and brutal form in the Nazi Holocaust of 1933-45. All states and even non-state entities are capable of committing the crime.

Here in Canada, we should not feel assured that it will never happen again. The indigenous peoples of Canada have experienced genocide, and Canadians of Japanese and Italian origin were rounded up during WWI and incarcerated in camps. The charter of rights, the constitution, and legislation against hate and advocacy of genocide are important legal tools, but they do not guarantee the end of racism, national chauvinism, fascism, and genocide. Only citizen awareness and their action can prevent new disasters. Mass murders have occurred frequently in the past, but genocide is distinguished by its ties to nationalism, which is itself a product of modernity, its politics and culture.

I have seen much progress, within the last decade, in the struggle against the Armenian genocide. Some Turkish intellectuals and political activists, in and out of Turkey, have already recognized the genocide. The Turkish people must be seen as allies of the Armenian people in this struggle for justice, if justice can ever be achieved. The crime was planned by the government not by the Turkish people.

The last phase of the genocide, 1915-23, was planned by a small group of Turkish nationalists who shared power with the Ottoman sultan in the wake of the 1908 �Young Turk Revolution.� It would be a serious error to treat all Turks, i.e. the Turkish people, as perpetrators of the crime. In fact, many Turks and Kurds risked their lives by saving some Armenian victims.

While we should persist in revealing the atrocities committed by Turkey�s armed forces and civilians, it is equally important to celebrate the resistance against it by Turks and Kurds while the crime was being committed. A world free of genocide is possible only when we build and promote these traditions of solidarity. Twenty years ago, Yilmaz G�ney, the Kurdish film maker from Turkey, launched a campaign of recognition of the genocide by citizens of Turkey [5]. This year, a book by a Turkish scholar, Taner Akcam, on the need to recognize the genocide was published in Turkey. We will not take a step forward if the European Union pressures Turkey into recognizing the genocide.

Justice will be done, to a limited extent, when the Turkish state recognizes the crime through the action of the peoples of Turkey. This is surely possible, and it will happen if the struggle for recognition is turned into a social movement, and if it pursues a politics of internationalism.

We, in Canada, should persist in this struggle and ensure that Turkey recognizes the genocide by the time we commemorate the centenary of the crime. The Armenian people lost more than a million lives and part of their homeland. It is difficult to imagine how justice can be done even if the Turkish state is willing to pursue it. The citizens of Turkey are, however, capable of denying their state the right to commit genocide now and in future, and take the first step in this direction by recognizing the Armenian genocide. We should contribute to this struggle here in Canada.

Amir Hassanpour is Associate Professor at the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto

[1] Alexander Norris, �Armenians fear city bowing to pressure,� The Gazette [Montreal], March 2, 1996, pp. A1, A15

[2] Yair Auron, The Banality of Indifference: Zionism and the Armenian Genocide. New Brunswick (USA), Transaction Publishers, 2000.

[3] Azmi S�sl� et al, Armenians in the History of Turks: Basic Text Book. Kars, Rectorate of the Kafkas University. Printed in Ankara 1995.

[4] Mark Levene, �Creating a modern �zone of genocide�: The impact of nation- and state-formation on Eastern Anatolia, 1878-1923,� Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Vol. 12, No. 3, 1998, pp. 393-433.

[5] ��Retrouver notre honneur�: Un interview de Ragib Zarakolu,� France-Arm�nie, Mai 1998

 

By Amir Hassanpour, 24 April 2005

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