For those of you who read Armenian… A column I wrote in 2005 about the Genocide.

A story about my family (written for my Turkish friend)

Photo: Genocide survivor Takuhi holding her great-grandchild (me) in 1986

I will start telling the story of my family by saying
that I know very little about it. I know very little,
because my grandparents are now gone, and my father
doesn’t know whole a lot about yeghern because it had
been a taboo in my family for a long time. I know
very little, because there are no written documents
and written accounts about my family. But I know one
thing – I may never be able to trace my family’s
history before 1895. I always tell my girlfriend she is lucky. Her family,
who are Iranian-Armenian, have a tree, and I have a
copy, that dates back to the 1600s. 1600s, because
this was the time when Persia’s Shah Abbas forced
Djulfa’s residents to leave and establish in what is
now New Djulfa, Isfahan. Although I am jealous, she,
too, cannot trace her family’s history before 1604,
and will never be able to do so, especially when the
Azerbaijani authorities flattened to the ground the
ancient Armenian cross stones in Djulfa cemetery in 2005.
The cross stones might have included the key to her
family’s ancient history.

My own paternal family was from Urfa, now Sanliurfa in Turkey. We were known as “Magak Oglonts” (Maghakyan men), and there was a street with that name next to
Urfa’s St. Astvadzadzin (St. Mary) church. I found
the street on the 1915 self-defense map. My father
says our extensive family was very big. When his
grandfather, Hakop Maghakyan, would visit his families
in their street for holidays, it would take him the
entire day. Now, I can’t tell whether it was because
there were hundreds of Maghakyans or because they
would keep my great-grandfather in their homes for
hours.

Hakob’s father, my grandfather’s grandfather, was
Gevork Maghakyan. I know this because Hakop
Maghakyan’s gravestone says so. My father says Gevork
was shot on his head in the Armenian church of
Urfa by the Turkish militia. I suspect Gevork was one of the
3,000 Armenians who were burnt in the church in the
late 1890s.

Gevork had many sons. Some were killed, but my direct
ancestor, Hakop Maghakyan, survived. Hakop had served
in Algeria as a Turkish soldier – perhaps this would
make it easier to find out more about him – and after
participating in the self-defense, had fled to Syria
dressed up as a girl. He lost track most of his
relatives. Some had escaped and disappeared earlier
than him.

In Syria, Hakop met Sarah Ghasapyan – the mother of
his future wife. Sarah told him that she had given her
young daughter, Takuhi, to their Turkish neighbor in
an Urfan suburb village during the massacres. Sarah
thought she would never survive the deportation, and
knew that young Takuhi was safe with their friends.

When the Allies occupied Urfa after WWI, Hakob
returned to look for Takuhi, instead, she found a
Turkish child who did not recognize Sarah or anybody
from her family. The child, I think in her early
teens, did not want to leave her mother and go to
Syria. I don’t know the exact details, but she ended
up remembering her family, and agreed to go to Syria.

In couple of years, Hakop and Takuhi married. Their
first child was Sarkis, I think named after Hakob’s
murdered relative. Gevork (George) was the second one
named after Hakob’s murdered father. I don’t know who
the later brothers, Gaspar and Zaven, were named
after.

In 1948, Hakob, Takuhi and their four sons decided to
immigrate to Soviet Armenia. In the 1970s, they were
among the ones to establish New Yedesia (Yedesia was
one of Urfa’s names) village in Soviet Armenia.

The first son of the emigrated family was Hakop
Maghakyan, my father. Before he was born, the story
says, Hakop Maghakyan Sr. woke her wife up and said,
“A king to Syria is going to be born.” I was Hakop
Jr.’s third child and second son, born in 1986.

In 2005, I went to Canada for the International
Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies
course. The president of the school, Greg
Soghomonian, said his mother was Maghakyan too. “FromUrfa?” I said. “Yes,” shockingly answered Greg. “Do you know Gevork Maghakyan?” I said. “No,” said Greg.

After a long conversation, we could not find the part
of the tree that connected us. Here we were – two
descendants of Urfa’s Maghak oghlonts who could not
connect their families. The warmness went away, and
the Genocide that had torn our stories apart was the
only thing that brought us together again. I was
there to learn genocide, and he was there to organize
genocide education. But we were not relatives any
more.

One can’t get more angry after finding out that a group of Turks were out in New York City streets on the eve of April 24 – Armenian Genocide commemoration day – denying the Armenian Genocide.

A Shameful Act: The Denial of the Armenian Genocide (photo credit)

 iArarat informs:

Little Green Footballs (LGF) the notorious blog that broke the news of the Beirut bombing photography doctoring by a journalist working for the Reuters has an entry on what it calls the “professionally-staged demonstration yesterday by a Turkish group denying the Armenian genocide.”

A video, via ANCA, shows the anti-Armenian denial in NY.  Another interesting video summarizes the Turkish propaganda on YouTube.com.

By the way, this blogger, along with a few other members of the Armenian community, attended a denialist lecture by Justin McCarthy in Denver last on April 14, 2007 organized by the Turkish community.  I was not angry, but I was sad.  Sad – because I couldn’t understand why McCarthy hated Armenians so much, why he would call an entire people “wining,” and why he was there to make the Turks hate us even more.

At the end of the denialist lecture, one Turkish woman told me that I had beautiful eyes.  I warned her she was not going to like my response.  “Armenians say our eyes are big because of the suffering that we have gone through.  It is the Armenian pain that has taken our eyes out.” 

In a few hours – on April 24, 2007, our eyes will be even bigger, and perhaps wet as well.  And yes, even if we forgive one day, we will never forget.

The ‘apology’ quoting America’s Ambassador to Armenia John Evans for saying he shouldn’t have referred to the Armenian genocide as such, turns out, was a fabrication by the State Department.

As the U.S. ambassador to Armenia, and a career diplomat, Evans knew the uses of circumlocution. Some words, he understood, must be avoided. But then, speaking in Fresno, Los Angeles and Berkeley, Calif., two years ago, Evans violated U.S. policy by declaring that Armenians were the victims of a genocide from 1915 to 1923.  

When his comments became widely known, the State Department issued apologies. The statements included made-up quotes that Evans now says others crafted and attributed to him.

“Let’s put it this way: I had no role in it,” he said of the statements.

LINK

According to the Russian-language “Real Azerbaijan,” Iranian citizens are fleeing to bordering Azerbaijan with a fear of U.S. attack against the Islamic Republic.

The report says local Azerbaijani authorities in the Nakhichevan region have searched the basements of multi-story buildings where Iranian escapees find refuge.  After confirming that there are Iranian citizens in these basements, local authorities have decided to help refugees by making the basements more “comfortable.”

Colorado’s paradoxically progressive and also unprogressive history includes a governor in the 1920s who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).  

With an enormous white population, Colorado is not famous for racial hatred today and it seems the Klansmen are long gone in the centennial state.  But with anti-illegal-immigration politicians like Tom Tancredo (R-Littleton), it is not difficult to find reasons for hate.

My friend Daryl Davis, an African-American musician who has written one of the most famous books on the Klan, sent me the following update on April 22, 2007 about the current situation of the KKK in Colorado:

Colorado is beginning to pick up a little with their KKK and White Supremacist activity.  They had been very cautious lately because they were infiltrated a while back and almost wiped out.  So they’ve gone more underground lately.  However there’s a group of Klan operating out of Olathe, Colorado and they are growing in numbers around the state, capitalizing on their stand against illegal immigration.

How the arrest of a journalist leaks to the infamous agenda of an ultranationalist

Pictured: Hasan Zeynalov, member of Azerbaijan’s “Sicilian” mafia who is more famous for persecuting Azerbaijani journalists and less famous for his sinister agenda in Turkey to keep the Armenian-Turkish border closed.I hope that after the murder of Turkish-Armenian editor Hrant Dink there is more appreciation for the work of journalists among Armenians.

I am not sure that my optimism is applicable to the case for Armenia’s journalists yet, who are usually beaten, threatened and harassed in Armenia. Speaking of torture against journalists, I want to continue telling the underreported story of one journalist who was placed in jail yesterday, with the hope that there will be transnational outcry for persecution of journalists worldwide in general, and in Azerbaijan in particular. And not only because persecution of Azerbaijani journalists is too alarming (deaths, unbelievable high fines, regular beatings), but also because it is in the interest of everybody in the Caucasus – Armenia, Azerbaijan and the rest – to have democracy and freedom of speech. Journalists are the only ones in those isolated conflicts that can bring the rails to the truth on the table. They are the ones who can de-demonize “the other” by showing how much common all people have among each other.This is exactly why Eynulla Fatullayev was placed in jail for 2 ½ years yesterday. “Why do you interview Armenians?” This is the question that Fatullayev, in his own words, is being asked.

In his “last words” (before the court decision), published at Fatullayev’s founded Russian-language Realniy Azerbaijan website, the Azerbaijani journalist ridicules the fact that in the twenty-first century people ask him why he interviews Armenians.

“It is my duty to do so,” has uttered Fatullayev, “After I am free again, I will be occupied with the same exact work.”

Fatullayev is not playing games. He knows how serious it is to challenge Azerbaijani authorities. Before establishing his own newspaper, Fatullayev worked with editor Elmar Huseynov. Huseynov was an Azerbaijani journalist who was murdered in March of 2005 after having written “The Godfather,” an article that accused the labeled Azerbaijani authorities “Sicilian mafia.” Before his murder, Huseynov, along with Fatullayev, was taken to the court by an Azeri ultranationalist – Hasan Zeynalov, Nakhichevan’s permanent representative in Baku since at least 1998.  This is the same Zeynalov who made news in 1998 when talking to the BBC he denied state-sponsored vandalism against Armenian monuments – especially the now-gone-to-dust Djulfa cemetery – in Nakhichevan by saying, “Armenians have never lived in Nakhichevan, which has been Azerbaijani land from time immemorial, and that’s why there are no Armenian cemeteries and monuments and have never been any.”

In my research about the Djulfa vandalism – the annihilation of several thousand hand-crafted medieval Armenian monuments called khachkars – I have seen pattern between persecution against journalists in Azerbaijan and destruction of Armenian monuments in Azerbaijan. It is interesting how Zeynalov himself has been apparently involved in both, but there is more to come – something hard to believe.

Zeynalov is now the Azerbaijani Consul General to Kars (unless there are two Hasan Zeynalovs – which would prove my speculation wrong), where he is involved in “proving” that there is no Armenian heritage there (just like Armenians have never lived in Nakhichevan).  For example, only last month Zeynalov alarmed to the Azerbaijani press that an Armenian delegation had visited Kars and “By the study of some historical sites, the delegation tries to prove the relation of these areas to Armenians. During the visit the Armenian representatives discussed the opening of the state border.” In August of 2006, the mayor of Turkey’s Kars city – across the Armenian border – was attacked by Zeynalov for having advocated for the opening of the Armenian-Turkish border.  

I don’t know when Zeynalov transferred to Kars, but I can’t help to speculate that his mission is to stop the border from opening (why would Azerbaijan need a representative in Kars in any way?).  He is further busy organizing a commemoration for “Azerbaijani genocide” in Kars.

I don’t think the line of anti-democracy and anti-“otherness” has ever been this bold in Azerbaijan before. And the bottom line is – ultranationalist Azerbaijanis are not only danger to ordinary Azerbaijanis, but to ordinary Armenians and ordinary Turks likewise and vice-versa.

The international media is finally reporting the trial of an Azeri journalist who is accussed for “insulting” some Azeri refugees for having challenged Azerbaijan’s official claim that Armenian forces have killed up to 600 civilians in the 1990s during the Karakabh war.

The Associated Press informs

Eynulla Fatullayev, editor and founder of newspapers Real Azerbaijan and Everyday Azerbaijan, was found guilty of disseminating false information about a 1992 attack during the country’s six-year war with Armenia.

He was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison.

Many of you perhaps know that three Christians were slain in Turkey this week for publishing Bibles.  They were murdered in Malatya, the city where assassinated Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was from.

Hearing about “Christian Turks” one automotically speculates whether these are hidden Armenian converts who are returning to their roots through Christianity, even though not through the Armenian church.

Speculation is speculation, but an Associated Press photograph testifies that one of the slain Turks was burried today in an Armenian cemetery in Malatya.

Moreover, the New York Times had alluded to the indirect connection of the Armenian genocide to the killings:

The recent nationalist attacks are ghosts from Turkey’s past. Malatya once had a heavy Armenian population. But in eastern Turkey, Armenians were driven out or killed in a series of purges culminating in the 1915 genocide, in which 1.5 million Armenians died. Subsequently, nationalists were urged to settle in the area to preserve a Turkish identity there.

I noticed that only media in Azerbaijan have been reporting the trial against Eynulla Fatullayev for questioning what happened in an Azeri village – Khojaly (Khojalu) – when Armenian forces occupied it during the Karabakh war of the 1990s.  Even the few reports are difficult to follow and understand (the word, “Armenian” for example, is not mentioned in any article perhaps to avoid attracting attention on the trial through popular “Armenian” keyword searches).  Here is a summary of Azerbaijani sources (in Russian and English) with a background on the journalist’s involvement.

An Azeri journalist, who has challenged the official Azerbaijan’s rhetoric that Armenian forces have massacred between 200-600 Azeri civilians in the 1990s, is facing charges for insulting Khojaly village refugees in an Azerbaijani district court, reports Azerbaijan’s Trend News Agency.

Photo source

Eynulla Fatullayev, editor-in-chief and founder of the Russian language Realni Azerbaijan and Azeri language Gundeliik newspapers, has reportedly accused the Azeri government for perpetrating the killings of Khojaly civilians – an event that Azeri officials and pro-government media refer to as “Khojaly genocide perpetrated by Armenians” – often denounced as “anti-Armenian propaganda” by others.

In 2006, Fatullayev visited Nagorno Karabakh – an Armenian enclave within Soviet Azerbaijan that proclaimed independence in 1991 and provoked war between Armenia and Azerbaijan – and wrote a long article in Russian called “Karabakh diary.” Fatullayev recalled in the diary of interviewing Azeri refugees from Khojaly in the 1990s who said that Armenian forces had warned the civilians several days before the attack about the upcoming operation and offered the civilians to leave the village through a humanitarian corridor along the river Kar-Kar (the exact scenario of the pre-operation presented by Armenian officials). Visiting Khojaly in 2006 and putting the account of some Azeri refugees with the geography of the village, Fatullayev concluded that “It seems that the battalions of Azerbaijani Popular Front strove not for the salvation of the Khojalies, but for a big blood.”

According to the March 1, 2007 issue of Today.az, a news website from Azerbaijan, “[a] group of [former] Khojaly residents held a protest action outside Gundelik Azerbaijan paper editorial office… and raised posters ‘Eynulla Fattulayev is dashnak’s (Armenian) agent.” They demanded depriving the journalist of citizenship and broke two windows of the office by throwing eggs.

A letter from Human Rights Watch to Azerbaijan’s president Illham Aliyev (dated February 9, 2007) accused the authorities for suppressing freedom of speech and persecuting journalists in the country. According to the letter, “Eynulla Fatullayev, editor-in-chief of Realny Azerbaijan and Gundelik Azerbaijan, was forced to suspend publication of both papers on October 1, 2006, after his father was kidnapped. The kidnappers threatened to kill Fatullayev, as well as his father, if Fatullayev continued to publish the papers. The kidnapping had been preceded by numerous phone threats against Fatullayev and his family.” The letter also denounced Azerbaijani courts for fining high amounts to journalists, including Fatullayev.

The Armenian government has long denied responsiblity for the massacre of between 200-600 Azeri civilians in Khojaly, charging one fraction of Azeri military – a political opposition group in Azerbaijan at the time- for orchestrating the event for anti-Armenian propaganda and domestic political purposes. They often recall the footage of Azerbaijani cameraman Chingiz Mustafayev, who shot footage of killed Azeri civilian corps from Khojaly – under Azeri control – both on February 29 and on March 2. The same corpses were mutilated on March 2, 2007 but not on February 29 – an incident that led Mustafayev to accuse Azerbaijani forces for orchestrating the mutilation of Azeri bodies. The footage was shown in the Azerbaijani parliament, followed by Mustafayev’s murder during filming military units of the Azerbaijani Popular Front.