A beautiful monument to the Armenian Genocide in downtown Budapest, Hungary, was desecrated by suspected Turkish nationalists on April 24, 2008, the day of the commemoration of the 93rd anniversary of the Genocide.

A YouTube.com video shows devastating and disgusting imagery of the vandalism while PanArmenian.net refrains from reporting the worst of the desecration.

A penis was painted across the cross on the monument, a 2000 replica of an ancient Armenian cross-stone (khachkar). The word “fuck” was written twice at the bottom of the cross-stone, while the writing on the back of the monument was painted over. The word “Lie” and “Fuck” were also written on the back of the cross-stone. PanArmenian.net only reported the “lie.”

I have also received an e-mail from Jean Eckian with four vandalism photographs, taken by Hungarian journalist Ingrid Hutterer.   

Through Hrag Vartanian’s blog, where he posts a photograph from the Armenian Genocide and tells his family history, I came across to a set of newly-uploaded photographs from the Genocide.

The photographs are part of the Nubarian collection owned by the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU). Some of them show rescued women and children completing our recent post on similar, newly-published photos.

 Image: Armine Minassyan, 19, holds the Armenian flag during rally after thousands of American Armenians marched in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles Thursday April 24, 2008, to observe the 93rd anniversary of the Armenian genocide. The marchers want the Turkish government to admit responsibility for the slaughter of about 1.5 million people during World War I. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)

 Image: A woman attends a religious service marking the the Armenian Genocide anniversary at an Armenian church in Tbilisi April 24, 2008. REUTERS/David Mdzinarishvili (GEORGIA) 

Ninety-three years after the Armenian Genocide started Armenians still remember their unforgettable tragedy. Ninety-three years after the extermination of western Armenia started Turkey denies it ever happened. Ninety-three years after the Genocide started it continues for many Armenians. It continues in denial, hatred and continuous oppression of Armenian culture in Turkey.

For Armenians, April 24 is a day of sorrow, reflection and pride. Sorrow for the uncountable lives lost and an ancient culture reduced to dust; reflection on how to deal with the past in the present for a better future; and a pride for surviving the worst crime in this world.

For Turks, it is a story rather to remain untold. Challenging Turkey’s very right to exist, the Genocide is seen a threat to national pride and legitimacy by many Turks. But for others, it is also a fundamental question of human rights with universal and apolitical applications.

 BBC IMAGE: Turks commemorating Gallipoli on April 24, 2008

The conventional Turkish attitude was reflected in a large event in Turkey. According to the BBC, “Turkish soldiers, members of the traditional Ottoman army band of Mehter, perform[ed] …during the 93rd anniversary of the World War I campaign of Gallipoli.” The battle of Gallipoli, according to Wikipedia, “is perceived as a defining moment in the history of the Turkish people—a final surge in the defense of the motherland as the centuries-old Ottoman Empire was crumbling.” The Turkish understanding of Gallipoli has been extended to nationalist attitude toward the Genocide. The few who proudly admit they committed the crime, argue it was for the sake of saving Turkey.

For Armenians, the Genocide was not an act to save the Ottoman Empire but to expand the Turkish leadership’s imperialist desire of establishing a Pan-Turkish empire from the Balkans to China. The Armenian nation, according to many Armenians, was the obstacle to expansion. They held the keys to the frontier.

BBC IMAGE: Message for peace at the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan

In Armenia, hundreds of thousands of people visited the Genocide memorial in the capital city Yerevan. Some had brought pigeons for peace (as seen in the picture above), while another brought a Turkish flag to step on. Interestingly, Turkey’s nationalist Sabah newspaper was quick to report the latter.

Image: Tsitsernakaberd, Yerevan, Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2008 

But another Turkish newspaper, Taraf, devoted its front page to the Armenian Genocide yet was careful not to use the word genocide. (I received the .pdf version in an e-mail from Turkey and its English translation from a Turkish friend in California.) It published the names of the Armenian intelligentsia members who were arrested and eventually killed on April 24, 1915. Taraf’s article was nothing close to recognition or acknowledgment, but given the high degree of ultra-nationalism in Turkey it was indeed a progress. In fact, a dangerous one too. A Kurdish newspaper, for example, was closed down after publishing photographs from a possible Armenian mass grave in 2006 (later cleaned up by the Turkish army and presented by the Turkish historical society as a Roman cave).

But like the Armenians who have survived the Genocide, the closed Kurdish newspaper continues to publish… under another name. Its website is now http://www.aktuelbakis.com/ and it just published another story on the Armenian Genocide.

Outside Armenia and Turkey, the Genocide was also commemorated. In Southern California – the largest Armenian hub outside the Republic of Armenian – thousands joined hands in marching for genocide recognition. Also in the U.S., the White House released a statement by President George W. Bush commemorating the Armenian Genocide in another failure to refer to the Genocide as such. In the meantime, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi talked of the importance of recognizing the Genocide in a video posted at YouTube.com. In Lebanon, another Armenian diaspora, people came together to pray for the dead ones.

Conventional and unconventional media remembered the Genocide as a blow to Hitler’s reference that the Armenian extermination is forgotten. Agence France Press wrote about the commemoration in Yerevan posting a map of the areas where Armenians lived before 1915.  The National Geographic Magazine posted a map of Wilsonian Armenia, the territory given to the Armenian nation under the Treaty of Sevres (1920) with a short history on the Genocide.  The World War 4 Report, a website for indigenous rights, wrote about the Armenian Genocide and its argued connection to Artsakh – Nagorno Karabakh.

In one place, the message of the Armenian Genocide anniversary was summarized in a few words: no nation is above global justice.

Image: Arpa Sinanian, 3, sitting on top her father’s shoulders holds a sign during a rally after thousands of American Armenians marched in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles Thursday April 24, 2008. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)  

America’s only legally blind governor, David A. Paterson of New York State, has proclaimed April 24, 2008 Armenian Remembrance Day in the Empire State.

In commemorating the Genocide, Paterson also remembered Greeks and Assyrians who were killed along with the Armenian nation.

Whereas, a global leader in human and social rights, the Empire State has a prominent role in highlighting humanitarian concerns and teaching future generations critical lessons derived from mankind’s past transgressions and intolerance, and we acknowledge the importance of discussing such events that contribute to our understanding of world history while promoting tolerance for people of all races, religions and points of view; and

Whereas, the Armenian Genocide of 1915-23 was a catastrophic event during which an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were killed by the Ottoman authorities under whose imperial rule most Armenians lived; alongside their Greek and Assyrian imperial co-subjects, Armenian men, woman and children met their end in mass killings, organized death marches, starvation tactics and other brutal methods employed against civilians; and

Whereas, a deliberate effort to destroy people on a massive scale, the Armenian Genocide led academics to use the term genocide and it is believed that, had the Armenian Genocide been stopped through diplomatic or interventionist means, the resulting precedent for peace could have prevented the Holocaust that befell the Jewish people; and

Whereas, the Armenian Genocide caused the displacement of the Armenian people from their ancestral lands, the loss of two-thirds of the these lands and the orphaning of countless Armenian children; Armenians’ expulsion from their ancient territories was so extreme that almost every Armenian-American family can trace its immigration history to the Genocide and to the missionaries in the Middle East that housed children, the European continent, and ultimately to the United States; and

Whereas, New York recognizes that the number of survivors of the Armenian Genocide of 1915-23 is dwindling and the memory of the elderly who experienced and witnessed its occurrence has led to courageous testimonials that have put a human face on this event; and

Whereas, it is fitting that all New Yorkers recognize the hardships Armenians faced, for the purpose of preventing tragedies such as the Armenian Genocide of 1915-23 from recurring, and to appreciate the United State’s role as a refuge for all oppressed people […]

An employee at the National Geographic just informed me that the homepage of National Geographic Magazine will feature a map of Armenia and a short story on the Genocide on April 24, 2008 (in a few hours) amid worldwide commemoration of the 93rd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide on the same day.

The link that will go live on April 24, 2008 (U.S. time) is http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/map/map-day/2008/04/24.

The Armenian Genocide Musem-Institute, based in Yerevan, has translated and posted an article by Turkish poltician Hasan Amca. Mr. Amca, who was an eyewitness to the Armenian Genocide, published an article in the Turkish “Alemdar” daily in 1919 condemning nationalist Turkish leaders for denying and justifying the Armenian extermination. He also wrote memoirs, now lost, on the same subject. Below are excerpts from the article.

[…]

Live away the words “extermination” and “deportation”. Proclaim that it is decision to “annihilation of the Armenian nation” and let there remain no place for dispute. That decision was made by the gang of robbers of Ittihat ve Terrakki. It made high ranked officials carry out those special measures. You deny it, is there any necessity to insist on it? I do not know.

I must leave this problem and proofs to future to clarify your article.

You state, “Country, because of war stipulation, had a necessity to deport a part of population from war regions and had to pass a law connected to it”.

That is all right. Do you find it lawful and justified advising to use the fact of deportation unequal to extermination. According to what right the government usurps house, family property and money of its own citizen?

What kind of war necessity made them deport the women to the unknown Der-Zor desert with suckling baby, taking by the arm of a three years old child, they grabbed money in the first station, which will be enough only to buy bread for a day.

Ponder a little before saying “leaving from war regions”, necessity to comprise war regions and also deportation of the Armenians from those regions expanded from Edirne to Basra.

All right, but don’t you understand that you close the danger by deporting Armenians from Kaisery to Der-Zor, which is the back of the 6th army, and approaching them to the back of the 4th army of Hauran.

Whole area of the country became stage of general war. The “necessity” arisen by the war was to move the Armenian nation from that region. It would be more logical if you supported it in following way, “there was left no place on the earth, the country became topsy-turvy, and thus we decided deporting and driving places”.

And also the law… Not only my, but in the name of the whole nation, please do not repeat that bloody and terrible word like Ittihat ve Terakki.

Do not repeat that wild word to relax the conscience of nation, because of which hundred of thousands sons of the country were hanged, hundred of thousands were shot, hundreds of thousands innocent children and women were smashed to pieces with ax, thousands widows and orphans were starved to death. Protests addressed to “our statesmen supplying all the good” heard from the bravest mouths had only instant life and under the reign of those cruel people who perpetrated all these crimes, the population of the empire was drunk with that wild word giving them pompous.

I am sure that only few citizens can give the brightest and clearest explanation of the law except you. The law that makes you express called deportation by you must be carried out first of all for your family. At that time to realize the meaning of applying a law you will have strength to ponder on deep philosophy, to correspond the law to the God’s law, conscience and logic. You will be able to conclude that there exist several hundreds of ayats in the holy book and constitutional articles to reject and curse this crime.

And you consider it as a law adopted by four bloody and foolish people? As if that word has power to transform all those crimes into humanness and you think the statesman deserves to amnesty following that example. How should it be?

[…]

When you say there were officials in the deportation regions who carried out demand of the law reasonably and even “defended and were kind-hearted”, I do not know what you mean by saying the expression “defended and kind-hearted”.

Do you think that “defended and kind-hearted” man may take a woman with three-four children out of the house with “mealy-mouthed” and send them to the mountains, uninhabited deserts where even grass is not found or a place to meet death? Is that all?

That was “defended and kind-hearted” deportation that I saw. You say who passed “border of duty”, were dismissed by Talaat pasha in spite of his wish who is the most influential person in the government. I should ask the following questions with your allowance that Talaat pasha was a legal or an illegal person or was he a bastard?

There is another “border of duty” in this problem. I leave it for you to clarify.

In all cases defense and kind-heartedness were within border of duty of deportation. I recognize many people who rose with the ladder of service after having passed the normal border and being whipped. May Your Excellency point a punished person by that “positive” government? You accept not to show that “negative” persons were a progress in the war field for realizing the deportation.

Reshid vali, who left for Diarbekir with two suitcases after organizing a slaughter returned with wagons. Then he was appointed vali in Ankara as I think for punishment.

Believe me; the latter got the most severe punishment compared with others.

“Even if there is no official order for extermination and plunder, there will always be resigned and dismissed officials who will not keep silent”, are you speaking seriously?

If we keep silent, it is only to inspire crimes of several people. It is to honor wounded and bloody hearts for not piercing and breaking them once again. But if we speak on them, that will mean to sound something well-known to everybody.

If there are people who defended Armenians from extermination and massacre, their activity came from courage, humanness and conscience typical to them. Activities of such individuals as Bekir Sami, Hyusein Kyazim and Dr. Arif, personalities who deserve to be recorded in accounts of the government Ittihat ve Terakki, yesterday they were considered to be persons of high-treason, feeble, coward and mean.

They achieved that honorary goal acting opposite to the official orders of the government. Not the government gave legal orders and the honorary officials carried it out well. Your Excellency knows it very well.

But how can one not get surprised by wrong viewpoints and conscious instigating wrong defense?

The murderer Kemal from Yozghat says,

-The government has not carried it out.

An improvident member of Ittihat ve Terakki says,

-Ittihat ve Terakki has not made such decision; it even punished several people for abuses, – he is not ashamed of saying it, he does not avoid of it.

If we ask a poor Turk, he would answer,

– I came back from war. My neighbor Avetis agha, a smith, Nikoghos Chorbadjin, I do not know many of my neighbors have been robbed; they have been drawn to Arabistan or elsewhere.

All right, we will not speak unless anybody asks. However, the God who is one for a Christian, Turk, and Armenian will ask with loud and ruthless voice.

That is all right, but who killed hundred of thousands Armenians?

“Alemdar”, April 5, 1919, Constantinople (Translated from Osmanli into Armenian by Arsen Avagyan)

The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) has launched a new website, www.endthegagrule.com, for Armenian Genocide recognition.

Here is the press release for the only (open) Armenian Genocide awareness event in Turkey this year received in e-mail:

HUMAN RIGHTS ASSOCIATION ISTANBUL BRANCH

PRESS RELEASE 

Today, 24th of April, is recognised worldwide as the date signifying the Armenian Genocide. Only in Turkey it indicates a taboo. The Turkish state mobilises all its resources to deny the meaning of this date.

At diplomatic platforms Turkish officials and their advocates claim that they recognise the “big tragedy” and they only object to its being named as  a “Genocide”. That’s not true. At every occasion in Turkey not only the Armenian Genocide, but also the great agony of the Armenian people is denied and attempts are made  to justify the genocide. 

It was only last month that during a Symposium on the Armenian-Turkish relations the denialist official theses were voiced one after another, offending the Armenians in Turkey and elsewhere and insulting the memory of their grandparents. Lies were told in the name of “science”,  like  “Armenians have always sold their masters”,   “deportation was a means of crisis management”, “death toll of deportation is comparable to the death toll of flu epidemic in England that time”, “there is no other people as noble as the Turkish nation in the world, it is impossible for them to commit a genocide” and many more,  humiliating a people who was one of the most advanced in science, art, literature, and in all other aspects. 

Denial  is an  constituent part of the genocide itself and results in the continuation of the genocide. Denial of genocide is a human rights violation in itself.  It deprives individuals the right to mourn for their ancestors, for the ethnic cleansing of a nation, the annihilation of people of all ages, all professions, all social sections, women, men, children, babies, grandparents alike just because they were Armenians regardless of their political background or conviction. Perhaps the most important of all, it is the refusal of making a solemn, formal commitment and say “NEVER AGAIN”.     

Turkey has made hardly any progress in the field of co-existence, democracy, human rights and putting an end to militarism since the time of the Union and Progress Committee. Annihilation and denial had been and continues today to be the only means to solve the problem. Villages evacuated and put on fire and forced displacements are still the manifestation of the same habit of “social engineering”.  There has always been bloodshed  in the homeland of Armenians after 1915. Unsolved murders, disappearances under custody, rapes and arrests en masse during the 1990’s were  no surprise,  given the ongoing state tradition lacking any culture of repentance for past crimes against humanity.

Similarly the removal of a public prosecutor and banning him from profession just for taking the courage to mention  an accusation against  the military, a very recent incident, is the manifestation of an old habit of punishing anybody who dares to voice any objection to the army.  And today’s ongoing military build up of some 250,000 troops in the southeast of Turkey is the proof of a mindset who is unable to develop any solution to the Kurdish question other than armed suppresion. 

Turkey will not be able to take even one step forward without putting an end to the continuity of the Progress and Union manner  of ruling.  No human rights violation can be stopped in Turkey and there will be no hope of breaking the vicious circle of Kurdish uprisings and their bloody suppression  unless the Turkish state agree to create an environment where  public homage is paid to genocide victims, where the sufferings of their grandchildren  is shared and the genocide is recognised. 

Today we, as the human rights defenders, would like to address all Armenians in Turkey and elsewhere in the world and tell them “we want to share the pain in your hearts and bow down before the memory of your lost ones. They are also our losses. Our struggle for human rights in Turkey, is at the same time our mourning for our common losses and a homage paid to the genocide victims”. 

And here is the program:

Human Rights Association

Istanbul Branch 

WHAT HAPPENED ON 24^th APRIL 1915 IN ISTANBUL?

PANELISTS

EREN KESKİN

24th April 1915 from Human Rights Perspective

RAGIP ZARAKOLU

24th April – A milestone setting an example for the annilihation of intellectuals

ARA SARAFIAN

Why Armenians Commemorate 24 April 1915 to Signify the Beginning of the Armenian Genocide: a Critical Examination.”

 ERDOĞAN AYDIN

Historical Consciousness and Confronting the History

Thursday, 24^thtApril 2008 

02:00 p.m.

BİLGİ UNIVERSITY

DOLAPDERE CAMPUS

Source: Fort Collins Courier (Fort Collins, Larimer County, Colorado, United States); Date: Dec 20, 1921 Page: 2

Image: Knesset member Zeev Elkin sounds positive that Israel will recognize the Armenian Genocide one day but given Turkey’s angry response and Armenia’s lack of reaction he is not so sure the move will take place this year

It sounds natural for the state of Israel to recognize genocides committed against others, but a move by a Jewish parliamentarian to do so for the Armenian Genocide is in jeopardy amid heavy Turkish lobby.

According to Haaretz, a Turkish delegation has asked Israel’s government to cancel a discussion on the Armenian Genocide in the Knesset, Israel’s legislature.

The chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in the Turkish parliament, Hasan Murat Mercan, has asked the Prime Minister’s Bureau to cancel a scheduled discussion in the Knesset on the Armenian genocide.Mercan was in Israel this week at the head of a Turkish parliamentary delegation for talks with their Israeli counterparts.

Talks included discussions on Iran, the Palestinians and Syria, but the main issue the Turkish delegation raised was an upcoming Knesset debate on the Armenian genocide.

“The Armenian issue is very sensitive for Turkey,” the visitors told Yoram Turbowicz and Shalom Turgeman, two of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s most senior aides, adding that, “We would prefer if this discussion would not take place at this time in the Israeli parliament because it may harm the relations between the two countries.”

[…]

It is not just the heavy Turkish lobbying that may kill the move, Knesset member Zeev Elkin has told The Armenian Reporter, but also the lack of Armenian reaction. 

[…] I have to note that there has not been any intense attention from the Armenian side – either from the diaspora or the government – to this issue. And this does not make things easier for me.  e fact that both Turkey and Azerbaijan are intensively lobbying the Knesset, and there is no similar effort from the Armenian side, makes the challenge we have even more difficult.

[…]

To the question of what Armenians can do, Mr. Elkin says:

Well starting just with communication by supporters of this issue with members of the Knesset – all member e-mails are available on the web site www. knesset.gov.il, as are phone numbers. All parliament members pay attention to the public, even if that public is not part of their electorate.

[…]

Whether letters by Armenians will help is a question wide open but many are convinced Israel will recognize the Armenian Genocide sooner or later. “Turkey will eventually have to resign itself to the fact that the parliament of Israel, like parliaments of other countries before it, will take a position on this issue,” says Elkin.