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Th Armenian G nocide

and International Relations

1913-2015

ublic opinion in Europe has outcome of continuous harassment Denial of this Genocide has had paral-
heard about the Armenian and pogroms employed against reli- lel consequences on Turkish demo-
Genocide perpetrated in gious minorities. The September 1955 cracy and the rule of law. The Turkish
p 1915, yet they often know pogrom in Istanbul, which targeted state has continued to own confisca-
little about it. This ignorance is not the Greek and Armenian populations, ted Armenian property, whether real
accidental. The state responsible -- is one such event. Another in 1974 estate, capital or assets belonging to
Turkey, the inheritor of the Ottoman confiscated 1,400 properties belong- the Armenian Church. This confisca-
Empire -- denied that it committed ing to Armenian foundations in Istan- ted property was distributed among a
a crime against its Armenian citizens. bul -- schools, churches, hospitals. new "Muslim bourgeoisie" making the
The extermination of 1.2 million entrepreneurial class dependent on
people and the deportation of another In Eastern Anatolia Armenian civili- the state, with huge consequences on
million were attributed to military zation was systematically erased. the rule of law. For decades, the Turk-
necessity. Moreover, the victims them- Remaining Armenians were forcibly ish state has invested huge efforts
selves became the accused as Turkish converted to Islam, Turkified or Kur- in "denial" with a negative effect on
authorities denounced them for col- dified. Thousands of churches and freedom of speech. Anyone challen-
laborating with the enemy during the monasteries, centres for the transmis- ging the official line was persecuted,
First World War. sion of culture, were either turned into as happened to the Armenian-Turkish
mosques or destroyed. journalist Hrant Dink. In the last few
What distinguishes the Armenian years, the liberal intelligentsia has
Genocide from similar cases is the fact What is most surprising is that tried to resuscitate the memory of the
that it remains unrecognized. It there- Turkish antagonism towards Arme- Armenians in the struggle for demo-
fore shows us what happens when a nia and its population continues until cratization within Turkish society.
major crime is committed. Why does this day. Following the collapse of the
our international political system USSR and the emergence of an inde- Denial of the crime of Genocide could
behave as if nothing happened? pendent Armenia, Ankara refused not have been sustained without in-
This was the question I researched to establish diplomatic relations and ternational indifference. The city of
in my recent book Open Wounds: imposed a blockade on this landlocked Geneva's project to erect a memo-
Armenians, Turks, and a Century country, crippling its economy and rial to the Armenian victims, which
of Genocide, and came to stunning weakening its population. received heavy opposition from Ankara,
conclusions.' but also surprisingly from Bern, did
If a state celebrates criminals of war as not lead to any protest from Geneva's
The first consequence I discovered national heroes, then crimes become large human rights community. This
is that justice is not only an abstract, legitimate conflict-resolution mecha- "banality of indifference" only encou-
moral notion, but has concrete, tan- nisms. Once the Christians had been rages Genocide denial.
gible effects. By not recognizing a dealt with, the Turkish state turned
major crime against its own citizens, against its "new" minority, the Kurds. Yet, Genocide denial continues to
Turkey has been able to continue the The Kemalist state considered that pollute international relations. After
destruction of its Armenian popula- Kurds simply did not exist; they were 100 years it is time to break this inter-
tion. When the Turkish Republic was branded as "mountain Turks" and national indifference. We owe it not
founded in 1923 there were 300,000 discrimination continues to this day. only to the memory of Armenian vic-
Armenians living in the country, out of Kurdish protests against such poli- tims, and millions of other innocent
a total population of 14 million. Today, cies or revolts have been repressed by victims of past wars, but also to future
the Armenians hardly make up 60,000 force, followed by massacres of civilian generations. Otherwise, what kind of
out of a population approaching 75 populations and mass displacements, justice can we promise to the innocent
million. This dramatic drop in the as happened in Dersim in 1937-1938, victims of future conflicts?
Armenian population -- the largest or following the PKK guerrilla attacks
non-Muslim community -- is the in the 1980s and 1990s. Vicken Cheterian

18 International 'http://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/open-wounds/