{"id":608,"date":"2020-04-25T17:18:12","date_gmt":"2020-04-25T17:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/armeniangenocidereparations.info\/?p=608"},"modified":"2020-04-26T17:26:07","modified_gmt":"2020-04-26T17:26:07","slug":"genocide-scholar-sees-virtual-commemorations-as-new-way-of-reaching-out-for-armenians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/armeniangenocidereparations.info\/?p=608","title":{"rendered":"Genocide Scholar Sees \u2018Virtual Commemorations\u2019 As New Way Of Reaching Out For Armenians"},"content":{"rendered":"

Harry Tamrazian
\nRFE\/RL Armenian – azatutyun.am<\/strong><\/p>\n

A leading U.S. specialist in genocide studies sees this year\u2019s \u201cvirtual commemorations\u201d of the Armenian genocide conditioned by the need to cope with the spread of a deadly virus as potentially a new additional way for reaching out for a stronger global recognition in the future.<\/p>\n

Henry Theriault, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs at Worcester State University and President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, spoke to RFE\/RL Armenian Service Director Harry Tamrazian on the eve of April 24, which Armenians in Armenia and around the world mark as an anniversary of World War I-era killings and deportations of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey.
\n<\/p>\n

Leading international scholars and more than two dozen governments in the world recognize the killings of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks as the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey denies any planned Ottoman government effort to annihilate Armenians, ascribing the deaths that it claims were on a much lower scale to the consequences of civil strife, disease, and starvation.<\/p>\n

Instead of holding traditional annual mass events commemorating the genocide victims, including hundreds of thousands of Armenians\u2019 marching towards a hilltop genocide memorial in Yerevan known as Tsitsernakaberd, Armenia\u2019s authorities this year limited the remembrance events to ceremonies involving only officials. Instead, hundreds of thousands of Armenians sent text messages to a designated telephone number, and their names were projected on the slabs of the memorial on April 24-25 night. The night before, in conditions of the stay-at-home orders during the coronavirus epidemic, street lights were switched off and church bells pealed across the country in memory of the victims.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think that one year of changing the form of remembrance of the Armenian genocide will have a very strong impact. Quite the opposite. I think that in fact, it will allow Armenians to recognize and remember the genocide in a different way from how it was before and that will be a positive change,\u201d Theriault said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I think also more practically it will help Armenians develop new ways of out-reaching regarding the Armenian genocide particularly in using electronic media in ways perhaps the community has not used before around the world, and that those tools will actually become very useful in the future. The idea of having very strong virtual commemorations alongside, I hope next year, very strong in-person commemorations will actually perhaps double the impact of the commemorations and allow for an even stronger global recognition of the Armenian genocide,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Last year the U.S. Congress almost unanimously passed a resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide.<\/p>\n

Theriault thinks it took the United States decades to adopt the resolution because of the political and military influence that Turkey had had in Washington as well as due to \u201ca lack of commitment generally in the United States and elsewhere around the world for human rights issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat changed, I think, as the equation in the region in which Turkey sits has changed. Turkey has become less aligned with the United States in many ways. [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan has become more of a wild card and has pursued his own agenda at times with some animosity towards the United States. So, I think that that widened the gap between the U. S. political and military interests and Turkish political and military interests which opened the door to the possibility of this change,\u201d the scholar said.<\/p>\n

Theriault believes that Turkey\u2019s denial of the genocide today \u201cdoes not have the power that it once did.\u201d \u201cPeople are not naive about denial anymore and so the effect of the Turkish government and its allies on efforts to stop the passage of this bill, to deny the genocide in popular and academic circles really has decreased and so I think with all those factors together the time was right last year finally for passage of this resolution,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Theriault believes that Ankara\u2019s denial has two dimensions. \u201cOne is the obvious political and economic interest in preventing recognition because of fear, in my opinion, of reparations. I think Turkey is very afraid that if it admits the Armenian genocide, there will be legal consequences, particularly around expropriated Armenian wealth\u2026 But I think at the same time \u2013 and this has actually become worse in the last five years \u2013 denial of the Armenian genocide is unfortunately tied very closely to a fragile Turkish national self-image, an image that often presents Turkey in an impossibly positive light. No country is free from human rights violations, but Turkey presents itself internationally as this incredibly untainted and perfect country. And the glaring truth of the Armenian genocide undercuts this image that it presents and its own self-image,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In the scholar\u2019s opinion, the annual letters that the Turkish president sends on April 24 to the Armenian spiritual leader of Istanbul and in which he regrets the 1915 Armenian deaths but stops short of admitting they were part of a premeditated and concerted effort of the Ottoman government to exterminate are \u201ca subtler form of denial.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s impossible to outright deny that Armenians suffered significantly in the late Ottoman Empire and in the early Turkish national period. I think that the historical record is so clear, so the best that Turkey can do to try to look credible in denying the Armenian genocide is to take the kind of line that Erdogan has taken, which is to try to relativize suffering to try to recognize without actually going as far as recognizing this as a case of one-sided mass violence by a government against the minority group that clearly qualifies as genocide,\u201d he said.\u201cI think Erdogan is a very shrewd politician. He knows that if he gave a na\u00efve, extreme form of denial it would be apparent to everyone and he would not be able to have any credibility. So, he adopts a subtler approach\u2026 I still think it\u2019s not very effective, even that subtler approach is not very effective at this point.<\/p>\n

Official Ankara on Friday reacted angrily to the statement by U.S. President Donald Trump in which the American leader, while not using the word \u201cgenocide\u201d, described the 1915 Armenian killings as \u201cone of the worst mass atrocities of the 20th century.\u201d<\/p>\n

Theriault said, however, that as an American he was relieved that \u201cTrump wouldn\u2019t be the first sitting U.S. president to recognize the Armenian genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that would carry some baggage for Armenians because his record on human rights both within the United States and internationally is extremely poor,\u201d the genocide scholar said. \u201cI think the fact that he does not recognize the Armenian genocide actually in one strange way is a confirmation of the importance of this case and the legitimacy of this case.\u201d<\/p>\n