By Uzay Bulut
What Ottomans did during the 1915 genocide (and what Turkey
is still doing today) is very similar to what the Islamic State is doing. While
much of the world has been shaken by the atrocities committed by the Islamic
State against non-Muslim communities in Syria and Iraq, a non-Muslim community
in Turkey, the Armenians, has for decades been suffering – mostly forgotten and
abandoned by the world.
(Demolition of historic Armenian houses in Mus, Turkey Photo: Video screenshot)
What Ottomans did during the 1915 genocide (and what Turkey
is still doing today) is very similar to what the Islamic State is doing.
Drawing parallels between the past and the present is of great significance to
understand the continuity, universality and horridness of Islamic jihadi
genocide.
Even though it has been 101 years since the 1915 genocide
befell the Armenian Christians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, the few
remnant homes, churches and even cemeteries of the victims are still being
targeted by both the state authorities and locals in Turkey. Much of the public
is also complicit by staying completely silent in the face of these injustices.
Today, the Armenians in their ancient homeland inside
Turkey’s boundaries have become almost extinct. But in Turkey, even the dead
Armenians are not allowed to rest in peace.
“Dozens of graves have been dug and bones have been taken
out,” said Aziz Dagci, the head of the Armenian Minorities Association, who
filed a criminal complaint in the city of Muş (pronounced Mush) about the
destruction of the graves that date back to the 1800s.
“They should stop digging our graves. There is nothing but
our dead in our graves,” he said. “And they should also stop destroying our
monastery.”
Much of the world media, however, fails to cover the human
rights abuses Armenians and other Christians are subject to in Turkey. Their
sole focus seems to be the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL). Sadly, they fail to see
what is done to Armenians and other Christians inside Turkey, a NATO-member
nation.
For example, in 2013, 500 historic Armenian houses in the
Kale neighborhood of Mus were demolished within the government’s project of
“urban renewal.” (See a video of the demolished houses.)
“This obliteration of a culture,” wrote researcher Varak
Ketsemanian, “is a consistent policy of the Turkish government; it uses it as a
tool of counter-propaganda against any Armenians claims that assert the
pre-1915 existence of Armenians on these lands. Although this policy does not
include any actual massacres or deportations, it is a continuation of the same
policy adopted in 1915.”
Apparently, Armenian cemeteries are intentionally chosen as
targets by Turkish authorities or locals.
Again, in 2013 a restaurant was built on the Armenian
cemetery in the city of Tekirdag in eastern Thrace.
“During the construction, the bones in the cemetery were
scattered all around and some were thrown into trash bins. The gravestones,
stolen from the cemetery, were used in the construction of a manhole and
Armenian gravestones were found in another infrastructure work,” reported the
newspaper Taraf.
Taraf also reported that in the central Anatolian city of
Sivas "the Armenian cemetery in the city had been looted during a road
construction and human bones were scattered to the roadsides. What happened to
the gravestones is still unknown.”
Mus had a vivid Armenian community before 1915. Statistics
show that before the genocide, 140,555 Armenians lived in Mus' 339 villages.
There were 299 churches, 94 monasteries, 53 holy sites and 135 schools with
5,669 students. The city is also subject to many Armenian folk songs and
stories, including the love song “Gulo,” performed here by the Armenian singer,
Hasmik Harutyunyan.
According to the 1917 Ottoman census, however, 99 percent of
the Armenians in the region had become “lost.” Apparently, the word “lost” in
the Ottoman-Turkish dictionary means “slaughtered” or “deported” – and by the
most brutal methods imaginable.
“Some of the children were burnt alive; the others were
poisoned or drowned, died from lack of food, or succumbed to diseases,”
according to the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute.
“I am confident,” said Henry Morgenthau, the U.S. Ambassador
to the Ottoman Empire (1913-16), “that the whole history of the human race
contains no such horrible episode as this. The great massacres and persecutions
of the past seem almost insignificant when compared with the sufferings of the
Armenian race in 1915.”[i]
Most Armenians have been wiped out from Mus, as well as the
rest of Turkey. “[Officially] there are 3,000 Armenians in Mus now, but the
locals say that there are more,” said the director of the Study Center for
Western Armenian Issues, Haykazun Alvrtsyan in 2014, who added, “There are at
least 2.5 million ‘Muslim Armenians’ in Turkey, half of whom are hiding.”
Given the boundless intolerance against everything
reminiscent of Armenians in Turkey, the “hidden” Armenians seem to have
justifiable reasons not to reveal their ethnic or religious identity.
In a country where even the bones and cemeteries of
Armenians are not respected, being an Armenian is a considerable hardship to
live with every day.
[i] “The Armenian Genocide: The Essential Reference Guide”,
by Alan Whitehorn, Publisher: ABC-CLIO, 2015.
Uzay Bulut is a Turkish journalist formerly based in Ankara.
She is presently in Washington, D.C. Follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/uzayb
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