Robert Fulford
A question Adolf Hitler once asked still haunts the
history of political atrocities: “Who remembers the Armenians today?” He was
confident that in a few years no one would care that he killed a multitude of
Jews. After all, the Ottoman Empire and its successor state, Turkey, murdered
more than a million Armenians, beginning in 1915. Less than three decades
later, Hitler believed that crime was already forgotten.
In fact, much of the world ignored the Armenian tragedy
as it was occurring. The First World War seemed more important than fragmentary
news from remote Anatolia. But ever since, Armenians around the world have done
their best to recall what happened. Every April 24 they commemorate the day in
1915 when the Turkish government began the genocide by arresting 200 Armenian
community leaders in Istanbul. They were imprisoned and in most cases executed.
Armenians particularly want governments to acknowledge
what happened as genocide, the conscious attempt to obliterate an ethnic group.
The government of Turkey is just as anxious to deny that genocide occurred. The
official story is that the people involved were deportees, leaving Turkey by
foot, under harsh circumstances. That would explain the deaths.
Within Turkey it’s forbidden to name this a genocide.
Orhan Pamuk, Turkey’s winner of the Nobel prize in literature, was prosecuted
for “insulting Turkishness” by referring to the killings in an interview with a
Swiss magazine. Protests from around the world got Pamuk’s case dismissed. But
there are still Turks who believe Pamuk expressed anti-Turkish opinions just to
promote his career.
This decades-old dispute has taken an interesting turn
with the appearance of the first ambitious and expensive movie about the
genocide, The Promise. It’s a U.S.-Spain co-production recently given its world
première at the Toronto International Film Festival. The director, Terry
George, who had a success with Hotel Rwanda, embraces the story as told by most
Armenians and most historians. He depicts masses of Armenians of all ages
trying to escape Turkish rule, travelling across deserts and mountains as
Turkish soldiers harass and shoot them. These sections of the film are
convincing and moving.
But there’s also a wearying romantic triangle involving
Michael (Oscar Isaac), a medical student, Chris, a U.S. journalist sympathetic
to Armenians (Christian Bale) and the woman they both love, Ana (Charlotte Le
Bon), a painter. This badly over-written, too-familiar tale takes up much of
the film’s foreground.
The Promise does not attempt to explain why the Turks
hated Armenians. Turks were Muslims, Armenians were Christians, both living
under Ottoman rule. The Armenians tended to be better educated and more
prosperous, creating envy.
They were also said to be close to their neighbours, the
Russians, and Turks suspected them of treason. In the First World War, Turkey
sided with Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empire while Russia was allied with
Britain and France. Turkey justified the forced deportation of the Armenians as
a “wartime measure of military security.” Armenians were also victims of the
passionate nationalism of Turkey. The cause of independence brought with it a
desire to “Turkify” the new nation-state.
If the genocide was little noticed by the world, it was
recorded by many witnesses. Henry Morgenthau, American ambassador to the
Ottoman Empire, described it as “a campaign of race extermination” in a 1915
telegram to Washington. In his memoirs he wrote, “When the Turkish authorities
gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death
warrant to a whole race. In their conversations with me, they made no
particular attempt to conceal the fact.”
In forcing the victims to reach its border, Turkey made
no provisions for them. They were allowed only what they could carry.
Starvation killed many. There were many massacres. Those Armenians not shot
were reduced to a famished mass. Having inhabited the Armenian highlands for
3,000 years, survivors eventually settled in about two dozen countries around
the world. Those who eluded deportation formed a small enclave, Russian
Armenia. By late 1920, the Soviet Army arrived and their region became the
Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. Freed finally by the collapse of the Soviet
Union, the current Republic of Armenia appeared.
Today Armenians remain intent on getting more countries
to recognize the genocide — so far 28 have done so. Recognition passed Canada’s
parliament in 2004, after vigorous lobbying by Sarkis Assadourian, an
Armenian-Canadian Liberal MP from Toronto — and over objections from the
Turkish ambassador in Ottawa. He said Canada would suffer because Turkey would
not buy Candu reactors or Canadian-made trains.
This year, Germany infuriated Turkey for a special
reason. In June the Bundestag passed a resolution labelling the event a
genocide, causing Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to recall his
ambassador. Worse, for Turkey, 11 Bundestag members who voted for the
resolution had a Turkish background. Several received death threats. Erdogan
attacked them by suggesting they take blood tests to see “what kind of Turks
they are.”
Erdogan loses most of these battles, despite his skills
in diplomacy. He lost conceivably the biggest one, with Pope Francis. The pope
has publicly used the word genocide in connection with the Armenians and says
he has always done so.
National Post
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