by Uzay Bulut
"In all of these operations children were part of
the general population targeted for wholesale destruction. In many instances
they were also subjected to separate and differential forms of mass
murder." — Professor Vahakn Dadrian, in Children as Victims of Genocide:
The Armenian Case.
These forms of murder included methods such as mass
drowning, mass burning, sexual assaults, and mutilations.
"In Ankara province, near the village of Bash Ayash,
two rapist-killers -- a brigand, Deli Hasan, and a gendarme, Ibrahim -- raped
twelve boys, aged 12-14, and subsequently killed them. Those who did not die
instantly were tortured to death while crying 'Mummy, Mummy.'" — Professor
Vahakn Dadrian, in Children as Victims of Genocide: The Armenian Case.
"A female survivor from Giresun relates how in Agn
(Egin), Harput province, some 500 Armenian orphans collected from all parts of
that province were poisoned through the arrangement of the local pharmacist and
physician." — Leslie A Davis, U.S. Consul at Harput.
More than 100 years after the genocide, Turkey still
denies it and Turkish history textbooks even blame the genocide on the
Armenians themselves.
When experts deny the Armenian genocide and even try to
prevent the U.S. government from officially recognizing it, they are killing
the victims all over again.
"As long as the genocide remains unrecognized,
justice will not be established. The curse of the genocide will not leave this
land, and Turkey will never see the light of day. This is not a prediction, but
a statement of fact." — Turkey's Human Rights Association, 2016.
U.S. President-Elect Donald J. Trump was recently called
on to "guarantee" to Turkey that the Armenian genocide will not be
properly acknowledged by the U.S. Congress, in a set of proposals regarding
"U.S. Policy on Turkey".
"The United States can quietly guarantee Turkey that
the Armenian Genocide resolution in Congress will not pass. This has always
been critical in the relationship, and most Turks care deeply about the
issue," reads a part of the paper issued by The Washington Institute for
Near East Policy (WINEP), and authored by former U.S. ambassador to Ankara
James F. Jeffrey and Turkish scholar Dr. Soner Cagaptay.
In the meantime, an Armenian protestant church in the
Turkish city of Elazig (historic Kharpert/Harput) has been turned into a
parking lot, the Dicle News Agency (DIHA) reported.
The walls of the church, which served as a place of
worship for the Armenian and Assyrian communities alike, is now loaded with
advertising boards, installed by the managers of the parking lot. Before that,
the church was used as a flour plant, a marketplace and a livestock market.
The city of Elazig is located in the Armenian highland of
eastern Turkey.
Professor Benjamin Lieberman in his book, Terrible Fate:
Ethnic Cleansing in the Making of Modern Europe:
"Elazig is a small city in Eastern Turkey of several
hundred thousand inhabitants, situated near a series of lakes created by a dam
on the Euphrates River. Today its residents are mostly Turks and Kurds, but as
late as the spring of 1915 it was also very much an Armenian town. In 1915,
Armenians called it Kharpert while Turks referred to it as Harput. It had been
an Armenian center for many centuries."[1]
The historic town and citadel of Harput (also called
Harpoot, Karpoot, and Kharperd) means "rock fortress" in Armenian.
After the founding of the Turkish republic in 1923, the government changed the
city's name to "Elazig".
According to professor Richard Hovannisian, the Armenian
genocide was the "physical elimination of the Armenian people and most of
the evidence of their ever having lived on the great highland called the
Armenian Plateau, to which the perpetrator side soon assigned the new name of
Eastern Anatolia".[2]
No matter how much the Turkish government is trying to
erase the Armenian heritage in Harput and the rest of Turkey, the Armenian
roots of the region are undeniable. As a medieval town, Harput seems to have
developed under the Byzantine rule (10th and 11th centuries – 938 onwards).
According to the author T.A. Sinclair, "The Byzantines presumably valued
the site for the powerful castle rock, but once a military base became
established here a civilian population started to form. No doubt this
population, ethnically Syrian and Armenian, came in part from the city of
Arsamosata [a city in the Armenian Kingdom near the Euphrates] further east,
which started to give way to Harput, as well as from nearby villages."[3]
The Ottomans captured the region in 1515. Under the
Ottoman administrative system, the province was called Mamuretul-aziz. But the
Armenian presence in the city remained strong despite all of the massacres and
pressures to which they were subject, such as forced conversions to Islam.
According to another author, George Aghjayan: "On
the eve of the genocide... The figures as presented indicate that the Armenian
population of Kharpert remained relatively static for almost a century, never
deviating much from approximately 40,000."
It was in 1915 that Armenians were exposed to what they
often call "Medz Yeghern" or "the Great Disaster" when the
leaders of the Turkish government set in motion a plan to expel and massacre
them.
The plan resulted in the systematic extermination of 1.5
million Armenians. Today, most historians call this event a genocide–a
premeditated and systematic campaign to exterminate an entire people.
Armenian civilians, escorted by Ottoman soldiers, marched
through Harput to a prison in nearby Mezireh (present-day Elazig), April 1915.
(Image source: American Red Cross/Wikimedia Commons)
Professor Vahakn Dadrian, an expert on the Armenian
Genocide, wrote in his article, "Children as Victims of Genocide: The
Armenian Case":
"In the provinces of Sivas, Harput, Trabzon,
Erzurum, Diyarbekir, as well as the independent sanjaks of Urfa and Maras the
genocide was earned out in part through deportations and in part through
massacres... In all of these operations children were part of the general
population targeted for wholesale destruction. In many instances they were also
subjected to separate and differential forms of mass murder."[4]
These forms of murder included methods such as mass
drowning, mass burning, sexual assaults, and mutilations.
"[O]rphanages in which Armenian children were
gathered after the liquidation of their families served as transit camps for
subsequent annihilation through drowning."
U.S. Consul at Harput, Leslie A Davis, described a
horrendous scene of butchering around Lake Goeljuk [Golcuk/Hazar Lake] near
Harput:
"In the mass burning of Armenian orphans, plain
sadistic fiendishness was mostly at work. After eliminating the rest of the
Armenian population, these remnants had become a nuisance to the perpetrators.
In several regards it was deemed most economical to end their misery by
torching them en masse. In four provinces, Diyarbakir, Harput, Bitlis, and
Aleppo, this method was applied with special ferocity."
After describing the gaping bayonet wounds on most of the
naked bodies, usually in the abdomen or chest, sometimes in the throat with the
victims showing "signs of barbarous mutilation," Consul Davis
declared:
"That which took place around beautiful Lake Goeljuk
in the summer of 1915 is almost inconceivable. Thousands and thousands of
Armenians, mostly innocent and helpless women and children, were butchered on its
shores and barbarously mutilated."
Mass poisoning and rapes of children were also
widespread.
"An Armenian boy, adopted by a Turkish family in
Mezre, Harput province, related a graphic description of rapes committed
regularly by a Turkish man with the full knowledge of his wife in that
household. The other modality involves rape before murder. In Ankara province,
near the village of Bash Ayash, two rapist-killers — a brigand, Deli Hasan, and
a gendarme, Ibrahim — raped twelve boys, aged 12-14, and subsequently killed
them. Those who did not die instantly were tortured to death while crying
'Mummy, Mummy'.
"A female survivor from Giresun relates how in Agn
(Egin), Harput province, some 500 Armenian orphans collected from all parts of
that province were poisoned through the arrangement of the local pharmacist and
physician."
According to the author Deirdre Holding, Davis sent a
letter to his boss, the American ambassador at Constantinople, on 24 July 1915.
It reads in part,
"I do not believe that there has ever been a
massacre in the history of the world so general and thorough as that which is
now being perpetrated in this region, or that a more fiendish, diabolical
scheme has ever been conceived in the mind of man."[5]
More than 100 years after the genocide, Turkey still
denies it, and Turkish history textbooks even blame the genocide on the
Armenians themselves.
Turkey's persistent denial is a known fact but much of
the world has also failed to recognize the genocide and sufficiently support
the survivors. Today, similar crimes are committed by other criminal
governments or organizations such as the Islamic State (ISIS), AL-Qaeda and
Boko Haram.
When experts such as Amb. James F. Jeffrey and Soner
Cagaptay deny the Armenian genocide and even try to prevent the U.S. government
from officially recognizing it, they are not only killing the victims all over
again but are also preventing Turks from learning historical truths that they
need to learn in order to take the necessary steps to democratize their
country.
However, there are also a few very courageous voices in
Turkey who are trying to challenge the denial perpetrated by the government and
much of the public. Turkey's Human Rights Association (IHD), for example,
declared in a statement last year:
"Genocide denial perpetuates genocide. Denial is the
exculpation of the perpetrator and the criminalization of the victim. From
course books to special publications, from newspapers to television programs,
Armenians have been represented as those who deserve genocide. Since the
foundation of the Republic, the Armenians of Turkey have been living to this
day in a society that remains hostile to them and in close quarters with the
grandchildren of perpetrators who think exactly the way their predecessors did.
"As long as the genocide remains unrecognized,
justice will not be established. The curse of the genocide will not leave this
land, and Turkey will never see the light of day. This is not a prediction, but
a statement of fact."
Uzay Bulut, a journalist born and raised a Muslim in
Turkey, is currently based in Washington D.C.
[1] Terrible Fate: Ethnic Cleansing in the Making of
Modern Europe, by Benjamin Lieberman. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,
2013.
[2] The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies,
by Richard G. Hovannisian, Transaction Publishers, 2007.
[3] Eastern Turkey: An Architectural & Archaeological
Survey, Volume III: 3 Kindle Edition, by T.A. Sinclair. Pindar Press, 2014.
[4] "Children as victims of genocide: the Armenian
case", by Vahakn N. Dadrian. Paper presented at the international
Association of Genocide Scholars, Galway, Ireland, June 6-10, 2003.
[5] Armenia: with Nagorno Karabagh, by Deirdre Holding.
Bradt Travel Guides, 2014.
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