Armenia

Tsitsernakaberd (Genocide Memorial), Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online 2006

By Nessuna

On April 24 Armenians all over the world honor the memory of the one half and a million victims of atrocities that qualify as “the first genocide of the XXth century.” The Armenian genocide was planned and carried out during between the years 1915 and 1923 by the Turkish government against the entire Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire.

The present-day Republic of Turkey adamantly denies that genocide was committed against the Armenians. Fortunately, there are now historians in Turkey who speak out about the Armenian Genocide. I will refrain from going into the timeline of the events because there is large amount of information online.

The history books are open. You need only to open your mind.

In the Armenian blogsphere, Christian Garbis over at Notes from Hairenik has an entry on the Armenian genocide as well as a little background on the families of his mother and father who managed to survive it, while Tamar has posted links to all the blogs that mention it at Armyouth.

It should be crystal clear to everybody that affirming the truth about the Armenian Genocide is an issue of international significance. As Dennis R. Papazian states at Useful Answers to Frequent Questions on the Armenian Genocide, which is an absolute must read:

Many scholars and intellectuals have argued that if the Allies had punished the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide after the war, namely the leaders of the Young Turk party of the then Ottoman Government of Turkey, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis would not have carried out the Jewish Holocaust during World War II.

[…]

By leaving the Armenian injustice of World War I uncorrected, the stage was set for the Holocaust of World War II. The abandonment of the Armenians was not lost on Hitler. Hitler said before sending his troops into Poland, “Go, go kill without mercy. Who today remembers the extermination of the Armenians?”

It is simple really. Unless you recognize and condemn genocide, history will repeat itself. That is why I found the fact that Global Voices did not link to Christian Garbis’s entry on the Armenian genocide or mentions on other sites a little weird. I hate to sound paranoid, and I would love for them to prove me wrong and link to the posts including this one, but I cannot think of a reason as to why anybody would miss out such an event unless…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 26th, 2006 at 9:56 pm and is filed under Globalvoices, Genocide, History, Diaspora, Blogging, Turkey, Caucasus, Armenia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.