Dear Editor,
Walking across the UCSD campus each day are dozens of Armenian students ‘mdash; students whose ethnic history pulses with an unforgettable incident of cultural persecution that remains painfully relevant to them and to today’s anxious world: the Armenian genocide of 1915, the Ottoman Empire’s destruction of more than 1 million Armenians, commemorated worldwide every April 24.
But how can an event that happened 94 years ago still be relevant with the other crises currently raging across the globe?
Quite easily.
The Ottoman government’s desire to ‘cleanse’ minorities and create a Pan-Turkish state has been well documented. Records reveal that the Ottoman Empire was particularly intent on annihilating the Armenian race, which had become so successful within its country ‘mdash; a country with much territory previously belonging to ancient Armenia. The annihilation of the Armenian race would be the first genocide of the 20th century, one that Adolf Hitler studied in preparation for his own Holocaust years later.
Government archives in Turkey and around the world have proof of these goals. Yet Turkey still denies an Armenian genocide ever occurred, and many countries still side with Turkey when it claims that the deaths of a million Armenians were merely the result of a variety of World War I skirmishes and Armenian insurgencies impossible to pin on the government.
Sound familiar?
Acknowledging the Armenian genocide is still a key world priority as long as there is a Darfur, Rwanda, Kosovo or Cambodia, or any country imprisoning people for their beliefs ‘mdash; particularly students and scholars ‘mdash; or a terrorist group plotting to annihilate another race, nation or ideology.
Most Armenian students on campus and within the wider local Armenian community hope that with a new president and vice president, both with longstanding records of support for Armenian issues, perhaps the tide will turn, the age-old avoidance of the truth will stop, and official legislation acknowledging the Armenian genocide will be signed into law.
However, between war and the economy, these are rather worrisome, distracting times and once again the State Department will likely use the current multiplatform war as its good old excuse to pressure the administration to bypass the Armenian genocide issue altogether ‘mdash; as Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently attempted to do in his first official dialogue with President Barack Obama.
After all, the only remaining superpower in the world is so darn powerless in the Middle East unless it retains a strategic military base in Turkey, right? Surely the United States is rendered useless without one. Our powerful nation and military ‘mdash; with two world-war victories and many others under its belt ‘mdash; couldn’t possibly innovate an alternative borne out of a bigger-picture integrity, could they?
Yes, they could.