{"id":39115,"date":"2019-04-24T05:22:57","date_gmt":"2019-04-24T05:22:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=39115"},"modified":"2019-04-24T05:22:57","modified_gmt":"2019-04-24T05:22:57","slug":"why-the-armenian-genocide-wont-be-forgotten","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=39115","title":{"rendered":"Why the Armenian Genocide won\u2019t be forgotten"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-io-article-url=\"http:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/node\/1487226\/middle-east\" readability=\"186.5\">\n<p>\nDUBAI: More than 100 years on, Armenians and experts alike remember the brutal atrocities and forced exodus from what is now Turkey, which left up to 1.5 million Armenians dead.<\/p>\n<p>\nApril 24 marks the start, in 1915, of the Armenian Genocide. \u201cEvery Armenian is affected by the repeated massacres that occurred in the Ottoman Empire as family members perished,\u201d said Joseph Kechichian, senior fellow at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cMy own paternal grandmother was among the victims. Imagine how growing up without a grandmother \u2014 and in my orphaned father\u2019s case, a mother \u2014 affects you,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cWe never kissed her hand, not even once. She was always missed, and we spoke about her all the time. My late father had teary eyes each and every time he thought of his mother.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" height=\"792\" src=\"http:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/sites\/default\/files\/userimages\/17\/armenia_a-4.png\" width=\"1150\"><\/p>\n<p>\nEvery Armenian family has similar stories, said Kechichian. \u201cWe pray for the souls of those lost, and we beseech the Almighty to grant them eternal rest,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cWe also ask the Lord to forgive those who committed the atrocities and enlighten their successors so they too can find peace,\u201d he said. \u201cDenial is ugly and unbecoming, and it hurts survivors and their offspring, no matter the elapsed time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\nDonald Miller, professor of religion and sociology at the University of Southern California, said: \u201cThe ongoing denial of the genocide by the government of Turkey pours salt into the wound of the moral conscience of Armenians all over the world. On April 24, the genocide will be commemorated all over the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\nOn that day, the Ottoman government arrested and executed several hundred Armenian intellectuals.<\/p>\n<p>\nOrdinary Armenians were then turned away from their homes and sent on death marches through the Mesopotamian desert without food or water.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UFDXcT1t_vU?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\nOttoman killing squads massacred Armenians, with only 388,000 left in the empire by 1922 when the genocide ended, from 2 million in 1914.<\/p>\n<p>\nMany were deported to Syria and the Iraqi city of Mosul. Today they are scattered across the world, with large diasporas in Russia, the US, France, Argentina and Lebanon.<\/p>\n<p>\nTo date, only 28 countries have officially recognized the tragedy as a genocide. The only Arab country that has done so is Lebanon, although a bill is pending in Egypt\u2019s Parliament to do so as well, while Muslim clerics in Iraq have called on Turkey to end the denial.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cThe other significant consequence of the Armenian Genocide is the denial that successive Turkish governments have practiced, even though the last Ottoman rulers acknowledged it and actually tried a number of officials who were found guilty,\u201d Kechichian said.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cDenial translates into a second genocide, albeit a psychological one. Eventually, righteous Turks \u2014 and there are a lot of them \u2014 will own up to this dark chapter of their history and come to terms with it, but it seems we\u2019re not there yet.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"simplebox opinion\" readability=\"8\">\n<p>\nThis section contains relevant reference points, placed in (Opinion field)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>\nFor some 3,000 years, Armenians had made their home in the Caucasus, with Christianity their official religion. During the 15th century it became a part of the Ottoman Empire, whose rulers were Muslim.<\/p>\n<p>\nSoon enough, Armenians were viewed as \u201cinfidels,\u201d having to pay higher taxes than Muslims and with very few political and legal rights.<\/p>\n<p>\nDespite this the Armenian population thrived, causing great resentment among their Turkish neighbors.<\/p>\n<p>\nAnd shortly after World War I began, atrocities against Armenians started taking place, with crucifixions, drownings, live burnings and mass murders.<\/p>\n<p>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" height=\"457\" src=\"http:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/sites\/default\/files\/userimages\/17\/untitled-1_copy_104.png\" width=\"189\">Some children were kidnapped, converted to Islam and given to Turkish families. Meanwhile, women were raped and forced to join Turkish \u201charems\u201d or work as slaves, and Armenian properties were seized.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cThe Armenian Genocide was the first major calamity that hit an entire nation in the 20th century,\u201d Kechichian said.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cAlthough the term genocide wasn\u2019t in use at the time \u2014 it was coined by Raphael Lemkin in his 1944 book \u2018Axis Rule in Occupied Europe\u2019 \u2014 the Polish attorney applied it to the Armenian case.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\nTurkey still denies the persecution of Armenians after World War I. But Hamdan Al-Shehri, a political analyst and international scholar in Saudi Arabia, said: \u201cWe know that the genocide happened. The Ottoman Empire in that era conducted many massacres against many people, including Arabs and Armenians.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\nHe compared the situation to that of Turkey today, with its President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. \u201cWe still see that he wants to have his empire again,\u201d Al-Shehri said. \u201cHe thinks he\u2019s the sultan of that empire.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\nAl-Shehri also drew a parallel with Iran and the Persian Empire. \u201cThey (Iran) want to control the whole region, so they\u2019re living with that era in their mind and (trying) to apply it on the ground,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cThis is the difference between us and them \u2014 they don\u2019t want to leave countries alone, and this is what we\u2019re facing with Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\nDr. Theodore Karasik, senior advisor at Gulf State Analytics, said the Armenian Genocide remains a \u201ccontentious\u201d issue because of \u201cthe acrimonious debate over how to define genocide, particularly from the Turkish point of view. Ankara doesn\u2019t recognize genocide because of many reasons, all of them extremely poor.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DUBAI: More than 100 years on, Armenians and experts alike remember the brutal atrocities and forced exodus from what is now Turkey, which left up to 1.5 million Armenians dead. April 24 marks the start, in 1915, of the Armenian Genocide. \u201cEvery Armenian is affected by the repeated massacres that occurred in the Ottoman Empire&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":39116,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}