Where's Armenia?

I suppose I choose #5. What I write may not exactly fit the billet, but I've been wanting to write about this for a long time. The events of 1915 affected my great-grandmother Hatoon Bazarian, who was a part of the Armenian coalition against the Ottomans. She was able to escape Armenia to the United States, where she and many other Armenian refugees finally settled in Fresno, CA.


Q: Where is Armenia?
A: Between Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Russia, bordering on the very eastern tip of Turkey.

We're on the map. Riiiight there. See us?

At the beginning of the First World War, the Ottoman Empire- restricted now to Turkey- was in its dying days. The Russians began advancing into Eastern Anatolia with the aid of Armenians from both the Russian Caucasus region and modern Armenia (part of Turkey at that time). The Ottoman government blamed the Armenians for their devastating military losses to the Russians. Coupled with ethnic tensions between Armenians and Turkish Ottomans, the Ottoman government took the opportunity to start a mass deportation of Armenians out of Anatolia.

From a population of 2 million, nearly 1.5 million Armenians were massacred during these forced deportation marches from 1915 to 1917. Any outbursts against this genocide were silenced when Armenia was absorbed into the Soviet Union not long after the end of World War I. The country was a quiet wallflower until their independence in 1995.

For the past 15 years, relations between Turkey and Armenia have been tense: efforts to negotiate peace treaties have been stalled because of Turkey's refusal to recognize the 1915 killings as genocide. Recently, movements in both the United States and Swedish legislatures have pushed bills to recognize the events of 1915 as genocide; consequentially, Turkey has put its ambassadors to both countries on the first flights out. The entire country is a part of possibly the largest denial ever.

In the Armenia-Turkey relationship, Turkey holds nearly all the power as far as strategy goes. If the United States passes the bill recognizing the 1915 atrocities as genocide, Turkey could deny us access to their military bases, which are a huge part of deploying American troops from Europe into the Middle East. Turkey's prime minister Tayyip Erdogan is threatening to expel nearly 100,000 Armenian workers from its country as a retaliation to the negative publicity the country is receiving.

(There are currently 170,000 Armenians working in Turkey. The 100,000 Erdogan is referring to are illegal workers, forced into Turkey because of an impoverished economy in Armenia, a combined result of Turkish oppression and the devastating earthquake of 1988.)

Turkey gained the upper hand in this relationship 100s of years ago. The Ottoman empire was one of the most successful ancient regimes, until Europe modernized its weapons armaments. Armenia has been just a small country absorbed by larger empires; first the Ottomans, then the Soviets. They've had no real chance to prove themselves on the world's stage until the last 15 years, when their government decided to challenge Turkey's resolute denial of the 1915 genocide.

Unlike the Jewish Holocaust- one of the most largely publicized modern genocides, largely aided by photographic evidence from both Allied Forces and Nazi records- there are very little photographic records of the Armenian Genocide in 1915.

Turkey will not give up its narrow-minded views easily. It justifies the actions of 1915 by asserting that many Turks died as well. This is true- Turks died as a result of famine and the war, but no mass genocide came from the part of the Armenians. The Turks were the only side to purposefully work towards eliminating the Armenian ethnic group within their country. No matter how hard the rest of the world tries, you can't tune a broken record.

Further Reading:
Memoir- Black Dog of Fate by David Balakian
Online information- http://www.armeniapedia.com