Kehetian: Genocide Taboo: An Interview with Ambassador Evans

DETROIT, Mich.—Why have America’s last three presidents bowed to the whims of the pro-Turkish lobby in the U.S. State Department by not recognizing the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians as a genocide in their annual April 24 messages of “remembrance?”

In their successful bids for the White House, candidates Bill Clinton, George Bush, and Barack Obama  said it “was genocide”; but after taking office, the three presidents retreated from their campaign pledges.

John M. Evans, the former ambassador to Armenia, knows why, and points the finger of guilt at the pro-Turkish lobby in the State Department.  He was forced to leave his post in 2006 for having used the term genocide while responding to questions from students at UCLA, Fresno State, and University of California at Berkley.

In granting this exclusive interview, Evans was emphatic in his verbal denunciation of the State Department’s continuing role in Turkey’s cover-up of the 1915-23 Armenian Genocide, a ploy it executes by merely letting “it be known of the taboo to avoid a paper trail as to who issued the orders.”

“No one person would tell you. It was just taboo to mention the genocide when addressing the Turco-Armenian conflict. But it became apparent to me where it came from.  It was the work of the Turkish foreign desk in the State Department,” the courageous diplomat stresses.

Evans was here to address students at the University of Michigan and the April 25 Madagh dinner at St. John Armenian Church in Southfield.

In his two-year stint as ambassador to Armenia, Evans was recognized “as an American statesman who upholds the tenets of truth in public service.”

After his address at Berkley in 2006, Evans said newspaper reports picked up his comment on genocide. “When that happened I contacted the State Department to tell them I did not address the genocide in my speech, that it was used in my response to legitimate questions. I was asked by students and scholars if I thought what happened in 1915 was a genocide. My response then and now is an emphatic yes. Based on all the data researched by American officials and historians who witnessed the massacres made it clear. It was a government planned genocide. If I said otherwise, public faith in my office as a representative for the United States would have been seen as a failure.”

But truth has not been a tenet within the credo of the State  Department.

Evans said he was forced to leave his post in Yerevan on Sept. 10, 2006 when President Bush began screening candidates to succeed him as ambassador. “I got the message and submitted my resignation.”

When pressed on who he thought was enforcing the taboo on the use of genocide, Evans again referred to the Turkish lobby, and painted the picture of how the cover-up works. “The president is forced to heed the advice of his national security officers and that’s where the foreign policy of the Turkish desk revolves. In fact President Bush’s last April 24 message was cleared by the State Department’s Turkish desk to make sure genocide was not used.”

That’s when the term “Meds Yeghern” was first used, and subsequently by Obama in his two remembrance messages—a term Armenians use to describe a Great Calamity.

In the April 25 editions of the New York Times, the newspaper reported how candidate Obama “vowed to use the term genocide” as president, but declined “to do so” in his last two April 24 messages—to the dismay of Armenian Americans.

The nationally recognized newspaper also pointed out that Obama as the candidate “had no qualms about using the term genocide and criticized the Bush administration for recalling an ambassador (John M. Evans) who dared to say the word.”

When asked about the harm America suffers for not calling the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians a genocide, Evans responded with a forceful message: “We are losing face by agreeing to Turkey’s denial. The whole world knows of Turkey’s cover-up but this is no time to stop in the noble task to attain justice. Progress comes slow. Now 22 countries are on record that it was genocide, and 44 states—including Michigan—recognize the truth. Don’t stop now.”

While critical of Obama for not living up to his campaign pledge, Evans said “at least Barack Obama has stressed that his opinion on genocide has not changed, and that he cares about the issue—and did so by addressing the Turkish Parliament.”

As for the suspension of protocol talks between Yerevan and Ankara, Evans said it was on shaky footing from the very beginning, and contends Armenia should not be forced to agree to any preconditioned concessions Turkey seems to be implying from the genocide issue to the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict with Azerbaijan.

The poorly orchestrated protocol talks were fueled at the urging of Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

At the Madagh dinner, Evans and his wife Donna were given a standing ovation for upholding the truth of the Armenian Genocide. “The Armenian people thank you for your courage. God bless you,” was a fitting expression by Richard Norsigian, the program’s master of ceremonies.

Haig Korkorian served as chairman of the St. John steering committee that coordinated Evans’ visit to Detroit and this exclusive interview with the career diplomat who spoke for “truth as our ally” even knowing he would pay the consequences.

As the New York Times said, he was recalled from his post for having “dared to say the word.”

It was genocide…

Abris Ambassador Evans.

Mitch Kehetian

Mitch Kehetian

Born and raised in Detroit, Mitch Kehetian launched his newspaper career as a reporter in 1953 with the Detroit Times. He was also editor of Wayne-Westland Daily Eagle and the Macomb Daily. He has been honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award from Wayne State University's Journalism Department. Mitch retired in 2005 and has served as president of Detroit Moorad-Zavarian AYF and Antranig ARF Gomideh.

7 Comments

  1. It is unfortunate that in the 12th paragraph the author calls Medz Yeghern ‘a term Armenians use to describe a Great Calamity.’ It does not ‘describe’ anything. It names what happened a Great Crime. If the author or anyone else can justify why Medz Yeghern is given the meaning of Great Calamity, I’m all ears.

  2. Diran, I know you have written it elsewhere, but would you mind stating again why you say Great Crime instead of Great Calamity.

  3. To Boyajian: I say Great Crime instead of Great Calamity because that’s what Medz Yeghern means in Armenian. Our dictionaries need to be heeded. The Turkish government and its agents have no problem calling the Genocide a calamity. That’s what they want to call it. Too many Armenians are helping them do that. When I saw Great Calamity again in this article I felt like throwing up my hands and calling it quits. It’s like battering one’s head against a brick wall. It’s completely natural for Armenians to feel that the Genocide was a calamity. It was. It was also a catastrophe, a cataclysm, a disaster, a tragedy, a holocaust. But those were not the words our enlightened predecessors chose as their principal and overarching name for the Genocide in the days before the word was coined. They decided to use a name that cut to the quick of what had happened, not one that was hesitant or ambiguous or handwringing. And I am sure that Raphael Lemkin was aware of the meaning of the word and was inspired by it to persevere until he had defined the crime and coined the word.

  4. Every year on April 24th, we are witness to the spectacle of our President delivering a statement that commemorates the mass killings of Armenians in Turkey but at the same time absolving  the Turks of the crime of genocide, to which they would strenuously object. Except for President Reagan who actually used the word genocide, succeeding Presidents make use of terms like murder, slaughter, massacre, and even in an attempt to mask what they are really saying, use the Armenian term, Medz Yeghern, which really just means great crime. The Armenian word for genocide is literally, race murder. One might ask, what’s the significance between those other words and the term, genocide. The difference is one of intent. Murder is a generic term for killing, but genocide implies the extermination of  a whole race. It’s like getting rid of a weed. You don’t just kill it, you dig it up by its roots. There’s plenty of documentary evidence that race murder was the Turk’s intention. An order from Talaat Pasha, one of the architects of the genocide, makes this clear. “The duty of everyone is to affect, on the broadest lines possible, the realization of the noble project of wiping out of existence the well known element who for centuries have been a barrier to the empire’s progress in civilization.” The Armenian’s hopes for the use of the word genocide by the President, was due to the fact that in his campaign, he unequivocally stated that he was fully aware of the nature of the crime that befell the Armenians. Yet, as President, he felt he had to hold back because he feared threats of repercussions from the Turks, a cowardly response of a great superpower to a baseless threat by a country who depends on us for many favors. President Obama apparently still hasn’t risen to the realization that a truly strong leader doesn’t fear doing what is right regardless of the consequences.

    Berge Tatian

  5. To Berge Tatian: I agree with almost everything you say and certainly your moral indignation. But I would like to use one of your phrases as a point of departure to get a little deeper into the meaning of “Medz Yeghern”. You say, ” The Armenian  term, Medz Yeghern. . . . really just means great crime.” It’s the word “just” that I’m focusing on here. It will not take much investigation to reveal that in modern Armenian the word “yeghern” , even by itself, has come to mean mass killing, let alone ‘medz yeghern’, and it has shed most of its secondary Old Testament meanings of calamity, catastrophe, etc.
    Therefore, translating it as Great Crime is quite conservative (and, I would add, highly responsible). But even that conservative translation is too strong for Turkish denialists and many Armenians who almost always translate it as “calamity”. I think we can agree that this completely cancels out its true meaning. The President used the term without an English translation and it has become almost universally accepted that it means great calamity. This is a great defeat. I think most of us are very interested in how the term was brought to the President’s attention. Mitch Kehetian’s article suggests that it came from the Turkish desk in the State Department. It’s not clear what he means when he says,  “That’s when the term “Meds Yeghern” was first used”. It seems to be associated with Bush ( the previous paragraph), but I have no memory of Bush using the term. This is something that should be clarified, if possible. I take it you agree with me that translating Medz Yeghern as “great calamity” is completely unacceptable. The best thing of course is for the Armenian Genocide to be squarely named as such by the corrupt great powers who are still not willing to do so. This would save us all this misery, the misery of discussing what Medz Yeghern really means and dealing with the insidious, convoluted tissue of lies and distortions the Turkish government pumps out every day. But until that day, we shouldn’t allow the true meaning of Medz Yeghern to be washed down the drain as some expendable phrase of a small and insignificant people.

  6. Berge Tatian makes the point that Medz Yeghern ‘just’ means great crime. That implies that it does not say much.  It is clear that in modern Armenian the word ‘yeghern’, even by itself, means a crime involving violence and killing, in other words a capital crime. When you put ‘medz’ in front of it, even more so. In this light, while translating it as Great Crime is quite conservative, that would be going too far for the President and the State Department. Medz Yeghern would never have been used if that’s what they really thought it meant and that that’s the way Armenians would explain it to the world. It could also be called “The Great Atrocity”. But saying ‘great calamity’ is a radical falsification of the term.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*