April 24th: Remembrance Devoid of Inspiration and Commitment

The Armenian Weekly
April 2011 magazine

If there is one day during the year when all Armenians are united spiritually, it is April 24th, when we remember our martyrs of the genocide. However, it has become remembrance devoid of a compelling message that inspires and encourages us to participate in shaping the future of the Armenian nation.

The depravity of the Ottoman Turkish plan and the sadistic manner in which the killings were carried out is known to every Armenian and is an established fact of history. Although April 24th marks the beginning of this horrendous tragedy, with the arrests and executions of our leading intellectuals, its roots lay in the xenophobic mindset of the Ottoman Turkish leaders. Although Armenians may have prospered within the Ottoman Turkish Empire, they were a subject people who periodically endured government-sponsored pogroms or the rapaciousness of officials, as well as the Turkish and Kurdish overlords who ruled the rural interior.

The Meds Yeghern (Great Catastrophe), as it was initially referred to by our people, had ramifications far beyond the emptying of our historic lands of its Armenian inhabitants. It was a determined effort by the Young Turks to wipe out the Armenian nation. The resulting genocide represented an exceedingly virulent form of xenophobia by these Ittihadists. The impact of this Great Catastrophe shattered the political, economic, social, psychological, and geographic framework of the Armenian nation.

The determination to destroy the Armenian nation crystallized under the Young Turks or Ittihadists during the Great War. This visceral response to Armenians and Armenian culture became embedded in the mindset of every Turkish leader and has fueled the policies of every Turkish government that has succeeded the Ittihadist perpetrators of the genocide, from Mustafa Kemal Ataturk to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Having succeeded in emptying the provinces of historic western Armenia, it then became necessary to obliterate every vestige of Armenia’s ancient culture from the landscape. The genocide never ended, but morphed into a more subtle and insidious attack on the Armenian nation.

Our message on this Day of Remembrance should not forget the thousands of children and young women who became the “lost” Armenians of the genocide. Whether accepted by compassionate neighbors or people along the infamous death trail to Der Zor, or taken in lust, these young Armenians were lost to their people and denied their birthright to grow up as Armenians. This should be a day when we pray for the progeny of these “lost” Armenians who are still our brothers and sisters living on the lands of their Armenian ancestors. And April 24th should remind us of the never-to-be-born generations of Armenians that the genocide forever took from us.

Not content with having shed the blood of some 1.5 million of our men, women, and children, Turkish forces mounted a final campaign to occupy what little remained of historic Armenia in their determination to complete the annihilation of our people. In the ensuing Battle of Sadarabad (May 1918) the Armenian forces were victorious. Within a few days following this epic victory, the first independent Republic of Armenia was established.

When the Treaty of Sevres was formulated the following year, an independent Armenia (Wilsonian Armenia) was created on our ancestral lands. Unfortunately, it was a country with few of its rightful Armenian inhabitants. The newly formed Armenian Republic, beset with overwhelming problems—refugees, shortages of food, medicine, clothing, and housing, and the trauma of genocide—was in no position to claim its historic lands.

The rump government of Kemal Ataturk seated in Ankara summarily rejected the Treaty of Sevres, which Sultan Muhammad VI in Constantinople had signed. With little effective opposition to his nationalist message, Ataturk protected his eastern flank by agreement with the Russian Bolsheviks, thus freeing himself to reestablish Turkish control over an Anatolia that had been partitioned by the allied powers. Ataturk’s ensuing military successes forced the scrapping of the Treaty of Sevres and its replacement by the the Treaty of Lausanne (1923). It was recognition by the European victors of the Great War of the new reality in Anatolia. The present-day country of Turkey, successor to the defeated Ottoman Turkish Empire, was officially recognized as a sovereign state. The genocide of 1.5 million Armenians and the promised independent Wilsonian Armenia were forgotten.

The nascent Armenian Republic had collapsed earlier in 1920 under the combined burden of the socio-economic problems generated by the genocide and the political subversion of the Russian Bolsheviks. The boundaries of the newly created Bolshevik Armenian Republic were redrawn to place Javakhk in Georgia, and Nakhitchevan and Artsakh in the newly created Bolshevik Republic of Azerbaijan, and by treaty ceded Kars-Ardahan to Turkey.

In the decades that followed, the determination and resiliency of our people allowed them to overcome what should have been an insurmountable tragedy. Their fortitude and will to survive has brought us to this April 24th, which, symbolically, falls on Easter Sunday. In our desire to honor our martyrs the subtext of our observance continues to be the demand for recognition. We seem willing to ignore the fact that this is the 20th year of the second independent Republic of Armenia. We seem willing to ignore the fact that in Artsakh, our brothers and sisters were successful in their war for independence from a despotic Turkic-Azeri government. That during the nearly two decades of their freedom, they have developed a sustainable economy and a democratic government.

We are so fixated on the intransigence of Turkish leaders not recognizing the genocide that the miracle wrought by our survivors of the genocide is overlooked. Not only did they rebuild shattered lives, they created vibrant communities wherever good fortune or misfortune took them. Their efforts have made the diaspora a vital part of a resurrected Armenian nation. Through their efforts Armenia can no longer be viewed as a small, isolated, landlocked country, but a global nation whose people have created a web of vigorous and energetic communities in over 40 countries on every continent, linked emotionally and spiritually to the cultural hearth, mer Hayasdan (our Armenia).

April 24th should be an opportunity not only to remember our martyrs, but to honor them by dedicating ourselves to building a better and stronger mayreni yergir (motherland) and a better and stronger diaspora. Let us not devote this day to a lamentation of their deaths. That should not be the message of April 24th. We have become so obsessed emotionally with seeking recognition that we fail to accept the fact that the Enver Beys and Taalat Beys and the Ataturks who sought to destroy our nation have been defeated.

Today Erdogan looks to the east and sees an independent Armenia, while his Turkic brother in arms President Ilham Aliyev looks to the west and sees historic Armenian Artsakh resurrected. Today our Armenia is on the threshold of an exciting and challenging future. And it is up to each of us, if we care enough, to participate in shaping that future. That should be the message for this April 24th and every April 24th that follows.

Our martyrs would be proud of what their people have accomplished. And each of us, old and young alike, should be inspired as well. Genocide recognition is not the key to Armenia’s future. A strong and secure Armenia is the key to the justice we rightfully seek.

• Bio
• Latest Posts

Michael Mensoian

Michael Mensoian, J.D./Ph.D, is professor emeritus in Middle East and political geography at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and a retired major in the U.S. army. He writes regularly for the Armenian Weekly.

Latest posts by Michael Mensoian (see all)

• Facing the Reality that is Artsakh - August 6, 2020
• Tourism: An Economic Tide That Can Lift All “Boats” - January 29, 2020
• The Legacy of the Hairenik and the Armenian Weekly - January 7, 2020