The following interview with Ümit Kurt tackles how the physical annihilation of the Armenians paralleled the confiscation and appropriation of their properties in 1915. By citing the various laws and decrees that orchestrated the confiscation process, Kurt places our understanding of the genocide within a legal context.
Ümit Kurt is a native of Aintab, Turkey, and holds a bachelor of science degree in political science and public administration from Middle East Technical University, and a master’s degree from Sabancı University’s department of European studies. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the department of history at Clark University and an instructor at Sabancı University. He is the author of several books, including Kanunların Ruhu: Emval-i Metruke Kanunlarında Soykırımın İzlerini Aramak (The Spirit of Laws: Seeking the Traces of Armenian Genocide in the Laws of Abandoned Property, 2012) with Taner Akçam. His main area of interest is the confiscation of Armenian properties and the role of local elites/notables in Aintab during the genocide. Below is the full text of the interview Kurt granted The Armenian Weekly earlier this month.
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Varak Ketsemanian: What were the laws and regulations that governed the confiscation of Armenian properties during the genocide?
Ümit Kurt: A series of laws and decrees, known as the Abandoned Properties Laws (Emval-i Metruke Kanunları), were issued in the Ottoman and Turkish Republican periods concerning the administration of the belongings left behind by the Ottoman Armenians who were deported in 1915. The best-known regulation on the topic is the comprehensive Council of Ministers Decree, dated May 30, 1915. The Directorate of Tribal and Immigrant Settlement of the Interior Ministry (İskan-ı Aşâir ve Muhacirin Müdiriyeti) sent it the following day to relevant provinces organized in 15 articles. It provided the basic principles in accordance with which all deportations and resettlements would be conducted, and began with listing the reasons for the Armenian deportations. The most important provision concerning Armenian properties was the principle that their equivalent value was going to be provided to the deportees.
The importance of the decree of May 30 and the regulation of May 31 lie in the following: The publication of a series of laws and decrees were necessary in order to implement the general principles that were announced in connection with the settlement of the Armenians and the provision of the equivalent values of their goods. This never happened. Instead, laws and decrees began to deal with only one topic: the confiscation of the properties left behind by the Armenians.
Another regulation was carried out on June 10, 1915. This 34-article ordinance regulated in a detailed manner how the property and goods the Armenians left behind would be impounded by the state. The June 10, 1915 regulation was the basis for the creation of a legal system suitable for the elimination of the material living conditions of the Armenians, as it took away from the Armenians any right of disposal of their own properties. Article 1 of the June 10, 1915 regulation announced that “committees formed in a special manner” were going to be created for the administration of the “immovable property, possessions, and lands being left belonging to Armenians who are being transported to other places, and other matters.”
The most important of these committees were the Abandoned Properties Commissions (Emval-i Metruke Komisyonları). These commissions and their powers were regulated by Articles 23 and 24. The commissions were each going to be comprised of three people, a specially appointed chairman, an administrator, and a treasury official, and would work directly under to the Ministry of the Interior.
The most important steps toward the appropriation of Armenian cultural and economic wealth were the Sept. 26, 1915 law of 11 articles, and the 25-article regulation of Nov. 8, 1915 on how the aforementioned law would be implemented.
Many matters were covered in a detailed fashion in the law and the regulation, including the creation of two different types of commissions with different tasks called the Committees and Liquidation Commissions (Heyetler ve Tasfiye Komisyonları); the manner in which these commissions were to be formed; the conditions of work, including wages; the distribution of positions and powers among these commissions and various departments of ministries and the state; the documents necessary for applications by creditors to whom Armenians owed money; aspects of the relevant courts; the rules to be followed during the process of liquidation of properties; the different ledgers to be kept, and how they were to be kept; and examples of relevant ledgers. This characteristic of the aforementioned law and regulation is the most important indication of the desire not to return to the Armenians their properties or their equivalent value.
The Temporary Law of Sept. 26, 1915 is also known as the Liquidation Law (Tasfiye Kanunu). Its chief goal was the liquidation of Armenian properties. According to its first article, commissions were to be established to conduct the liquidation. These commissions were to prepare separate reports for each person about the properties, receivable accounts, and debts “abandoned by actual and juridical persons who are being transported to other places.” The liquidation would be conducted by courts on the basis of these reports.
The temporary law also declared that a regulation would be promulgated about the formation of the commissions and how the provisions of the law would be applied. This regulation, which was agreed upon on Nov. 8, 1915, regulated in a detailed fashion the protection of the movable and immovable property of Armenians who were being deported, the creation of new committees for liquidation issues, and the working principles of the commissions. The two-part regulation with 25 articles moreover included explanatory information on what had to be included in the record books to be kept during the liquidation process, and how these record books were to be used.
In brief, these were the major legal rules and regulations in 1915.
VK: How did the Ottoman government deal with the property of Armenians living in Istanbul, since no actual massacres took place in the capital? Were there laws for them, too?
UK: It is very important to note that these laws and statutes were known as the Abandoned Properties Laws, which was the official euphemism and an established term in the CUP propaganda to characterize the expropriation of the Armenians, and were merely applied to deported Armenians. Movable and immovable properties of Armenians who were not deported were not subjected to the Abandoned Properties Laws. As known, there were some Armenians deported from Istanbul—of course, very limited compared to Western Armenia—and properties of those deported Armenians in Istanbul also went through this process of confiscation, expropriation, and liquidation of their properties.
VK: How does the concept of confiscation and destruction of property help us understand the broader picture of the genocide?
UK: Actually, a new group of critical genocide scholars has started to come up with a new definition of genocide by taking into consideration the confiscation and destruction of property and wealth of the victim groups. In doing so, these critical genocide scholars have brought Raphael Lemkin’s original definition of genocide to the attention of existing genocide scholarship.
I see Raphael Lemkin as the founding father of genocide literature. Lemkin introduced the concept of genocide for the first time in 1944 in his book entitled Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. The book consists of a compilation of 334 laws, decrees, and regulations connected with the administration of 17 different regions and states under Nazi occupation between March 13, 1938 and Nov. 13, 1942. That is to say, Lemkin did not introduce the concept of genocide together with the barbaric practices like torture, oppression, burning, destruction, and mass killing observed in all genocides, but through a book quoting and analyzing legal texts. Could this be a coincidence?
Given its importance, it is necessary to stress this one more time: In the year that Lemkin completed the writing of his book (1943), he already knew of all the crimes perpetrated by Nazi Germany. However, he did not present the concept of genocide in a framework elucidated by these crimes. On the contrary, he introduced it through some laws and decrees that were published on how to administer occupied territories and that perhaps in the logic of war might be considered “normal.” We cannot say that this situation accords well with our present way of understanding genocide. In the general perception, genocide is the collapse of a normally functioning legal system; it is the product of the deviation of the system from the “normal” path. According to this point of view, genocide means that the institutions of “civilization” are not working and are replaced by barbarism. Lemkin, however, seems to be saying the complete opposite of this, that genocide is hidden in ordinary legal texts. By doing this, it is as if he is telling us not to look for the traces of genocide as barbaric manifestations that can be defined as inhuman, but to follow their trail in legal texts.
Genocide as a phenomenon fits inside the legal system—this is an interesting definition. And this definition is one of the central theses of our book. The Armenian Genocide does not just exist in the displays of barbarity carried out against the Armenians. It is at the same time hidden in a series of ordinary legal texts.
What we wish to say in our book is that genocide does not only mean physical annihilation. Going even further, we can assert that we are faced with a phenomenon in which whether the Armenians were physically annihilated or not, is but a detail. How many Armenians died during the course of the deportations/destruction or how many remained alive is just a secondary issue from a definitional point of view; what is important is the complete erasure of the traces of the Armenians from their ancient homeland.
The total destruction of the Armenians marked the fact that a government tried to eliminate a particular group of its own citizens in an effort to settle a perceived political problem. Between 1895 and 1922, Ottoman Armenians suffered massive loss of life and property as a result of pogroms, massacres, and other forms of mass violence. The 1915 Armenian Genocide can be seen as the pinnacle of this process of decline and destruction. It consisted of a series of genocidal strategies: the mass executions of elites, categorical deportations, forced assimilation, destruction of material culture, and collective dispossession. The state-orchestrated plunder of Armenian property immediately impoverished its victims; this was simultaneously a condition for and a consequence of the genocide. The seizure of the Armenian property was not just a byproduct of the CUP’s genocidal policies, but an integral part of the murder process, reinforcing and accelerating the intended destruction. The expropriation and plunder of deported Armenians’ movable and immovable properties was an essential component of the destruction process of Armenians.
As Martin Dean argues in Robbing the Jews: The Confiscation of Jewish Property in the Holocaust, 1933-1945, ethnic cleansing and genocide usually have a “powerful materialist component: seizure of property, looting of the victims, and their economic displacement are intertwined with other motives for racial and interethnic violence and intensify their devastating effects.” In the same vein, the radicalization of CUP policies against the Armenian population from 1914 onward was closely linked to a full-scale assault on their property.
Thus, the institutionalization of the elimination of the Christian-Armenian presence was basically realized, along with many other things, through the Abandoned Properties Laws. These laws are structural components of the Armenian Genocide and one of the elements connected to the basis of the legal system of the Republican period. It is for this reason that we say that the Republic adopted this genocide as its structural foundation. This reminds us that we must take a fresh look at the relationship between the Republic as a legal system and the Armenian Genocide.
The Abandoned Properties Laws are perceived as “normal and ordinary” laws in Turkey. Their existence has never been questioned in this connection. Their consideration as natural is also an answer as to why the Armenian Genocide was ignored throughout the history of the Republic. This “normality” is equivalent to the consideration of a question as non-existent. Turkey is founded on the transformation of a presence—Christian in general, Armenian in particular—into an absence.
This picture also shows us a significant aspect of genocide as Lemkin pointed out. Genocide is not only a process of destruction but also that of construction. By the time genocide perpetrators are destroying one group, they are also constructing another group or identity. Confiscation is an indispensable and one of the most effective mechanisms for perpetrators to realize the aforementioned process of destruction and construction.
VK: What happened to the property after it was seized from the Armenians?
UK: Most of the Armenians properties were distributed to Muslim refugees from the Balkans and Caucasia at that time. Central and local politicians and bureaucrats of the Union and Progress Party also made use of Armenian properties.
The exhaustive process of administering and selling the property usually involved considerable administrative efforts, employing hundreds of local staff. Economic discrimination and plunder contributed directly to the CUP’s process of destruction in a variety of ways. At the direct level of implementation, the prospect of booty helped to motivate the local collaborators in various massacres and the deportation orchestrated by the CUP security forces in Anatolia in general.
The CUP cadres were quite aware that the retention of the Armenian property would give the local people a material stake in the deportation of the Armenians. In many cities of Anatolia, especially local notables and provincial elites who had close connections with the CUP obtained and owned most of the properties and wealth of Armenians. This process was realized in Aintab, Diyarbekir, Adana, Maras, Kilis, and other cities in the whole Anatolia. For my Ph.D. dissertation project, I am exploring how Armenians properties and wealth changed hands and were taken over by local elites of the city during the genocide.
Similar to the policy of Nazi leaders regarding the “Aryan”ization of Jewish property in the Holocaust, the CUP aimed to have complete control over the confiscation and expropriation of Armenian properties for the economic interests of the state, but could not prevent incidents of corruption from taking place.
It should be emphasized that corruption was fairly rift among bureaucrats and officers of the Abandoned Properties Commissions and Liquidation Commissions who were the responsible actors for administering and confiscating Armenian properties under the supervision and for the advantage of the state, as did happen in the “Aryan”ization of Jewish property.
Despite the widespread incidence of private plunder and corruption, there is no doubt that the seizure of Armenian property in the Ottoman Empire was primarily a state-directed process linked closely to the development of the Armenian Genocide. However, the widespread participation of the local population as beneficiaries of the Armenian property served to spread complicity, and also legitimize the CUP’s measures against the Armenians.
A number of leading members of the Central Committee of the Union and Progress Party, as well as CUP-oriented governors and mutasarrıfs, seized a great deal of property, especially those belonging to affluent Armenians in many vilayets. In addition, according to one argument, CUP leaders also utilized Armenian property and wealth to meet the deportation expenses.
Also, it is worth mentioning an important detail on the National Tax Obligations (Tekâlif-i Milliye) orders. This topic is important to show the Nationalist movement’s viewpoint concerning the Armenians, and also Greeks and the properties they left behind. The National Tax Obligations Orders were issued by command of Mustafa Kemal, the head of the Grand National Assembly and commander-in-chief of the Turkish Nationalist army, to finance the War of Independence against Greece. The abandoned properties of Armenians were also seen as an important source of financing for the war between 1919 and 1922.
After the establishment of the Turkish Republic, in 1926, Turkish Grand National Assembly passed a law. This law was promulgated and enforced on June 27, 1926. According to this law, Turkish governmental officers, politicians, and bureaucrats who were executed as a result of their roles in the Armenian deportations or who were murdered by Dashnaks were declared “national heroes,” and so-called Abandoned Properties of Armenians were given to their families.
And finally in 1928, the Turkish Republic introduced a new regulation that granted muhacirs or Muslim refugees who were using Armenian properties the right to have the title deeds of those properties, which included houses, lands, field crops, and shops.
As you can see, a variety of actors and institutions seized properties and wealth that the deported Armenians were forced to leave behind.
VK: What did this entire process of confiscation and appropriation represent, on the one hand to the Ottoman Elite, and on the other to the average Turk? Was it an ideological principle or a mere motivating element for further destruction?
UK: We should be very cautious when giving a proper answer to this question. Also, in my view, this aspect of the Armenian Genocide should be compared with the “Aryan”ization of Jewish properties in the Holocaust. We can see palpable resemblances between these two dispossession processes.
It is obvious that the material stake for the average Turkey played a significant role in his/her participation in the destruction process of Armenians. Economic motivation was always present and enabled CUP central actors to carry out their ultra-nationalist ideological policies against Armenians in terms of gaining the support and consent of average Turkish-Muslim people.
To have a better appreciation of the motivation of the average Turk, one should look at what happened at the local level—which means we need more local and micro studies in order to understand how the deportation and genocide alongside the plunder and pillage of Armenian properties took place in various localities in Anatolia.
The process of genocide and deportation directed at the Armenians was, in fact, put into practice by local notables and provincial elites. These local actors prospered through the acquisition of Armenians’ property and wealth, transforming them into the new wealthy social stratum. In this respect, the Union and Progress Party’s genocide and deportation decree on May 27, 1915 had a certain social basis through the practice of effective power, control, and support mechanism(s) at local levels. Therefore, a more accentuated focus on the local picture or the periphery deserves closer examination.
The function of the stolen Armenian assets in the Turkification process makes the confiscation of Armenian properties a social matter. In this respect, the wide variety of participants and the dynamic self-radicalization of the CUP and state institutions at the local level need to be examined. Although the CUP was involved throughout the confiscation process and was fully in charge of it, the collaboration of local institutions and officers also played a considerable role. The local institutions and offices could not operate in complete isolation from their respective societies and the prevailing attitudes in them.
The expropriation of the Armenians, therefore, was not limited simply to the implementation of the CUP orders, but was also linked to the attitude of local societies towards the Armenians, that is, to the different forms of Armenian hatred. As in the empire, the corruptive influence that spread with the enrichment from Armenian properties in Anatolia could also have led to various forms of accommodation of CUP policies. The robbery of the property is also a useful barometer to assess the relations of various local populations toward the CUP, to the CUP central and local authorities, and also toward the Armenian population in each city.
With regard to the widespread collaboration of parts of the local populace in measures taken against the Armenians, the distribution of a great amount of the Armenian property provided a useful incentive that reinforced hatred for the local Armenians as well as other political and personal motives.
One should keep in mind the fact that the participation of local people is a necessary condition to ensure the effectiveness of genocidal policies. Planned extermination of all members of a given category of people is impossible without the involvement of their neighbors—the only ones who know who is who in a local community.
Therefore, the entire process of confiscation can be evaluated and construed as both an ideological principle and economic motivation. These two aspects cannot be separated from each other in our analysis. In my view, the ideological principle was hugely supported and complemented by economic motivation and material stakes. In some instances, ideology played a more significant role than economic motivation, and in other instances economic interests came into prominence vis-à-vis ideology. Yet, in any case, these two parameters were on the ground and constituted effective mechanisms and dynamic in the confiscation, plunder, and seizure of Armenian material wealth.
It is quite refreshing to see an intellectual of Turkish origin rise up and fearlessly discuss Armenian genocide. I applaud his zeal for truth and all the effort he is making to further his research.
I add my voice to Artur’s commendation.
considering that the stealing and then distributing and selling of the movable and immovable assets of the “deported” Armenians was done legally and within the frame of the law, then there should be records of such actions. Are there such documents? If yes, do the documents present the names of the real ex-owners?
“One should keep in mind the fact that the participation of local people is a necessary condition to ensure the effectiveness of genocidal policies. Planned extermination of all members of a given category of people is impossible without the involvement of their neighbors—the only ones who know who is who in a local community.”
I think this is the first time that I have heard anyone so clearly articulate this. The Kurds in the surrounding villages who ate lavash and dolma and pilaf at my grandmother’s table, the young boys who played games on the mountains with my father, their mothers who shared the clear water from our springs, were the ones who came into our village and murdered my family. They took the clothes off my father’s grandfather before they killed him. They removed the jacket off my father’s five year old brother and then killed him. Even before my family was forced out of their village, my grandmother’s house had been stripped of everything in it by those same neighbors. My father’s grandmother was tied to the pillar in her own empty house and beaten, until she was left for dead, by neighbors demanding to know where her money was buried. They wasted no time collecting their reward for assisting in the annihilation of the Armenians. The bread was probably still in the tonir when they came in and took it.
Thanks for publishing this article.
I have seen similar laws of abandonment being utilized in Israel against Palestinians who were ruled to have abandoned their properties when they fled for safer ground during the Six Day War. In the case I witnessed, the confiscation happened years later (1991) after the Palestinian family had long since returned to their home in Jerusalem, only to be forcibly removed by police to allow a Jewish settler family to move in. The fault lies with the government, not the settler, for misuse of power. Had I not known our history, I would have thought such actions would never be allowed in a civilized society, but Armenians know better. The cycle of cruelty keeps going. We owe it to humanity to pursue justice and we owe our gratitude to Umit Kurt and Taner Akcam for their scholarship which strengthens our case.
Well time to give it back-my family wants it and many of us do-why wait til their regime and empire die a slow death-let them pay up now and maybe we can let them live -unlike what they did to us- they will not stand in their old law-we will prevail-Armenia is ours-
This fascinating and yet horrifying research shows that there is still much to learn about the Armenian Genocide. Hats off to the young Turkish and Armenian scholars who are facing up to the past and making it available to us.
Dear Ambassador, Please enlighten us all why the US State Department and many Jewish organization fight justice for the Armenians and have pretty much since the genocide? There is way more to this then meets the eye. I believe i know why. But I would like honest answers. And a “Nato Ally” and “using their military base”, ironically one that is put on a piece of property confiscated from the very victims of the genocide, just doesn’t fly…
Miram; the caravan my family was in was stopped en route and the kaymakam asked every woman, who appeared to be responsible for the family, what the name of her village was, how many men, how many women and children were in her clan, the occupation of each of the men in her extended family, the number of oxen, sheep, the “main purse” in the household. He asked how much gold they had and where it was hidden. When my grandmother said it had all been taken from them, he asked who had taken it. “Vay, vay, vay,” he said as he wrote it all down. I know exactly what my grandmother told him. I know the exact number of sheep and oxen and gold. I know exactly how much money the church treasurer divided between the women before he was murdered.
So, yes,there was a list made as the caravan moved forward. What happened to those lists? Do they still exist? Or were they all destroyed?
Tahlat Pasha said that he knew that he would die for the genocide and confiscation of lands that he set into motion and he did not regret what he had done. This was a man who made a deal with the devil. Or with his own inner sanctum of absolute Ottoman Turkish Power. Let us never forget.
We should demand for all the confiscated lands be called crime scene and yellow taped…. even though it is disturbed and we should ask DNA samples of Armenians only, payed by turkey stored in a bank of a neutral country for future reference.I am sure they will find lots of matches.
I am always amazed at Turkish intellectuals who pursue issues on the Genocide. It must take such a great deal of emotional strength to approach these difficult topics. Thank you Ümit.
Baruyr, a corrupt mind finds a corrupt justification for corrupt actions. Much evil is/has been done in the name of patriotism, ideology and jihad.
This excellent piece shows very clearly what Armenians have known and have been saying for years: that there exists a wealth of detailed information about how and why the genocide took place, and that the details of the aftermath are and have always been available to true scholars who are willing and open to finding, exposing and discussing them. The partisan hacks hired by successive Turkish governments, to promote their 100 year old lies and anti-Armenian agendas, are touted as ‘scholars’, but they clearly have only been studying and preparing specific propaganda as dictated by the state.
One can only hope that a new generation will break through these barriers, expose the lies and their creators, and at the same time allow the unvarnished truth to prevail. This will serve many communities, Turkish, Armenian, Assyrian, Greek, Kurdish and may also serve to embarrass and erase the tiny group of artificial scholars who continue to tout the well-tarnished party line of the deep state.
I would suggest that the strong genocidal implications of the abandoned property laws could have been sufficiently established without the somewhat jarring assertion that “whether the Armenians were physically annihilated or not is but a detail”. Both elements were essential to the genocide and should be seen as organically related rather than opposing them to each other as if they were distinct. I do agree with the significance of “the complete erasure of the traces of the Armenians from their ancient homeland” and the possibility that such erasure, aside from body counts, could be incorporated into the definition of genocide.
Diran, the language, the summary of your in-depth analysis greatly impress me.
I claim no expertise in matters of law. Proper semantics to rightly convey the essence of law elude me, such as the insistence that the use of the word Genocide is a must to convey the legality of the horrid reality of the 1915 complete erasure of the Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire and confiscating their properties and that using the term the survivors used – Medz Yeghern – is a meaningless utterance to lay a legal claim.
You claim that–“possibility that such erasure (referring to property), aside from body counts, could be incorporated into the definition of genocide.” But could it be?
As far as I am concerned the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide adopted by the U.N. Genera Assembly on December 9, 1948 pertains only to “body count”. Whether in a legal deliberation pertaining to a particular genocide the issue of the confiscation of property may be incorporated as well is for legal experts to comment. However, I am not sure if the definition of Genocide can be altered to add confiscation of the properties of the annihilated as well without a U.N. General Assembly agreeing to the change. It would be interesting if legal experts shed light on the matter.
Great article .
Armenians around the world should make these Turks and those who went against the order to massacre the christian population honorary Armenians .
Umit’s interview supports that tseghasbanoutiun, the Armenian word for genocide and hence the western word itself, take a back seat and that Raffi Hovanissian remains more so vindicated when he stated that whether we call it genocide or not is tertiary. What actually took place, in Raffi’s coinage was the “Great Dispossession” of a way of life and of lives. The survivors could only sum up its horrid reality by calling it Medz Yeghern for the lack of better term in their Armenian lexicon.
The 32 women and children in my father’s family were butchered in the death caravans of the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1922.
All the adult men in my mother’s family were butchered in the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1922.
The murder of my family is called the Armenian Genocide.
Pirouz, what you write is so haunting. I am not surprised that the memories of these events have survived so vividly thru multiple generations. The sad thing is, no matter what Turkey does now (reparations, land, etc) … none of this will make the pain go away. Why does it now matter to that poor 5 year old victim of an evil that today Turkey does X, Y, or Z? The evil done was done, and it will never be made to have not happened. I am not saying that you should not seek X, Z, or Z in recognition of the Genocide, to at least mitigate the wrong (although not to undo it). I am not a Turk, but since you guys often equate us Azeris with them anyways, here it is … I will go ahead and apologize to you personally. I am sorry for what was done to your family. I know this does not mean much or anything to you. But that is all I could do after reading your post.
@Karim: “since you guys often equate us Azeris”. It is YOU who equate yourselves with Turks. We didn’t come up with the slogan ONE NATION – TWO STATES. You did! Also, your goals are identical – the annihilation of Armenia. I can read what is written on Azeri wikipedia: all Armenian cities, villages and churches are really Azeri!!! This is what is written on Azeri wikipedia. This clearly shows your genocidal intentions towards us, doesn’t it?
Karim,
The memories of these events will, as you write, survive down through many generations. In my own case, I am of the first generation born after the genocide, and I know all too well how the effects of genocide are carried forward to subsequent generations. There has been considerable scholarly research in this area, but I have experienced it first hand.
You are also correct in saying that “it will never be made to have not happened.” The murder of my father’s five year old brother, and also, his two year old brother, Hovhanes, or the rest of his entire clan, can never be made to not have happened.
But you are wrong in saying that an apology “does not mean much or anything to you.” An apology is a beginning. It is an acknowledgment that evil occurred, and it must not be denied by the perpetrator. Let me tell you one way in which Kurds can go beyond mere words and show their regret.
When we return as pilgrims to our villages, which are now occupied by the descendants of those who murdered our families, do not call the police. Do not tell us to leave. Do not threaten us with prison if we don’t leave. In what way do we harm you as we kneel in tearful prayer and meditation on the land our fathers tilled? What loss do you suffer as we fill little plastic bags and bottles with soil to scatter on far-away graves? Your dead are now buried in their soil. What harm comes to you as our hands caress the old stones of the now ruined houses our fathers built? To threaten us is to expose your fear and hatred.
Kurds don’t have to like me or welcome me, when I journey thousands of miles just to walk the fields of my father’s village. But they could start by just letting me come in peace. You know what they say about actions being more powerful than words.
Vahe, I very belatedly and accidentally found your comment on my comment just now, having lost track of this thread weeks ago. I will try to explain my thought. It is not legalistic or formal in any sense, but simply this: I was not referring to property, I was referring to something much larger, akin to what Raffi Hovhanissian meant. I mean, Armenians once constituted a nation in their homeland but were erased from it. My thought is that in a case when an entire nation is physically removed from its homeland and thrown to the winds, that should in some way be considered genocide aside from the specific numbers killed. Suddenly and violently uprooting a people from their homeland just because of who they are exposes them to death and unspeakable suffering eventually–even if you put them all on first class flights to parts unknown. In other words I am suggesting that genocide should be understood as nation killing. Where their was once a thriving people and culture there is now desolation. . .
My mother and grandparents came from Aintab, my grandfather was Dr Yeghia Aroyan and he was recruited into the Turkish army, later became prisoner of war and was sent to India. My grandmother with three children made their way to Egypt where they settled. I was told he was a neighbour to an American Missionary Dr Shepherd in Aintab. As the oldest grandson, how can I visit and check out the old home?? to pass information to the next generation.
Umit Kurt is a true intellectual who has made a major contribution by the simple, but difficult, task of searching for and communicating the truth of what constitutes a Genocide.
My parents and my grandparents were direct victims of the Armenian Genocide.
My generation did not experience the Genocide directly. My brother and I had the good fortune of being born in America. As a result, we could never feel what my parents and grandparents experienced. Our children and their children are further removed from the harsh and bitter realities of that dark period in our and their history.
We are indebted to all who have the courage and tenacity to search for and communicate the truth about this period in our history. I am indebted to those who are not Armenians who reveal this truth because they bring an important credibility to this task.
I am especially moved by reading Umit Kurt’s research because I wish to call the true meaning of Genocide to my children and their children. It is critically important that the sources of this research be objective and unbiased. Umit Kurt offers a powerful insight to how Genocide not only results in the death and suffering of the victims but it includes a comprehensive legal methodology and the complicity of many, but not by all, of the neighbors of our parents and grandparents to take their wealth and possessions and cause the complete eradication of an entire people from their historic homelands.
Umit Kurt has made a major contribution in understanding the extent and full meaning of Genocide.
extraordinarios todo ,las notas ,los comentarios de familiares de victimas del genocidio y por sobre todo la claridad de todo lo que se expone .Estoy seguro que los turcos ,al pasar 50 años del genocidio y viendonos a los armenios en general en Terapia Intensiva ,pensaron estos no vuelven mas ,ARCHIVESE .