Jagatakeer, your fate is written on your forehead
I ask how genocide was written for us as Armenians? Due to this tragedy, a single mother in a foreign country of Lebanon raised my grandfather. Just as my grandfather was making Lebanon home, the Lebanese Civil War broke out. My family comes with a rich history as a result of the Diaspora of the Turkish-Armenian genocide. The United States has never acknowledged the horrendous fact that over 1.5 million Armenians were killed in their land from the Ottoman Turks in the year 1915. Thousands to millions of Armenians are not in their motherland of Armenia.
The Armenian Burden
I have family in Greece, Brazil, France, Australia, Canada, etc. due to the need to escape first the Turkish Armenian genocide then the Civil War in Lebanon. The forgotten stories need to be written, or verbally carried on. The burden we bare as Armenian American youth. Armenians may be a minority, but that doesn’t stop us from making a boisterous voice of thought for the Armenians.
We Demand Recognition
The lack of recognition lays in the intra-politics of D.C. There is a whole other layer to D.C., where real politics happen, and decisions are made, not about democracy but power. Regular Americans don’t hear about this, and I believe that needs to change. Conversations about the mistreatment of Native American people to the recognition of the Turkish Armenian genocide, as a massacre is one of the many inner D.C. workings. I have chosen to analyze the claims and intra-politics of this matter to the best of my abilities as a citizen who can’t get my hands in Pennsylvania Avenue Diplomacy, just yet.
U.S. – Turkey International Relations
Right away I know that the United States has military connections with Turkey, they have an airbase that is needed for our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, again this ties to the geographic location of our Turkish allies. With the recognition of the word genocide, the “Turks have threatened to close that base, cancel purchases of American military equipment, boycott American goods, and even pass their resolutions condemning nineteenth-century U.S. government massacres of Native American.” (Yegparian 2009 and The Cost of Denial – Stanton). The United States in result claims that peace and reconciliation are far more imperative than blaming past perpetrators for the genocide.
I wonder how is it possible that countries like Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Paraguay, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Uruguay, Vatican City, and Venezuela recognize the atrocities that we as a people have gone through but the preacher of peace and freedom does not accept the obvious facts? How can the U.S. callously deny the memory of the murders that my ancestors have gone through? How can they justify why I am displaced from my homeland of Armenia? Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust victim, describes this denial as a “double killing,” because they deny the memory of the event.
Democracy!
Ask yourself how does this embody humanitarian ideals, how does this exuberate freedom, how does this shine as an example? The United States houses the largest populations of Armenians in the world and we, as a race, contribute to this country in countless forms, and all we ask is a form of recognition. We ask for democracy to reign true instead of a capitalistic society, a society that is fueled by the question of “who gets what and when?”
The infamous English axiom “history repeats itself” will reign true if we do not acknowledge the truth. This will become the most apparent pitfall, putting us at risk for history repeating itself. If we continue to lack the proper recognition and condemnation, we will likely run into rebellion in the form of the victim groups.
Acknowledge, Admit, Recognize, and Concede
All synonyms that should be implemented within the language of the United States; this is in response to the atrocities, violence, Diaspora, and displacement of the beautiful Armenian race. Words are not a sufficient way to try to cover up what has been done to us; we are done going along with the politics of this matter. We are done trying to patch up by saying the present-day Turkish people did not kill the Armenians of 1915. News flash, the present-day Turks are not even acknowledging the mass killings. We, as a people, as a race, as a collective, are tired of the Irish jig being danced on the overt genocide of 1915.
The time is now because the longer the United States government waits, the louder our voice becomes. We will not be silenced. We will not stand for a double killing.
To learn more about the Armenian genocide.
To learn more about how I reconnected to my ancestral roots check out my travels to Armenia and Lebanon.
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