In this session of the National Assembly, when the discussion of the statement condemning the genocide of Greeks and Assyrians in Ottoman Turkey in 1915-23 was underway, Parliamentarian Hrant Bagratyan suggested mentioning also the genocides occurred in Cambodia, Rwanda and Darfur. It seems to me that it is a step in the right direction. The more you expand the borders of your understanding, the wider you put yourself, your problems and history in the context, the greater are the chances that you will be understood. And vice versa, the more you highlight that your problems are unique, the more you get pride that you’re the world’s most suffered nation, the less you become interesting for the same world.
The same Parliamentarian also spoke about condemning the Holocaust, specially emphasizing that no need to be guided by “market relations” on this matter, let’s wait, let Israel condemn the Armenian Genocide, and only after that, as a response, we would address the Holocaust. We condemn ethnic and racial-based mass killings and deportations not for Israel, but for us, it is the moral duty of one of the nations who experienced genocide.
Actually, I understand why Bagratyan’s initiative will not find a positive response. In our “semi-combat” circles, the attitude towards the Jews is ambiguous. Recently, I have received a letter in which the author explains that a cultural “desert” is created in Iraq by destroying the cultural heritage of all nations not by the “Islamic state” fighters, but …. the Jews to prove that they are the oldest nation in the region. Not to mention that I have read many Armenian texts with a claim that the Armenian genocide was organized not by the Turkish government but by the same Jews.
Apparently, dominated images about “the world centers” arise in some of our fellow citizens partly under the influence of Russian nationalist propaganda, and largely, from the temptation to visualize the reality in simplified schemes. No one, indeed, should be idealized, all the nations have their own interests and they are neither good nor bad of us. We, too, should be guided by our own interests.
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There is no anti-Semitism among Armenians. Moreover, I would say that there is no anti-Turkism in our people. Negative feelings in your own people towards this-or-that nation are raised by the so-called “literates”, who are easily self-established in the provincial swamp rather than in the conditions of “clean air” of global competition. It is easier to give assessments in terms of this-or-that tribe, nation, group, team and gender rather than to try seeing the Man in each one. Individual approach requires much more active brain working.
… The people, who do not like what I write or say, sometimes say that I am a Jew. Perhaps they mean something bad.
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
