Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day came and went on April 24th, and despite my best intentions, I couldn't write a thing. I tried to pen something article-like, thinkpiecey, memoirish. But no matter how much I called the black dog of fate, he would not come.
So instead I'll just ditch all the prose about what Armenians might think and feel on this day get on with what I really want to say:
Restorative justice, international recognition, a meaningful apology -- these things matter. But what really upsets me every year on this date is the way that Turkey and a handful of its allies go balls-out posting ahistorical trash and victim-blaming Armenians, and the way that this rhetoric is alive and well today. Not just from Turkey, but deployed by China against dissidents and perceived "separatists". It terrifies me that seeing the exact same language and tactics portend fresh death.
Every year, there's also a small chorus of spectators to this show who ask whether Armenia shouldn't just get over it, pursue peace with Turkey today, let the past be the past.
There's historical precedent for this: the Treaty of Lausanne was one big fat Letting Turkey Get Away With It, all because Turkey threw a temper tantrum. Of course, that temper tantrum turned into a war.
Okay, but so what? Well, if we Let Turkey Get Away With It, we continue to tacitly condone a blueprint for anyone so inclined to commit atrocities and Get Away With It. And if there's a decent chance that the world will decide to ignore your genocide "for international peace and stability" or "we can't do anything about their domestic turmoil" or some such, then exactly what is stopping governments who are so inclined to just...well, commit genocide?
I'm not being hyperbolic here: I don't know if that oft-cited Hitler quote asking "who...speaks today of the Armenians?" is apocryphal (though it's probably real), but there's no way he wasn't aware of the genocide and the implications of Turkey's impunity.
But let's talk about what's happening right now. Every year without fail, the Turkish government puts out some horrifying press release denying the genocide, without ever explicitly naming the accusations against it.
I'm especially irritated by the part where Turkey says it does not need to be lectured about its own history by anyone. Bitch, that's my history too. I'll talk about it all I like.
This isn't new. Even before 1915, Abdul Hamid II was denying the Hamidian massacres while simultaneously making excuses for them:
In a rare interview, granted to a representative of the London Times, he declared that the reports of Armenian massacres were 'gross exaggerations.' To the mild inquiries of the English and French Ambassadors, the Sultan's Ministers replied politely, or sometimes not so politely, that the situation of the Armenians was an 'internal matter', and that, in any event, it had resulted from Armenian provocation."
If you realized that, without context, you might have mistaken all this for some Chinese wolf warrior lying about the Uyghur genocide or threatening Taiwan, congratulations. You've got the point.
And if you're wondering how an event they deny perpetrating at all could have also been "provoked", well, lies don't need internal logic. They just need to get pesky foreign countries off your back about all those crimes against humanity. Making sense is a nice-to-have, but it's not a need-to-have.
Back then, all of this -- the side-by-side denial and justification of massacres, the debate about whether Armenians deserved to not be killed en masse, was called the Armenian Question.
You know, kind of like how China and assorted bloviators refer to the Taiwan Question today. As though the words themselves weren't dehumanizing. Even people who should be smart enough to know better sign off on this sort of language as though the humanity of Taiwanese people -- of any people -- is a fucking question. As though this construct has any merit at all.
It is not, and it does not, Bonnie.
This sort of language is a precursor to genocide.
Turkey's various allies help out -- not just through overt genocide denial, but in making it sound like it was committed by Armenians against Turks:
I cannot stress this enough. China is using the same sort of manipulative language that Turkey employs in its genocide denial when it insists that Hong Kong dissidents are "secessionists" for being unhappy that they didn't get the autonomy through 2047 that they were promised. (Some actually are secessionists, but they're not wrong.) It isn't that different when it calls Taiwanese whom they have never governed "separatists" who will be sent to re-education camps -- you know, the same way Turkey called Armenians "separatists" and then sent them to die in the desert.
Turkey continues to tell the world that recognizing the Armenian genocide is a "mistake". China tells the world to look away from its harassment of Taiwan -- apparently said harassment is fine, but challenging it is a "provocative activity".
China is, in other words, creating pretexts.
Sometimes, they're post-texts. The Uyghurs whom they themselves terrorize are "terrorists", and anyone who speaks up merely "interferes in China's internal affairs". The Uyghur genocide, of course, has already begun. China's lies terrorized Turkey into silence, even after the Premier League Genocide Denier itself had called it a genocide! This is some Circle of Life shit, except, you know, the opposite of that.
Anyway, this is already getting longer than I want it to be.
When people say victims of past atrocities and their descendants should leave such things "in the past", move on, focus on a contemporary peace, they miss the point. Not only is it wrong to lecture victims on the point at which they should be "over it" for your convenience, but it's not really about the past at all. It's not even about the future. It's about right now.
When I read sad testimonials and historical discussions about the Armenian Genocide, which are common around April 24th, I'm struck by how much the tactics and language employed back then continue to be employed not only by Turkey in its ongoing genocide denial, but by other countries looking to Get Away With It just as Turkey did.
Often, they do. In what way is China meaningfully hurting from its genocide of the Uyghurs? To what extent is it incentivized to stop? Or to leave Taiwan alone, never engaging in the slaughter it so frequently promises? The answer is not at all. Even people who want to deter China still treat Taiwan like a "question"!
China does these things -- it follows the same blueprint -- because we've learned so little. They're doing it because they can Get Away With It.
This is what April 24th means to me. This is why it matters. Not because of the past, but right now. I'm less concerned with what happened a hundred years ago than the fact that China is using the same playbook, inventing the pretext now for a genocide in Taiwan.
In 1915, Turkey was able to exterminate Armenians from Anatolia. The world knew, but when Turkey told them to shut up and do nothing, they obliged. When Turkey insisted it never happened -- or that it did, but the "Armenian Question" was an "internal matter" and "provoked" by "terrorists", most countries tacitly accepted this. It took until 2021 for the United States to recognize the Armenian Genocide.
Today, China is erasing Uyghurs and their culture from East Turkestan. The world knows, but China tells them to shut up and do nothing, and that's exactly what they do. They insist it's not happening, or an "internal matter", or stopping "terrorists", and most countries are tacitly allowing it.
What year will it be when China decides it can invade Taiwan and ship anyone who resists off to a death camp? How much time do we have before calling Taiwanese "separatists" and the "Taiwan Question" an "internal matter" turns into labeling them "terrorists"? Will telling the world to shut up and do nothing work yet again?
Turkey wants you to forget. Don't. China doesn't want you to notice that they're using the same tactics, the same rhetorical flourishes. Notice.
Armenians were never a question, but they were a warning. And the Taiwan Question is not real -- it's a pretext.
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