Showing posts with label armenian_genocide. Show all posts
Showing posts with label armenian_genocide. Show all posts

Sunday, May 21, 2023

The Tragedies of the Spotlight



Everybody seems to think that I'm a fan of Uncle Roger (British-Malaysian comedian Nigel Ng). I suppose this is because I live in Asia, I love a good joke and I know how to cook.

Yes, I found his fried rice 'thing' amusing. I was less amused, however, by his deletion of a video collaboration with a Taiwanese Youtuber who had criticized the Chinese government. The Taiwanese Chinese-American Youtuber, Mike Chen, had spoken up about China's treatment of Hong Kongers, the Uyghur genocide and the documented historical fact of Tiananmen Square Massacre.

Ng said about Chen that "I wasn’t aware of his political thoughts and his past incorrect remarks about China." In calling Chen's commentary "incorrect", Ng revealed that he believed -- or at least was willing to publicly say -- that China's denial of genocide in East Turkestan, its oppression of Hong Kong and attempts to erase the Tiananmen massacre from historical memory were all, well, correct.

Edit: Chen's nationality was reported in a few places as being Taiwanese. He was actually born in China and then lived in the US (I wouldn't know; I don't watch his content). Chen is also a member of Falun Gong and has various other views that I personally either don't agree with or find outright abhorrent. However, the stated reason for dropping the video at the time was "incorrect remarks about China", not those other issues. If that was the reason, Ng was still in the wrong. Whatever his other beliefs, Chen's remarks about China were indeed accurate.

It wasn't hard to quit Uncle Roger altogether. Underneath that, however, I couldn't shake the suspicion that this was not Ng's sincere opinion. It sounded too contrived. "Past incorrect remarks" isn't even good scripting; it sounds like something straight from the tweets of some low-level CCP lackey. If I were forced into saying something I didn't believe, I too would make it sound like such a clunky hack job that it'd be clear I thought it was nonsense.

It turns out I was right. 

Just a few days ago, Ng uploaded a promo teaser for one of his shows in which he pokes fun at the CCP, saying "we have to say that now" about calling China a "good country" (after which he smirks) because the government is "listening" on everyone's Huawei phone. He pretends to praise Xi Jinping while tapping the phone in his pocket, jokingly says Taiwan is "not a real country" and then asks the Chinese audience members to write up a report to the CCP calling him a "good comrade".


Of course, Ng was banned from Chinese social media shortly after. He had to know that was going to happen, but did the routine anyway.

All of that was from Ng's own mouth. He made multiple jokes over the span of several minutes; this was no slip. Graphics and commentary added to the promo the sarcasm for anyone who didn't get the joke. Nobody makes several cracks in a row at the expense of the CCP, especially on stage, and then approves a video edited to highlight those jokes for mass distribution, if they sincerely approve of the Chinese government. 

Perhaps Ng feels it's less necessary to bow and scrape to retain Chinese fans now. Perhaps he hasn't been popular enough in the China market to bother faking tankie beliefs.

It's still irksome, though. On his way to the top, this Asian comedian had to step on other Asian people -- Taiwanese people -- and say some pretty awful things that were clearly insincere. I still don't know quite how to support AAPI voices in general when Taiwanese voices are so often left out, betrayed, rebuked,  actively squashed or outright done dirty by other Asians.

Compare Ng's turn to that of another Asian from a markedly different part of the continent: Enes Kanter Freedom -- yes, Freedom is now his legal surname. Unlike Ng, Freedom has been consistently clear on his ideals, both in speaking out against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, calling him a "dictator" and expressing hope that one day, Turkey would be "a democracy" (Turkey has elections, but I agree that it's not quite a democracy). He's also been vocally critical of the Chinese government and President Xi Jinping.

Freedom made international news for wearing sneakers painted by Chinese dissident artist Badiucao supporting both Tibet and Taiwan, as well as speaking up against Nike's alleged use of slave labor in China. Just in the last day or so he met with President of the Legislative Yuan You Si-kun, who is visiting the United States.

Less known is Freedom's admirable stance on the Armenian Genocide, a topic that any regular reader knows is of particular importance to me. I know there are plenty of Turkish people who recognize the truth of this history -- Orhan Pamuk and Elif Shafak come to mind -- and it's uplifting to see that play out in the public sphere. 



What did all of these ideals get him? Well, he lost his Turkish citizenship and was stateless until eventually gaining American citizenship. He was slapped with extradition orders and threatened with trial in absentia and prison time in Turkey. Erdoğan personally placed a $500,000 bounty on his head, and he was placed on Turkey's most-wanted terrorist list. He was chased out of Indonesia and stranded in Romania when his passport was canceled. He chose not to travel abroad with his team due to credible threats against his life. 

Freedom was eventually dropped from the NBA. His skirmishes with the Turkish government don't seem to have stopped him from playing basketball, but vocally criticizing the Chinese government appears to have done so, at least according to Freedom himself. Representatives deny he was dropped for this reason, but even I can tell that his record as a player looks to have been pretty stellar -- what else could it have been? (Don't worry too much about him though; he's still a multimillionaire).  

In other words, Ng kowtowed with a fake apology and kept his career. Only now does it appear that he can say what he wants. Freedom has been consistent and firm, and lost his. Ng still gets laughs. Freedom gets Twitter trolls, attacks from the left and death threats.

This particular tragedy of the spotlight is pretty straightforward. In order to keep your spotlight, you might have to fake an apology along the way, as Ng did. Only then might you hope to remain relevant enough to say something closer to your true beliefs later on. To be honest, you may first have to lie.

There are other tragedies worth our attention, too. For example, that one can remain a public figure and stand firm in one's criticism on some topics (e.g. Turkish authoritarianism) but not others (Chinese authoritarianism). That organizations like the NBA will support you against one brutal regime, but deny that you were dropped for speaking out against another. 

I don't necessarily think Ng's beliefs are deeply held: he hasn't indicated any kind of lasting commitment to, say, Taiwan or holding the CCP accountable. So, he was able to grit his teeth and lie. What do you do, then, if you are so steadfast in your principles that you simply cannot lie about them, but you're not a basketball phenom like Freedom, who has at least some leverage to speak his truth?

The beauty of people like Freedom and (possibly) Ng is that they reach a broader demographic: Freedom raised awareness among sports fans who have no personal reason to care about these issues. Ng's audience might be a bit more AAPI-dominated, but probably just wants to laugh. We need people like that, because those who make most of their public life about one issue (say, Taiwan advocacy), so rarely get heard outside of the bubble of people who already care about that issue.

Ng found out the hard way that there's a point at which you either kowtow or face irrelevance. Freedom found out that no matter how famous you are, or how good you are at the thing that made you famous, you could still lose quite a lot to the CCP  Cancellation Machine. And we've all learned that being famous means having a platform, but having a platform does not necessarily mean you can engage in honest discourse. It's very difficult to remain relevant and heard at the level of Freedom and Ng if you have sincere beliefs, or really anything worth saying.

The only hope I can offer is this: Freedom still gets interviews; he may be out of the NBA but he hasn't been silenced. Ng seems to have finally broken free from his former insincerity and is willing to make jokes that the CCP doesn't like. But it's still a tragedy that the choice seems to be lose your job, or lie.

Saturday, April 29, 2023

Don't You Forget About Me?


My great-grandmother Verjine and her three brothers, around the time when their father was dragged away by Turkish soldiers and never heard from again. All they were trying to do was leave Smyrna.



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.

Thursday, March 23, 2023

Doing Nothing Wrong

The man at the top right resembles my great-grandfather, but it's hard to tell 


This is going to start out like a post focused on the Armenian Genocide; I promise that it is related to Taiwan, and there is a point. But I'm going to do this my way -- that is, the long way -- and I only ask that you bear with me, if you like. 

***

Generations ago, two contradictory narratives came out of late Ottoman Turkey surrounding the ongoing massacre of Armenians under Sultan Abdul Hamid II. One was spoken about among diplomats and travelers, discussed in salons across the Western world: a paranoid Armenophobe Sultan was allowing Armenians to be attacked and slaughtered across Anatolia and even in Istanbul. Sometimes these attacks came with a pretext ("revolutionary activity" or "separatists"), sometimes not. 

Of course, these worried people made sympathetic noises but took few if any concrete actions to actually help the Armenians.

It's not an uncommon belief that the Armenian Genocide began and ended around 1915, that it came like a wave, and then receded. This is not true: the Hamidian massacres began in the late 19th century, ebbing and flowing and continuing into the early Turkish republic until at least 1922. 

Despite being called the "loyal" millet, or minority community, Armenians, among others, were second-class citizens. Possession of weapons was more heavily restricted, taxes were higher, and legal rights fewer. 

In this narrative, the Armenians had done nothing at all; they were prosperous in banking and commerce and living happily under Ottoman rule until one day, the crazy Sultan decided to exterminate them, and that bloody legacy was perpetuated by the Young Turks. (To be clear, it is well-documented that Abdul Hamid II suffered from mental health problems later in life and was paranoid specifically about Armenians). 

Of course, the Ottoman state narrative was wildly different: this was an "internal" matter, an "exaggeration" of events or a "provocation" by Armenian separatists and terrorists. 

If you think this sounds quite a bit like the way China spins its own stories about Taiwan, as well as actual parts of China such as Tibet, East Turkestan and Hong Kong -- exactly. But that's obvious; all governments lie, but authoritarian states are both the biggest and worst liars. It's not even my main point. 

To hear the Armenians tell it, they were loyal to the Sultan, while still celebrating the advent of the Turkish republic, presumably at its nascent stage when they believed it might result in fewer massacres, not a tsunami of fresh killings. Few were revolutionaries; none were trying to topple or break away from the state. We weren't separatists, they said. All we ever wanted was equality and justice. 

To hear the Turkish side, they were indeed separatists engaging in terrorist acts, and had to be stopped. Of course, this narrative always stops short of genocide: we had to stop them, we were provoked into the massacres that you are exaggerating and also that we did not commit. 

Frankly, the Turkish government continues to embarrass itself by perpetuating this narrative.

One of these narratives is obviously false. Let's leave aside the fact that I had ancestors in the death camps and not all of them survived, that my great-grandfather and great-grandmother, children at the time, barely survived the 1909 massacres and my great-great grandfather was murdered in Smyrna by Turkish troops as the 1922 fire raged. Plenty of documentation attests to the truth of the events, the official narrative makes no sense, and anecdotal accounts fill out the picture. From Michael Arlen's Passage to Ararat

In the fall of 1895, a group of German and Swiss schoolteachers were traveling through eastern Turkey. They passed a village where not a soul appeared to be alive. "A terrible plague," explained the guide. The schoolteachers saw blood on the walls of houses, and a village square where jackals and vultures still fed off the unburied dead. 

It's easy to assume that therefore, the Armenian story must be unimpeachable. The loyal millet, living peacefully under the imperial yoke, never engaged in the activities of which the Ottomans -- and later the Young Turks -- accused them. If this is true, the Armenians did nothing. 

The thing is, this isn't quite right. They didn't do nothing. 

The Turkish story may be embarrassingly stupid, but the issue with the Armenian narrative is that it glosses over the most important point: that they did nothing wrong

Why exactly is this a problem? First, it makes it easy for Turkey to defend their position: if there were no Armenian revolutionaries, how do you explain all the Armenian revolutionaries? 

Because they existed. That, too, is well-documented.

The main groups were the Dashnaksutiun (the Dashnaks) and the Hunchakyan Kusaktsutyun (the Hunchaks). The Dashnaks are known in English as the ARF, or Armenian Revolutionary Federation -- emphasis mine. Both groups were at least nominally socialist or social democratic; the Dashnaks perhaps less so, whereas the Hunchaks were more overtly Marxist. The two groups began as a united front, with the Hunchaks splitting off over ideological differences: if you think leftists like to get into big, fractous spats with each other rather than fighting their common enemy, then I would like to welcome you to join the People's Front of Judea, not those apostates running the Judean People's Front.

Fun fact #1: both parties still exist. Fun fact #2: my great-grandfather Mihran was a Dashnak and fedayi (resistance fighter) in the 1920-21 war for Armenian independence. I admire that a lot; I do hope that if the time ever comes for me to stand up for what is right despite immediate physical danger, I will do so. 

Theoretically, the Dashnaks were more reform-minded, wanting to better the position of Armenians within a larger Turkish state, whereas the Hunchaks advocated a breakaway Armenian state. The Dashnaks worked with the Young Turks to overthrow Abdul Hamid II, and the two groups worked together up until the 1909 massacres, which were promulgated by the new Turkish government (the Sultan had just been removed from power by this revolution) against Armenians, primarily but not limited to Adana, near my great-grandmother's hometown of Tarsus.

That is to say, these groups did consist of separatists and revolutionaries. Not every Armenian was a member; I'd gather most weren't. However, it's historically inaccurate to claim that they meant no harm to the Ottoman government. Some absolutely did. I do not believe this was wrong; for a time, they shared the same goal as the Young Turks, who are now celebrated in Turkey. Clearly, the Turkish government doesn't think opposing the Sultan was "wrong" either, as long as it was Turks doing it. 

Let's look at a specific example: one side says that the 1894 massacre of Armenians at Sasun was "unprovoked", the other says it was provoked because Armenians refused to pay taxes. The truth is that the Hunchaks indeed encouraged them to stop paying, because the taxes levied on Armenians were unequal and unfair, and the whole situation was a lot more complicated than a protest over taxation.

Without getting into the local, factional violence, there were indeed Armenians calling for reforms that directly threatened the state. Throughout, the Dashnaks and Hunchaks did indeed use revolutionary tactics to resist Ottoman oppression. Some of these forces were at play in Sasun; they emerged again during the bank occupation in Istanbul, which precipitated further massacres.

That's not doing nothing. But I generally support resisting murderous dictators. I am in favor of protesting unfair taxation and tribute. If the regional or central government is sending in troops to specifically punish you for refusing to be exploited by the other people they sent in to harass you, you should fight back against both the local perpetrators and the central government. 

That's not "doing nothing", it's doing nothing wrong. 

While I don't think separatism is always the best way to solve political problems -- sometimes it is, sometimes it just creates more problems -- I understand why Armenians at the time might have thought it a good solution. They were being treated like dirt; prosperity was gained not through privilege but adversity. Under those conditions, especially in the sociopolitical environment of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, wouldn't you also want to advocate for either reform or independence? 

To ignore this and insist that they lived their lives placidly oppressed is not only to give official Turkish accounts credibility that they do not deserve, but also to flatten the story. It perpetuates the myth of the "perfect victim": do we really want to imply that only some genocide victims are worth recognition and compassion? Do we really believe that the only argument against mass murder is to say the victims didn't resist their murderers? Or that "separatism" is an excuse for genocide? Do we really want to erase the agency of targeted groups to resist?

It is ethical and right to stand up against injustice. It is correct to push for equality, and if the government lording over you won't give it to you, you either have to change the government, or rid yourself of it. 

Whether you are independent like Taiwan and requiring only international recognition, or a part of some larger oppressive state and seek to break free, you are not required to accept second-class status up until the point that the state begins murdering you, never daring to set off a bomb or stage a protest. This should not and cannot be the threshold for deciding who is and is not a true victim. 

I hope you've followed me this far, and see how this connects not only to Taiwan, and every other group fighting CCP oppression. 

To hear the Chinese government tell it, Taiwan (and the US) are relentless provocateurs; their story veers between insisting most Taiwanese understand that their ultimate destiny is to be "reunified" as good Han subjects under the rejuvenated Chinese nation but are misled by a minority of "splittists" or the United States, and screeching that Taiwanese "separatists" are the instigators wholly responsible for Beijing's continued threats of violence. It's an internal matter, they say. You're exaggerating, China would most prefer a "peaceful" resolution but, you know, those pesky separatists! It's their fault that we may be forced to wage war, followed by brutal re-education camps. 

They do the same in East Turkestan and just about anywhere else that suffers under CCP repression. Like the Turkish government, they claim that Uyghur terrorists forced them to open the concentration camps that they also claim don't exist. You're exaggerating, they repeat. Those are vocational schools aimed at helping Uyghurs, not jailing them. Except we had to open them because of all the terrorists, and we had to forcibly detain people sent there. But you're exaggerating. 

If that fails, we're admonished not to worry ourselves over a far-off genocide because apparently genocide is acceptable if it's an "internal matter". 

Certainly I don't condone violent acts against civilians, but if we're talking about which side has killed more people, it would be the CCP. I may not be a fan of bus or subway bombs, but I have all the empathy in the world for people fighting the systemic erasure of their identity and culture. Such erasure never works, it always leads to violence, and the CCP started it. 

It forces us to consider the ethics of actions within a given context: Ottomans sending in troops to harass Armenians was wrong; Armenians occupying a bank with pistols and explosives was not wrong, per se. The American South wanting to secede because they wanted to continue the institution of slavery was wrong; East Turkestan wanting to cleave itself from its murderers to end a cultural genocide is not wrong.

I could draw out similar scenarios in Tibet and Hong Kong, but I think the point is clear.

This may seem obvious, but I don't think it is. When we portray the bad guys (and the Chinese government is unequivocally the villain here) as going after people who did nothing at all, the next step in that thought sequence is to consider "something" to be worse than "nothing".  As in, compassion comes more readily if they weren't revolutionary, or separatist; but if they were,  some might think the consequences are justified. But they actually did set off subway bombs! They did occupy a bank! They did resist police officers! They did plot to assassinate the Sultan! They actually are separatists!

Then it becomes "bad" to be a separatist or revolutionary. Those words sure sound so scary on the news! But again, if the government you're fomenting a revolution against is oppressing you and others, being a revolutionary is not wrong


Think of it this way: how much easier is it to advocate that the Chinese government should stop disappearing poor innocent Uyghurs who were just minding their own business? Compare that to persuading others that, yes, in fact there was and is resistance to Chinese rule in East Turkestan; that yes, there are Uyghur "separatists" by the basic definition; that resistance occasionally turns violent; but that Chinese oppression in East Turkestan is still unjustified and if the CCP can't do better (and it can't), perhaps East Turkestan actually should be independent. 

The same is true in Taiwan, although there are no thorny questions of civilian attacks to contend with and unlike East Turkestan, Hong Kong and Tibet, it is not legally a part of the People's Republic of China no matter how much the CCP screams otherwise (if it is, show me the binding international treaty or accepted convention that says so. It doesn't exist).

It's so easy to say that Taiwan has done nothing at all, but that's not true. Taiwan's done quite a lot: first and foremost, it democratized and in spite of Chinese missile tests, stayed that way. War is a deeply unpopular notion, but most do intend to defend their country against China if necessary. When China gets its hackles up about "separatists" we may roll our eyes, but most Taiwanese do not want to be a part of China. 
A large number -- likely a majority, depending on how you define the issue -- are indeed "separatists" by China's definition. The problem is not the desire for continued sovereignty, but China's definition.  


Taiwan does seek international recognition, even when doing so "angers" China. They do identify primarily as Taiwanese, which China cannot abide. They do reject China's conditions for "peace", which begin with the so-called 1992 Consensus and end with accepting annexation without a fight. They don't give up and accept second-class international status; it may be forced upon them, but you'll always encounter resistance (even if they're just online comments reminding, say, a sporting organization that "Chinese Taipei" is bullshit and everyone knows it).

In everything from calling Taiwan an "independent country (named the Republic of China)", changing the passports, cultivating ties with the US and other countries and any number of small actions, Taiwan tests where China's red lines are.

They do this because those red lines are unjust and do not deserve respect. Taiwan is right to resist them, reject fabricated agreements from decades ago, turn down Beijing's poisoned offer of "peace". 

That's not nothing. It's exercising agency in a thousand small ways: it's nothing wrong. 

By China's definition, Taiwan actually is provoking China. That's not doing nothing. It's just doing nothing wrong: again, the problem here is China's definition.

If we don't believe that, then the logical conclusion is to insist that such "provocations" are wrong simply because China does not like them: that is, giving credibility to the abuser in this messed-up relationship. It's to say that Taiwan should clamp itself down and do less, do nothing. Let itself be a victim. Never raise its voice. Accept ever-decreasing space in the international community, let its autonomy be chipped away.

The ways in which Taiwan's story and agency are being flattened in international media are not exactly the same as Armenia's a century ago. People then either seemed to believe that Armenians were hapless, agency-less victims, or that they deserved what they got for being separatists and revolutionaries. 

In Taiwan's case, the danger lies in portrayals of the country as some unpopulated rock fought over by the United States and China, as though the people of Taiwan haven't made their own decisions about their sovereignty and self-governance. Taiwan's very real desire to remain separate from the People's Republic of China is the entire reason why the conflict exists at all. 

China is indeed threatening Taiwan because of what it deems to be "separatism", not US "provocations" --   it is the will and agency of the people of Taiwan that is central to the issue. Chinese painting of Taiwan's views as US-created constructs is a lie, because they know they don't have a strong argument against the truth: that Taiwan itself wants continued sovereignty, and it has that fundamental right of self-determination.

If it melted away, and Taiwan placidly announced that would do anything at all for peace, including meeting China's demands, there would be no conflict. That will never happen, which may mean war. To steal from a great artist of my parents' generation, Taiwan would do anything for peace, but it won't do that. 

This does not mean -- it cannot mean -- that Taiwan's will and agency are wrong. They are not. 

Taiwanese don't act like Dashnaks or Hunchaks; they don't need to, because the would-be oppressor they fight does not control them. Someday, it might be necessary: while some might submit, others will certainly resist. I hope that day never comes, but if it does, I'll support them. Hell, I might be making Molotovs or growing sweet potatoes for the resistance fighters. After all, they'd be right. 

Nobody desires a Syria-like situation in Taiwan, but that's the most likely outcome if China "successfully" annexes Taiwan. Still, Taiwan will be right, and China will be wrong.

Wanting equality, justice, freedom and human rights is fundamentally ethically sound. That may be revolutionary; in some cases it may be tantamount to separatism. Fine, I say. Let it be revolutionary, let it be separatism if it must. It's our job to understand this, and not rob people facing an oppressor of either agency or compassion, when indeed they deserve both. 

Friday, September 23, 2022

The Two-Tongued Pretender

 

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"Բարեւ Ձեզ սիրելի կամավորներ: Շատ ուրախ եմ նսրից հանդիպել ձեզ,"  Anna says. She goes by Anna, not Dr. Sahakyan. 

I understand and nod. I'm not a volunteer, not in Peace Corps, and not in Armenia, but the language course videos are online, so why not? 

"Այսօր մենք սովորելումենք ինչպես հարցնել ճանապարհը:"

Now I freak out -- I don't understand this at all. The first twelve videos were introduced in English, but the actual volunteers learning Armenian with Anna have materials and live online sessions, which I do not have. I suppose by the time they get to this point, their service has begun and they're far ahead of me. I figure out what she just said using logic, educated guesses, an Armenian keyboard and Google Translate.

At least my pronunciation seems fine, because I'm able to recall and imitate what my grandfather's generation sounded like when they met for the holidays and had throaty, velar conversations from which I was completely excluded. But I don't really know. There's no one to check if my ը is schwa-y enough or my խ sufficiently tubercular.

The video ends and I set a reminder to transfer my messy notes to the neater record I keep. I reach to the right and grab my Taiwanese textbook. We've had a few lessons, all of which have focused on mastering pronunciation. I expected the tones to be difficult, but they're not (yet). It reminds me of all the musical training I'd otherwise forgotten, and anyway it's a similar principle to Mandarin, just...more of it, and harder. 

It's the the k and g that get me: I can't hear the difference, so each is inconsistently produced. haven't learned a single actual word that I can remember, but I dutifully listen to the recordings and parrot along. Someone's going to check, and Ms. Deng has struck me as rather meticulous. 

Both methods are strikingly Audiolingual. Armenian has to be; how else does one deliver asynchronous online sessions? You can't teach communicatively without someone to communicate with. For Taiwanese, I suspect it's partly based on how Mandarin is taught (that is, very traditionally), and partly because most of Ms. Deng's students are hopelessly Indo-European: they need and expect the pronunciation support. I'm told by a friend who also takes lessons that she'll be happy to practice speaking authentically once I'm able to speak at all. 

Still, Armenian starts with conversation: Hello, how are you? I'm fine, you? I'm fine, thanks. What's your name? My name is Anna. And you? I'm a teacher. I'm a volunteer. Communicative methods aren't embedded in Armenian; they went through centuries of inefficient teaching and learning modalities just like everyone else. The method is Anna's doing.

Armenian also has something called the trchnakir, a Medieval illustrator's avian dream, in which the letters of the alphabet are rendered as brightly sinuous bird bodies. I know the difference in learning style has nothing to do with that, but there's something poetic in thinking of one of your new languages as music, practiced like I quacked those first notes on a trumpet years ago. I had to learn to read music, of course, before I could do much of anything. It was months before I played a real song. The other is the organized chaos of a watch of nightingales, a murmuration of starlings or a charm of finches. You just up and go.




(Originally from this tweet)



Taiwanese starts with a, á, à, ah, â, ā, å (I made that last one up; my keyboard won't type the actual diacritic). Do all that, then you can have some words. We go over it again, and yet again, until Ms. Deng is satisfied with my ability to stumble around in her language. 

"Okay!" she says. 
"Okay," I laugh. Just okay.

Okay, but why am I doing this? Do I enjoy elaborate constructions of linguistic masochism? (A little, yes.) Why both? Why now? Why these two hilariously unrelated languages? At the same time?

One is about the past, one is about the future, and in both, I'm a pretender. I speak neither language yet, though I can make sounds which imply I kind of do. Generously, I am a small child in the body of an adult, whose tongue can thrash around like a baby: goo-goo gaa-gaa barev dzez, inchpes ek, shnorakalutiun yev hajogutsyun Զեփյուռ կդառնամմեղմիկ աննման: Սարերից կիջնեմ, նստեմ քո դռան. Cháu chháu kâu gâu pōng bōng ng hng ióng hióng 在這個安靜的暗暝我知道你有心事睏袂去, 想到你的過去, 受盡凌遲, 甘苦很多年。

Neither my Armenian nor my Taiwanese is that good, but I understand those lyrics. One of the ways I bolster my motivation is to listen to music I like in languages I'm studying. I look up what is being said, even if I'm not ready to truly learn it yet.

I chose Armenian because I simply felt I had to. For too long, I've acted like a victim of the heritage language denied me, all those ideas and modes of expression that nobody thought important enough to pass on, a cold wall between all those relatives who thought their opinions, ideas and perspectives didn't matter enough for me to understand them. My great-grandmother died when I was 14, and while we had real conversations, I can't say we ever had full, deep, real ones. I both knew her and didn't. 

This memory resurfaces every time a Taiwanese acquaintance reveals that they could barely communicate with their own grandparents because their generation was raised in Mandarin but their elders barely spoke it.

Being a linguistic victim sucks, though, and it doesn't even suck in an interesting way. I'm unlikely to ever be fluent, but if I can have an understanding and some basic Armenian conversational skills, it'll be a victory. Just because my grandfather made a decision in 1953 doesn't mean I have to abide by it. I think it's necessary not just to connect with my heritage, but to move my own story forward as well. As far as I know, I'm the only Renjilian of my generation who decided to re-learn, however imperfectly, what was lost. 

I have no such ancestral connection to Taiwanese. I moved here at the age of 26 for no specific reason: it just looked like an interesting place to be. I stay for a thousand reasons, which deserve their own post. Whatever connections grow from learning this language, they are entirely in the future. I don't know that I'm trying to prove that Taiwan is actually my home now...except perhaps, I am. 

Still, I feel like a fake. My family spoke Western Armenian (the last native speaker died just this summer). I'm learning Eastern, because that's what's available. As for Taiwan, well, I consider this my home but I'll always be seen as something of an outsider, no matter what language I learn.

It turns out that both Armenian -- especially Western Armenian -- and Taiwanese are somewhat inaccessible; both suffer from a dearth of teachers and materials. There are days when I have to tamp down annoyance that I have to work for a heritage language I should already know, and a local language I began learning about 15 years too late.

That's a long time to put something off, so I felt a strong need to start now. Not in a year, not after I'd gotten some Armenian under my belt, and not until I could improve my Mandarin (as I used to tell myself). Now. If I wait too long, I'll wait forever.

The inaccessibility is a bit seductive, though. Many have the opportunity to learn Mandarin. Who is so lucky as to have an experienced Taiwanese teacher dropped in their lap by recommendation? I have to learn it via Mandarin, which frankly provides more motivation to improve said Mandarin than I've felt in years.

Armenian is the same: most Armenians speak Russian as a second language, and the diaspora all have other tongues now. Russian is more common as an offering -- how many have the patience to practice Armenian from Taiwan, with no feedback and no real reward? I'd be surprised if there were six Armenian speakers in the whole country! 

Both languages need more speakers: Taiwanese was the target of an intentional campaign of eradication, and even today is insultingly classified as a dialect despite being mutually unintelligible with Mandarin. Unsurprisingly, 
Taiwanese is an endangered language. Western Armenian is endangered as well, and I'm unlikely to be able to access it unless I learn Eastern Armenian first. 

Neither language is widely considered useful: I've already been advised to just stick with Mandarin -- or worse, to spend my time practicing Simplified characters. I blanch at the thought! I've also been told to just learn Russian as I'll get more utility out of it.

That's just fuel, though. I'm sick of the utilitarian argument. It's a privilege to be able to float around in languages that aren't international, that you don't need for anything in particular. But it's also what draws me.

Maybe I have something to prove or I just like learning "useless" things, but I'm not doing this for utility. My intrinsic motivation to learn Mandarin died awhile ago; I persevered because it was useful. I was never a huge fan of the politics of it. Yes, Taiwanese has a settler-colonial history too, but it should have never been suppressed the way that it was. In any case, most expats come to Taiwan expecting to learn some Mandarin. Some succeed, some don't. How many come and decide to learn Taiwanese?

I know more than one, but there could be -- should be -- even more than that. 

As for Western Armenian, it should still be widely spoken across Anatolia. But it isn't. You know why. 

With opinions like that on why languages are worth learning, who needs usefulness?

And yet, blue eyes in Armenian culture portend bad luck -- they're said to be more susceptible to the effects of the evil eye (I think this is why charms against the evil eye across the Mediterranean are blue). Yeghishe Charents even wrote of it -- Blue-Eyed Armenia. And here I am, a blue-eyed white lady learning two wildly disparate languages and wondering what bad luck might await. 

The worst possible outcome is that I make a short study of both, learn neither well, and they enter the dormant part of my brain where French and Spanish are buried. Just another person who "took a language class" but never actually learned the language. Or I'll try and try but never master tone changes in Taiwanese, and always be stuck sounding like a tortured goose. Or I'll go to Armenia again, someday when it's safe, and proudly try out whatever Armenian skills I've gained by then only to be laughed at because my pronunciation sounds more like a series of sneezes than comprehensible language.

I also wonder, given the endangered status of both languages, if I'm actually helping by being a new person -- something of an outsider -- interested in learning. Or am I just rubbernecking as both languages fall, like birds shot out of the sky by the KMT, or the Young Turks?

As China amps up its provocation and bullying of Taiwan and Armenia stands on the precipice of invasion by Azerbaijan, am I doing anything meaningful by learning Armenian and Taiwanese? It strikes me as a statement: I will help preserve what you are trying to destroy. But am I really helping, or indulging myself? I can't help but think it's closer to the latter.

And yet, I keep practicing pronunciation until Ms. Deng moves us on to actual words. When I feel I've done enough, I head over to Youtube. Anna's classes are a challenge now, but if I'm tired I can always watch Bopo children's television and learn colors, or animals, or whatever.  

Perhaps I'll never succeed at either language. Perhaps Armenian won't lead to whatever window on the past I'm looking for. Certainly, learning Taiwanese won't make me a local. Neither language will lead to a better job, more money or even many conversation partners. But it's worth it. 


Monday, October 18, 2021

There are only wrong answers when you ask the "Taiwan Question"


Armenian refugees in Athens, taken some time after 1924


In the 19th and early 20th centuries, scholars, diplomats, those generally interested in international politics and people I would call "Ottoman Watchers" -- though the term almost certainly did not exist -- discussed and debated the "Armenian Question" at length. The decline of the Ottoman Empire saw the rise of the "Hamidian massacres" of Armenians in the 1890s and eventually the 1915 genocide perpetrated by the Young Turks.

The ethno-nationalist beliefs of the otherwise liberal-seeming Young Turks was lifted directly from European nationalism, on the rise since the 1840s. The independence and self-determination movements of this emerging nationalist sentiment might be considered a form of liberalism, but strong (conservative) ethno-nationalist currents undercut that. 

While these slaughters took place leading up to the Armenian Genocide, the talkers talked. The dandies dandied. The parlor-chatters parlayed. The salon-occupiers occupied themselves. How to solve the Armenian Question? Whatever was to be done with the Armenians? Those far-away orientals?

(Yes, it's true that I just about the whitest lady who ever whited. I don't deny that or the privilege attached to it, even though an entire branch of my family were considered 'Eastern' until very recently.) 

My ancestors lived and died through that. One of my direct ancestors was a victim, murdered by the Kemalist forces in Smyrna in 1922. Two other direct ancestors died in the refugee camp at Port Said after the successful defense of Musa Dagh in 1915 (although they were too old to have played a part in the actual fighting). Others lost siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins. That side of my family is littered with the names of people who died between 1915 and 1922. Except they did not just die -- they were massacred.

My great-great grandfather Hagop, murdered by Kemalists in Smyrna


It was so unspeakably horrific that an old folk song, Nubari Boye (Nubar's Height), went from being a lovely ode from a girl to her sweetheart describing his height, his brow and handsome build to an elegiac song symbolizing the death of so many of those sweethearts.

It seemed the Armenian Question had an answer, at least for the "debaters" in drawing rooms and cafes far away. It wasn't the "right" answer, because that doesn't exist. Their answer, however, appears to have been do
 nothing at all and just let them be slaughtered

But I am sure they were very intellectually stimulating debates indeed. 



My great-great-great grandparents, whom I believe (from what evidence I have) died at the Port Said refugee camp after the Musa Dagh resistance



Now, the Communist Party of China is drawing fire for its "final solution" to the "Taiwan Question". Many have pointed out the similarity in language to the Nazis' "final solution" -- that is, the Holocaust. Something everyone with a heart and soul has agreed should never be allowed to happen again. 

Obviously, this is horrifying. That should not need to be said. I simply cannot believe that whoever wrote in Chinese state-run media that there was a "final solution" to the Taiwan question was unaware of the connotations of that abominable phrase. 

While this has been going on, the other half of that statement hasn't drawn quite as much fire. I understand why: it's just not as powerfully unacceptable as the other term which appears in the same sentence. 

I do want to point it out, however.

The "Armenian Question" was not the only question asked in those decades. There was a "Jewish Question" too. That question was answered in much the same way as the Armenian Question: it was discussed a lot, and then a genocide was ultimately allowed to happen.

An Armenian refugee settlement in Athens after WWI

Even the Ottoman Empire's allies, the Central Powers, did nothing. Germany did nothing, even as their own ambassador, Henry Morgenthau, documented the horrors he saw. He wasn't the only one.


If that's the answer to the question -- discuss it at length as an interesting intellectual debate at a far remove from one's own personal, emotional or empathetic concerns until ultimately there is a slaughter ending in massive and heartbreaking loss of life -- then what are we to make today of the "Taiwan Question"?

Are we going to debate it as an abstract notion in international affairs, or are we going to see that Chinese threats against Taiwan are very real, very violent, and could end in the massacre of millions as an annexationist CCP attempts (and quite possibly succeeds) at subjugating Taiwan, with no rational justification?

Because that is what will happen if we treat this like an abstraction or a debate, but ultimately do little or nothing. That is what China is intending to happen -- they don't even try to hide it. They talk openly about meting out punishment to "Taiwanese independence supporters" and "splittists", knowing full well that most Taiwanese identify as solely Taiwanese and do not support unification, which by China's definition, makes them "splittists". That, again, is millions of people. 

It's not just Chinese media saying this, either. China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs uses the term. Here it is from an American think tank saying they care about "safeguarding peace", while using language that implies anything but. Here's an article from a legal scholar in Singapore using it (it isn't a very good article). That's just the first page of results. 

              

What will it take to convince the self-important debaters that China is genocidal and means to engage in further massacre?

We're asking the same questions, in the same salons, the same sort of callow bloviators in different hairstyles and clothing. We're doing exactly what people did before: debating at a remove, refusing to actually try to answer the question, until the question gets answered by the wrong people and millions die. 

Why do we do this? Because answering the question honestly requires one to grapple with the very real paradox: we keep saying we won't let it happen again, but we don't want to go to war to stop it. We know that actually engaging with the threat these questions pose to the lives of millions of people far away means we can't do nothing. And it's so much easier to do nothing, and then debate the next question. Write papers about it, maybe publish books or articles and pretend this is all useful work and helpful fucking debate.

But is it useful work, if it doesn't prevent the next bloody -- literally bloody -- question from being asked?

It is hard to imagine how my ancestors must have felt, hearing about the Armenian Question. I know they heard about it, because even though the people talking about them far away assumed those 'orientals' weren't listening or didn't understand, they fucking did. And I know they did, because they all spoke not just Western Armenian but English, or French, or Arabic, or any combination of these. 

But I can imagine this: they most likely heard about the Armenian Question and thought simply:

I'm not a question. I'm a person.




                             

Although it's hard to say, I believe this is my great-grandmother as a teenager, not long before her father was dragged away in front of her and murdered


It is not as hard to imagine how Taiwanese must feel when people ask the "Taiwan Question."  I'm not Taiwanese, but I do live here. This is my permanent home, I will fight for it, and those missiles are pointed at my house too.

They are not questions. They are people. 

Millions of people who will die unless the world realizes that there is no right way to answer these kinds of questions. Either you do the right thing, or you don't, but debating people's lives as an abstraction as they face an imminent threat to their survival is not useful. It's not even particularly intellectual. It's just cruel.

History repeats itself in other ways, too. The Chinese government denies the current Uyghur Genocide in much the same way the Turkish government insists the Armenian Genocide never happened. But of course it did. I know that not just because I grew up knowing my great-grandmother, a survivor, but extensive documentary evidence (including telegrams) as well as past admissions by the Turkish government that it had: a Turkish court condemned the exiled perpetrators to death in absentia. A monument to the genocide existed in what is not Gezi Park in Istanbul until Kemalists took it down in 1922.

And China will either speak the truth about Taiwan knowing few are really listening, or they'll attempt to lie about it. This is how it goes. This is the fascist playbook.

This descendant of genocide survivors -- except not all of them survived -- has not forgiven the historical figures who talked about the Armenians at length but ultimately did nothing. Who took a goddamn century to even recognize the Armenian Genocide. 


                             

My great-grandfather -- he joined the resistance despite having been a loyal military officer, but ultimately lost a brother and several other relatives in the genocide


And she won't forgive you in the future, if you continue to ask questions that cannot be answered as intellectual exercises, and do nothing until the people you are talking about are slaughtered.

Perhaps it doesn't matter that I won't forgive you, but I can tell you this: history won't forgive you either. 



Me (the older kid) with my great-grandmother. She passed when I was about 13.


***


A reward for reading through this absolute howl, this scream from the belly: Zepyuri Nman (Like a Zephyr), all about how this guy'll come from the mountains like a gentle breeze and put his sword in his sweetheart's garden. Not joking. Those are the lyrics. Enjoy.


Thursday, April 16, 2020

When My Worlds Collide: The Chinese Aid/Mount Ararat Dispute

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Looking like a dork on my visit to Khor Virap in 2017


I was going to write about the way the WHO and China have both been slithering among political figures, begging bowls in hand, asking for statements of support for their handling of the CCP Virus. And I will - tomorrow, perhaps.

Today, something else caught my eye.

This is sort of a collision of my worlds: an American of Armenian heritage, whose ancestors fled Turkey, and who has visited both Turkey and Armenia while living in Taiwan and keeping an eye on China.

With that in mind, about a week ago, a tiny diplomatic snafu went unnoticed by most people. It seems that China sent medical supplies and equipment to Armenia, and this was written on the boxes:

高山之巔,長江之濱May Our Friendship Higher Than Mountain Ararat and Longer than Yangtze River

EVGKuItXkAEpnGh
These are the boxes in question

You'll note that the Chinese and English do not quite match. The actual translation of that phrase is "A High Mountain Peak, The Shores of The Yangtze" which sounds like a Chinese idiom but if so, I'm not familiar with it. (Readers?)


This caused a lot of consternation in Turkey, which demanded an explanation for why a mountain which is technically in Turkey, and called Mount Ağrı (Ara), was printed on aid sent to Armenia. IS CHINA DISRESPECTING THE TERRITORIAL SOVEREIGNTY OF TURKEY??!! ...is what I assume they screamed.


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Even on polluted days, you can see the peak of Ararat from Yerevan

China quickly clarified that the packages came from a provincial government in China - Chongqing - and that the Chinese phrasing made no reference to Ararat (which is true). They then said the "English translation was added later", implying that it might have been done by the private company which delivered the aid (which is probably not true, but who knows) - and that China respects Turkey's territorial integrity. As an Armenian, allow me to provide some background, both political and cultural.


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Also I will tell you about brandy
Mount Ararat is highly culturally important to Armenia. It's visible from both Yerevan - the capital, and also just a cool, funky city that you absolutely should visit - and much of the Armenian plain (the monastery of Khor Virap is an excellent place to get a closer look at it). Like Olympus in Greek history, pre-Christian Armenian mythology considered Ararat the home of the gods. One might think this mythology is 'lost', but just as Athens is still named for Athena, plenty of Armenian names derive from these pre-Christian mythological names. For example, Mihran (my great-grandfather's name) is from Mihr, the god of smithing. Getting on the Jesus train didn't change this much: believed to be the landing site of Noah's Ark by those inclined to such beliefs, Armenians essentially transferred Ararat's pagan sacredness to Christianity. Since the Armenian genocide, it has also become a symbol of everything Armenians lost when they were exterminated from lands they had inhabited for centuries. Not just the land, but the culture - I could list several examples of eastern Anatolian cultural touchstones that are claimed by Turkey but may in fact be Armenian in origin, but I'll just point out one - carpets. There is evidence to suggest that "Turkish rugs" are culturally Armenian. And yes, Ararat has been a symbol of Armenian irredentist beliefs. I am unable to speak objectively on this so I won't belabor the point, but much of what is now eastern "Turkey" was heavily populated by Armenians until the genocide. The Treaty of Sevrès gave that land to Armenia, and then the USSR, for purely political reasons, turned around and handed it to Turkey - including Ararat.



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Not joking about the brandy - Winston Churchill apparently drank it
Ararat is on the coat of arms of Armenia. In Yerevan, the statue of "Mother Armenia" faces it (and is surrounded by military accoutrements). Armenia's most famous brandy is named for it. Pins purchased by pilgrims to the various well-known monasteries across Armenia generally depict it. When I visited Armenia and caught my first sight of Ararat, despite knowing how silly it was to have an emotional attachment to a geographical location I had only a tenuous ancestral connection to - my ancestors having lived along the Mediterranean, not near the mountain - I got misty-eyed anyway. I don't know how else to express how important Ararat is to the Armenian people.
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Armenian pilgrimage pins from my personal collection
(not my pilgrimages - I inherited these from my mom, who collected them despite ever going herself)
So, I can tell you that from an Armenian perspective, referencing Ararat in a gesture of friendship really has very little to do with borders. Yeah, Armenia wants that mountain back. Sure. Won't deny it. But even with the borders as they are, without even expressing an overt wish to change those borders, it is entirely culturally appropriate to reference Ararat in an Armenian context. From that perspective, for Turkey to get mad about it feels a bit like China getting butthurt whenever someone calls Taiwan "Taiwan" or expresses support for Hong Kong.

Imagine having a thing on your country's coat of arms, purposely building your museum to the Armenian Genocide within sight of it, naming your brandy after it, and believing in its religious significance several layers and millenia down, and having another country get all pissy for acknowledging it's important to you, because it's within their borders due to some Soviet political maneuvering. Sounds like that'd feel like crap, right? Well, it does.
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The view of Ararat from the Armenian Genocide museum
Perhaps Taiwanese can understand this. Although the two situations are not exactly parallel, I can only imagine how it must feel to want to claim some aspect of that part of Taiwanese cultural heritage which does have roots in China, only to be told that doing so makes you Chinese by nationality. So you're stuck with either constantly trying to explain your heart, or distancing yourself from that heritage. (This rock and hard place were both intentionally created by China). Imagine being told that huge segments of your history and cultural heritage are wrong. That this thing and that place are actually Turkish and the things you say happened to your ancestors...didn't. Of course, Taiwanese don't have to imagine.

The problem, of course, isn't with emotional attachments to geographical locations. It's with the rabid anger and perpetual glass-hearted offense created by nationalism, abetted by national borders.


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Mother Armenia ain't playin' games
If you've ever wondered why I came to care so much about Taiwan after moving here, despite having no Taiwanese ancestry, it's this: what my ancestors went through and what the ancestors of my Taiwanese friends went through were different, but surely you can see how these conflicts are, in great part, variations on the same old themes of dominance, marginalization and nationalism? And I'm as sick as they are of being told that my heritage isn't allowed to be what I know it is?
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Really not joking about that brandy

I've long thought of Turkish political views as running on a parallel discourse with Chinese perspectives. Both are countries I have enjoyed visiting, meeting absolutely wonderful people and seeing some truly spectacular places. But politically, in Turkey they've convinced themselves that Armenia is the 'bad guy' and the Armenian genocide never happened (false), which is not that different from Chinese views that Taiwanese are the 'splittist' aggressors and Taiwan is their sovereign territory (again, false). I have lamented that these views are baked into the education that Turks and Chinese receive, and acknowledge that it is very difficult to overcome the failings of one's political upbringing.
Now, imagine that there a place which is key to your identity, perhaps even sacred in a quasi-religious sense. It occupies a central place in your cultural consciousness. Imagine being told by another country that not only is it theirs, not yours, but that it's not even particularly important to them. Taiwan, as a part of China, would be...just another province. Geostrategically important, perhaps, but honestly, I could see many Chinese viewing it as just a backwater, a nowhere. That's what it was under the Qing, after all. By Chinese standards, Taipei isn't even that big. I suspect most Taiwanese know this in their bones: Taiwan is everything to them. It's central to their history, identity and culture. To China, it's just hicksville. Yet they dare to pitch a fit whenever Taiwan points out that it's better off on its own. That's Ararat to Turkey. They don't care about it. It's so far east that I suspect Turks generally don't think about it much. It's a nowhere, a backwater. It is not central to their nation or identity the way it is to Armenians. And yet they have the temerity to throw a tantrum when any other nation references that cultural significance to Armenia. If you've gotten this far, you're probably shaking your head thinking "is Lao Ren Cha really saying that China did nothing wrong here?"
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Another view of Ararat from Yerevan
You'll be shocked to hear that Istanbullus don't care much about this mountain, but Yerevanis do. 
Well, I suppose...yes. But even when China is right, of course it's also wrong. Bullying Turkey out of supporting the Uighurs is wrong. And Armenia has quietly become a key node in China's Belt and Road Initiative, which sort of mimics its status as a border state between "east" and "west" (which the Romans and Persians would interfere with in order to snipe at each other from time to time) and stop on the Silk Road. But the BRI is no Silk Road - instead of bandits, there are debt traps. Even if the countries involved don't end up as serfs to China, they'll find themselves at the other end of threats to cut off this or that source of funds - closing a highway, cutting off international students, re-routing shipping, tourism, whatever - if they become to dependent on China. Again, variations on the same old themes.
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I really can't emphasize enough about the brandy