A senior US official has accused Turkey of pulling
a bait-and-switch by using a recent anti-Islamic State agreement with
the US as a "hook" to attack the Kurdish PKK in northern Iraq, The Wall Street Journal reports.
"It's clear that ISIL was a hook," the senior military official told
The Journal, referring to the Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh).
"Turkey wanted to move against the PKK, but it needed a hook."
On Tuesday, an American military source told Fox News
that US military leaders were "outraged" when Turkey began its bombing
campaign, giving US special forces stationed in northern Iraq virtually
no warning before Turkish jets started striking the mountains.
"A Turkish officer entered the allied headquarters in the air war
against ISIS and announced that the strike would begin in 10 minutes and
he needed all allied jets flying above Iraq to move south of Mosul
immediately," the source said. "We were outraged."
The confrontation highlights the tension growing between the US and
Turkey, which became a reluctant ally in the fight against ISIS after
years of turning a blind eye to the militants' illicit activity on its southern border during the Syrian civil war.
Ankara officially joined the coalition fight against ISIS on July 24,
striking ISIS (and the PKK) on the same day. It also recently began
allowing the US to use the Incirlik airbase in Turkey to carry out
strikes against ISIS.
But Turkey has conducted 300 strikes against the PKK and three against ISIS since July 24, according to data compiled by IRIN news. All three ISIS strikes occurred on the first day of the campaign.
Nearly 400 Kurdish militants have been killed, IRIN reports, compared with nine ISIS militants.
When asked about Turkey's commitment to fighting ISIS, a senior
defense official said "there are still question marks out there. Our
folks are very eager to put it to the test.”
And if Turkey keeps going after the PKK while trying not to provoke
ISIS, "it will leave the US without a Syria strategy," geopolitical
expert Ian Bremmer told Business Insider by email.
"Access to Incirlik airbase matters, but the additional bombing it enables will only help contain ISIS,
not roll it back," Bremmer added. "And it will leave Washington without
the improved relations with Ankara that the Obama administration is
hoping for." Reuters
The ongoing
bombing campaign against PKK strongholds in northern Iraq came as a
surprise, but it probably shouldn't have: Turkey has long seen the PKK —
a designated terrorist organization that waged a three-decade
insurgency inside Turkey — as more of an existential threat than ISIS,
which refrained from launching attacks inside Turkey even as its
militants lived and operated along the border.
"The PKK is a bigger threat to us, as it is active within the
country," a Turkish official told The Wall Street Journal. "They stage
attacks on our security forces on a daily basis, in many cities. ISIS is
more active in Syria, and is therefore less urgent now.” REUTERS
Moreover, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's bombing campaign — capitalizing on the nationalist, anti-Kurd sentiment that has been steadily growing inside Turkey — could help him regain his AKP party's absolute majority in parliament now that coalition talks have failed and snap elections are likely. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, also a member of the
AKP, said on Thursday he would prefer an election to be held "as soon as
possible", Reuters reported.
"The AKP needed the Kurdish angle to sell the war to
ultranationalists inside Turkey," whose main priority is to curb Kurdish
territorial gains along its southern border, Jonathan Schanzer, vice
president for research at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Business Insider last month.
But Erdogan's gamble has come at a price: Nearly 40
Turkish police officers and military officials have been attacked and
killed by PKK militants since the war began, and that number is
increasing every day. REUTERS
Erdogan has also complicated his party's relationship with Washington
further: While the White House was relieved when Turkey announced it
would allow the US to launch airstrikes against ISIS from Incirlik
airbase in its southeast, the PKK is a politically contentious target.
The militia was working with US-backed Kurdish fighters to repel ISIS
from northern Iraq and is also closely linked to the Kurdish YPG
militia, which, backed by US airstrikes, has proved to be the most
effective force fighting ISIS on the ground in northern Syria.
Now the US is reportedly embracing an all-out partnership with the
YPG to make up for the failures of its $500 million Syrian
train-and-equip program — a move that is sure to anger Ankara and
inflame tensions even further.
"To fully embrace a Kurdish force would complicate an already fragile
strategy, two [US] defense officials concluded," Nancy Youseff of The Daily Beast reports.
"The Turks ... would not welcome an emboldened Kurdish force on its
southern border. Neither would many of America's Arab allies, who are
also threatened by Kurdish sovereignty movements."
ISTANBUL — Turkish voters delivered a rebuke on Sunday to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as his party lost its majority in Parliament in a historic election that thwarted his ambition to rewrite Turkey’s Constitution and further bolster his clout.
The results represented a significant setback for Mr. Erdogan, an Islamist who has steadily increased his power since being elected last year
as president, a partly but not solely ceremonial post. The prime
minister for more than a decade before that, Mr. Erdogan has pushed for
more control of the judiciary and cracked down on any form of criticism,
including prosecuting those who insult him on social media, but his
efforts appeared to have run aground on Sunday.
The
vote was also a significant victory to the cadre of Kurds, liberals and
secular Turks who found their voice of opposition to Mr. Erdogan during
sweeping antigovernment protests two years ago. For the first time, the
Kurdish slate crossed a 10 percent threshold required to enter
Parliament.
Mr.
Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, or A.K.P., still won the most
seats by far, but not a majority, according to preliminary results
released Sunday night. The outcome suggests contentious days of
jockeying ahead as the party moves to form a coalition government.
Already, analysts were raising the possibility Sunday of new elections
if a government cannot be formed swiftly. Many Turks were happy to see
Mr. Erdogan’s powers curtailed, even though the prospect of a coalition
government evokes dark memories of political instability and economic
malaise during the 1990s.
With
99 percent of the votes counted, the A.K.P. had won 41 percent of the
vote, according to TRT, a state-run broadcaster, down from nearly 50
percent during the last national election in 2011. The percentage gave
it an estimated 258 seats in Turkey’s Parliament, compared with the 327 seats it has now.
“The
outcome is an end to Erdogan’s presidential ambitions,” said Soner
Cagaptay, an expert on Turkey and a fellow at the Washington Institute
for Near East Policy.
Almost
immediately, the results raised questions about the political future of
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who moved to that position from that of
foreign minister last year and was seen as a loyal subordinate of Mr.
Erdogan.
Speaking
Sunday night from a balcony at the party headquarters in Ankara, Mr.
Davutoglu struck notes of triumph and optimism, touting his party as the
winner because it won the most seats, without mentioning the loss of
its majority.
“The elections once again showed that the A.K. Party is the backbone of Turkey,” he said.
Photo
Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, the leaders of the People’s Democratic Party, celebrated in Istanbul.Credit
Murad Sezer/Reuters
Mr.
Erdogan, who as president was not on the ballot Sunday, will probably
remain Turkey’s dominant political figure even if his ambitions have
been curtailed, given his outsize personality and his still-deep well of
support among Turkey’s religious conservatives, who form the backbone
of his constituency. But even among those supporters, including ones in
Kasimpasa, the Istanbul neighborhood where Mr. Erdogan spent part of his
youth, there are signs that his popularity is flagging.
“A
lot of people in Kasimpasa have become disheartened by Erdogan’s
aggressive approach in recent weeks,” said Aydin, 77, who gave only his
first name because some of his family members are close to Mr. Erdogan.
“I voted for the A.K.P. because it has become habit, but I think Erdogan
lost votes this week.”
Turnout
was 86 percent for the elections, which were seen as a referendum on
Mr. Erdogan’s tenure, especially his plan for a presidential system that
would have given him more power. Polling had consistently shown that
the majority of Turks are opposed to the change.
By
law, Mr. Erdogan can call for new elections after 45 days if a
coalition is not formed, and the political uncertainty sent Turkey’s
currency, the lira, to a record low against the dollar in after-hours
trading.
The
vote turned on the historic performance at the ballot box of Turkey’s
Kurdish minority, which aligned with liberals and secular Turks opposed
to Mr. Erdogan’s leadership to win almost 13 percent of the vote,
passing the legal threshold for earning representation in Parliament.
Selahattin
Demirtas, 42, a former human rights lawyer who leads the largely
Kurdish People’s Democratic Party, told reporters Sunday night: “As of
this hour, the debate about the presidency, the debate about
dictatorship, is over. Turkey narrowly averted a disaster.”
There was celebration in the streets of
Turkey over gains by the Peoples’ Democratic Party, which aligned with
liberals and secular Turks opposed to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
By Reuters on Publish Date June 8, 2015.
Photo by Bulent Kilic/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images.
The
People’s Democratic Party, known as H.D.P., was able to broaden its
base by fielding a slate of candidates that included women, gays and
other minorities and appealed to voters whose goal was to curtail Mr.
Erdogan’s powers.
“I
voted for H.D.P. because it’s the only party that can break up
Erdogan’s bid for absolute power,” said Selen Olcay, 47, a fitness
instructor who voted in Istanbul’s Sariyer District. “In this election a
lot of Turks abandoned their ideological preferences and voted
strategically to derail Erdogan’s one-man rule.”
The
Kurdish party opted to run a unified slate, rather than field
independent candidates as it had in the past. But it was a big risk:
either it would reach the 10 percent threshold and enter Parliament, or
it would be shut out, and its seats would have gone to the A.K.P.
In
the city of Diyarbakir, in the Kurdish heartland in the southeast,
celebrations broke out as people flooded the streets, dancing and
setting off fireworks.
In
Istanbul, Kurds saw the election as the culmination of decades of
struggle, some of it waged violently by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or
P.K.K., which has fought an insurgency from a base in northern Iraq for
more political rights. In recent years Mr. Erdogan’s government had
entered peace talks with the Kurds and violence ebbed, and Sunday’s vote
raised hopes for a final deal.
“This
is the victory of peace against war,” said Sirri Sureyya Onder, an
H.D.P. official, speaking to a group of reporters after preliminary
results were published.
Photo
Supporters of the A.K.P. at the party’s headquarters in Ankara, the capital.Credit
Umit Bektas/Reuters
The
Republican People’s Party, the main secular opposition party, came in
second with 25 percent of the vote, but it was the Kurds whose surge
positioned them as kingmakers in the next Parliament. It also
highlighted the evolution of the Kurdish movement, from the battlefields
of the southeast, where a bloody insurgency raged for nearly 30 years,
to the halls of power in Ankara, the capital.
Even
as days of political bargaining lie ahead, the elections capped a
two-year period of seismic shifts in Turkish politics. Widespread
antigovernment protests in 2013, set off by plans to raze an Istanbul
park and replace it with a mall, laid bare the growing resentments among
liberal and secular Turks toward the governing party. Then, a
corruption scandal threatened to engulf Mr. Erdogan and his government.
Mr. Erdogan survived by targeting the followers of his erstwhile ally,
the Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who over the years had taken
positions in the judiciary and the police and were accused of
orchestrating a graft inquiry.
Turkey
has felt strains in other arenas. It has taken in nearly two million
Syrians, who have been a burden on services and exacerbated tensions in
border regions, especially as the economy has slowed. In the wake of the
Arab Spring, Turkey pursued an Islamist agenda in the region,
supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, whose president was deposed
by the military. Its policy in Syria of pushing for the ouster of
President Bashar al-Assad has been unpopular in Turkey, and Mr. Assad,
four years later, is still in power.
The
diminished power of Mr. Erdogan’s party is likely to rein in Turkey’s
ambitions to shape events in the Middle East, an activist foreign policy
that has been controversial among political opponents and the public.
“Turkey’s
foreign policy will be less driven by the A.K.P.’s ambitions, which is
basically driven by a foreign policy vision to make Turkey a regional
player at any cost,” Mr. Cagaptay said, suggesting it had supported
various Syrian factions opposing the Assad government and sometimes
turned a blind eye to fighters crossing into Syria to join the Islamic
State.
He
added: “The outcome of the election will take Turkey’s anti-Assad
policy down a notch. The government will not be able to drive its agenda
single-handedly anymore.”
Turkey,
a member of NATO, has seen its relations with its Western allies
deteriorate, mainly over Syria and the fight against the Islamic State,
the militant group that controls vast areas of Iraq and Syria. An
American-led coalition has been carrying out an air campaign against the
group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, for nearly a year, but Western
officials complain that Turkey has not done enough, such as allowing its
air bases to be used for bombing runs. Critics also partly blame Turkey
for the rise of the Islamic State for its early support of Islamist
groups in Syria.
The
election was defined by bitter partisanship, with opponents criticizing
Mr. Erdogan for his accumulation of powers, his bashing of the news
media and his lavish new official residence, which Mr. Erdogan justified
by saying his previous residence was infested with cockroaches. The
campaign was also marred by violence, including a bombing last week at a
Kurdish political rally that left two people dead.
“Erdogan’s
salvos over the past week show how nervous he is about the outcome of
this election,” said Ugur Kaplan, 24, a student who voted in Istanbul.
“The
A.K.P. has lost votes, and it’s because of him. People are tired of
having their lives dictated by one nutty man. It’s time for change.”
U.S. State Department Spokesperson Marie Harf speaks to journalists during a press conference
WASHINGTON—US State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf denounced
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s attacks against Western media outlets,
but brushed aside criticism that Turkey was an unreliable ally despite
the growing rift between the two countries.
Asked about President Erdogan’s accusing the New York Times, CNN and
BBC of trying to weaken and divide Turkey, and later expanding on it
with a claim that journalists, Armenians and homosexuals were “allies in
sedition,” Senior Advisor for Strategic Communications at the US State
Department Marie Harf told a daily briefing that the US supports freedom
of expression, and remains concerned about government interference in
freedom of expression in Turkey, “We’ve said that for a long time and we
remain concerned.”
“An independent and unfettered media is an essential element of any
democratic and open society,” said Harf. “As Turkey’s friend and as
their NATO ally, we urge the Turkish authorities to ensure their actions
uphold democratic values, including due process, judicial independence,
and freedom of expression, including access to media and information.”
When asked if she would “denounce or decry or criticize” Erdogan for
his criticism of homosexuals, Armenians and journalists, she responded
“Absolutely.”
Turkey’s President Erdogan continued his salvoes against a number of
minorities ahead of the June 7 general elections, when he accused
Armenians, journalists, and homosexuals on Wednesday of supporting the
Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).
“Their biggest ally is Dogan Media. The Armenian lobby, homosexuals and
those who believe in ‘Alevism without Ali’ – all these representatives
of sedition are [the HDP’s] benefactors,” Erdogan said during an address
to citizens in the eastern province of Bingöl on June 3.
On June 3, the Turkish president also repeated his ever-toughening
rhetoric against international media. “They also received the support of
some foreign media outlets, which see Turkey as their colony,” he said.
In recent days for different reasons, Erdogan has slammed several
media institutions including the daily Hurriyet, which is owned by the
Dogan Media Group, daily Cumhuriyet, the New York Times, CNN
International and the BBC.
Erdogan has made slights against Armenians on several occasions in
the past, including last year, when he raged against opposition
politicians for calling him an Armenian. “They called me a Georgian.
Pardon me for saying this, but they said even uglier things: They called
me an Armenian!” Erdogan said in an interview on national TV in August
2014.
Federal Prosecutors last week indicted former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert for:
1) lying to the FBI on why he had withdrawn nearly $1.7 million from various banks in the last four years, and
2) evading the reporting requirements of banks for large cash transactions.
Each count carries a maximum penalty of 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
The indictment charges that in 2010 Hastert secretly met one of his
former students and agreed to pay him $3.5 million to secure his silence
for “past misconduct,” when he was a wrestling coach at the Yorkville
High School in Illinois from 1965-81. Since that meeting, Hastert, 73,
paid him $1.7 million by initially withdrawing $50,000 at a time from
several banks; after being questioned by bank officials, he reduced each
withdrawal to just under $10,000, to evade the banks’ reporting
requirements.
In December 2014, when asked by the FBI as to why he had made such
large cash withdrawals, Hastert made “materially false, fictitious, and
fraudulent statements,” the federal prosecutors said. Hastert was making
these payments to his former student to conceal sexually abusing him
decades ago, according to various news reports.
Hastert’s indictment is of particular interest to the
Armenian-American community because of past accusations that he had
received large bribes from Turkish entities to quash pending Armenian
Genocide Resolutions, while serving as Speaker of the House of
Representatives from 1999 to 2007. These claims were never fully
investigated by the U.S. government. After retiring from Congress,
Hastert worked for Dickstein Shapiro LLP in Washington, D.C., as a
lobbyist for Turkey and other clients.
Ironically, at the start of his political career, Hastert strongly
supported recognition of the Armenian Genocide. He spoke on the House
floor on April 19, 1984, in favor of a congressional resolution
acknowledging the genocide. On June 5, 1996, he voted for an amendment
to cut U.S. aid to Turkey until that country recognized the Armenian
Genocide. Furthermore, in August 2000, Speaker Hastert met with Armenian
community leaders in Glendale, pledging to bring the pending Armenian
Genocide Resolution to a vote, despite then-President Clinton’s vehement
objections.
However, moments before the genocide resolution was to be voted upon
on Oct. 19, 2000, Hastert yanked the bill from consideration, using the
excuse that Clinton had sent him a letter raising “grave national
security concerns.” How is it that the Republican House Speaker, who
fiercely opposed a Democrat president on almost every issue and
supported his impeachment, suddenly decided to agree with him on
rejecting the Armenian Genocide Resolution? Four days later, the Turkish
Sabah newspaper reported that Hastert had agreed to block the
resolution on condition that Clinton made such a request in writing.
Could there have been a sinister reason why Speaker Hastert had a sudden change of heart on the Armenian Genocide issue?
Vanity Fair magazine revealed in its September 2005 issue that former
FBI translator Sibel Edmonds had reviewed wiretaps of Turkish phone
calls claiming that Hastert’s price to withdraw the Armenian Genocide
Resolution would be at least $500,000. The FBI overheard Turkish
speakers boasting that they have “arranged for tens of thousands of
dollars to be paid to Hastert’s campaign funds in small checks” because
contributions less than $200 do not have to be itemized in public
filings. In fact, Vanity Fair’s examination of Hastert’s federal filings
from 1996 to 2002 showed that his campaign had received close to
$500,000 in un-itemized payments.
Shockingly, rather than investigate Edmonds’ credible accusations,
the FBI fired her, and the U.S. government did not allow her to testify
in Congress or in court, using the “state-secrets privilege” as a cover.
Not surprisingly, Speaker Hastert’s visits to Turkey in 2002 and 2004
were funded by the Turkish-U.S. Business Council. Consequently, in July
2004, Hastert issued a blunt statement vowing to block all future
Armenian Genocide Resolutions—a pledge he kept until his departure from
the House in November 2007!
Interestingly, Hastert’s personal wealth went from $270,000 to up to
$17 million during his 2 decades of service in Congress, at a time when
his congressional salary was $175,000 a year! Where did his millions
come from?
Six months after leaving the House, Hastert began to reap the
benefits of serving Turkish interests in Congress by joining the firm
Dickstein Shapiro as a lobbyist representing the Turkish government,
among other clients. He worked jointly with former House Majority Leader
Dick Gephardt, sometimes traveling together to Turkey, and splitting
millions of dollars in lucrative lobbying fees. Last week, immediately
after the federal indictment was issued, Hastert resigned from the
lobbying firm.
A full investigation should now be conducted of all allegations
against Hastert that have been ignored for far too long. The American
public needs to know if he was being bribed, or even worse, blackmailed,
by Turkish entities during his tenure as speaker, the third most
powerful office in Washington after the president and vice president!
(Agencia Prensa Armenia)—The Federal Senate of Brazil passed on June
2 a resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide. The Resolution No.
550/2015 was introduced by Senators Aloizio Nunes Fereira Filio and Jose
Serra.
The resolution expresses its “solidarity with the Armenian people
during the course of the centenary of the campaign of extermination of
its population” and states that “the Senate recognizes the Armenian
Genocide, whose centenary was commemorated on April 24, 2015.”
The Federal Senate of Brazil (photo: Wilson Dias/ABr)
Filio stressed the need for Turkey to recognize the genocide and to
establish a productive dialogue with Armenia. “But that also means
respect for life, respect for diversity, and commitment that this will
never happen again,” said Filio.
“[The] statement of the plenary of the Senate is the most important
in the history of the Armenian Cause in Brazil,” James Onnig Tamdjian,
Director of Politics and International Relations of the Armenian
National Committee (ANC) of Brazil, told Prensa Armenia. “It is an
important sign that all political parties have joined and offered their
solidarity in the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide,” he added.
“To honor the victims and recognize the contribution of the thousands
of Brazilians—descendants of Armenian refugees—to the economic, social,
and cultural formation of Brazil, we emphasize that no genocide must be
forgotten so that it does not happen again,” reads the text.
The draft highlights that the Armenian Genocide was rooted in the
“need for a racial cleansing, to make Turkey—then multiracial—a
uniformly Turkish nation.”
In addition, it denounces the “systematic denial, pressure, and
intimidation against those who try to reconstruct historical events.”
“The policy of extermination is so far denied by the Turkish
government,” reads the draft resolution, and cites the cases of
recognition from a growing number of countries, including Argentina,
Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay, and Venezuela in Latin America, as well as
European countries, the European Parliament, and, more recently, Germany
and Pope Francis.
“It is estimated that at least 100,000 descendants of Armenians live
in Brazil, mostly in São Paulo. They are Brazilians whose ancestors had
to leave their homeland to escape the genocide. In Brazilian lands they
could restart their lives, build families, and contribute to the
economic, social, and cultural development of our country,” reads the
resolution.
The Brazilian government has not yet recognized the Armenian
Genocide, although the legislatures of Ceará and Parana have. “In 2015,
the State of São Paulo instituted April 24 as the Day of Recognition and
Remembrance of Victims of the Genocide of the Armenian people,”
concludes the resolution.
The Armenian Weekly Magazine April 2015: A Century of Resistance
In March I spent three days at “Responsibility 2015,” the conference
on the Armenian Genocide sponsored by the Armenian Revolutionary
Federation held in Manhattan. At the end of the final day, I was at once
invigorated and exhausted. I was inspired by the passion of the artists
and activists and intellectuals, and I was emotionally wrung out by the
realities of imagining for three days the genocide that a century ago
this month was commencing.
It was impossible not to contemplate my visits to Western Armenia,
and what I have seen there. I was brought back to Van and Kharpert and
Diyarbakir. I was brought back to Chunkush and the Dudan Crevasse. And I
was brought back to Digor.
The St. Sargis Church sits hidden on a ledge halfway down a steep ravine. (photo: Victoria Blewer)
Digor isn’t on a lot of the maps that we Armenian pilgrims follow on
our journeys back into the world that was ours once. It’s a town of
about 2,500 people, mostly Kurds. But it’s not far from Ani. It’s no
more than 20 miles from the Armenian border. The editor of this
newspaper, Nanore Barsoumian, has been there. So has her predecessor,
Khatchig Mouradian.
At some point in the 1950’s, a small Turkish military contingent
drove to a rocky plateau west of Digor and placed dynamite inside the
five medieval stone churches that comprised the isolated Armenian
monastery of Khdzgonk. And then they blew them up.
Most of them, anyway. I had heard that one proud section of the largest of the five churches, St. Sargis, was still standing.
We all know the appalling lengths to which Turkey will go to deny the
genocide. We know the government is pathologic; we know that it
approaches the culpability of the Ottoman regime with a despicable,
Stalin-like determination to rewrite history via lies and bluster and
threats.
But if you want to see firsthand the lengths to which the government
has gone to deny the historical reality of the Armenian presence on the
Anatolian plains, visit St. Sargis. I journeyed there last summer with
my family.
St. Sargis is not easy to find. The monastery compound is only eight
miles as the crow flies from Digor, but it sits hidden on a ledge
halfway down a steep ravine. We only found it because we were traveling
with Khatchig, who knew the mayor of Digor, who, in turn, offered us a
guide from the village to lead us there.
But we hiked through the desert-like hills to the edge of a plateau,
looked down, and there it was: St. Sargis. The center of the church and
the iconic Armenian dome, despite great gaping holes in the walls, had
survived the blast.
St. Sargis Church (photo: Victoria Blewer)
I remember wondering when I was climbing several hundred feet down
the vertigo-inducing ridge into the sheltered ravine, did the Turkish
soldiers lower their dynamite over the side of the cliff with pulleys
and ropes, or did they carry it in their packs? Clearly they’d needed a
lot: I’d seen black and white photographs of the five-church compound.
The churches had been constructed between the 11th and 13th centuries, and they had been built to last.
I’ve visited a lot of Armenian ruins across Historic Armenia—perhaps
as many as 30 or 40 different monasteries and churches in places that
most North Americans outside of our community couldn’t find on a map. In
some ways, it’s reminiscent of visiting a castle keep in Scotland or
the ancient city in Rome. The soul wonders at the past and we are left
wistful by the ephemerality of our lives.
But here is how it is different: Often these ruins—while as old as
some Roman temples or the remnants of a tower in the Scottish
highlands—were the homes to vital, vibrant, and active congregations or
monasteries a mere hundred years ago. When Babe Ruth was playing
baseball. When Scott Fitzgerald was honing his craft. When Alexander
Graham Bell in New York was ringing a fellow named Watson in California.
By the 1950’s, when the locals who live in Digor recall the Turkish
soldiers blowing up the 5 churches, the monastery had been sitting empty
for less than 40 years.
Today much of the rubble has disappeared back into the earth. Scrub
brush and dirt have slowly buried the shattered stonework, as well as
the walls of the chapels that were blown out and into the nearby
crevasse.
The last stage in any genocide is denial. My sense is that’s why
decades after evicting the monks, the Turks tried to blow up the
site—one of perhaps dozens of churches they would destroy in the 1950’s.
It wasn’t enough to ethnically cleanse the Armenians from
the country; it was important to scour away any trace that once upon a
time we had lived there, too—even in a ravine in the absolute middle of
nowhere.
It wasn’t enough to ethnically cleanse the Armenians from the
country; it was important to scour away any trace that once upon a time
we had lived there, too—even in a ravine in the absolute middle of
nowhere. My wife and I speculated that the only reason St. Sargis
remains is because the soldiers ran out of dynamite and it was too much
work to bother coming back to finish the job.
But, as Shakespeare observed, the truth will out.
The full quote is even more meaningful here: “Truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long…at the length truth will out.”
Indeed: Murder cannot be hid long.
As drained as I was at the end of “Responsibility 2015,” I was also
confident that we—Armenians—are winning. We really are. While so many of
our ancestors’ voices were stilled, their descendants are speaking more
passionately and powerfully than ever. “Long” is a relevant term. A
century is but a blink in geologic terms.
You can blow up a monastery. But you can’t bulldoze the truth.
The paperback of Chris Bohjalian’s most recent novel, Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands, was published in May.
Join Rafi Topalian as he discusses the past, present and future Armenian news, stories and related issues that effect not only the Armenian Community in the Capital District but non-Armenian readers alike.
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