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Movses Ler/ Vakifli article

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  • Movses Ler/ Vakifli article



    Vakifli: The last Armenian village in Turkey
    By Talin Suciyan


    * Behind a showcase of Turkey’s “tolerance” stands a story of exile and heroism – with an uncertain future

    Vakifli, Turkey – Nestled in the shadow of Musa Dagh, Vakifli is the only Armenian village in Turkey where the headman (or village leader) is Armenian, and where Armenians make up the town council. For this reason, Vakifli is frequently used by Turkey to showcase its “tolerance” to the European Union and the rest of the world – as if the existence of the country’s last Armenian village somehow counters Turkey’s anti-Armenian history. Last week, a friend and I traveled to Vakifli on a trip organized by the “Mount Moses Villagers Foundation” in Istanbul. Mount Moses – the legendary Musa Dagh, also known in Armenian as Musa Ler -- has always been an appealing place, with its distinctive dialect, successful organic farming projects, and (interesting for me, at least) the nine votes it cast for Turkey’s Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) in the last elections. Our arrival was confusing; it was hard to believe where we were. The first impression one receives of Vakifli is surreal: a village in the middle of a mountain in Turkey, where the inhabitants are Armenian and where to this day Armenian is spoken on the streets. But as we plumbed the various layers of Vakifli, we began to understand how the village is incorporated into the political, social, and economic context of Turkey. Showcases can be frightening for those who know how fragile they are – and learning the the stories behind the showcase can leave a bitter taste in one’s mouth.


    * Those who remained...

    Vakifli is a village of people who remained -- who chose not to go. In 1915, the people of the seven villages around Musa Dagh -- Kebusiye, Hidir Bek, Bityas, Yogunoluk, Hablak, and Yezur -- heard what had been happening to their fellow Armenians in other parts of Anatolia, and decided to save their lives by ascending the mountain. Altogether around 4,500 people went up the Mountain of Moses, and lived there for almost two months. At last, a French ship rescued them and brought them to Port Said in Egypt. (The story was made famous in Franz Werfel’s novel, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh; Werfel himself admitted that he had seized on the number “40” not for its historicity, but for its biblical resonance.) The Armenians from Mount Moses lived in Egypt for four years, and afterwards went back to their villages; at the time, the Hatay or Iskenderun region was under the control of France. The decision to return their homeland was not the end of decision-making for the Musa Dagh Armenians, however. In 1939 the region was incorporated into Turkey through a referendum, and the Armenians were left to decide, once again, whether they would remain or leave. One group decided to depart, and built a village similar to Vakifli in Lebanon, known as Aynjar. The ones who chose to remain gathered in a single village, which is today’s Vakifli. The Armenians of Mount Moses commemorated their “40 days” of struggle and survival, as well as their 18 lost comrades, every year up to the 1980s. They also raised a monument above the 18 graves, symbolizing the ship which rescued them. Yet, after the coup d’etat of 1980, the monument was destroyed, along with the graves. But unlike the monuments, memories proved more indestructible, and the history behind Musa Dagh became etched even deeper in the popular imagination. The 1950s saw relations between Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul and the village became grew closer. The children of the village, mostly its boys, are sent to Istanbul’s Sourp Khatch Tibrevank high school. In the meantime, emigration continued, mostly to the West -- to Europe and the U.S. -- and those children who were sent to Istanbul mostly remained there. As a result, the village population decreased to a great extent. A 1965 population census listed 1,000 Armenians living in the region, 120 of them from Vakifli village. Today, including the lower districts, there are 200 Armenians altogether. Thought the village has around 1,500 acres of land, only 50 acres belong to the villagers. Another 50 acres is under the control of the General Directorate of Foundations, and the rest has become the property of people from the neighboring villages. In Hatay and its environs today one can find Alevits, Arab Christians (both Orthodox and Catholic), Armenians, Jews, Afghans, Turcoman, and of course Turks. One of the biggest villages of the seven original Armenian strongholds, Yogunoluk, which was densely populated by Armenians in the 1920s, is today a Turcoman village. Fulya Dogruel, who wrote a book about Hatay, says that after 1915, “in order to balance the ethnic composition, Turcoman people were settled in the area.” As I mentioned, Vakifli gave nine votes to Turkey’s ultra-nationalist MHP (Nationalist Movement Party) in the last election. It was not difficult to identify the MHP electorate in Vakifli’s village cafe. As we traveled around the villages with other tourists, we looked for stones, inscriptions on the walls – anything to relate ourselves to the region’s history. Suddenly, we would see a group gathered, photographing one small stone on a building edifice; or people squeezing themselves to view a stone at the back of a fountain. What they had discovered were the “fossils” of the Armenian past. But the most striking thing to witness in this regard was the mosque built on top of a church. The huge arches of a distinctly Armenian church carried a mosque with aluminum carpentry on its windows. The children of the village surrounded us, aware that something was strange about us, since we were visitors to the “lower floor” and not the “upper floor.” The children said: “The owners of this village went, and left their places for us to live in.” On display in one of the seven villages of Musa Dagh, Hidir Bey, is a photograph of the village taken in 1923 that was a present from the Gendarmerie City Commandership. It made a nice gift, to tell the truth. But one wonders what today’s villagers in Hidir Bey imagine when they look at that photograph. In Hidir Bey once – up to 1974 -- there stood an Orthodox church or monastery. But in 1974, in the wake of the Cyprus crisis, it was destroyed in a single night. That was the way the Cyprus crisis was received in the Hatay region: as fuel for resurgent ethnic hatred.


    * The future of the village

    We met some young Armenians of Vakifli to talk about their future plans and the future of the village. Today, outside of Vakifli, there is only one Armenian family living in Bityas Village. Can Capar is from Bityas; he is 16 years old, and he said, “I’ll stay here until the end of my life.” But he’s the only one to say so -- and most probably he thinks this way because life has not yet challenged his idealism. Linda Karakus, 22, lived abroad for a while and wants to do so again; and if that happens she only wants to come back when she retires, or during summers. Hayko Kisadur, 23, studies in Istanbul and wants to go abroad too. He said, “Yes, here is the only Armenian village in Turkey; it is an honor for us; but it is not enough.” Indra, who is 27, still lives in the village, and works in Samandag (the central municipal town), says she is doing fine, but “We are at the same point all the time.” They all attest that it has been a privilege to have grown up in Vakifli, that they learned a lot from the village, that no one in the big cities believes that they have come from these villages. But this pride turns a little sour when it comes to their future plans. When I ask, “What do you think Vakifli will be like 50 years from now?” they all answer: “Will there be any Vakifli in 50 years?” Of course, when one thinks how difficult it is to find a job even in the big cities of Turkey, one cannot blame these young people for their decision. The local dialect spoken in the village is truly fascinating: Armenian mixed with Arabic sounds and Turkish words. If no one starts recording and researching the structure of this dialect, it will soon be lost forever. The younger generation understands it, but rarely answers in the same language. For the most part, they know only a little of the distinctive dialect.


    * Harisa for all

    The most festive days in the village come during the second week of August, when Sourp Asdvadzadzin – the Feast of the Assumption of the Holy Mother-of-God -- is celebrated and the grapes are blessed. Many former villagers who now live elsewhere in the world return to the village during these days to see relatives, and tourists pour in from far and wide to take part in the celebrations. On Saturday night, the Armenian Patriarch of Turkey, Archbishop Mesrob Mutafyan, came to Mount Moses, and villagers and visitors alike gathered in the old school garden. Drums and horns were at the ready, the “Rainbow Choir” of local youth sang Armenian songs, and the whole village danced. Simultaneously, in the church garden, 150 kilograms of meat and 70 kilograms of wheat started to cook in large kettles. The result would eventually be harisa -- the prescribed meal for the day after -- but to get there it would have to cook through the night. On Sunday morning, before a large crowd, Patriarch Mesrob conducted the age-old ceremony. First he blessed the grapes, and then the harisa. The harisa was distributed throughout the crowd of people – down to the last kernel of wheat. As I watched, I wondered what the other people were thinking -- especially the ones who arrived here as visitors from abroad. So I started to ask how they felt, what they had expected, and what they ultimately found. The first to answer was Hayk Karakiz, originally from Istanbul, who has been living in Holland for 42 years. “I found more than I expected,” he said. “I’m impressed by the unity of the society here. The future of this village is the future of all Armenians in Turkey. One should pay extra attention to this village.” Ari Yakar is also from Istanbul, and has been living in Canada for 17 years. He too found more than he expected. “I find it very impressive to see people coming here from all over the world. The places we saw were very interesting -- especially the church with the mosque on top. I definitely want to come here again.” There were Armenians from Aleppo present, too. Aleppo is 60 kilometers away from Hatay, and since there is no visa problem, it is easy to travel from one side to the other. George Tertsagyan’s mother has not been to Mount Moses for 40 years, but they have relatives still living in the village. “We expected to see more Armenian people in the village. The ‘soul’ still lives, but the people are dispersed. I went to the celebrations of people from Musa Dagh in Armenia, but it was totally different. Nonetheless, we want to come here with a bigger group next year.”


    * Something to do for Vakifli

    Avedis Demirci is one of the oldest people in town. There is some dispute about his actual birth date; but in any event, he went up Musa Dagh with his parents while he was a baby, then lived in Port Said for four years, and later came back to Vakifli. He speaks very good Armenian, Ottoman, Arabic, and French. He has also learned Turkish. Araksi Kadiyan is 90, and has had 10 children. But she lost four of her children due of financial problems and malnutrition during the Second World War, when her husband was inducted into military for a second time -- like all the other male non-Muslims between the ages of 25 and 45. She has a house overlook the valley, and despite all that she has gone through, she lives happily with her daughter and other children, who visit during the summer. Araksi sings all the old local songs, one after the other, without getting tired. I feel myself lucky to have listened to her. Ohannes Mardiryan is 62, and had a photography workshop in the 1960s in Iskenderun. Though there was no electricity at the time, he somehow managed to show the first pornographic movie in Yezur village. He explains by saying, “I am eager to learn anything new.” It wasn’t the last time, either: Ohannes eventually brought modern poultry farming techniques to his village. As I reflect on the faces and voices and experiences of my sojourn, it strikes me how unfair it would be to treat Vakifli only as a showcase for Turkey. To have an Armenian-populated village standing 1,200 kilometers from Istanbul is living proof – if any were needed -- that the country’s official ideology cannot persuade people. To put it differently, the very existence of Vakifli is a rebuke to Turkey’s official, incessantly repeated mythology about itself. However, one can hardly expect the younger generation to dedicate their lives to the village for this reason alone. Therefore, in order to sustain its future, I think all Armenians, all over the world -- including Armenians in Turkey and Armenia -- should have something to say, and something to do, for Vakifli. And if Turkey truly wants to benefit from Vakifli’s distinctive claim to fame in the years to come – even if only as a “showcase” -- it could encourage the local Armenians to remain in their villages, by enabling them to make full use of their opportunities in a town where the headman is an Armenian, and where Armenians make up the village council.
    General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”

  • #2
    History: The 74 years of Musa Dagh

    by Michelle Ekizian

    * Edward Minasian. Musa Dagh: A chronicle of the Armenian Genocide
    factor in the subsequent suppression, by the intervention of the
    United States government, of the movie based on Franz Werfel's The
    Forty Days of Musa Dagh. Nashville, Tennessee: Cold Tree Press, 2007.
    385 pp. Illustrated. ISBN: 9781583851593

    The world of the 1930s had all but forgotten the Armenian massacres of
    1915, and their one and a half million victims annihilated by the
    Ottoman Turkish government. It was the time of the Great Depression,
    and most people had problems of a more recent vintage to worry about.
    But the year 1935 held out a glimmer of hope for those who did
    remember: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) announced it was preparing to make
    a movie of Franz Werfel's The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. The epic novel
    published a year earlier was based on a true-life incident of
    resistance during what would come to be known as the Armenian
    Genocide.

    That movie was never made. The reason it wasn't made has become the
    emblematic tale of the numerous frustrated attempts to portray and
    acknowledge the Genocide in a high-profile, public way. The
    cause-and-effect narrative of threatening protestations from the
    Turkish government, appeasement from U.S. officials, and pressure
    exerted on an American industry, has become all too familiar to
    Armenian-Americans, and resonates to the present day. The "Hollywood
    factor" has made the Musa Dagh episode the stuff of legend: most
    Armenians know of it, refer to it, feel outrage over it. Until now,
    however, there hasn't been a definitive telling of the story.

    Edward Minasian's recently published book, Musa Dagh, fills that
    deficiency. Minasian delves into the documentary evidence -- the MGM
    archives, U.S. State Department records, Franz Werfel's official
    papers -- and tracks down surviving players in the story for their
    first-hand insights, to show how the ambitious plans for a 1930s
    motion picture version of Musa Dagh were aborted. He also reveals the
    continuing collusion of the Turkish government, the U.S. State
    Department, and Hollywood studio executives to thwart successive
    attempts to mount the film, up through the 1960s. The twisting,
    turning odyssey of hopeful starts (often championed by major Hollywood
    figures) and crushing terminations (invariably orchestrated from the
    behind the scenes) would itself make for an intriguing movie plot.

    While censorship of Hollywood products has long since ceased to be a
    threat -- these days movies actually thrive on controversial points of
    view -- Edward Minasian's book reminds us that the U.S. State
    Department and its willingness to succumb to Turkey's bullying has not
    changed since the 1930s. What has changed -- and what deserves credit
    for some of the recent advances we have seen in Genocide recognition
    -- is the presence in Washington of a resourceful and active voice for
    the Armenian-American community, and the rise in Turkey of a new
    generation willing (at least in some quarters) to question its
    government and the prevailing "official" history.

    Other constants of the last 70 years are the deep desire among
    Armenians to commit the dramatic story of Musa Dagh to film in the way
    it was originally intended, and the continuing hope that such a
    project would convey the truth of the Armenian Genocide to the public
    on a scale as yet unachieved.

    * Musa Dagh revelations

    Werfel divided his novel into three main sections, which he titled
    "books," each annotated with quotes from the biblical Book of
    Revelations. Minasian also faintly echoes Revelations in each of his
    six books: an example is Minasian's Book III, "Babylon on the Pacific
    and on the Potomac," which sets the stage for the "revelations" culled
    from Minasian's research.

    Minasian's writing style combines an historian's eye for detail with
    a dash of showmanship. A World War II veteran who came of age during
    the era of the great Hollywood moguls of the 1930s and '40s, he's able
    to give a first hand perspective on some of the figures and events he
    chronicles. Perhaps because he is a product of that less cynical time,
    Minasian takes to heart the acts of deception and trickery he relates
    involving the entertainment and political arenas; a writer nourished
    on the scandals of our own day might dismiss these as simply par for
    the course.

    He portrays the first generation of Armenian-Americans emerging from
    the Depression as a closely-knit group, whose pride in their ancestral
    heritage is overshadowed by a dutiful desire to move forward in
    America. (One wonders whether, had Armenian-Americans been less
    impressionable, they could have formed a coalition to combat the
    internal politicking against the movie -- in the way Jewish groups in
    the 1960s quelled dissenting voices during the making of Exodus, about
    the founding of Israel.)

    The story of the Musa Dagh film begins in 1933, when Louis B. Mayer,
    general manager of MGM's studio in Culver City and first
    vice-president of Loew's Inc. (the studio's headquarters in New York),
    found himself so moved by Werfel's book that he opened negotiations to
    acquire the screen rights. These were eventually purchased for
    $20,000. The project gained an enthusiastic supporter in the person of
    MGM's supervisor of production and Loew's second vice-president,
    Irving Thalberg, who would remain the project's strongest advocate
    until his own early death.

    In Armenian circles, grapevine talk championed Hollywood's sole
    director of Armenian heritage, Rouben Mamoulian, as the candidate to
    helm the movie.

    MGM studio producer and Mayer's son-in-law David O. Selznick
    recommended in a memo that the picture be made with Clark Gable in the
    central role of Gabriel, and suggested placing the burden of
    complicity on one representative Turk rather than on an entire nation.
    Then, in a spirit of true American magnanimity, Selznick further
    suggested that the Turkish ambassador in Washington should be informed
    of the movie plans, as a matter of courtesy.

    But opposition from that front had started earlier, when Turkey's
    Ambassador Mehmet Munir Ertegun Bey noted a brief news item on the
    possibility of the film production, and expressed his concern to the
    U.S. State Department's Near Eastern Affairs Division.

    As a result, Major Frederick L. Herron, foreign manager of the
    Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA, better
    known as the Hays Office) became the point man for matters concerning
    Musa Dagh. In defense of the project, Herron reassured the State
    Department by describing the story as a domestic love triangle that
    would not contain anything offensive to the Turkish ambassador or his
    countrymen.

    However, the Turkish ambassador's objections were only temporarily
    eased. Ertegun saw red when an in-depth article appeared in the
    Washington Herald describing Hollywood's plans to portray "Christians
    who combined against Turkish massacres in Armenia." From that point on
    a flurry of communications ensued with the State Department -- and
    Minasian wonderfully conveys the chain of officials all aflutter, full
    of vacillating and paranoid judgments. Lost in all this back-and-forth
    correspondence, it becomes clear, is the true content of Werfel's book
    and its broader humanitarian meaning, which Werfel himself described
    as a "search for humanity everywhere, and to avoid barbarism."

    Minasian's chapter on the "Cabal of Conspirators" takes readers to
    the year 1935 and an unprecedented development in Hollywood history.
    Though it had been common practice for studios to obtain permission
    from a foreign government to permit filming in its country, never
    before had permission been sought for the initiation of an American
    film project. But the stakes seemed grave. Eventually, Turkey
    threatened to cut off not only the distribution in Turkey of the Musa
    Dagh movie itself, and not only of all MGM movies, but of all
    Hollywood-produced films if the project went ahead.

    In different contexts, such threats have become a familiar refrain
    in our own era: part of the background noise accompanying any
    assertion about the Armenian Genocide. But in the 1930s they were new,
    seemed credible, and were not so easily dismissed.

    * A cadaver in anatomy class

    >From 1934 through 1966, MGM initiated numerous failed attempts to make
    the movie; at least 12 screenwriters had created scripts and synopses
    of Musa Dagh -- amounting to more than 100 submissions to the studio.
    Minasian uncovers an MGM office memo from the end of the studio's
    tenure on the Musa Dagh project which reads: "This book has been
    worked on and reworked more than a cadaver in an anatomy class."

    Speculating on the long on-again, off-again history of the movie,
    Minasian wonders whether Loews/MGM was periodically bribed to keep any
    Musa Dagh project from advancing beyond the pre-production phase.
    However, in the two decades following World War II, two political
    developments ensured the American government's support for any issue
    that Turkey found troublesome. The Truman Doctrine in 1947 and the
    alliance against the Communist bloc marked the start of this
    "insurance policy," and Turkey's leverage increased in 1959 when its
    government agreed to allow an American ballistic missile base on
    Turkish soil.

    Despite official trepidation to pursue the project, some artistic
    souls ventured to crack the opposition hovering around Musa Dagh
    during the 1950s Cold War era. Minasian mentions Stanley Kubrick,
    Carlo Ponti, Elia Kazan, Henri Verneuil, and Elliot Kastner as among
    the luminaries who threw down gauntlets in support of the project.

    But a bright ray of hope for producing a blockbuster movie came in
    1962, thanks to the celebrated MGM producer Pandro Berman, who
    remarked: "the project was announced by MGM 40 times in 40 years ... And
    each and every time aroused Turkish indignation to the point it had
    become routine."

    Berman had real credibility, and with his assistant Hank Moonjean
    (Henry Momjian) he envisioned a star-studded, epic treatment for the
    film, along the lines of other movies of the day, with Guy Green as
    director and writer, Omar Sharif as the hero Gabriel, Audrey Hepburn
    or Leslie Caron as his French wife, Dahlia Lavi or Julie Christie as
    the young Armenian girl, and Ralph Richardson or Alec Guinness as the
    village priest. But Berman's dreams ended in 1965, when the MGM
    hierarchy described Musa Dagh as "irrelevant."

    It was in response to this attitude that Armenian community activism
    at long last reared its head. In 1969, Archbishop Torkom Manoogian, at
    the time Primate of the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church of
    America in New York, telegrammed MGM on behalf of major Armenian
    organizations with an offer to rally the Armenian community to counter
    Turkish protests: "If the movie had been made as planned in the
    1930s," he wrote, "who knows, it may have deterred Hitler and the
    Jewish Holocaust." The message did receive a serious reply from the
    studio, but no promises, and despite a fresh screenplay the project
    remained on the shelf.

    Armenians, however, were about to become significantly more
    influential in the destiny of the film.

    * Armenians at the helm

    The year 1970 saw the purchase of MGM by Armenian-American
    industrialist Kerk Kerkorian, and shortly thereafter, the sale of the
    Musa Dagh screen rights to John Kurkjian, a retired Armenian-American
    real estate businessman in Los Angeles. With two Armenians at the
    helm, it seemed as though the movie would finally receive its just
    due.

    Unfortunately, Kurkjian proved a novice at filmmaking. His inability
    to raise the funds for the movie's projected budget of $7 million from
    the Armenian community further weakened the production, and his
    partnership with MGM ended in 1976. Kurkjian did eventually make his
    film -- the low-budget 40 Days of Musa Dagh that one can still see
    kicking around the dusty video racks of Armenian bookstores -- but it
    was hardly an auspicious affair.

    Minasian's canny eye catches a change in the political and
    bureaucratic assault on the picture around this time. From the 1930s
    through '60s Musa Dagh had been the Turkish government's bęte noire,
    suppressed with the collusion of the U.S. State Department. But in
    light of the Kurkjian production, Minasian suggests that Turkey's
    fears about the project may have been motivated at least in part
    because of the association with MGM: a film produced by such a dynamic
    and powerful entity could certainly be expected to have an impact on
    the general public. But the political risk would be much less with a
    cash-strapped independent production. When Kukjian was abandoned by
    MGM to venture alone into the realm of low-budget movie-making, the
    veil of Turkish threats lifted.

    Ironically, at the same time MGM was severing its association with
    Musa Dagh, an outspoken generation of filmmakers more sympathetic to
    causes of human justice, was emerging. The 1970s saw the popular
    success of Midnight Express, a movie about the drug world set against
    the backdrop of the brutal Turkish penal system. Turkish protests
    ensued -- but proved ineffective in the Hollywood of the time.

    It is deeply regrettable that during this more "open" period, a
    suitable motion picture version of Musa Dagh could not be made --
    either as a big budget studio blockbuster or as a finely made
    independent film. Irony piles on irony in this phase of the story: MGM
    was actually owned by an Armenian at the time; the Armenian-American
    community, so proud and eager at the prospect of seeing this story
    made into an epic movie, proved unwilling to invest its financial
    resources in the venture. All of which regrettably left John Kurkjian
    to pick up the pieces and proceed with the production on his own, as
    everyone around him -- the studio honchos, fellow Armenians, and (one
    can only imagine) Turkish officialdom -- all stood by and watched him
    founder.

    * Curse or blessing?

    Minasian traces the saga to recent years -- by which time the present
    author became caught in Musa Dagh's tribulations. In 1989 a German
    television producer became involved with the book's screen rights. Now
    a man in his 80s, he continues to cycle in and out of Armenian
    communities -- partnering occasionally with Hollywood-based producers
    -- always on the lookout for potential funders. But like so many
    proposals over the years, nothing substantial has come to light.

    As one reaches the end of Minasian's account, one can't help but
    wonder whether the entire Musa Dagh project lives under some kind of
    curse. Or perhaps -- in some twisted, paradoxical way -- its
    tumultuous history has merely been a prologue for the realization of
    the dream in our own era: an era more receptive to issues of genocide,
    an era of greater Armenian prominence in the surrounding culture, and
    an era of unparalleled technical capability in film. Providentially,
    today's mainstream Hollywood is also home to an astonishing number of
    accomplished Armenians in fields like screenwriting, producing, studio
    administration, and casting, who are eager to tell their people's
    stories. Werfel himself had the village priest in his novel say, when
    the villagers were rescued after surviving their ordeal: "The evil
    only happened ... to enable God to show us His goodness."

    So maybe we're on the verge -- finally -- of seeing this movie done right.

    If that's so, Edward Minasian has some advice to offer: "The history
    of Musa Dagh in Hollywood serves as a lesson for future attempts at
    the movie," he writes, and goes on to lay these out in his book.
    Prospective filmmakers should (a) be prepared to deal with Turkish
    pressure; (b) provide a budget worthy of an epic film; and (c)
    counteract any protests with a publicity campaign that will not only
    diminish the opposition, but create an enthusiastic audience for the
    film. He also advises that the Armenian Caucus in Congress and
    Armenian political action groups need to stay alert throughout the
    filmmaking process.

    Minasian's research into the attempts at making a motion picture
    based on the story of Musa Dagh is truly meticulous -- his extensive
    reference notes testify to the sea of documentation he waded through
    -- and his treatment surely settles all the matters of fact that have
    long since passed into hazy legend in Armenian circles. Now, thanks to
    Edward Minasian's Musa Dagh, we know exactly what transpired between
    Hollywood, Washington, and Ankara that caused the film project to be
    aborted time and again over the course of four decades.

    And with that knowledge in hand, maybe we can all move forward and
    make this picture.

    * * *

    Michelle Ekizian is resident composer for the Interfaith Committee of
    Remembrance at New York's Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Her
    current projects include an opera on the life of Arshile Gorky, and a
    multi-media concert presentation "Songs of Light and Peace: a
    cross-over opera for a world divided." She lives in Mamaroneck, N.Y.
    General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”

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