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Peter Balakian interview

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  • Peter Balakian interview

    Interview with Peter Balakian


    Interview by Khatchig Mouradian
    [email protected]



    13th of November 2003

    "Aztag Daily" contacted Peter Balakian while he was on tour in the United
    States, promoting "The Burning Tigris". The acclaimed author agreed to do an
    interview by phone. During our one-hour talk, we discussed issues related to
    "The Burning Tigris", the Armenian Genocide and the human rights movement it
    engendered in the USA , Turkish-Armenian dialogue, and much more...


    Aztag- In "The Burning Tigris" you argue that the Armenian genocide
    triggered the first human rights movement in US history…

    Peter Balakian- The effort to rescue the Armenians in the 1890s from Sultan
    Hamid's massacres, which took the lives of around 200000 Armenians before
    1896 was over, engendered the first human rights movement in the US. During
    the 1890s some 300,000 dollars were raised by Americans and in the genocide
    period (from 1915 to 1920) 110 million dollars were raised by what was first
    called the "American committee on Armenian atrocities", which became later
    "Near-East relief".110 million dollars in today's terms is about 2.5 billion
    dollars. It is important to note that both of these movements were
    orchestrated by major American intellectual and cultural elites.



    Aztag-You are stressing the humanitarian factor. But during calamities of
    this enormity, humanitarian efforts are not enough, are they?

    Peter Balakian- It's never enough…



    Aztag- So intervention should have gone beyond that…

    Peter Balakian- "The Burning Tigris" tells the history of the grid-lock
    between American cultural philanthropic and relief efforts and the wall in
    the state department in the white house preventing these relief efforts from
    becoming active intervention in a military or political way. That's part of
    the tragic story of the American response.



    Aztag-In this respect, can't we draw parallels between what happened in the
    USA back then, and what is happening now?

    Peter Balakian- I think the Armenian case inaugurated a modern paradigm for
    human right issues in the USA. Which is to say that there can be a great
    deal of passionate commitment at the grassroots level and among
    intellectuals but we have not figured out how to get beyond the barriers
    created by the White House. It is still the same problem we are wrestling
    with, that's why the Armenian case has so much to teach us.



    Aztag-Samantha Power's award-winning book "A Problem from Hell" also
    addresses America's response to the Armenian genocide, as well as other
    genocides of the 20th century. What are the differences between your and
    Power's approach?

    Peter Balakian- Samantha Power wrote a brilliant book about America's
    ineffective response to genocide throughout the 20th century. My book deals
    with how Americans tried hard to help save the Armenian people and the
    obstacles they faced from their government.



    Aztag-How can such books help create social change?

    Social change is complex; it is not a neat and clean process. It is the
    result of decades of proper education. If one studies the evolution of the
    African-American human rights movement one will see that it took decades and
    decades before blacks and whites could sit in the same restaurant and eat
    together.



    Aztag-Let us talk about the sources you used. A couple of reviews noted that
    you have limited yourself to English-language sources.

    Peter Balakian- I have used dozens of foreign office records in the UK. The
    French and German sources I used were translations. The same goes for
    Turkish sources. I have also used hundreds of US State Department sources.



    Aztag-Is "The Burning Tigris" a continuation of "Black Dog of Fate" in terms
    of your quest to discover your roots?

    Peter Balakian- It is a continuation of my pursuit of historical truth. I
    don't want to make a simple comparison, because "Black Dog of Fate" was a
    memoir. It was a literary exploration of my coming of age as an Armenian
    American. It had history in it and it brought history to the reader but it
    wasn't history in the methodological sense. "The Burning Tigris" is a
    history and its assumptions and conventions are different.



    Aztag-What was your motive for writing this book?

    Peter Balakian- As an Americanist, as I began to discover how rich the
    American history was, I decided to write a story from that perspective. I
    knew I would also write a history of the Armenian genocide. I also felt that
    our history has never portrayed in a trade book, so I wanted to do that.



    Aztag-How and when did the idea of writing "The burning Tigris "come to you?

    Peter Balakian- The idea for "The Burning Tigris" came to me while I was on
    Tour with "Black Dog of Fate". It came as a result of reading more about the
    Armenian genocide and massacres and finding out about Americans who were
    involved. I started working on the book in 1999, and continued for 4 years
    without a break.



    Aztag-Last year, Egoyan's Ararat created widespread awareness about the
    Armenian genocide. Now, your book is doing the same. What do you feel about
    the politicization of the book? After all, "Black Dog of Fate" was a memoir,
    but with this book you have thrown yourself right in the middle of the war
    against denial.

    Peter Balakian- My motivation was to write a deep, rich history of this
    major event in the 20th century. The rest comes with the terrain. Since
    there is denial, anybody who writes about this history enters a degree of
    political dimension. But I don't want to overemphasize the denial, because
    its only a tiny group of corrupt people who are perpetuating it, and nobody
    really listening to them, nobody believes. They are able to coerce and bully
    at certain levels and I think we are going to see that go away too.


    Aztag- Taking into account the strategic importance of turkey in the region,
    and in a context where real politics, the "war against terror", and oil
    diplomacy, are having an increasingly heavier role, can we see that change
    in the near future?

    Peter Balakian- Social and political change are unpredictable, they happen
    sometimes very quickly after years of preparing the ground for it. I think
    that there is no need to deny the Armenian genocide by anybody. Turks must
    come to terms with it. It will help them immensely, making them more
    progressive in the eyes of Europe and the West. I think the denial is
    untenable for Turkey, and as people become educated, the denial becomes more
    absurd. Sooner or later they have to acknowledge that this is a waste of
    their time and money.



    Aztag- The human rights movement you discuss in your book is less explored
    by genocide scholars. Are there any parallels to this story in other
    countries?

    Peter Balakian- Absolutely, One could write books about the pro-Armenian
    movement in Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Russia. My hope is
    that my book will spawn ideas for many books.



    Aztag- Can you compare the awareness of Americans about the Armenian
    genocide back then and now?

    Peter Balakian- It's a dramatic reversal. Its ironic! President Hoover, as
    he was looking back at those years, said that probably only the word
    "England" was more deeply embedded in the mind of the American schoolchild
    than the word Armenia. That's how popular Armenia was in American mind in
    the first decades of the 20th century. Then, that completely evaporated and
    the Armenian genocide fell into the amnesia hole. Americans forgot about
    it. Now, it is being revived, so I think it's a very exciting time in that
    respect. We are recovering lost cultural memory.



    Aztag- What was the reason for that amnesia?

    Peter Balakian- There were several factors. First the Turkish government's
    denial campaign aimed at wiping Armenia out of popular memory. Mustafa
    Kemal's new Turkish republic of 1922 wanted the West to drop Armenia from
    the radar screen. The United States, for example, caved into Kemal's wishes
    because America was interested in making friends with Turkey in the hope of
    obtaining the rights to the Mosul oil fields, which were under Turkish
    control in the early 1920s. Other American cultural factors made historical
    memory of the 1915 Armenian genocide more difficult to achieve until the
    late 1960s when the cultural climate changed. I address this in my book.



    Aztag- What do you think about Turkish-Armenian dialogue, which is "en
    vogue" these days?

    Peter Balakian- I think any true and meaningful dialogue can only happen if
    there is truth. We can't have debate without truth. Those who come to
    converse around a table must acknowledge the truth about the Armenian
    genocide and the moral nature of what genocide is, and then we can move
    forward.



    Aztag- So, in this respect, the recognition of the Armenian genocide is a
    prerequisite for you?

    Peter Balakian- Yes.



    Aztag- Your book relates to Americans. That helps when you are presenting
    atrocities that took place in the Middle East a century ago, doesn't it?

    Peter Balakian- Yes, Armenian Genocide often seems like Middle Eastern
    history that happened long ago in another place, now Americans and Europeans
    have the chance to see how deeply the Armenian catastrophe affected the
    west, and in the case of my book, the USA in particular.



    Aztag- Do you have any plans to travel to the Middle East?

    Peter Balakian- Lebanon and Syria are 2 of the most important places in the
    history of the Armenian Diaspora and I want to visit them in the near
    future.
    General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”

  • #2
    12/31/2007
    Best-selling author and poet recognized


    Professor Peter Balakian accepts the Movses Khorenatsi Medal, one of Armenia's highest civilian honors.

    HAMILTON - As a young student, Colgate University professor Peter Balakian's curiosity about his family roots led him on a personal and intellectual journey. Balakian has spent decades unraveling his Armenian ancestry and, in the process, educating the world about the atrocities of the Armenian genocide.

    Now, the Armenian government is recognizing Balakian, the Constance H. and Donald M. Rebar Professor in the Humanities and professor of English at Colgate.
    During a ceremony in November at the embassy of Armenia in Washington, D.C., Balakian was awarded the Movses Khorenatsi Medal. The medal - one of Armenia's highest civilian honors - is presented to individuals for their prominent contributions in the fields of culture, arts, literature, education and humanities.
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    "I feel honored that President Kocharian has honored me in this way and I hope that my work will contribute to an ongoing body of knowledge about the Armenian genocide," Balakian said.
    Ambassador Tatoul Markarian lauded Balakian's literary accomplishments along with his active position and leadership on Armenian issues.
    "His books preserve for us and the entire humanity the record of the tragedies, the challenges and the perseverance of the Armenian people in the most tragic chapter of our millenniums-old history," the Ambassador said.
    Balakian is the author of eight books including 'The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response,' which was a New York Times Notable Book and Best Seller.
    His award-winning memoir, 'Black Dog of Fate,' chronicles the sudden awareness of his ethnicity - "the story of a boy growing up bewildered by some of the ambiguous signals he's receiving from his elders who are trying to repress the trauma of the past."
    In his remarks, Balakian discussed the remarkable resilience of the Armenian people and stressed education as the key to progress.
    "It is gratifying to be able to say in 2007 that we have educated significant chunks of Europe, North America and the Middle East about who we are and what our history has entailed," he said. "If you asked Armenians in 1970 if we would have transmitted our history into popular consciousness, into the curriculum, into the news of the day, I think they would have dismissed you as a dreamer."
    Balakian was also recently awarded the Emily Clark Balch Prize for poetry from The Virginia Quarterly Review. The prize honors the single best poem or group of poems published during the previous year by the magazine.
    The professor's poems "World Trade Center/Mail Runner '71," "World Trade Center/Mail Runner '73," and "World Trade Center/Black Holes/'74" appeared in the summer 2007 issue and will be part of Balakian's book of poems he is currently working on.
    The prize comes with a $1,000 cash award.
    General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”

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