To Prevent Cultural Genocide

[Hovik]

TO PREVENT CULTURAL GENOCIDE

A1+
15-07-2005

A number of intellectuals were gathered in the National Academy
of Science today and tries to appeal to the TA Authorities. Their
concern was the fact that no steps are taken to condemn the policy
of cultural Genocide led by Turkey to destroy the Armenian spiritual
and cultural monuments in Western Armenia and Turkey, and to punish
Turkey according to international legislation.

«It is high time for Armenia, as a sovereign country to raise the
question in international channels, either in UN, or in other European
structures», said the head of the Turkish administration of the NAS
Orientology Institute Ruben Safrastyan.

The Turkish policy is condemned by the «Lozano treaty», «Resolution
about the protection of the World cultural and national heritage»,
and the «European Convention about the protection of the Architectural
Heritage» signed by the country. The Euro Parliament resolution «About
the solution of the Armenian Case» adopted in 1987 and re-confirmed in
2004 demands that Turkey respect and protect the historical monuments
of the Armenian nation.

According to UNESCO, after the Great Armenian Genocide about 1000
Armenian monuments have remained in the territory of Turkey. In 1974
more than half of them were totally destroyed, and about 200 are all
in ruins.

[Gavur]

By removing every trace of this ancient civilization,Turks

David's Mental Meanderings
9th July 2003
In my Daily Diversions, I have mentioned before how much I appreciate certain food indigenous to the people occupying what I prefer to call eastern Greece or that part of Greece outside of Europe - a region sometimes called Asia Minor and geographically known as Anatolia. All after, sometimes there's nothing quite as tasty as a good kebab. I have also noted the appreciation pretty much ends there.

This peninsula between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea is the home of much of the New Testament. St Paul was born here and later visited and wrote letters to churches in towns like Colosse and Ephesus, and regions like Galatia. Not all of Anatolia is occupied Greece. It is also home to the first nation to officially convert to Christianity in 301 under the missionary endeavours of St Gregory the Illuminator.

In Germany, holocaust denial is a crime. In Turkey, holocaust suggestion is a crime. Not admission, just suggesting the possibility. In Turkey, we aren't talking about the Jewish holocaust under the Nazis. We are talking about the Armenian genocide.

It doesn't make the papers much. It isn't the subject of all sorts of movies and used as a backdrop in others. And if the Turks have their way, it never will. That's because the Turks don't just want to deny they killed 1.5 million Armenians in 1915. They want to deny the Armenians ever existed.

I have to admit that the Turks have done a fairly good job of removing the Armenians from the public consciousness. After all, how often do you hear about the German genocide of Jews? There are Holocaust museums, remembrance days, and octogenarian former concentrations camp guards outed and deported. Just suggest that fewer than 6 million Jews were killed and you can be run out of town, or especially out of academia, on a rail. Suggest it in Germany and you will go to jail. Compare this to the Armenians. I have to admit that was I not reading William Dalrymple's From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium, I wouldn't have been thinking of the Armenians, either.


I've been aware of the Armenian genocide since I was in college. One of theological pillars whose writings we devoured, R. J. Rushdoony, was born the year after the genocide. His parents had just escaped the city of Van with their lives. His grandfathers were martyred.


Now for the first time I actually looked into the history of this holocaust. I learned that 55,000 Armenians were massacred in Van and cremated. I felt bad that I did not know names like Ras-ul-Ain, Rakka, and Deir-el-Zor the same way I knew Auschwitz or Dachau.


The Armenian leaders and intellectuals were rounded up first. After these were killed, the slaughter of the general population began. In seven provinces of Anatolia, 90% of the able-bodied men were killed outright. Most of the rest of the population was deported out into the desert to starve in primitive versions of concentration camps. The Turks even beat the Germans to the idea of gas chambers, even if they lacked the technology. They forced groups of Armenians into caves and then set brush fires at the entrances to deplete all the oxygen and asphyxiate the victims.

The Turks save a special fate for the children. The lucky ones were just burned alive or taken out in boats which were capsized in the middle of the sea. That was much quicker than the fate that befell the pretty ones. The prettiest girls and boys from the age of about 10 upwards were reprieved long enough to be raped and tortured. The accounts of foreign eye-witnesses to the atrocities are so horrific that I cannot bear to write about them. Should you find this all too incredible, I have provided links to websites containing the relevant information, replete with documentation, on David's Daily Diversions.

Without attempting to minimise the evils perpetrated in the Jewish holocaust in any way, I have to say that the Turks almost make the Germans seem nice. It is made all the worse by the Turks refusal to even acknowledge what they did.

The Turkish government has gone to great lengths to try and insure others do not know about them. For example in 2000, a Syrian Orthodox priest was charged with "inciting religious, racial and sectarian hatred" for mentioning the genocide to the press.

Like many foreign governments to promote their history and culture, the Turks have endowed chairs in Ottoman studies at major universities. The condition of the funding is that these compromised academics do not write or lecture about certain subjects and that they only use approved sources in their research. The Turks have also used more direct methods in shaping the research. In an 1994 interview at which I was present, Rushdoony indicated that while the scholar editing The Slaughterhouse Province: An American Diplomat's Report on the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1917 was researching in the US National Archives "she found that the Turks were allowed access to the National Archives and were destroying material derogatory to them regarding the massacres." [Rushdoony's interviewer, the history chair at a major Christian university, is also responsible for you reading this. He was a reader of the pre-Internet Meanderings, whose encouragement is at least partially to blame for the resumption of these newsletters in the electronic age.]

They have kept the US and UK from even officially recognising that the genocide ever happened. In 2000, a resolution in the US House of Representatives was withdrawn by the Speaker, under diplomatic pressure from Ankara. The UK Government has been petitioned by it citizens and by Members of Parliament, but it will not budge. Because Turkey is the only Muslim member state of NATO, no one has wanted to offend them. Now that the US controls neighbouring Iraq and has bases in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan, perhaps that bargaining chip has dropped in value.

It as also been suggested that Turkey may have to admit the genocide to be admitted to the European Union. It would probably also help if they didn't have all their guns in the west pointed at what remains of EU member Greece. When we travelled between Turkey and the Greek island of Kos two years ago, the ferries in harbour were flanked in the docks by small gunboats, with warships nearby. Much of Turkey's military, however, is in the east.

When they aren't fending off the Kurds, they are rewriting history. Not being satisfied with slaughtering the Armenians, they are using the army to demolish all of the evidence that the Armenians were ever there.

This is the case in Rushdoony's ancestral city. According to Rudy Brueggemann, who visited Van in 2001, "All that remains of old Van are three ruined mud and stone structures and two mosques. Beneath a large rocky outcropping on which sits the ruins of the Van fortress, the flattened remnants of the former city are visible on the mud landscape that's almost lunar in its appearance. The new Van was built 5 kilometers away from there."


The most important NATO base in Turkey is Incirlik Air Base, located just outside the city of Adana. In the shadow of the American flag today is site of not one, but three episodes of violence against what was the indigenous Armenian population. They were attacked in the mid-1890s over a three year period. They were massacred by the tens of thousands in 1909. According to Brueggemann, "Were the 1909 massacres in Adana not overshadowed in scale by the genocide of 1915, they might be better known today." Every Armenian in the city and surrounding villages that wasn't killed was forced out. There are now no Armenian buildings in the city. Entire villages were demolished and there is no evidence they ever existed other than in the knowledge of the descendants of the handful of survivors.


In the removal of distinctive Armenian architecture, the Church has been particularly hard hit. Dalrymple notes that the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople (not to be confused with the Ecumenical Patriarchate located in the same city) did not complete a 1914 survey of actively used churches. Nonetheless, it recorded "210 Armenian monasteries, 700 monastic churches, and 1,639 parish churches, a total of 2,549 ecclesiastical buildings." In 1974, a survey indicated that there were 913 buildings with still-known whereabouts. Of those, 464 had disappeared, 252 were in ruins, and 197 were in sound shape.


This was before the Turks really got aggressive about removing any evidence of the Armenians. In the 1970s and 1980s, they started a campaign which does not appear to have stopped. Every Arminian place name has been renamed. They regularly go into villages, identify any and all Armenian antiquities, smash them to bits and remove the rubble overnight. As Dalrymple and others account, whenever returning foreign visitors ask what happened to monuments, churches, gravestones, or anything Armenian they saw before, locals in fear of the secret police insist that such a thing never existed.


If you look on the official website of the Republic of Turkey, the only references you find to the Armenians are in a section called "Armenian Allegations and the Facts". It explains how the Armenians "in fact" massacred the Turks. Even the culture and tourism section of the site, which panders to Christians and which you would think was written by Christians, never mentions the Armenians once. I couldn't find a reference to a single Armenian historical site.


I don't want you to think that this is some sort of Muslim attack on Christians. Constantinople fell in 1453. The Armenians survived over 450 years of Muslim rule. Though Islamic parties are on the rise, Turkey is the most secular of the Muslim states. The father of the modern Turkish state, Mustafa Kemal (known universally as "Ataturk" - the Father of the Turks) crushed Islamic fundamentalism soon after he came to power in 1923.


The Armenians have also suffered some persecution from the more fundamentalist Kurds. That's more of a religious conflict. The Turks have no such motivation. This is just what they do, whether in the elimination of the Armenian people in 1915 or in the current eradication of their history. As the curator of the Armenian Museum in Jerusalem told William Dalrymple, "Soon there will be no evidence that the Armenians were ever in Turkey. We will have become a historical myth."


By removing every trace of this ancient civilization, the Turks will assume the Armenian role as the cultural creators of eastern Anatolia.


The Turks are bit like the father in the film My Big Fat Greek Wedding, who tries to convince everyone that the Greeks invented everything. The difference is that the Greeks actually invented an awful lot and the Turks only invented a lot of awful.

http://www.holford.org.uk/meanderings/meanderings9-7-03.htm

[Gavur]

Armenian Delegation Discusses Restoration Of Ancient City Of Ani In Turkey

Arminfo
2007-04-02 18:26:00

"We should establish contacts with the Turkish side and learn to trust
each other," Armenian Deputy Minister of Culture and Youth Gagik
Gyurjyan said at a press-conference in Yerevan, Monday. To remind,
G.Gyurjyan led the Armenian delegation which participated in the
opening ceremony of the Sourb Khach (St.Cross) Church in Lake Van,
West Armenia (modern Turkey).

He noted that the trip was fruitful. During private conversations
with representatives of the Turkish authorities, the Armenian side
raised the issue of restoring the ancient Armenian city of Ani. The
head of the delegation expressed hope that the next meeting of the
sides will be held for this purpose.

"The restoration of the Sourb Khach Church has been carried out at a
high level and complies with international standards, on the whole,"
G.Gyurjyan said.

He expressed regret at the fact that the issue of placing a
cross on the dome of the church was discussed more than the
restoration itself. "As for the Turkish flag hung out during the
opening ceremony, it should be noted that it is stipulated by the
legislation of this country while holding all the official events,"
he emphasized. Answering the journalists' question whether the
restoration of the Sourb Khach Church is a PR action made by the
Turkish Government, G.Gyurjyan pointed out that he welcomes any action
aimed at restoring an architectural monument, moreover, an Armenian
monument. "One shouldn't demand too much of Turkey at the current
stage," he said in conclusion.

[Gavur]

According To Deputy Minister Of Culture, Cross To Be Mounted Soon

ACCORDING TO DEPUTY MINISTER OF CULTURE, CROSS TO BE MOUNTED SOON ON DOME OF SURB KHACH CHURCH

Noyan Tapan
Apr 02 2007

YEREVAN, APRIL 2, NOYAN TAPAN. If the Armenian Patriarch of
Constantinople Mesrob Mutafian had not delivered a speech at the
re-opening ceremony of Surb Khach (Holy Cross) Church on Aghtamar
Island of Van, the head of the Armenian delegation which attended
the ceremony, RA deputy minister of culture and youth issues Gagik
Gyurjian would have made a speech. G. Gyurjian stated this at the
April 2 press conference. In his words, according to a preliminary
agreement and the Turkish side's plan, the Armenian delegation
was not to make a speech, however, a speech was prepared jointly
the RA Ministry of Foreign Affairs io order to use it in case of
necessity. The deputy minister said that in his speech the Armenian
Patriarch of Constantinople pointed out a number of issues of concern
to the Armenians, including the issue of mounting a cross on the
church's dome, celebrating the holiday of Surb Khach (Holy Cross)
once a year, and declaring March 29 Day of Aghtamar (on this day,
a national festivity with songs and dances will be held). As regards
the fact that there were Turkish flags and a portrait of Ataturk on
the church during the ceremony, G. Gyurjian noted that according
to Turkish law, "the Turkish flag and a portrait of Ataturk shall
be displayed at all state and governmental events." In his words,
the flag and portrait were immediately removed after the ceremony.

He expressed an opinion that the cross of the church will be mounted
soon - the cross has already been made and is now at the Patriarchate
of Constantinople. Moreover, the deputy minister said that the group
implementing the repair work during the church's restoration kept a
constant touch with them. The Turkish side consulted with Armenian
architects on the issue of making the cross. G. Gyurjian said that
the church was restored and repaired in line with international
architectural standards, although there are some insignificant defects.

[Joseph]

Bingo!

Read the final paragraph
Armenians Remember Genocide At Hands Of Turks
VIDEO: Watch The Latest News
SLIDESHOWS: View The Day's Top Photos
(CBS) LOS ANGELES Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the Los Angeles City Council and Armenian leaders gathered Friday to commemorate the 92nd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide committed by the Turks, which resulted in the deaths of 1.5 million people in 1915.

"Today's remembrance ... will not only keep us all united in our remembrance of the 1.5 million lost souls, it will also help us teach the new generation to prevent injustice and intolerance and will renew our respect for all of humanity," said Archbishop Honvan Derderian, primate of the Western Diocese of the Armenian Church.

Turkey rejects the genocide label and argues that about 300,000 Armenians, and at least as many Turks, died during civil strife in 1915.

The deaths occurred when Armenians in eastern Anatolia fought for independence and sided with Russian troops invading the crumbing Ottoman Empire during World War I.

"It is important that the next generation of truth tellers is here with us today," Villaraigosa said. "Denial of the genocide is an attempt to instill fear in the hearts of all those who treasure truth. The first condition of justice is recognition of the gravity of the evil done."

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena, introduced a resolution in January that asked President Bush to recognize the killings.

In February, the City Council designated the Armenian capital of Yerevan as a sister city to Los Angeles, under a plan spearheaded by Councilman Eric Garcetti.

"Today it may feel long ago, but to think of the 3,000 years of culture and history ... that (the Armenian genocide) tried to wipe from the earth makes us realize that it is part of our present," Garcetti said.

(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report. )

[bell-the-cat]

Arminfo
"The restoration of the Sourb Khach Church has been carried out at a
high level and complies with international standards, on the whole,"
G.Gyurjyan said.

Entirely wrong. The restoration breaks or ignores just about every current standard of best-practice.
The fact that the restoration was up to Armenian standards is nothing to be proud of. His very use of the word "restoration" (as if it were a good thing) graphically shows how backward the concepts of preserving historical monuments and artefacts currently are in both Turkey and Armenia. That is not to say I am particularly critical of Mr Gyurgyan, he is a decent person, but he should have better advisors on the subject. For him to wish a similar fate be inflicted on Ani is most disturbing.

He expressed regret at the fact that the issue of placing a
cross on the dome of the church was discussed more than the
restoration itself.

I have yet to read a single useful comment anywhere on the restoration itself.

[Gavur]

Site in Armenia provides information about ancient capital across the border

Project Discovery funds archaeological research at
an Ani suburb, on the Armenian side of the border

http://www.armenianreporteronline.com/generating/pdf/jul28-2007/BE0728.pdf

BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. –7
Project Discovery has awarded a
grant of $7,175 to Dr. Hamazasp
Khachatrian, director of the Shirak
Regional Museum in Gyumri, to
conduct archaeological research at
Haikadzor.
Haikadzor was occupied during
the Middle Ages, when it was a
suburb of Ani, the famed medieval
capital of Armenia. The remains of
Ani are on the Turkish side of the
Armenian-Turkish border. Haikadzor
is located in front of the monastery
of Horomos, situated about 15
km (9 mi) northeast of Ani, beside
the Akhurian River on the Armenian-
Turkish border.
Horomos, founded during the
reign of the Bagratid King Abas I
(928-953), brother of King Ashot
Yergat, was one of the most important
religious and cultural centers
within the kingdom of Ani. Haikadzor
is the only suburb of Ani located
within the territory of the Republic
of Armenia, making it the only
part of Ani open to archaeological
investigation by Armenians. Thus,
this grant affords a unique and important
opportunity to study the
material culture of Ani.
Ani, built on a spectacular site
– a plateau enclosed by deep ravines
– was once the capital of a medieval
Armenian kingdom that covered
much of present-day Armenia and
eastern Turkey. Renowned for its
splendor and magnificence, Ani rivaled
the great cities of Constantinople,
Baghdad, and Cairo. At the
height of its glory, Ani’s population
reached between 100,000 and
200,000.
Ani is first mentioned in Armenian
chronicles in the 5th century
as a possession of the Armenian
Kamsarakan dynasty. By the
early 9th century, Ani had gone
to Bagratunis. By the end of the
10th century, the Armenian catholicate
had moved its seat to Ani.
The city reached its apogee at the
start of the 11th century, when it
was known as the “City of Forty
Gates” and the “City of a Thousand
and One Churches.” Located at the
crossroads of various trade routes,
Ani developed strong commercial
ties with the cities of Byzantium,
Persia, Southern Russia and Central
Asia.
The city comprised dozens of religious
structures (churches, chapels,
monasteries, and mausoleums)
and secular buildings (royal
palaces, mansions, baths, markets,
caravanserais) and defensive
structures (the citadel and double
line of ramparts) as well as bridges,
aqueducts, and sewer systems.
While the urban center of Ani was
being developed, so too was an underground
Ani being built, whose
remains testify to the existence
of hundreds of houses, dozens of
chapels and tombs, monastery
complexes, and city service facilities
such as stables, mills, cellars,
reservoirs, stores and food shops,
all essential in the event of a siege
of the city.
The city’s economic, social, and
cultural boom was accompanied by
the expansion of its building and architecture.
Its numerous religious
structures, palaces, and fortifications
were among the most technically
and artistically advanced in
the world at that time. Ani’s architects
were of such renown that the
influence of the Ani school of architecture
extended over the whole of
Armenia.
But Ani’s glory would soon fade.
The city fell victim to waves of conquerors
over several centuries, and
later was devastated by an earthquake.
Ani was finally abandoned
and largely forgotten – until the
late 1890s, when Toros Toromanyan
and Nikolai Marr undertook
to excavate at Ani. Their research
was interrupted by the First World
War.
Lost magnificence
The site Dr. Khachatrian will study
was discovered in 1998. It was used
as a stone quarry, which destroyed
part of the site. Thanks to the efforts
of Dr. Khachatrian, the mining
activities were terminated and
the site was saved from destruction.
In 2003–06 the Terzian family of
Paris funded archaeological excavations
at Haikadzor. During this
time, excavations were carried out
both within and outside of the
caves there. As a result of these
investigations, the archaeological
team was able to glean insight
into the lifestyle of the people
who populated Ani. One of the
caves had been occupied by six
to eight horned cattle, indicating
that the people were engaged in
cattle breeding. The archaeologists
uncovered a bakery with 20 ovens
for baking bread, indicating that
the local residents not only made
bread for their own consumption
but also for sale to the larger population
of Ani. Copper and silver
coins discovered in the caves and
nearby territory indicate robust
commercial activities.
Further research at the site
is of critical importance to the
study of Ani. The last excavation
of Ani, carried out by Toros Toromanyan
and Nikolai Marr, ended
in 1917. All the finds from that
excavation were transported to
Russia in 1918 to preserve them
from Turkish intervention. Unfortunately,
much of the material
never reached Russia and was lost
forever.
The National History Museum
of Armenia has only one collection
of Ani finds that includes artifacts
from the Bronze to the Middle
Ages. However, that that collection,
for the most part, comprises only
fragments of ceramics and metal,
and none of them was properly
documented at the time of their
discovery so they have little value
as scientific evidence.
Dr. Khachatrian is optimistic
that his team’s further excavations
at Haikadzor will reveal a wealth
of important information about
the material culture and lifestyle of
the people of Ani, thereby preserving
in the annals of world history
this magnificent time and place in
Armenia’s past.

www.projectdiscovery.net.

[bell-the-cat]

Haikadzor
is the only suburb of Ani located
within the territory of the Republic
of Armenia, making it the only
part of Ani open to archaeological
investigation by Armenians.

Completely wrong. But it is easy to see why it is made out to be true. There are the remains of suburbs of Ani directly opposite Ani, but they are being destroyed by the quarry that is also directly opposite Ani (and which, rumour has it, is under the control of the same mafiosi that run Gyumri). A lot, including cave churches, has already been destroyed - and a medieval cemetery is now threatened. I don't think Dr. Khachatrian would last long in Gyumri if he were to make too much publicity about that.

Thanks to the efforts
of Dr. Khachatrian, the mining
activities were terminated and
the site was saved from destruction.

Quarrying is actually still going on all around the site (as well as at the massive quarry opposite Ani of course). The settlement probably existed because it was located at a spot on the river that could be easily forded.

[bell-the-cat]

Here is a picture of the location. I think the site lies at the cliffs between the two quarries. Horomos monastery is at the top right.

[Gavur]

Thanks as always for the clarification and insight that article was unable to convey (wow amazing pic!)