Gallipoli as a litmus paper

12:53, 19 January, 2015

100 days later, when the Armenian people will commemorate the victims of the one of the crimes of the century – the Armenian Genocide on April 24, the country, which carried out that crime, will hold a celebration. By all means, Turkey never used that symbolic date as an occasion to understand the pain of the other people, reassess the history or to repent.

But this time, they will openly hold a celebration on the official level without additional formalities. If it is not so, then how can one explain the fact that the commemoration of the anniversary of the Battle of Gallipoli (Çanakkale), which was usually marked on March 18 for years, has been moved to April 24 in the Turkish calendar? But this is not the question of questions as well…

It is now a fact that modern Turkey does not merely deny the Armenian Genocide, but also turns the pain of the Armenians into an occasion of holding a festival referring to the commemoration of the anniversary of the Battle of Gallipoli, as a justification. Denialism seems to be a simple game in comparison with this. It was not surprising for any individual, who has slightest idea about the Armenian-Turkish relations, that the political elite of Turkey will take all the startling steps advancing the 100th anniversary of Armenian Genocide. Unfortunately, there are all bases to assume that this is the beginning of new provocations by Ankara advancing the Armenian Genocide centennial.

Undoubtedly, Erdogan’s next step was even more cynical – among the other world leaders, he sent an invitation to the Armenian President and received a self-restrained and honorable reply from a country that mourns the massacre of its 1,5 million sons, but moves forward to the future. Erdogan’s invitation to Gallipoli sent to over 100 leaders of the world is now a litmus paper and a unique measuring instrument of value perceptions.

For the Turkish state, this statement is an elimination and end of the incomplete and fake condolences offered to the Armenian people in April of the last year; for those taking an observers position, this is an opportunity to remove the pharisaical mark of equality put between the Armenians and the Turks; for us, this is a proof of the truth enclosed in Homer’s lines saying that “wolves and lambs have no concord.”

The ruins of Troy are not far from the Greek Gallipoli, which was renamed to Çanakkale. Those walls witnessed the war, which became a source of inspiration of ancient poetry. The cause of defeat in that war was the gift, which was taken inside the gates of the impregnable city to hold a celebration. The wooden horse – the trap of the Achaeans, with the enemy’s soldiers hidden inside of it, ruined Troy and as Virgil states it became a warning: “Beware Danae bearing gifts.”

Now, Erdogan’s invitation is the horse, and the value basis, encouraging the denial of the crimes against humanity, are the soldiers, on which the Turkish President constructs his call. About the soldiers, by the way… Few weeks after overcoming the threat of losing the Battle of Gallipoli on March 1915, the Ottoman Empire began realizing the program of total annihilation of the Armenians.

Erdogan declares that Armenians also participated in the Battle of Gallipoli. This is a popular historical fact, but he has chosen a wrong target in this case as well, to remember the Armenian soldiers of the Ottoman army. I’m not certain how many cases one can encounter in the history of the organized and mass elimination of the servicemen of its own army solely because of their ethnicity, but the fact that the Ottoman army became the cemetery of its Armenian servicemen is certain not for me alone, but for a number of my colleagues studying the history of the Ottoman army. The Armenians recruited to the Turkish army in 1914 were disarmed and stage by stage sent to the working battalions, where they were brutally murdered. Even the Turkish archives state that only few hundred out of the tens of thousands Armenian conscripts survived in the end of the WW I.

The elimination of Armenian soldiers was one of the stages of the Armenian Genocide, though which the Armenians were even deprived of the opportunity to protect their lives and dignity. The elimination of the soldiers was followed by the mass massacres of the Armenian intellectuals on April 24, as well as of unprotected women, children and the old people. It is this crime that Ankara doesn’t want to accept, it is this day of mass murder that Turkey wants to celebrate hiding behind the Battle of Gallipoli, thus passing to the massive attempt of destroying the memory of the Armenian people.

I don’t know whether the people, who’ll go to Gallipoli (and there can be such, as this trap was meant to turn the representatives of at least Britain, Australia, and New Zealand into a part of denialism), will remember that on that very hours, the neighboring country marks the remembrance day of the victims of the genocide carried out by the Turkish empire, but the thousands of people, who’ll be in Yerevan on that day, will make a realized choice for the sake of future, human rights, and prevention of new genocides.

On April 24, the Tzitzernakaberd memorial will become the centre of magnetic attraction of those people. And avoiding from the Gallipoli trap will become a litmus paper for many, which will show everything in a simple and unvarnished way.

Aram Ananyan

Director of Armenpress News Agency

Doctor of History


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