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Author Explains How Echoes Of The Armenian Genocide Contain Lessons

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  • Author Explains How Echoes Of The Armenian Genocide Contain Lessons

    AUTHOR EXPLAINS HOW ECHOES OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE CONTAIN LESSONS FOR TODAY

    WNPR News
    Feb 17 2015

    Tue, Feb 17, 2015
    By Harriet Jones

    A century ago, in April 1915, an event began that's come to be known as
    the Armenian Genocide. One scholar believes that massacre should remind
    us of the long-term implications of events playing out in our own time.

    It's thought that up to 1.5 million people may have been massacred
    or expelled from their homes in the Ottoman Empire during the worst
    atrocity of World War I. For almost a century, Turkey has denied the
    enormity of the event, but that may be changing.

    Thomas de Waal works for the Carnegie Endowment for International
    Peace. Recently, he returned to Turkey with a group American Armenians
    -- descendants of those who fled the genocide in the early 20th
    century.

    "We were actually greeted incredibly warmly," de Waal told WNPR. "In
    a couple of places, Armenian churches had been reopened, people came
    out and shared stories about their Armenian grandparents. So on the
    ground in Turkey, that memory is coming back and those people to
    people contacts are happening."

    His experiences are recounted in a new book, Great Catastrophe --
    that's the term many Armenians use for those months in 1915.

    De Waal spoke recently at Connecticut College, and he said it is
    language that illustrates how divisive those events remain. The
    subtitle of his book is Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide.

    The term genocide -- the attempt to eradicate an entire people -- was
    first coined in the 1940s, and de Waal said that while at a scholarly
    level, it is correct to call what happened to the Armenians genocide,
    the use of the word has unfortunate consequences.

    "It's become a barrier to the solution of the problem," de Waal said.

    "Which is for Armenians and Turks to communicate more, and understand
    each other's history. And you've got this big, dark 'genocide' word
    standing between them."

    The descendants of the Armenian diaspora continue to seek closure, and
    that search has shaped U.S. politics. The Armenian lobby is powerful
    in Congress, but still finds itself at odds with America's political
    alliance with Turkey.

    De Waal said the fact that this is still relevant today should alert
    us to the lingering effects of events in our own time. "It only
    takes a few weeks or months to commit an atrocity. But the effects
    can cascade across the generations, and trauma can be transmitted
    from generation to generation."

    It also, he said, illustrates the importance of good history -- an
    understanding of events that tells a human story and not a morality
    play.

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