GOP House Candidate Blames Gun Control For Armenian Genocide

April 6, 2018 By administrator

Danny Tarkanian

Nevada congressional candidate Danny Tarkanian suggested in a recent interview that the Armenian genocide could have been prevented had the Ottoman Empire not robbed Armenians of their guns.

Tarkanian addressed the issue of gun control during a March 27 radio interview with conservative firebrand Wayne Allyn Root.

“I happen to understand that the first thing Hitler did before he herded the Jews into concentration camps to kill them was he passed, I believe in ’38, a law that said no Jew could own a gun,” Root said. “In the end you’re powerless and defenseless if you have no gun.”

Tarkanian, a perennial Republican candidate and vocal supporter of President Donald Trump, said the Holocaust was an example of “history repeating itself,” and pointed to the Armenian genocide.

“I’m Armenian, and the Ottoman Empire ― they took the guns from the Armenians,” Tarkanian said. “They came and they killed 1.5 million of the 2 million that were there because they had no way to defend themselves.”

Root agreed, and claimed that despots like Russia’s Joseph Stalin and Cambodia’s Pol Pot “always take the guns first.”

Tarkarian and Root are correct that many mass killings throughout history followed the confiscation of guns. The Ottoman Empire passed gun control laws in 1911, about four years before the start of the Armenian genocide, and Armenians were required to surrender their weapons.

But Armenians had been forbidden from owning weapons for hundreds of years and were the victims of religious persecution well before the 20th-century genocide. A pogrom in the late 19th century, which predated the gun control legislation, also resulted in the murder of hundreds of thousands of Armenians.

A handful of conservative figures, including Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson, have latched on to the claim that gun control legislation helped spur the Holocaust. In February, Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) also questioned how many Jews were “put in the ovens because they were unarmed.”

Tarkanian has unsuccessfully run in state elections since 2004. Hours before the filing deadline for the 2018 midterms last month, Tarkanian dropped his bid to unseat Sen. Dean Heller (R) and decided to run for a House seat instead. Trump had suggested Tarkanian make the move two days earlier:

Source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/gop-house-candidate-blames-gun-control-for-armenian-genocide/ar-AAvvSQ8

Turkish Director Fatih Akın says can’t visit Turkey because of Armenian Genocide film VIDEO

April 5, 2018 By administrator

Fatih Akın The Cut

Director Fatih Akın said he has not visited Turkey after the premiere of his film, “The Cut,” which depicts the Armenian Genocide, reported Turkish new site Artı Gerçek, according to Ahval.

“I am a German with Turkish origins and have always felt that I have been a potential victim,” said Akın, who recently won a Golden Globe with his film “In The Fade”, during an interview with the Turkish magazine.

“I have not been to Turkey since the premiere of my film “The Cut” about the Armenian Genocide three years ago,” said Akın and added “I really love Turkey”.

“I am really saddened by the fact that Turkey has been going through difficult times. Hatred and racism are poisoning the whole country; hatred and racism have been taking root in Turkey for a long time. The elites used to exploit the townsmen in old times, now townsmen have seized power and started taking revenge,” he continued.

“Nowadays I have to stay away from Turkey and I don’t have any plans to shoot a film there at the moment. Even if I had such plans, probably I would be arrested,” he said, noting that after directing “The Cut”, he thinks he is probably perceived in Turkey as an enemy of the people.

French film about the Armenian Genocide starring Gerard Darmon and Samy Naceri

April 3, 2018 By administrator

French film about the Armenian Genocide

Director Artak Igityan is at the moment shooting the film “Anatolian History” in France, which is based on the novel “Where wild roses blossom: Anatolian history” by Mark Aren (born Karen Margaryan). The composer of the film is a French musical composer Michel Legrand, Allinnet.info reports.

“Anatolian History” stars such renowned French actors as Samy Naceri (known for his main role in the French comedy franchise “Taxi”), Gerard Darmon, and Hermine Stepanyan in the leading female role. Stepanyan shared her yet scarce experience of working with the director:

“I met director Artak Igityan during the premiere of the film ”Dawn of the Van sea’. We didn’t manage to chat too much, I only congratulated him and left. Two years later, we met again at the “Moscow” cinema in Yerevan at the premiere of another film. This time, Igityan was with his wife Anna. I approached them and said that I loved the film. Artak’s wife looked at me and said: ‘Artak, she is an excellent character.’ Thus, began a conversation about the film, as well as some other topics, Stepanyan recalled.

“Of course, I have seen films starring Darmon and Naceri, and after I realized that we will be playing in the same film, I began to watch their every single movie and read their interviews to learn more about them. During the shooting, I will get acquainted with them better because of easier direct communication,” said Stepanyan, and then added that the shooting is planned for 2018.

The shooting of the film will start in 2018.

Armenian Genocide animated short takes 1st prize at Global India fest

April 2, 2018 By administrator

Armenian Genocide animated short

An animated film created by the Union of Armenians of Ukraine and dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide took the first prize at the Global India International Film Festival, The Siver Times reports.

Titled “Thank you for a chance to grow again. Armenians”, the film was selected in the competition program of the festival in early March. The event itself took place on March 24-25 in Pune, India. Among all the presented works, the video presented by the Union of Armenians of Ukraine was recognized as the best in its category to take the Best Ad Film Award.

According to the press service of the Union of Armenians of Ukraine, the piece by authors Andranik Berberyan and Andrew Ludogoscha will be shown at the 71st Cannes Film Festival as part of the competition program.

The animated film will be further presented in the Ukrainian pavilion at the Marché du Film, which is the business counterpart of the Cannes Film Festival and one of the largest film markets in the world.

“Thank you for a chance to grow again. Armenians” is a 2D animation, built on the image of a garnet grain.

The video was previously submitted to several other festivals, including the international animation festival KLIK in Amsterdam, Ukraine’s Molodiya Festival, as well as the international festival ReAnimania in the Armenian capital of Yerevan, and was well-received everywhere.

Armenian Genocide to be commemorated at Tufts University on April 18

March 30, 2018 By administrator

Lecture by Sylvie Merian, Tufts University

Tufts University, the Darakjian-Jafarian Chair in Armenian History, the Department of History, the Armenian Club at Tufts University, the Executive Administrative Dean at Tufts University, the Armenian Club at Tufts University, and the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) will sponsor the Commemoration of the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide on April 18,, the Armenian Weekly reports.

The Tufts event will feature a lecture by Dr. Sylvie L. Merian of the Morgan Library & Museum, New York City. The evening will be hosted by Ina Baghdiantz McCabe, Professor of History and Darakjian-Jafarian Chair of Armenian History at Tufts University.

The commemoration and lecture will take place in Goddard Chapel on Tufts’ Medford, MA, campus. A reception will follow in the Coolidge Room in nearby Ballou Hall. Parking is available in the Dowling Garage at 419 Boston Avenue and in designated on-street areas.

For centuries, handwritten, illuminated manuscripts were produced by countless cultures throughout the world, not only for use as sacred books in religious services but also as cultural vehicles to pass down religious beliefs, history, and literature for posterity. These scribal and artistic objects were revered and venerated by the people for whom they were produced, even the illiterate. The manuscripts were so closely associated with the native cultural group that produced them that the books sometimes suffered the same fate as the human population did in times of tragic invasions, war, or ethnic persecution. The enemy would often readily attack and destroy these inanimate objects as representations of their human rivals. When Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide he defined not only the intent to destroy a group of people but the deliberate aim of erasing their cultural legacy.

This lecture will focus on two manuscripts now at Harvard University’s Houghton Library. Both manuscripts were violently attacked during the 1894-1896 Hamidian massacres in the Ottoman Empire. Other examples from the medieval period to today of the deliberate brutalization and destruction of significant cultural artifacts, Armenian and non-Armenian, will also be presented. These will be placed in the larger context of cultural genocide, but will also highlight their survival as a reflection of the survival of the people that created them.

Merian received her PhD in Armenian Studies from Columbia University’s Department of Middle East Languages and Cultures. She has published and lectured internationally on Armenian codicology, bookbinding, silverwork, manuscript illumination, and the history of the book. She is currently Reader Services Librarian at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City.

Free bus service offered to NYC Armenian Genocide demo

March 30, 2018 By administrator

NYC Armenian Genocide

Free bus transportation will be offered to those wishing to attend the Times Square commemoration of the Armenian Genocide in New York City

The event is sponsored by the Knights and Daughters of Vartan and is co-sponsored by the AGBU, Armenian Assembly of America, Armenian National Committee of America, ADL-Ramgavars, and the Armenian National Council.

Also participating are the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church of America, Eastern Prelacy of the Armenian Church of America, Armenian Missionary Association of America, Armenian Catholic Eparchy of US and Canada, Armenian Church Youth Organization of America, AGBU Young Professionals of New York, Armenian Network of Greater New York, Armenian Youth Federation, New York Armenian Student Association, Homenetmen Scouts, Armenian youth and professional associations and Armenian university and college clubs.

Buses leave from the Armenian Cultural and Educational Center in Watertown, and from Worcester, both in Massachusetts.

Bus transportation to and from Times Square is free, but reservations are required.

Photo. Angel Chevrestt

Akcam to discuss #ArmenianGenocide at Watertown Armenian Museum “Killing Orders”

March 29, 2018 By administrator

Professor Taner Akcam

Clark University historian Professor Taner Akcam will be delivering a talk titled “Killing Orders: Talat Pasha’s Telegrams and the Armenian Genocide” at Watertown’s Armenian Museum of America on April 3, the Armenian Weekly reported.

Akcam—the Robert Aram and Marianne Kaloosdian and Stpehen and Marian Mugar Chair in Armenian Genocide Studies at Clark University—has made landmark discoveries that prove the Ottoman government’s central role in planning the Armenian Genocide.

Despite decades of scholarly research, the scarcity of direct evidence has allowed Turkey to persist in its denial. Professor Akcam will discuss the findings published in his groundbreaking new book, Killing Orders: Talat Pasha’s Telegrams and the Armenian Genocide (2018). He will highlight a recently discovered document, a “smoking gun,” which removes the cornerstone of Turkey’s denialism. He will show that the killing orders signed by Ottoman Interior Minister Talat Pasha, which the Turkish Government has long discredited, are authentic.

Akcam is the author of more than ten scholarly works as well as numerous articles in Turkish, German, and English on Armenian Genocide and Turkish Nationalism. His most known books are A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (Metropolitan Books, 2006, received the 2007 Minnesota Book Award for General Nonfiction) and Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton University Press, 2012, awarded in 2013 Hourani Book Prize of The Middle East Studies Association; and selected as one of Foreign Affairs’ Best Books on the Middle East for 2012).

Monument to Armenian Genocide victims will be installed in Geneva

March 27, 2018 By administrator

A monument to the Armenian Genocide victims will be installed in Geneva’s Tremblay park next month.

The works to install the monument called “Les réverbères de la mémoire” (The Lanterns of Memory) are already underway. The author of the monument is French sculptor of Armenian origin Melik Ohanian, bluewin.ch reported.

The installation of the monument has been a disputed issue for a decade.

The idea of the project was born ten years ago, but the Armenian community finally got a permit to implement it only in 2016. The attorney, adviser and MP of Swiss People’s Party Yves Nidegger has applied for cancelling the decision of the city’s administration. He said the park was a green zone, and nothing can be build there except for the buildings in the interests of the citizens and exclusively related to the park development.

The project was to be implemented in Geneva’s Ariana park in 2014, but was turned down on the ground of “violation of Geneva’s neutrality on the international platform,” although the decision was actually adopted under the pressure of the Turkish authorities.

Los Angeles: Central Library exhibits explore concept of inherited trauma related to the Armenian Genocide

March 14, 2018 By administrator

Central Library exhibits, Armenian Genocide

By Jeff Landa

The Downtown Central Library will host two simultaneous art exhibits that explore the concept of generational trauma associated with the Armenian Genocide.

The main exhibit, “Nonlinear Histories,” is co-curated by Ara and Anahid Oshagan as well as Isin Önol and features the works of seven artists who examine their generational ties to the Armenian Genocide by reimagining inherited artifacts.

It will run from March 17 through May 6.

The collections are inspired by the theory of “postmemory” by literature scholar and author Marianne Hirsch, which refers primarily to how the children of Holocaust survivors cope with inherited trauma.

Artists featured include Jean Marie Casbarian, Eileen Claveloux, Didem Erk, Hrayr Eulmessekian, Silvina Der Meguerditchian, Hrair Sarkissian and Glendale resident Harry Vorperian.

Ara Oshagan said there’s been no “post-memory” exhibit on the Armenian genocide, adding that it’s one of the most important concepts that tries to address ways in which second- and third-generation survivors deal with trauma.

“We sought out artists who work in this mode, dealing with grandparents and how their trauma is transported across this chasm. There is an attempt to reach across and connect with things that happen before [the] disruption [of genocide],” he said.

Artist Der Meguerditchian’s “Treasures” features 130 pages from a handwritten notebook on health remedies inherited from her great-grandmother, a genocide survivor. The notebook is one of the artifacts that she inherited from her uncle after she stopped him from unknowingly throwing it away.

“I hope the public will see what we are trying to see,” she said. “People need a space to reflect and see because lots of second and third generations were silenced by trauma, but our grand kids can now articulate a lot of things — it is necessary.”

The work from another artist, Vorperian, reimagines his grandmother’s ornate crochets into a lively garden of lilies constructed from various materials. The lilies function as public art, displayed outside the gallery and can be found throughout the library.

“[Her] colorful, large-scale wall tapestries adorned our walls, while her throw pillows, tablecloths and bed covers were spread all over the house,” Vorperian said in a statement. “It felt like living in some magical flower field somewhere in the Netherlands — or, indeed, Marash, the perennial source of my grandmother’s leaps of imagination.”

The second exhibit, “Prosperity, Loss, and Survival: A Photographic Journey from the Dildilian Family Archive,” opens March 24 and is co-curated by Armen Marsoobian. It is an organized family archive of memoirs and photographs, which were created before and survived through the Armenian Genocide.

“Armenians trace our roots back to that space [before the genocide] and having this extensive breadth of a collection is really a moment where we can stop and reflect,” Ara Oshagan said.

An opening reception will be held at the Downtown Central Library, 222 E. Harvard St., on Saturday from 5 to 8 p.m., with a lecture by Hirsch at 7 p.m.

Richard G. Hovannisian Armenian Genocide Oral History Collection Officially Announced

March 12, 2018 By administrator

Richard G. Hovannisian

LOS ANGELES—The USC Shoah Foundation has received one of the largest collections of testimonies from survivors of the Armenian Genocide that were recorded over decades by Dr. Richard Hovannisian, a leading scholar on the World War I-era genocide.

The Richard G. Hovannisian Armenian Genocide Oral History Collection was officially be announced as a part of the Visual History Archive at a ceremony on March 9.

The more than 1,000 interviews will constitute the largest non-Holocaust-related collection to be integrated into the Institute’s Visual History Archive. It will also be the Archive’s first audio-only collection.

Initially, a pilot of 10 testimonies—seven in English and three in Armenian—will be available to the public on March 9 in the Institute’s Visual History Archive. The rest will be added as they are digitized and indexed to the high standards used by the Institute.

To listen, go to the Visual History Archive Online, register for free, and select the box that says “Richard G. Hovannisian Armenian Genocide Oral History Collection.”

In addition to the audiotapes recorded in a variety of formats, the new collection includes documents and photographs corresponding to each interview, transcripts and translations that Hovannisian and his students put together over the years.

The vast majority of the collection was recorded in Armenian, but up to 20 percent of the testimonies are in English; there is a smaller portion of Turkish and Spanish language interviews.

The son of a genocide survivor, Hovannisian believes deeply in the power of testimony as a tool to educate, combat denial, and communicate the magnitude of a criminal scheme that claimed an estimated 1.5 million Armenian lives. But numbers alone don’t begin to tell the story.

“The figure ‘a million and a half’ can roll right over our shoulders,” he said. “But it’s different when you take those individual interviews and start listening to them one by one. And then it becomes a million-and-a-half individuals and the loss of a civilization, of a way of life, a space where people lived for more than 3,000 years, and everything that space contained.”

The Institute also houses the Armenian Film Foundation’s collection of Armenian Survivor testimony, which was fully integrated into the Visual History Archive in late 2016.

“By adding more context to the Visual History Archive, we continue to honor the memories of those whose lives were needlessly taken,” said USC Shoah Foundation Vinci-Viterbi Executive Director Stephen Smith. “These voices will help ensure future generations will learn from those who experienced the horrors of the Armenian Genocide.”

The Armenian Film Foundation’s collection of testimonies was recorded by J. Michael Hagopian for the purpose of making documentaries about one of the earliest genocides of the 20th century. By contrast, Hovannisian, a professor emeritus of Armenian History at UCLA, had a more academic approach. His testimonies typically exceed an hour and feature a wide range of questions about the survivor’s entire life history.

Hovannisian, who collected the testimonies from 1972 to the 2000s, also interviewed some children and grandchildren of survivors in the later years of the project.

Richard Hovannisian was one of the founders of Armenian Studies as a discipline in the United States, producing numerous articles and books that are considered foundational, while also training young scholars who went on to become experts in the study of Armenia from ancient to modern times. He is currently professor emeritus at UCLA, adjunct professor at USC and presidential fellow at Chapman University.