Retracing a grandmother’s steps in Armenian Genocide

October 13, 2015 By administrator

Sunday services at St. Hripsime in Etchmiadzin, Armenia, built in 618.(Photo: Michelle Andonian)

By Michael H. Hodges, Detroit News

Photographer Michelle Andonian traveled to Turkey last year to retrace her grandmother’s steps after she was driven from her village during the Armenian Genocide of 1915.

The Turkish government, however, has always denied the genocide, maintaining that the deaths were just an unfortunate consequence of wartime chaos.

The visit to Turkey was a profoundly affecting experience for Andonian. Out of it came a photo exhibition at the College for Creative Studies Center Galleries, up through Oct. 24, and a book — “This Picture I Gift” — just published by Wayne State University Press.

On Sunday, Andonian will participate in “Hope Dies Last” at the Detroit Film Theatre, a multimedia performance with violinist Ida Kavafia commemorating the Armenian Genocide.

Where did the title for the book and exhibition come from?

Andonian (Photo: Michelle Andonian)

I came across a picture postcard of my grandmother and aunt while going through my grandmother’s things, and it said that on the back. It’s a literal translation of the Armenian.

She sent it to a relative in Detroit they were coming to live with. I felt it was saying, “Here we are. We’re coming. We’re leaving everything we know behind, but this picture I gift to you.”

What did you take on this project?

My nephew saw that picture in my loft one day, and he asked who it was. I said, “My goodness, that’s your great-grandmother. You don’t know who that is? You don’t know what she went through?”

I realized all that would get lost in the next generation. Fear of losing that history was really the inspiration. And I learned so much about my people I didn’t know. I’m still learning.

When did you go?

July 2014. I was in Turkey and Armenia about a month, though I’d been in Armenia a number of times before.

Did your grandmother die in the genocide?

No, she died in 1987 when I was 28. Her name was Sara. She raised us. We lived next door to her in southwest Detroit. Both my parents worked, so my grandmother took care of us. But she was also the grandmother to the entire neighborhood.

Why did your grandmother and family leave their village?

In 1915, my grandmother’s father —a shepherd — was killed. Murdered. The course of the atrocity went like this: Ottoman Turks would go into the villages, take away all the men, and for the most part, kill them. They deported the women, children and older people who couldn’t fend for themselves.

They said, “It’s a war, you’re going to leave. Pack your stuff on a donkey.” But it was a death march, marching through the desert toward Syria.

How old was your grandmother?

Seven or eight. The family basically walked for three years with no food, no water. You know the migrants today, from Syria to Turkey to Greece to Hungary? It’s basically the same thing. My grandmother remembered stepping over dead bodies. She remembered the smell. Her baby brother died in her mother’s arms. But those who did survive did so because of the kindness of some Turkish and Kurdish families.

Where did they go?

They walked from their village of Iskhan to Homs and Salamiyah, in present-day Syria (over 400 miles). From there they got to Somalia, and finally back to Aleppo in Syria. But I couldn’t go there because of the civil war. Eventually she went back to Turkey in the early 1920s.

How did your grandmother get to America?

She came to the U.S. in 1922 from Istanbul. She came over with her aunt and uncle to Ellis Island, and was promised as a bride to my great-aunt’s cousin.

Did you tell people in Turkey what you were doing?

Not in Turkey. I played it low, with small cameras. I didn’t want to carry a big camera with a long lens and look like a professional photographer.

Are there still Armenians in Turkey?

Yes. There’s a fairly large community, though nothing like it used to be. I stayed with relatives of friends while there. But Armenians are definitely looked down upon.

What particularly affected you?

The ancient city of Ani. It’s this haunting heartbreak, a ruined, medieval Armenian town once known as the Land of 1001 Churches. The earliest inscriptions on the walls are from 1031. It’s literally a stone’s throw from the border of (present-day, independent) Armenia. That’s where I kind of lost it, I have to say. To see something so incredibly beautiful in such a state of ruin, so close to Armenia — the Turks could give it back to us without even a thought. It’d be an easy gift. For the 100th anniversary of the genocide, why not give us Ani?

Did you do all this alone?

No. I traveled with my friend Ani Boghikian Kasparian from Detroit, who’s an Armenian scholar. She teaches the language at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Dearborn. We’d been talking about this for years. She did so much for me. She arranged the guides, she arranged the connections.

What’s takeaway from all this?

Had the Armenian Genocide been validated, and Ottoman Turkey forced to recognize and do something about what happened, maybe it wouldn’t have given a permission slip to other atrocities.

You know what Hitler said when planning the holocaust? “Who today remembers the Armenians?”

The Syrian refugees today are just like the Armenian refugees, forced to leave their monuments and homes and history. It’s the same story. The timeliness of all this is horrifying to me.

mhodges@detroitnews.com

twitter.com/mhodgesartguy

‘Hope Dies Last’

3 p.m. Sunday

Detroit Film Theatre, Detroit Institute of Arts, 5200 Woodward, Detroit

Tickets: $19.50 – general; $15, DIA members and Wayne, Oakland and Macomb county residents

(313) 833-7900

dia.org

‘This Picture I Gift’

Through Oct. 24

Center Galleries, College for Creative Studies, 301 Frederick, Detroit

10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday

Free

(313) 664-7800

IAGS calls on German Bundestag to recognize Armenian Genocide

October 13, 2015 By administrator

The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) sent a letter to the German Bundestag calling on them to recognize the Genocide “of the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek populations of the Ottoman Empire.”

The letter reads:

“We write to you as the past presidents of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the largest body of scholars who study genocide, concerning the resolution on the Armenian Genocide that may be before you now.

The German government’s engagement with the Armenian Genocide is vitally important to the international perspective in the aftermath of this history. The German Bundestag’s non-binding resolution of June 2005 concerning the annihilation of the Armenians in Turkey provides an important context for the new proposal that is now being considered in the Foreign Committee of the Bundestag.

In order for progress toward reconciliation to be made between Turkey and the Armenian Republic and the Armenian people, acknowledgement of the historical facts about one of the most devastating human rights atrocities of the modern era must be made.

Furthermore, the 2005 resolution read: “The German Bundestag honors and commemorates the victims of violence, murder and expulsion among the Armenian people before and during the First World War. The Bundestag deplores the deeds of the Young Turkish government in the Ottoman Empire that resulted in the almost total annihilation of the Armenians in Anatolia. It also deplores the inglorious role played by the German Reich which had made no attempt to intervene and stop these atrocities.”

German documents on the Armenian Genocide are an important part of the historical record. The documentary scholarship of Johannes Lepsius , the collection of eyewitness photographs of Armin T. Wegner, the eyewitness accounts of numerous German diplomats, officers, missionaries, nurses, engineers and railway workers, and the massive collection of German diplomatic correspondence in the archives of the German Foreign Office, and in Wolfgang Gust’s major collection of foreign office records: The Armenian Genocide: Evidence from the German Foreign Office Archives, 1915–1916, all constitute a significant part of the international historical record.

Germany, more than any country in the 20th century, has dealt with the aftermath of Genocide with exemplary courage and moral reckoning. Germany has been a world leader in its ability to face its past, create a powerful culture of historical memory and deal with issues of recompense and social justice in the wake of the Holocaust. Thus, a statement from Germany affirming the historical facts and historical record of the Ottoman Turkish genocide against more than 3 million Christians—including more than a million Armenians according to the estimate of the German Embassy in Constantinople in October, 1916—would have great moral significance for this centennial moment.

We call on German legislators in this centennial year of 2015 to officially resolve in written form the forceful legal opinions made by speakers of all parliamentary factions on, April 24, 2015, confirming the genocide against the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek populations of the Ottoman Empire. We believe German leadership will help Turkey address its own struggles with historical memory and will help support progressive forces inside Turkey, and Turkey’s forward progress as a proud nation.”

Armenian Genocide Centennial monument unveils in New York

October 9, 2015 By administrator

American Armenian Artist and designer Michael Aram recently unveiled a sculpture he created in remembrance of the Armenian Genocide for The Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church of America.

The 13-meter steel sculpture, called Migrations, is a memorial to the events of 1915 and is a testimony of survival, strength and resilience, according to Aram, reported hfnmag.com.

The designer worked with historians to determine the shape of the map representing Armenian territories before lands were seized and people were eradicated and forced out,.

Robert M. Morgenthau: Centennial has brought an unprecedented level of awareness of Armenian Genocide

October 6, 2015 By administrator

“This year, the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide, has brought an unprecedented level of awareness of the slaughter and deportation of the Armenians, and of my grandfather’s humanitarian efforts to stop the killings,” Robert M. Morgenthau, grandson of U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire Henry Morgenthau said at on Capitol Hill hosted by the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation (IRWF) and the Congressional Caucus on Armenian Issues in honor of visiting Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan. Robert M. Morgenthau’s full speech is provided below:

“President Sargsyan, Members of Congress, Reverend Clergy, Foundation Board Members, and Friends

I am honored in more ways than I can recount to be asked to accept the Wallenberg Medal on behalf of my grandfather. The legacy of Raoul Wallenberg holds a very personal significance for my family. My father, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., was Secretary of the Treasury during the Holocaust. At a time when as many as 12,000 Hungarian Jews were being deported to certain death every day, he established the War Refugee Board to resettle the refugees and save their lives. It was Raoul Wallenberg who ultimately would run the Board, and it was his courage and tireless effort that saved 200,000 lives – and provided a model for the kind of humanitarian sacrifice that the world so needs today.

I am honored as well to be in the presence of President Serge Sargsyan. I can assure you that my grandfather would be especially pleased to know that one day his grandson would share the podium with the President of an independent and free Armenia.

This year, the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide, has brought an unprecedented level of awareness of the slaughter and deportation of the Armenians, and of my grandfather’s humanitarian efforts to stop the killings. What is less well known, but what consumed my grandfather equally, is the sad history of the betrayal of the Armenian people in the quest for self-determination.

Throughout their history, the Armenians showed great courage in resisting dominance by invading armies. The rebellion in Zeitun, the defense of Van, and of course the historic resistance of the Armenians of Musa Dagh, each displayed the determination of a proud people, indomitable in spirit, and unwilling to surrender their faith or their identity. Yet each time, Ottoman leaders responded with overwhelming force, force that escalated to all-out genocide.

In response, President Woodrow Wilson firmly committed the policy of the United States to the establishment of an Armenian homeland. This flowed from his Fourteen Points, one of which was the principle of the self-determination of the peoples in the former Ottoman Empire. The President appointed a commission, the King-Crane Commission, to set forth specific proposals to manifest this basic principle.

In August of 1919, the Commission concluded that the Armenians should inhabit a homeland that restored losses from the atrocities suffered periodically at the hands of the Ottoman Turks from 1894 through 1916. The homeland would comprise the Armenian highlands in Turkey and Russia, with an outlet on the Black Sea.

In August of 1920, Western powers and the Ottoman Empire signed the Treaty of Sevres. It too affirmed the principle of an Armenian homeland, although a homeland reduced in size from what Woodrow Wilson had envisioned.

But the ink had hardly dried on the treaty when the new Turkish state attacked the Democratic Republic of Armenia and occupied parts of its territory. Soon, the Soviet Union absorbed the remaining portion. This land grab, so soon after the Genocide of the Armenians, presented a challenge to the conscience of the world, particularly when a German periodical published the comment of the notorious Enver Pasha: “What do you think…Did we slaughter them just for fun?”

The response of the world community to this crisis was nothing short of shameful: the League of Nations capitulated. Soon there was a new treaty, the Treaty of Lausanne, which made no mention of an Armenian homeland.

This explains why, for eighty years, Armenians suffered under Soviet oppression. It is why, for eighty years, the Armenian people, who prided themselves on being the world’s first Christian nation, were ruled by an atheist dictatorship.

Today, of course, the Soviet Union is no more, and Armenia is an independent republic. And yet, as Armenians and their supporters all around the world marched this year for Genocide recognition, they did so under a two-fold phrase: “I remember…and I demand.”

I leave it to others to untangle the fiercely complicated question of how to make right the injustices of history. But let us begin by squarely confronting that history.

During the Genocide, my Grandfather witnessed first-hand what happens when the world’s conscience gives way to caution. He was personally devastated by what he famously termed a campaign of race extermination. And in the aftermath of that tragedy, even after he returned to the United States, even as he devoted himself to the resettlement of Armenian refugees, his greatest lingering disappointment was that he did not live to see the reestablishment of an independent Armenia.

I have said on other occasions that the principles that have largely animated my own life in public office are those that my grandfather brought back from his service in Anatolia. I commend them to one and all. Among those values are all of the freedoms that would later be included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But there is yet one more value that he taught us, one that gives life to all the rest: a commitment that, on issues of justice, we shall never give up.

On behalf of my grandfather, I thank you for this great honor.

Source: armradio.am

Armenian authors coming to University of Michigan-Dearborn

October 6, 2015 By administrator

By Teresa Duhl
Special to the Press & Guide

In Turkey, a 100-year-old Armenian woman, named Asiya, still resides in her family’s hometown of Chunkush. Not far away, a new school was erected in 2014. The connection between this new school and Asiya brings the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide into sharp focus. New York Times bestselling author Chris Bohjalian met Asiya when he visited Turkey in 2013. In two Washington Post op-ed pieces, he wrote about Asiya’s story and the anger he felt when he saw the school for the first time.

In 1915, Turkish and Kurdish killing squads rounded up the 10,000 Armenians living in Chunkush. They took them to the very spot where the new school now stands, at the edge of a ravine about two hours from Chunkush. At the pit of the ravine is the Dudan Crevasse.

Asiya’s mother was among the Armenians taken. She stood at the edge of the ravine holding her infant daughter. What did she see? Her neighbors and family pushed or stabbed into the crevasse? Did she look around at the frightened faces next to her? Perhaps she closed her eyes. What sounds did she hear? Screams, shouting, gunshots, the thud of bodies thrown onto other bodies? Was Asiya crying in her arms? What did she feel? Fear, rage? Would it be possible to feel peace?

One thing is certain, at the edge of the ravine, she waited for the force, whether bullet, bayonet, or boot, that would thrust her into the Dudan Crevasse below. She held her daughter and waited. She did this in the same space that, 100 years later, would be the home of a new, gleaming elementary school.

But death did not come. One of the Kurds found her attractive, so he pulled her from the line. He married her and raised Asiya as his own daughter. Asiya and her mother were saved from death, but they also had to hide their Armenian heritage for the remainder of their days. Even in 2013, when Bohjalian first met Asiya, she would not speak of her Armenian heritage with him, he said.

Bohjalian suggests the new school was built to cover up the mass grave and the larger history of Turkey’s orchestrated slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians.

“I do not know the thinking behind the placement of the Yenikoy elementary school. But I have my suspicions. I would not be surprised if next year when I visit, the crevasse has been filled in: the evidence of a crime of seismic magnitude forever buried,” he wrote in 2014.

Whether the school has been erected out of genuine need or as a means of covering up the evil that took place at the Dudan Ravine, its existence is ironic. A school now marks the unmarked mass grave of 10,000 Armenians. An institution of knowledge serves as the symbol of a space where heinous acts of ignorance were perpetrated.

“The irony, however, is this: It will no longer take complex directions or GPS coordinates to find the 10,000 dead at Dudan. All you will need to tell someone is to visit the Yenikoy elementary school. Go stand by the playground. The dead are right there,” wrote Bohjalian.

Though, as of yet, he has not made Asiya’s story into a novel, Bohjalian has written 18 books, including one that focuses on the Armenian Genocide, “The Sandcastle Girls.” He and eight other Armenian authors will present at the Book and Author Festival at the University of Michigan-Dearborn on Saturday. Continued…

Montreal: State of Denial: New play links Armenian Genocide to that in Rwanda

October 5, 2015 By administrator

Montreal’s Teesri Duniya Theatre is presenting its offering directed by Liz Valdez and written by playwright Rahul Varma. The play is called State of Denial and explores a very painful and often forgotten part of the history in the 20th century, the Montreal Rampage reports.

The play links the Turkish-denied Armenian genocide of 1915 with the 1995 genocide in Rwanda, connecting them through the Canadian diaspora experience. When Odette, a Rwandan-born Canadian filmmaker, travels to Turkey to investigate stories of genocide and hidden identity, she interviews Sahana, an elderly and respected Muslim woman who has devoted her life to assisting Armenian survivors. On her deathbed, Sahana confesses a chilling secret that challenges a long-standing state of denial that Odette promises to make public at any personal cost.

In the words of the Director Liz Valdez, “This is incredibly important at a time when we all seem to be so aware and informed, and yet here are these moments in history that most people don’t know anything about. Moments that actually lead to other moments in history. The truth that I had no idea of the similarities between what happened in Turkey in 1915-18 and the holocaust. How? Why? How did we not see it happening again when Hitler came to power? And since then, happening over and over in different horrific ways and for different reasons.”

“History has been written by victors who have the power to exclude what they do not wish the public to know. So learning about history is important, but history constitutes the background – the research that goes on is about peoples’ lives. Learning what history did to people tells us more about history,” playwright Rahul Varma (founder of Teesri Duniya Theatre) said in an interview with Sinj Karan of the Montreal Rampage.

“If we had learned from the Armenian genocide, we may have prevented the Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda and many other genocides,” he said.

“Today, the role of an artist is not to revisit history but to allow the public to learn important lessons from it, so horrible acts of history are not repeated. State of Denial is presented to draw attention to, and the elevation of, human misery and to create a world of diminished violence,” the playwright said.

The fictional State of Denial is derived from multiple true stories from the research project, Life Stories of Montrealers Displaced by War, Genocide and other Human Rights Violations housed at Concordia University. Varma affirms, “The stories of elsewhere are Canadian stories affecting all citizens. They go beyond biography and facts, revealing truth while instigating further inquiry. My aim is to address global issues locally.”

Guest Review: ‘The Cut’ A story of love, human frailty, and genocide

October 2, 2015 By administrator

By Rebecca Romani kpbs.org

Guest blogger Rebecca Romani says Fatih Akin’s new film “The Cut” (opening this weekend at the Ken Cinema) may be one of the best feature films yet on the Armenian Genocide.

German-Turkish director Fatih Akin may say he didn’t intend his new film to be a “genocide film,” but Akin’s “The Cut” may well be one of the best films yet to address what befell the Armenians living under Ottoman rule between 1915 and 1918.

A beautiful and somewhat sprawling film, “The Cut” is a deeply felt, compassionate piece, just right, for this, the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Armenian massacres, also known as the Armenian Genocide. “The Cut” joins a bare handful of films on what is one of the least commented upon modern massacres of the modern era.

Little known to many Americans, but much discussed in Europe, what happened to the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire concurrent with World War I, is generally considered the first genocide of the 20th century by many nations (Turkey and the U.S. are two of the exceptions). Starting in April of that year, the Ottoman Empire systematically deported and murdered between 800,000 and 1.5 million of its Armenian subjects over the course of about three years. Thousands more fled the empire, and the Ottoman State seized property and lands as well as Armenian children made wards of the state.

The Armenian solution was graphic and brutal and provided the blueprint for similar actions like the Holocaust, the Bosnian massacres and what is happening to theYazidi in Iraq today under ISIS, also known as Da’esh.

It is against this background that Akin’s “The Cut” follows Nazaret Manoogian (Tahar Rahim), a young Armenian blacksmith living a comfortable life in Ottoman Mardin with his beautiful wife, Rahel (Hindi Zahra), twin daughters, and an extended family. The year is 1915, and the new leaders of the Ottoman Empire, The Young Turks, have made secret and not so secret plans to rid the empire of its non-Turkoman people, especially the Armenians.

The Ottomans begin rounding up Armenian men like Nazaret as conscripts, only to use them to build the railroads as slave labor. Nazaret and his friends are slated be finished off by Turkish brigands and convicts, when the Ottoman Army is done with them, but at the last minute, a Turkish convict allows his hand to slip, merely piercing Nazaret’s neck instead of slicing his throat. Later, the convict, Mehmet (Bartu Küçükçaglayan), doubles back to save Nazaret, and together, they evade the Ottoman Army.

Saved, but now mute, Nazaret searches for his family on a journey through the horrors of the Armenian “refugee camps” in Ras-al-‘Ayn to the safety of a Muslim Syrian’s soap factory turned refugee sanctuary in Aleppo. Along the way, Nazaret, a devout Christian who wears an Armenian cross tattooed on his wrist in memory of his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, will lose his country, his people and his faith. He will learn why his sister-in-law is no longer able to see God as merciful, and he will be told of the fate of most of his family — like hundreds of thousands of Armenians — deported in death marches toward the Euphrates, raped, beaten, shot, or left to die. All have perished but his twin daughters.

Their fate becomes Nazaret’s obsession and his eight-year search for them leads him along the threads of the Armenian diaspora — from the orphanages of Aleppo to the Benevolent Societies of Havana, to the icy plains of North Dakota. What Nazaret finds will break your heart.

A word of caution, while Akin does not indulge in splatter action, the scenes of executions and the death marches are shot with such quiet attention to detail that they feel all the more horrific.

Akin’s last film in his trilogy of “Love, Death, and The Devil” is both an ode to the power of parental love and the moral quandary that is human nature. In his trilogy, Akin sees people as being capable of love, compassion, and horrific cruelty driven by ideology or the need to survive. In “The Cut” not all Ottomans are horrible, and Nazaret is no saint — several times he ignores opportunities to save others in favor of pursuing his dogged quest, nonetheless learning that small mercies can be found in the most unexpected of places. It is against the backdrop of one of the most depraved State-sanctioned massacres that Akin gives the Devil his due.

As a director of Turkish origin, Akin is also reaching across a divide with “The Cut.” Until recently, discussing what some Turkish officials called “The Armenian Question,” could lead to censorship at best, death at worst in Turkey. Hrant Dink, a Turkish-Armenian journalist was killed in 2007, by a young Turkish nationalist. Akin himself has received death threats from ultra right Turkish nationalists. The Turks have steadfastly refused to recognize the massacres, saying, in part, this was committed under the Ottoman Empire, and not an issue of the current modern state. They have yet to acknowledge the deportations, seizure of property, and assassinations. Only recently has the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inched toward recognition and apology.

If Akin is looking back 100 years at unspeakable violence against a population, he is also addressing our times and the current state of affairs in Syria and Iraq. The Armenian Genocide set not only the tone but also laid out the blueprints for similar actions throughout the 20th century. Now, 100 years later, when you see the scenes of forced marches and the Armenian slave girl, you cannot help but think of ISIS and its abuse and enslavement of the Yazidi people and Christian minorities. Akin, himself familiar with being a religious and ethnic minority in Germany, clearly sees the parallels.

Akin wrote the script with Mardik Martin, an Armenian-American scriptwriter, who also co-wrote Martin Scorsese’s “New York Stories” and “Raging Bull.” Martin adjusted the script, adding details. Akin and Martin even named the main character after Haig Manoogian, the Armenian-American film professor who co-produced “Raging Bull.”

And again, this might be part of the issue with the film. By focusing on one person, Nazaret, and peeling back the layers of the fate of the Ottoman Armenians, Akin gives his story a weight and compassion that sheer facts and numbers cannot do. However, if a story like this is not told, when it is finally explored, every detail begs to be let in, there is a need to do justice to the enormity of the event. As a result, “The Cut” loses focus at times and wanders through the landscape.

Akin has engaged in exhaustive research which lends his epic an unusual level of accuracy from the Armenian cross tattooed on Nazaret’s wrist to the streets of Havana. Lest you think the refugee camp scenes are exaggerated, dozens of photos taken at the time show scenes of greater horrific detail and the contemporary reporting out of the region is more graphic still.

If “The Cut” has a major weakness for American audiences, it is because Akin has chosen not to analyze what happened but to let Nazaret the Blacksmith guide the viewer through some of the horrors of the Ottoman solution to the Armenians and the goodness of people. While many Europeans and some Turks already know many of the details of what happened to the Armenians, Americans tend not to, which might make Akin’s film a little less accessible.

Nonetheless, “The Cut” is a beautiful and deeply compassionate film. Shooting across four countries, Akin lenses his scenes in deep focus, beautifully exposed 35mm. His vistas are gorgeous even when you know heartache and tragedy may lie just over the hill. The camera loves the faces of his cast and the bounced lighting and careful use of filters makes even scenes such as when Nazaret’s sister-in-law, Ani (Arevik Martirosyan) is mercifully released from her degraded state in the camps, horrifically beautiful. And the haunting, circling melody underscores Nazaret’s search for information about his daughters, always on the verge of finding them, always coming up short.

However, Akin’s sweeping vistas also stretch out the film a little too long. At a run time of about 138 minutes, much of it spent in the company of the mute Nazaret, the deserts, beaches, and winter plains start to drag on. A more tightly edited journey would allow the film to focus more on Nazaret’s reaction to his surroundings as opposed to endlessly stranding him in a gorgeous tableau.

Akin has called upon a stellar cast, many Armenian and the rest of Middle Eastern descent. The versatile and expressive French Algerian actor, Tahar Rahim (“The Prophet,” “Free Men”) is amazingly supple with his eyes and face once Nazaret is made mute and the shifts in his expression as he watches Charlie Chaplin for the first time deeply underscore the very real tragedies Nazaret has seen. The very talented French-Armenian actor Simon Abkarian does a nice turn as the refugee, Krikor, who has lost everything and unlike Nazaret, discovers the hidden cruelty of the oppressed, while Israeli-Arab actor Makram Khoury, seen recently in “Homeland” and “Miral” brings a weary compassion to his role as Omar Nasreddin, the Syrian soap seller who protects the refugees.

Of all of Akin’s recent films, “The Cut” is possibly his most ambitious and least constructed films. It overreaches in part of the story and leaves some important stones untouched. Nonetheless, it’s a telling commentary on how past can become prologue if not dealt with properly and it is clear from Akin’s portrayal of the brutalities Nazaret witnesses, that Akin is drawing clear connections to today’s headlines from Syria and Iraq. “The Cut” may not be the best film you watch all year, but it may well be one of the most important.

“The Cut” opens Friday, Oct. 2, at the Ken Cinema.See the Ken Cinema website for times and details.

Source: kpbs.org

The lost voices of the 20th century’s first genocide return to Istanbul

October 2, 2015 By administrator

By Matthew Ponsford, see more on CNN

Istanbul (CNN)Francis Alys’ film The Silence of Ani begins with the rustling of wind through a breathtaking city that now lies in ruins. In the ancient stone, we see eagles carved out, and slowly a melody of birdcalls rises to crescendo — revealed to be the sound of flute whistles played by children darting between the debris.

The artist behind the film, Alys, says he worries it is “too poetic.” If he had time to do it again, he might make something more critical: his starting point, after all, was a genocide in which more than a million Armenians were massacred.

The notes accompanying the film, currently on display at this year’s Istanbul Biennial, tells us that these ruins were once Ani, one of the most technologically impressive cities of the medieval world, and the capital of an Armenian Kingdom that stretched from modern day Armenia into eastern Turkey.

Ani, silent since the 17th century, speaks of a more modern absence: of the Armenian populations across Turkey who were killed and deported by Ottoman forces in 1915, and of a catastrophe whose name it is forbidden to teach in Turkish classrooms.

In Istanbul — where the film is among a spate of works that confront the Armenian Genocide on its 100th anniversary — the poetic optimism of the birdsong sounds out against a backdrop of government silence.

Artist Kristina Buch’s installation at the Istanbul Biennial also draws inspiration from the ruins of Ani

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has steadfastly refused to recognise the massacres as a deliberately orchestrated genocide. Yet works at the exhibition by contemporary artists of Armenian descent — Sonia Balassanian, Hera Buyuktascıyan, and Sarkis (real name Sarkis Zabunyan) — as well as Belgian-born Alys, Iraqi-American Michael Rakowitz, and Lebanese-born Haig Aivazian, among others, have formed a rising chorus of opposition in the heart of the country’s largest city.

The biennial’s curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev has made recognition of the genocide and Armenians’ cultural legacy a major theme of the event (which takes place in locations across Istanbul until 1 November).

Erdogan currently faces mounting pressure from international leaders to recognize the genocide as a deliberate campaign orchestrated by his country’s Ottoman Empire ancestors — and Christov-Bakargiev believes art can alter the course of this political debate.

In the biennial’s opening address, she said she chose to become a curator, in part, because “I feel that art has a possibility of shaping the souls of people, transforming the opinions of opinion leaders who are then in a trickle-down effect shaping what will be the policies of government.”

Alys and Rakowitz, an American conceptual artist of Iraqi-Jewish descent, who currently works in Chicago, explain why and how they took on this monumental issue.

Michael Rakowitz: The Flesh Is Yours, The Bones Are Ours

Michael Rakowitz‘ installation The Flesh Is Yours, The Bones Are Ours takes place on the third floor of a primary school for Greek children which closed in the 2007, due to a lack of students, as the once-great Greek population of Istanbul dwindled to few thousand.

It is one of many exhibition venues linked to Istanbul’s ethnic minorities which force visitors to confront the city’s non-Turk communities — other events take place in the former offices of Armenian newspaper Agos, an Italian school and workers club, and a French Orphanage.

Here, across a whole floor of the school, he lays out a complex narrative, born out of his own extensive research. It weaves together the city’s architectural history: a mixture of European baroque and art nouveau, Islamic and Levantine styles that mingle in the interior of the city’s historic buildings.

Visitors can take in the collected objects — plaster casts, newspaper clippings, photos, letters, bones of slaughtered dogs, the remains of Armenian farms — in any order they wish.

They learn the story of Kemal Cimbiz, the real-life Turkish apprentice of an Armenian master craftsman, Garabet Cezayirliyan, who made plaster decorative motifs that still line ceilings across Istanbul.

When giving Cimbiz over as an apprentice to his master, his parents told Cezayirliyan, “The flesh is yours, the bones are ours” — a traditional Turkish saying, meant to convey that the teacher is granted the right to influence their child. Rakowitz says his project started with photographs of the atelier in central Istanbul headed by Cimbiz– now 76 years old and still working in the city.

“Almost as soon as Carolyn [Christov-Bakargiev] showed me these images of this atelier, I immediately understood that also, as a city, it was these Armenian fingers and hands that were creating these motifs on the building that were bearing silent witness to the trauma in the past 100 years. And it was almost like this architectural seance, where these citizens that were forcibly forgotten, were able to come back in.”

Rakowitz says 1915 interested him because “it’s one of those moments that nation building gives way to a certain kind of amnesia”. As the Ottomans attempted to modernise at the start of the 20th century, and build a Turkish nation, the Armenian minority — among other groups — were stripped of land, property, and aspects of their distinct cultural history, he says.

“I was interested in the fact that Armenians have contributed so much to the creation of the city of Istanbul: visibly the architecture, but also the Turkish language — the alphabet was actually created by an Armenian [Hagop Martayan, first Secretary General of the Turkish Language Association]. The architect named Mimar Sinan, the author of the Mosque of Suleiman [Istanbul’s largest mosque] was also of Armenian origin.”

“And there’s all these beautiful things. But then you, or I, as a researcher, immediately became confronted with these very violent moments in appreciating all the beauty.”

“Amid whispers in 1935 that the architect Mimar Sinan was Armenian, Turkish nationalists exhumed his body and they measured his skull to try to prove that he was an ethnic Turk and not an Armenian. And then the skull ‘mysteriously’ disappeared.”

Cimbiz’ story mixes with various other strands — the story of how Ottoman officials rounded-up 60,000 stray dogs and exiled them to the island of Sivriada in 1910, and how their bones were ground to make plaster, the same material Armenian craftsmen used to decorate the modernizing city

Rakowitz past projects have included reintroducing ancient stone carving techniques to areas of Afghanistan where the Taliban destroyed giant 6th century stone Buddhas in 2001 — and much of his work deals with cultural erasure, and how endangered or extinct crafts link us to our past.

This installation explores the way “a people’s narrative is often taken away from them,” he says, “and the way the Turkish Republic has negated the history of the genocide and has refused to deal with it or acknowledge it.”

“It’s one of those episodes that is a very foundational moment in the way that the 20th century happened, and the way that the 21st century is happening.”

Francis Alys: The Silence of Ani

Belgian-born, Mexico-based Francis Alys says he had “a little bit” of knowledge about the massacres before he began working on this project, which he’d picked up from fellow artists who belong to the Armenian diaspora (Armenian descendents reckoned to number up to 10 million worldwide — three times the current population of Armenia.)

But the nine months between being invited to contribute by Christov-Bakargiev and the launch of the Biennial unfolded quickly, with 56-year-old Alys editing his film until late on the night before opening. Four months were spent researching: reading and watching everything he could find, from both Turkish and Armenian perspectives.

Alys in Ani

“I had to kind of squeeze it.” he says. “And it’s maybe the reason why the end result is a ‘fable’. I stayed within the frame of something that is not a historical approach it’s a much more poetic approach. If anything maybe too poetic, within the circumstances. But it’s what came out over that short time.”

By “too poetic” Alys says he worried about a quote by German theorist Theodor Adorno that says writing poetry after the horrific events that took place at Auschwitz would be “barbaric” — that a person could not do something so uncritical and naively beautiful after such a massacre.

“The scale of the tragedy is tremendous. You can’t help but feeling a certain anger. If I have one regret it’s that I could have been a bit more critical, a bit more aggressive in my response to the Armenian Question.”

Alys spent a week with the children who appear on the stark black-and-white film, discussing the performance and their understanding of the events of 1915. Filming was supposed to take place over half the week, but they were kept indoors by poor weather until the final day.

The children were recruited from a primary school near the ruins of Ani, in the eastern Anatolia region of Turkey and, Alys discovered, most are members of the Kurdish minority. Kurds were resettled in the area after the Armenian exodus, and in recent years have themselves been victims of social discrimination and violence. Since 1984, Turkish forces have suppressed an insurgency by pro-independence Kurdish fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (P.K.K. which is designated a terrorist organization by Turkey and the United States), in a conflict centered on eastern Anatolia that has so far killed 45,000.

The birdwhistles used in the filming of “The Silence of Ani”

But among this group, living in a once-Armenian region, there is a startling lack of knowledge of the genocide, Alys claims. Turkish guidebooks scarcely mention its Armenian history, he says, and one must learn to recognize Armenian names to find the remains. At the end of filming, one student “came out” as Armenian, says Alys, to the surprise of his classmates.

“The more I was reading about the many massacres… the more I was completely shocked by the events,” Alys says. “I found out about the way history has been twisted, to the point that the kids we worked with had no idea about what really happened.”

“We’re talking about a case of rewriting history that has been extremely efficient.”

Betül Tanbay: Turkish Intellectuals Who Have Recognized The Armenian Genocide

October 1, 2015 By administrator

By: Hambersom Aghbashian

Betül Tanbay (born 1960) is a Turkish professor of mathematics at Bogaziçi University, Faculty of Arts and Science, Department of Mathematics-Istanbul, Turkey. She holds a B.S. in Mathematics, from Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, (1982), M.S. (1984) and Ph.D.(1989) degrees in Mathematics, both from University of California, Berkeley. Her areas of interest are Functional Analysis, Operator Algebras and Set Theory and has published books in mathematics.(1) Betül Tanbay is member of the Raising Public Awareness Committee and of the Ethics Committee of the European Mathematical Society. She is also the president of the Turkish Mathematical Society (founded in 1948). As well as her active scientific career, she is also married with children. (2)
On December 15, 2008, Associated Press Writer Suzan Fraser wrote from Ankara that a group of about 200 Turkish intellectuals issued an apology for the World War I-era massacres of Armenians in Turkey.”My conscience does not accept that (we) remain insensitive toward and deny the Great Catastrophe that the Ottoman Armenians were subjected in 1915,” read the apology. “I reject this injustice, share in the feelings and pain of my Armenian brothers, and apologize to them.” The apology is a sign that many in Turkey are ready to break a long-held taboo against acknowledging Turkish culpability for the deaths. Historians estimate that, in the last days of the Ottoman Empire, up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks in what is widely regarded as the first genocide of the 20th century. Armenians have long pushed for the deaths to be recognized as genocide. Betül Tanbay was one of the intellectuals who signed the apology. (3)
The temporary exhibition titled “Armenian Genocide and Scandinavian Response” was opened on November 6, 2012, in Copenhagen Royal Library. The Turkish government demanded the Royal Library to open “an alternative” exhibition. And in response to the official statements that it was agreed, a group of Turkish citizens–including academics, writers, former members of parliament, and mayors–have signed an open letter to the Royal Library, in which they have mentioned” By giving the Turkish government the opportunity to present an’alternative exhibition’ you support their policy of suppression and intimidation. The support that you are extending to a regime that has made opposition to confronting history and denial of the truth a fundamental principle is equivalent to supporting a regime of apartheid. We want to remind you that your support constitutes an obstacle to democratization efforts in Turkey today.” Betül Tanbay was one of the signees. (4)
On September 30, 2014, The Armenian Weekly wrote “Turkish scholars, artists, and writers harshly condemned primary and middle school textbooks that are replete with anti-Armenian rhetoric in Turkey, and demanded that the books be pulled from circulation.” the signatories wrote, “After immediately pulling the ‘History’ and ‘History of the Turkish Revolution’ textbooks from circulation, apologies should be issued to all students, particularly to Armenian ones. As we approach 2015, the road to Turkish-Armenian peace that we long for passes through here.” The textbooks portray Armenians as traitors who plotted with foreign enemies to tear apart the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, and as mass murderers of innocent Turkish and Muslim women and children while Muslim men were waging a war of survival. The textbooks, all published over the past few years and approved by a special commission of Turkey’s Ministry of Education, are also mandatory in Armenian schools in Turkey. Two newspapers in Turkey, Agos and Taraf, had published a series of articles by Taner Akçam on the anti-Armenian hate-filled rhetoric in Turkish textbooks earlier in September. Betül Tanbay was one of the signees of the statement. (5)
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1- http://www.math.boun.edu.tr/index.php?option=com_content&task=section&id=26&Itemid=321
2- http://www.europeanwomeninmaths.org/women-in-math/portrait/betul-tanbay
3- http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_wires/2008Dec15/0,4675,EUTurkeyArmenians,00.html
4- http://www.genocide-museum.am/eng/19.12.12.php
5- http://armenianweekly.com/2014/09/30/textbooks-vilifying-armenians/

Spanish city of Silla recognizes Armenian Genocide

September 30, 2015 By administrator

YEREVAN. – Spanish city of Silla has officially recognized the Armenian Genocide.

The decision was unanimously made during the meeting of the municipality council on Tuesday, Armenian Foreign Ministry reported.

The motion was presented by Valentin Mateo who briefed the participants on the causes and consequences of the first genocide of the 20th century.

Silla has joined other Spanish cities that have recognized the Armenian Genocide.