The trauma of the genocide against Armenians in Turkey during World War I weighs heavily on modern-day Armenia. It is a raw wound, kept open by the failure of the Turkish Republic even to acknowledge it, let alone apologise for the huge injustice heaped upon the Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire. During visits to Armenia, the topic inevitably comes up. The country’s border with Turkey is closed, its relations with its neighbour far from normal. The genocide is a tragic page in Armenia’s long history which it seems cannot be turned.
I visited the Genocide memorial and museum in Yerevan in September 2017. The memorial was completed in 1967, following a huge demonstration in Yerevan on 24 April 1965 to mark the 50th anniversary of the start of the genocide. Such outpourings of national sentiment were rarely tolerated in the Soviet Union, but this time the authorities bowed to the popular feeling. The memorial sits on a hill overlooking the city, and consists of three main elements. Along the approach to the monument is a 100-metre long wall, on which are the names of the towns and communities whose Armenians were deported and massacred. The centre of the memorial consists of 12 inward-leaning basalt slabs forming a circle, with an eternal flame in the centre, commemorating the victims of the genocide. The 12 slabs represent what Armenians consider to be their 12 lost provinces in present-day Turkey. Nearby, a 44-metre high spire symbolises the survival and rebirth of the Armenian nation, but a fissure represents the tragic disbursal of the Armenian people by the genocide.
It is a solemn and dignified memorial, a fitting monument to the tragedy of the victims. A visit to the memorial is now part of the itinerary for foreign delegations. Nearby are trees planted by foreign heads of state and dignitaries who have been there. While I was there, two groups of visitors, dressed in formal clothes, solemnly walked along the path to the memorial, before standing quietly, heads bowed, around the flame, and then leaving flowers. No words were spoken. None were needed. It is difficult adequately to express feelings about such events, not a tragedy, but the wilful destruction of a people in a land they had inhabited for millennia.
The museum was opened in 1995. A subterranean construction, it tells the story of the genocide in photographs and explanatory texts, as well as artefacts from the time. It begins with exhibits about the life of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire before the genocide, a thriving community with schools and commercial enterprises and a rich cultural life. Photographs of successful businessmen, of happy, optimistic school children. Exhibits evoke the life of those times. The label of a lemonade brand is in four languages, Turkish, Armenian, Greek and English. Postcards marking the Young Turks revolution in 1908 have inscriptions in Turkish, Armenian, Greek and French. At the time, many Armenians shared the optimism of their Turkish compatriots.
The story them moves on to earlier massacres of Armenians in the late-19th and early 20th centuries. Each year, the genocide is commemorated on 24 April, because that was the day in 1915 when Armenian intellectuals and other prominent members of the community were arrested, prior to being murdered. As such it marks the beginning of the genocide. But state-sponsored terror against the Armenian community did not begin in 1915. The images of the events in 1915 and the following years tell a harrowing story. Even for people who are already well-informed about the genocide, walking through the museum, looking at the photographs, reading the accompanying texts, is deeply affecting. The pictures of wasted people, starved, in rags, hardly able to stand. Of corpses left by the side of road. Of ranks of children, orphans, having survived the death marches across Anatolia, but having lost all that they knew and loved. It cries out for atonement. But from Turkey, denial.
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