Armenian Genocide: Past grievances should be forgotten.

I think past violent conflicts shouldn’t be remembered. In most cases, past human atrocities were caused by deep hatreds that were never settled by different groups of people. Such memories of hate usually are deep rooted within societies because people won’t let go of them. I, being an Armenian, have no intention of keeping the memories of my ancestors. Yes, the Turkish government systematically carried out a genocide that killed around 1-1.5 million Armenians in 1915. Yes it was terrible event, but how beneficial would it be to keep these memories intact in present times?

Armenia is economically very dependant to its neighbors in trade which is a big political obstacle because it’s biggest neighbor being Turkey itself. Still today, Armenians have relentlessly tried to force the Turkish government into recognizing the genocide.

Do you think annoying the Turks with past events will help Armenia in anyway? No, it will just make matters worse and it has. European countries like France have recognized the Armenian genocide with the agenda of gaining political capital by French Armenians as well as a good excuse to stop entry of Turkey in the European Union with the pre-condition that they will not enter until they apologies for the acts committed. On the other hand, countries like USA and Israel (a nation that itself suffered from genocide) do not recognize Armenian genocide and even go to lengths that it didn’t even happen, reason being both of these are strong allies with Turkey.

The present Turkish government has no blame on this issue, and what it probably fears is that any kind recognition will lead to money lawsuits which do not help the victims; neither do they help to heal relations by both groups. Giving people financial restitution is an insult to the victims. That’s like putting a price on a human being.

Oddly enough, Jewish groups did exactly that with the German government and settled for billions of dollars in return for German exemption of future accusations. Norman G. Finkelstein, a Jewish author, wrote about this issue and greatly emphasized that one injustice has now lead to another. In this case, Jewish lobby that carried out the lawsuits have used most of the money not to help the victims overcome their grievances and compensate for their losses, but rather use it to fuel the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

These are not healthy memories; these are memories that are stretched out, blown out of proportion and used as political tools to advance similar agendas. Best evidence yet is Rwanda, where ethnic tensions by Hutus and Tutsis, which was in the first place an artificial social constructed hatred since colonial times, led to massive killings in short amount of time. A genocide was committed because of “Je me souviens” which is a Quebecor expression all too familiar with Canadians.

Yet in times of great faults, selfishness, cynicism, there are examples that should be recognized and remembered. My best example would be after the fall of the apartheid white government of South Africa and the empowerment of the majority black population. After years of torment, persecution, degradation and humiliation of blacks by the white government and police, did the newly established black government stage vengeance for past atrocities towards the whites? Did it chant the death of every white folk? No, it did not. Rather what they did is setup a “truth & reconciliation” committee where they asked any white man that committed any kind of crime against a black to voluntarily come up and apologies, and then go scot free. Yes, the power of forgiveness does seem to exist and it’s times like these we should never forget. Our memories should not haunt us, but to help us to better ourselves.

Update: Armenian Genocide documentary by PBS video here.