People around the world paused to commemorate Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day on Tuesday, a remembrance of the more than 1.5 million Armenians who were systematically exterminated between 1915 and 1923 under the Ottoman Empire.
Thousands of people marched in Los Angeles, home to one of America’s largest Armenian communities, to demand recognition of the genocide. Yet in his commemorative statement, Trump only went as far as describing the events as a “mass atrocity”:
Today we commemorate the Meds Yeghern, one of the worst mass atrocities of the 20th century, when one and a half million Armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in the final years of the Ottoman Empire. We recall the horrific events of 1915 and grieve for the lives lost and the many who suffered.
By international law, genocide is defined as an “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Although Trump’s statement recognizes the tragedy that took place, it missed an important detail, widely recognized by scholars, historians, and other experts — that what took place was not indiscriminate massacres, but a planned act of genocide.
This refusal to describe the events as a genocide is based on the U.S’s fear of upsetting the Turkish government, which vehemently denies allegations of genocide. Yet the U.S. is not alone. As of 2018, just 29 countries worldwide have officially recognized what happened in those years as a “genocide.”
Their stance is in stark contrast to a country like Germany, which has made the utmost efforts to heal the wounds of the Holocaust through commemorations and reparations. Meanwhile, Turkey continues to deny many of its crimes and even persecutes those who demand its recognition.
When former President Barack Obama came to power in 2009, he promised the more than one million Armenians living in the United States that he would recognize the genocide, although, like many of his foreign policy promises, it never materialized.
Yet recognition of the genocide remains an important conservative issue. The Armenian genocide was the first Christian genocide of the twentieth century and led to the displacement of millions of people from their Biblical homelands.
To this day, Turkey controls vast swaths of Armenian territory, while many of its Armenian inhabitants have been forced to convert to Islam. Christians are systematically persecuted, particularly those living in Kurdish territories. One recent example is the continued detention of American evangelical pastor Andrew Brunson on what appear to be phony terror-related charges.
Trump has styled himself as a defender of persecuted Christians around the world, and recognition of the genocide would go a long way to reinforcing his image as a protector of Christians in the Middle East.
A failure to recognize the past also serves as a partial endorsement of Turkey’s denial, under an Islamist regime whose leader Recep Erdogan has shown increasing aggression towards America with the threat of an “Ottoman slap” against U.S. troops in Syria.
Danny Tarkanian, an Armenian American endorsed by Trump in his race in Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District, has urged Trump to “set an example for the rest of world by formally acknowledging what truly happened.”
“If we are to prevent the worst of human tragedies from occurring, the world must recognize genocide and call it what it is,” Tarkanian told Breitbart News. “Adolf Hitler used the Armenian Genocide as a justified precedent for his atrocities against millions when he said, ‘Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?‘”
Clearly defining past genocides is important to holding modern genocidal actors accountable. In 2016, former Secretary of State John Kerry rightly acknowledged that the Islamic State had committed acts of genocide against Assyrian Christians and Yazidis in Iraq and Syria. Yet why couldn’t the same recognition be given to Armenians?
Since coming to office last year, Trump has demonstrated considerable boldness with foreign policy issues ranging from North Korea to officially acknowledging Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Now, it is time for his administration to show further strength by acknowledging the tragic history of one of America’s most loyal immigrant communities.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on June 2, 2016
The Turks always shout and threaten when someone wants to acknowledge the facts of history: that one and a half million Armenian Christians were the victims of Turkish Ottoman genocide in 1915. But did Sultan Erdogan really think that Germany – of all nations – would choose to be a Holocaust denier?
Well, the German parliament has voted by a quite extraordinary majority to declare the Armenian genocide a genocide – which the whole world (except, of course, for the Turks) knows it to be. There were the usual menaces to Germany – a danger to cultural/trade/military “ties” – from the government in Ankara and flocks of vicious e-mails to German MPs, but the parliamentary resolution rubbed in the fact that Ottoman Turkey was an ally of Germany when it perpetrated the atrocities and that Germany itself did not do enough to stop the genocide.
Poor Angela Merkel – who still prays that Sultan Erdogan will stand by her Operation Bribery campaign and keep back the refugees from the EU for a whopping €3bn and an offer of visa free travel in the eurozone – chose to stay absent from the vote. So did her vice-chancellor and her sad foreign minister, who would not have voted for the motion anyway. The greatest irony – utterly ignored by all politicians and journalists – is that the refugees and migrants whom Europe is now so frightened of come, in many cases, from the very towns and deserts in which the Turks committed their acts of horror against the Armenians 101 years ago.
The skulls and bones of Armenians still lie in the sands south of the Turkish border which Isis now controls; and when al-Nusrah captured parts of Deir ez-Zor, they blew up the Armenian cathedral of the Syrian city, took the bones of genocide victims from the vaults and scattered them in the streets. Several German officials who witnessed the original genocide went on to use their ‘expertise’ during the Jewish Holocaust in the Nazi occupied Soviet Union. And Hitler, preparing to invade Poland in 1939, asked his generals: “Who…is today speaking of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
Needless to say, we saw the usual weedy fence-sitting by the news agencies (especially by those with offices in Ankara and Istanbul) who emphasised the Turkish denial of the genocide and the “hotly disputed” nature of an international crime against humanity which – were those same agencies writing of the Jewish genocide – they would rightly never dare to ‘balance’ by quotations from deniers.
France and Russia and at least 18 other nations now accept the Armenian genocide as a fact of history, along with good old Pope Francis – the only major exception being the one whose name we would all guess: the US. An almost annual visit to Washington by a coterie of Turkish generals is usually enough to bring the White House to heel. Doesn’t America need those important air bases in south-eastern Turkey from which the US wages war against Isis (and from which, speak it not, Turkey now wages war against Kurds)?
But thank God, once more, for Germany. Here was one vote for which the country would be certain to snap obediently to attention.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on May 14, 2015
And he is the third member of the band “”, representing Armenia in the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest with “Don’t Deny.” Born and raised in Ethiopia, he will represent the continent of Africa in the project.
Vahe Tilbian is an Armenian-Ethiopian artist with an enthusiastic and bright character. He has a unique style: from rock to techno, from reggae to R&B, from Armenian to Ethiopian, and all that mixed with a lot of Latin music. This blend of cultures expresses Vahe’s personality and makes him stand out as an exclusive artist and a passionate dancer.
Genealogy will be uniting the new generation of Armenians spread through 5 continents (Europe, Asia, America, Africa, and Australia) around the world in the year of 1915. The group consists of 6 artists with Armenian origin – 6 destinies with 1 story.
An Armenian Artist from Africa
While Vahe was born and raised in Ethiopia both his parents are of Armenian origin. Vahe heard the call of the stage as a singer only after he graduated from University of British Columbia in Vancouver. After working in the business sector for over three years as a young college graduate, Vahe left his job in 2008 and started working in music full
He joined the band Z Beyaynetus and soon, Kenny Allen, performer and producer from DC residing in Ethiopia, heard him at one of the local bars and asked to sing backing vocals for his album release show with the 251 Band. Shortly afterwards Vahe decided to diversify his genre and repertoire joining a salsa band called Eshee Havana and worked on original remixes of Ethiopian songs into salsa music. In 2011 he reached the final auditions of Big Brother Africa.
Vahe wrote the lyrics to his first song called Life Or Something Like It in 2010. This gave him the enthusiasm and courage to write more songs. In November 2012 Vahe released his first album titled Mixology. In May of 2013 Vahe released Yene Tizita, a new rendition of the an old Ethiopian style of song.
A graduate of the Vancouver University, Canada, Vahe began demonstrating a serious interest in music upon obtaining his bachelor’s degrees in biology. He commenced as a senior tenor in the choir “The Motley Singers”.
The young singer’s first song, “Life or Something Like it”, was released in 2010. In 2012, his single “Don’t Stop” won the third place in the Armenian Pulse Music Award.
Later the same year, he completed the disc “Mixology” which was released for free.
In 2013, the singer released the song Yene Tizita (Nostalgia or Memories), which was a reproduced version of an old Ethiopian prototype. Its director and producer are Aramazd Kalajian and Mulugeta Amaru.
For the past two years, Vahe has been the soloist of Zemen Band. He has collaborated with singers Zeritu Kebede and Michael Belayneh, and the Nubian Arc Band. The ethnic Armenian singer has also been a back vocalist and first concert performer for Abby Lakew, Nhatty, Tsedenya Gebremarkos, Eyob Mekonnen and Shewandagn Hailu. He has performed concerts with Oliver Mtukudzi and Vee and Liz Ogumbo during tours in Ethiopia.
Vahe has been a correspondent for the Ethiopia-based Zoma Magazine; he can freely expresses his thoughts in Armenian, English, Amharic, Italian and French.
The young singer now intends to release two more discs, of which one will be completely Armenian, while the other will feature the Ethiopian musical culture, at the same time presenting a mix of equivalent elements.
The Eurovision 2016 semifinals are due on May 19 and 21. The final concert will take place on May 23.