The Armenian genocide: more than history

German recognition of the 1915 genocide might have implications for Armenia’s “European” future. But Russia, Turkey, and Azerbaijan hold captive its present.

Bells rang 100 times in the Berliner Dom and in the Koelner Dom, the principal churches in Germany, at 19.15pm Armenian time on Thursday (23 April).

They also rang in Armenian churches in Europe, the Middle East, in the US, and in Etchmiadzin - the seat of the Armenian Catholic Church in Yerevan, where thousands of native and diaspora Armenians came together on the eve of the 100-year anniversary of Turkey’s campaign to exterminate the Armenian people.

It was the first European genocide of the 20th century and a direct precursor of the Holocaust.

Germany, the Ottoman Empire’s ally in WWI, sent officers to study Turkey’s methods and used them in WWII.

German president Joachim Gauck on Thursday referred to the events as “genocide” despite Turkish pressure. The Bundestag is expected to follow suit on Friday.

It’s more than the EU foreign service, the UK, or the US are willing to do, for fear of alienating the West’s “strategic ally” in a sensitive region.

Germany risks more: Trade relations aside, it’s home to 3 million Turks and Ankara warned Berlin it risks civil disorder if it goes ahead.

It might sound like a matter for academics.

But it comes amid questions over Armenia’s political future: Will it stay in the Eurasian Union, Russia’s counter-EU bloc? Will it stay locked off from Europe behind closed borders with Turkey over its conflict with Turkey’s ally, Azerbaijan? Or will it, one day, go back down the road of EU integration?

Armenia’s U-turn

Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan caused shock on 3 September 2013 when he said he’ll join the Russian union instead of signing an EU association treaty.

He did it under duress.

Russia, Armenia’s security sponsor, had threatened to side with Azerbaijan, to impose economic sanctions, and to make life hard for ethnic Armenians in Russia.

Sargsyan later said the Eurasian Union is unlikely to last and that he’ll rebuild EU relations in better times.

He repeated the message to the European Commission and to German chancellor Angela Merkel i at the last meeting of centre-right EU leaders in Brussels in March.

He also told them, Armenian diplomats say, that wider EU recognition of the genocide will help incubate pro-EU sentiment in Armenian society.

EU diplomats see him as an opportunist who is more interested in retaining power than in Armenia’s well-being.

“Sargsyan recently abandoned the protocols [an Armenia-Turkey peace accord] not because of any Turkish actions. He did it because he wants to make Turkey look wicked at any price and to make himself look like a statesman who can win international sympathy for the Armenian cause,” an EU contact said.

“Symbolic acts [like German recognition] have no power to bring Armenia closer to the EU without the association treaty”, he added.

“The treaty would have given us real leverage to transform the country”.

Other elements corroborate the EU analysis.

A second Armenian government source told EUobserver in Yerevan on Tuesday that if the EU wants to win Armenia’s loyalty it should also force Turkey to unilaterally reopen the border and it should recognise the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenia-controlled territory claimed by Azerbaijan.

Both conditions are wildly unrealistic.

But Sargsyan’s other message - that the 1915 genocide is a bedrock of Armenia’s European, as opposed to a “Eurasian”, identity - rings true.

Armenian identity

The Armenian church, on Thursday, in an ornate ceremony at Etchmiadzin, canonised all 1.5 million of the Ottoman Empire’s victims.

Its pope, Karekin II, told the crowd that Armenia, the first country to adopt Christianity as a state religion, is the cradle of European culture.

He noted that it has lived, for centuries, in isolation in a “difficult” region, but that it’s waiting, with “patience”, to join a united Europe.

Gevork, a 24-year old Armenian priest, told this website: “We are making them [the genocide victims] into saints because they’re martyrs who gave their lives for Christianity … they were told to renounce Christianity if they wanted to live, but they refused”.

“Armenia is a Christian nation and a European nation”.

“If the world recognises the genocide, then those who perpetrated it will be forced to do the same, and if they do it, it will make it less likely to happen again”, he added.

His words highlight why 1915 is part of Armenia’s contemporary politics.

In contrast to Germany’s reconciliation with Jewish people, Turkish aggression could reignite despite the passage of time.

The conflict with Turkey’s ally, Azerbaijan, saw another deadly skirmish on the Nagorno-Karabakh contact line on Wednesday.

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan i, a populist whose ruling party faces elections in June, also scaled up his inflammatory rhetoric.

In a speech on Thursday in Istanbul he mocked the genocide solemnities, saying: “They [the Armenians] will play and dance on their own on April 24”.

For her part, Dana, a 65-year old US-born Armenian novelist, who came to Etchmiadzin, echoed Gevork.

“[US president] Obama is stupid: If the US and the UK, like the rest of Europe, recognise the genocide, it would leave Erdogan without any allies unless he does the same”.

Celebration of life

Despite the security concerns, world leaders’ strategic calculations were far from people’s minds on Thursday, however.

The Etchmiadzin event took place in an atmosphere of celebration rather than hostility.

Armenian children played on the grass under giant video screens which showed testimonials from genocide survivors, while Karekin II said the canonisation has transformed “victims” into “patron saints … of peace”.

The scene jarred with Sargsyan-sponsored billboards in Yerevan.

One image showed a Turkish fez as a pie chart with a black segment representing the dead. Another one showed gore-stained “tools” - sickles and rifles - of the killings.

Developments in Turkey also belie Erdogan’s intransigence.

He forbid churches in Turkey to ring bells at 19.15pm.

But Turkish civil society held an Armenia memorial in Istanbul on Thursday and Turkish liberals are to hold a peace rally in Taksim Square in the city centre on Friday.

The Hrant Dink Foundation, named after a Turkish-Armenian journalist who was murdered in 2007 by a Turkish nationalist, also brought Turkish newspaper and TV media to Etchmiadzin.

“It doesn’t matter if they use the word ‘genocide’ or not. The important thing is that there is coverage of the event in Turkish households”, a member of the NGO, who asked to remain anonymous, told this website.

Nanee, a 24-year old French-born Armenian, whose relatives fled to Iran in 1915 and who now lives in Turkey, agreed.

“Of course recognition is important, also in terms of reparation claims”, she told EUobserver.

“The atmosphere in Etchmiadzin is a celebration of life. But I can assure you, that when I visited the genocide museum [in Yerevan] yesterday, I could hardly bear it. I had to leave”.

But she added: “What’s more important to me, though, is that Armenian and Turkish people learn to understand each other, learn to live together in future”.