IAGS SESSIONS ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

Roger Smith (College of William and Mary)

Four sessions were devoted to discussion of the Armenian Genocide. Richard Hovannisian opened the conference with a wide-ranging and insightful address entitled "Ninety Years after the Armenian Genocide." Why remember the Armenian Genocide? Why is it still relatively neglected? How is it possible to achieve justice ninety years later? What would it consist of: acknowledgment? Return of land? Should genocide scholars, in this and other cases, attempt to shape policy, combining academic inquiry and political advocacy?  Also, there are many unresolved issues about the Genocide: when did it begin (1870s, 1890s, later)? Was the killing of 1915 planned in advance? Then there is the question of how to teach about the Genocide? How, for example, does one teach children about it, and when?  How does one avoid causing fear or turning children toward prejudice?  Professor Hovannisian concluded his talk with an expression of appreciation for the recent efforts of some Turkish scholars to further understanding of the Genocide. 

A roundtable on the keynote address included comments by Taner Akcam, Yair Auron, Simon Payaslian, Rubina Peroomian, and Richard Hovannisian. Some of the issues discussed were education, the importance of remembrance, the context of the Genocide, which included destruction of Assyrians and Greeks, the seeming inability of the international system in the last 100 years to prevent genocide, and the problem of denial.  A lively debate ensued with the audience on issues of denial, other genocides committed during World War I (or whether they were genocides), and why genocide has seldom been prevented.   

A later panel returned to the issue of the Pontic Greeks and Assyrians. The ethnic cleansing and population transfers that were begun before 1914 were finished by Ataturk after 1918, and involved many deaths, though this is seldom recognized.  Also more attention needs to be paid to the violence against Muslims and the ethnic cleansing that took place in the Balkans prior to 1915.  How does this connect to the killings of 1915 and later?

Also in this session, Tigran Sarukhanyan suggested that British naval and military plans were so inept that they helped to facilitate the destruction of the Armenians.  Finally, Nikolay Hovhannisyan charted the rise of a scientific study of genocide, rooted in the analysis and comparison of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust. He sees this as still the basis of contemporary genocide studies.

The most unusual panel, however, was that chaired by Stephen Feinstein, in which four Armenian artists displayed examples of their art and spoke about how and why they have chosen art as a means to confront the Genocide. Some of the work shown was that of paintings, others photographs of large installations. All saw themselves as artists, not historians, but all do research on the genocide and attempt to avoid anything false in their representation. One of the artists, Dionne Haroutunian, began with depictions of the genocide, but gradually moved on to connect it with other violence, including war and political repression. Despite their subject matter, her paintings are oddly beautiful.