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On Genocide Remembrance Day, Armenians Told To 'Overcome Trauma' Of 1915 Mass Killings

Tsitsernakaberd memorial in Yerevan - 20 September 2017 (Aleksey Chalabyan)

April 24, 2024

By RFE/RL's Armenian Service

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian urged Armenians to “overcome the trauma” of the massacre of their ethnic kin by Ottoman Turks more than a century ago and stop yearning for their “lost homeland” as they marked the anniversary of the Armenian genocide on April 24.

Pashinian said the enduring trauma prevents many Armenians from objectively assessing international affairs and challenges facing Armenia.

“Maybe this is also a reason why we get new shocks, reliving the trauma of the Armenian genocide as a legacy and as a tradition,” he said in a statement as tens of thousands of people marched to the Tsitsernakaberd memorial in Yerevan to commemorate the genocide.

The daylong procession followed a wreath-laying ceremony at the hilltop memorial led by Pashinian, Parliament Speaker Alen Simonian, and President Vahagn Khachaturian. Catholicos Garegin II, the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, who has increasingly been at odds with Pashinian’s government, was again excluded from the ceremony.

The genocide began on April 24, 1915 with mass arrests of Armenian intellectuals and activists in Constantinople, now Istanbul. An estimated 1.5 million Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire were massacred or died from starvation in the following months and years. About three dozen nations, including Russia, France, Germany, and the United States, have recognized it as genocide.

Pashinian’s statement came amid Yerevan’s ongoing rapprochement with Ankara. Armenia recently said Yerevan seeks full normalization of relations with Ankara, including the opening of their border and the establishment of diplomatic ties. Their strained relationship stems from their differences over whether the killings were a genocide, a distinction Turkey has vehemently rejected.

Pashinian’s choice of words could risk more opposition allegations that he is helping Turkey deny that the 1915 events were genocide. He frequently used the Armenian phrase Meds Yeghern (Great Crime) in reference to the events of 1915 and did not condemn the regime of the so-called Young Turks that ruled the Ottoman Empire during World War I. He said instead that Ottoman Armenians “became victims of geopolitical intrigues and false promises.”

The commemoration of the genocide “should symbolize not the lost homeland but the found and real homeland, the Republic of Armenia, whose competitive, legitimate, thoughtful and creative policies can preclude a repeat [of the genocide,]” Pashinian said.

Armenians should speak the phrase “never again” only to themselves, not as an accusation but as a point of view that puts Armenians “in charge of our own destiny,” he added.

Earlier this month, a senior Armenian pro-government lawmaker allied with Pashinian, Andranik Kocharian, called for “verifying” the number of the genocide victims, saying Pashinian wants to “make the entire list of compatriots subjected to genocide more objective.”

The remarks sparked uproar from Armenian government critics, civil society figures, and genocide scholars. They accused Kocharian of echoing the Turkish narrative that the number of Armenians who died was lower than the 1.5 million estimated and that the cause was not a premediated Ottoman government policy.

Kocharian said the following day that it was his personal opinion rather than the Pashinian government’s position and denied casting doubt on the Armenian genocide. Opposition leaders dismissed the explanation, continuing to accuse Pashinian of planning another far-reaching concession to Ankara.

Pashinian’s wife, Anna Hakobian, was jeered by several dozen people when she visited the Tsitsernakaberd memorial later on April 24. The hecklers, who apparently included opposition supporters, chanted “Genocidal Nikol!” and “Nikol the Turk!” as Hakobian and one of her daughters surrounded by bodyguards laid flowers by the memorial’s eternal flame.

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