MEMORYBREAK BEDROS DAĞLIYAN
Türkçe
MEMORCIDE BEDROS DAĞLIYAN People have a memory that is compatible with the place they live in. Therefore, every person does not and cannot forget the places they live in, their house, their street, the religious buildings they worship, even the plots they play in, the trees they climb and rest in their shade… Even the wall they engrave their name on, the old objects they use are their memory. A part of this memory has been passed down to them from their elders, along with their history. The expression memoricide, which means memory destruction, belongs to Mirko Grmek, and the UN explains this term as the deliberate destruction of cultural assets in war, in a way that cannot be justified as a military necessity. Since the foundation of the Republic, the rapid Turkification of the names of places, lands, mountains, rivers, plains and plateaus and their alienation from the peoples who lived there have always been on the agenda. This is how the alienation of Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, Kurds, Laz and Georgians from the places they live has been ensured. Holocaust is a word of Greek origin and comes from the word ‘Holokaustos’. It was used for the Hebrew word ‘Olah’, which means an offering to God after being burned in fire. Thanks to the Holocaust, which was given the meaning of holiness, memory museums began to be created. So much so that the objects used by the massacred people, the films, clothes and songs that inspired them took their place in those museums; they began to be used as methods of getting rid of trauma by remembering. Every conscious person knows that only by remembering can pain be eliminated and the experience that forces hatred can be purified. So much so that this pain is a situation that poisons the entire society… The systematic elimination of a nation, racial or religious group or the destruction of it in a way that it cannot continue its cultural existence is called ‘genocide’. The crime of genocide emerged when Raphael Lemkin learned about the destruction the Armenian people had suffered in 1915 and researched it, and included the massacre of the Jewish people by Hitler's Germany during World War II. So much so that on December 9, 1948, he had the UN accept the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. However, the concept of crime against humanity was first seen in the declaration of the Allied Powers dated May 24, 1915. Later, at the Paris Peace Conference held in 1919 after World War I, the term "crime against human rights" was used by the state as a meaning indicating serious incidents committed against a part of its own population. France, Britain and Russia informed the Ottoman State of their stance in their declarations dated 1915: All members of the Ottoman Government, as well as their officials, who are found to have been involved in such massacres will be held responsible. The Convention on the Non-Application of Statutory Limitations for War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, adopted in 1968, determines that even if this crime is not considered a crime according to the laws of the State that committed it, it will not be subject to the statute of limitations. During World War I, many German officers trained their allies and fought alongside them, and were even present when these crimes were committed. In 1939, when the German armies attacked Poland, Hitler said: “Who remembers the Armenians today?” After the end of the Balkan Wars, the Ottoman Empire was no longer just an Asian territory. At this time, a group put forward the ideology of Pan-Turkism in order to revive the roots of the Turks in Asia. This ideology, which immediately found supporters among the intellectual class and the bourgeoisie, grew rapidly. In 1914, on the eve of the war, the Young Turk Party called on Armenians, Georgians and Azeris to unite and rebel in order to be able to carry out an uprising in Russia. This proposal was rejected in Erzurum. Meanwhile, Russia entered the war and sent Armenian soldiers from its own people to the Austria-Germany Front. With the Russians entering the Armenian Region of Turkey, the Ottomans had the opportunity to implement Pan-Turkism. The Armenian issue would be resolved. According to the plan, first the intellectuals, politicians and soldiers in the army were resolved. All politicians, deputies, musicians, writers and poets who could establish a state were first taken into custody and sent to an unknown fate. Thus, the memory of a nation was destroyed. According to P. Thibad, this deportation and massacre includes more than this idea. It is also to evaporate, to make one lose one's direction and to destroy one's memory... Even the dead no longer exist, they have no grave. So much so that they have never lived or even existed. Every Armenian is anonymous from that date on. This is exactly where denial becomes an accomplice to the crime. The rest comes as soon as a sock is untied. The names Armenian, Greek and Assyrian have been erased from life, science, literature and even music listened to. Churches, historical buildings, schools have all been either destroyed or looted. Isn't that exactly what is being done in Diyarbakır Suriçi; to make people forget and then ignore it... Now, all minorities, including me, are trying to get over this trauma. We are just writing, telling We say that we are telling this primarily to ourselves. For years, we could not even tell anyone, not even to ourselves. We kept silent like Gomidas. We did not produce anything about our old history… We only existed with our art. We kept so silent that it was as if we were not living. No minority did business with the state for years. They did not take office in any level of the state, they were not allowed to. They did not become officers, district governors, governors or even muhtars. Every Armenian had a different baptismal name and a different name in their business life. We could not live ourselves. Wasn’t my name in my business life Bedri? Writing plays the role of a funeral, says Michel de Certeau, it banishes death by including it in its discourse like a devil. It defines a past by drawing its boundaries and makes it the place of death. The word is now a grave for those who have no grave… Now, each line of my poem is a grave for a massacred Armenian. I tell you and myself about that pain, so as not to forget and not to be forgotten… In fact, when the oil-rich Mosul Region was left in exchange for Iraq under British protection in 1924, the Armenian Homeland request accepted in Lausanne in 1923 and the request for amnesty for all crimes committed between 1914-1922 ended without being published. After that time, the people who were saved, the children, told everything they remembered, wrote it down and shared it in films. Armenian Lands now consisted of the memories of every Armenian, Assyrian and Greek. How can this sentence tell the pain: For years, Kurds tried to tell what they lived in this country, and Armenians tried to tell what they died, and this is still going on…
