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On May 20th dur­ing the Barcelona Fira Lit­ter­ary Book Fair, Pınar Selek will present online on radicalmay.com the Castil­lan ver­sion of her essay Because they are Armen­ian, Le mas­cara de la ver­dad, dur­ing the pro­gram on “Rad­i­cal ideas and books to change the world”.

We are pub­lish­ing here the pref­ace to Pınar Selek’s book, signed by Alex­is Papaz­ian, his­to­ri­an and active mem­ber of the Argen­tin­ian Foun­da­tion Luisa Haraibedi­an as well as the post­face by  col­lec­tif CHARJOUM.

We thank the authors as well as La Libélu­la Verde pub­lish­ing house for their autho­riza­tion in shar­ing with you French and Eng­lish trans­la­tions of these two texts.

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PROLOGUE

Truth beyond masks

Who are we real­ly? This ques­tion could well sum­ma­rize the love­ly book you are now hold­ing in your hands.
How many iden­ti­ties can there be in one body? How many real masks?
How do they affect us, our past sto­ries,  in the present and in the future?
.….….….Or rather
What part of our fam­i­ly’s his­to­ry belongs to us?

The Armen­ian dias­po­ra asks itself these ques­tions and many oth­ers… and Pınar Selek, with deep and sim­ple writ­ing, asks us again, who we are ? What became of Arme­ni­ans? What masks did the Turk­ish State con­struct in order to deny us and deny itself by the same token?

Pınar Selek begins with an imag­i­nary piece of home­work. In this book, a Turk­ish boy or girl declares: “What hap­pened to Arme­ni­ans? Pushed off by the wind, drowned in the seas.” With these words a sto­ry begins, tense, sin­cere and beau­ti­ful in which the nar­ra­tive thread finds cracks link­ing us to Turkey. I think I under­stand that these cracks act as bridges, com­mu­ni­cat­ing ves­sels link­ing us not only to the Armen­ian past, but also to the Armen­ian-Turk­ish-Greek-Kur­dish one…

I write in the frame­work of this Armen­ian dias­po­ra, pushed off by the wind, drowned in the seas… I write from Buenos Aires in Argenti­na, with no pre­ten­tions to being large­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive. I write in order to deci­pher the fine lay­ers left in me by this writing.

pinar selel la mascara de la verdadPınar’s work is a small masterpiece…It is read­ing which allows to think beyond masks and this is cen­tral in under­stand­ing the val­ue of the text.

I would like to focus these few lines on a reflec­tion con­cern­ing the forms of iden­ti­ty ren­dered vis­i­ble or invis­i­ble, accord­ing to his­tor­i­cal con­text and the expe­ri­ences in the per­son­al tra­jec­to­ries of each person.

Begin­ning with an iden­ti­ty in dias­po­ra and, thus, mul­ti­ple. An Armen­ian iden­ti­ty that faces  itself and finds itself sev­er­al times fol­low­ing a trag­ic event: the Armen­ian geno­cide (which is still denied and ren­dered invis­i­ble- but that also goes beyond the geno­cide in order to become a lan­guage, a writ­ing, a reli­gion, a dance, music, art, food and lit­er­a­ture; an iden­ti­ty with points of ori­gin far removed from our dai­ly life. Ori­gin myths, but all myths, mobi­lize us. Where Are­me­ni­an­i­ty is con­cerned we are like splin­ters from the same tree or bet­ter yet, from a same for­est, to which were added new “splin­ters” of new iden­ti­ties: Argen­tin­ian, French, Cana­di­an, Brazil­ian, Russ­ian, North-Amer­i­can, Lebanese…and so on…

So, where are the Arme­ni­ans? A quick answer allows us to “think our­selves” every­where…con­nect­ed by a net­work of dias­po­ra, present, liv­ing, mobile.  Linked also through a State (the Armen­ian Repub­lic) which, like a bro­ken mir­ror, reflects us in a frag­men­tary man­ner, deform­ing our iden­ti­ties and redefin­ing them accord­ing to our prox­im­i­ty or our dis­tance to an imper­fect notion of “nation­hood”… The Dias­po­ra (my under­stand­ing of the dias­po­ra) escapes from it… and where else can Arme­ni­ans be?  In a space so illu­mi­nat­ed that it blinds us, for Arme­ni­ans are there (also), in Turkey, from where they nev­er left.

I allow myself here a brief account of my own experiences.
A few years ago, I vis­it­ed Istan­bul. In that fre­net­ic and con­tra­dic­to­ry city, a series of child­hood mem­o­ries resur­faced. Smells brought me back to rel­a­tives and friends that are no longer there. Games car­ried me to the laugh­ter and a sub­tle feel­ing of being at home. Cof­fee, tea, food, tobac­co, faces… The Armen­ian faces in Istan­bul. Mem­o­ries that were acti­vat­ed thou­sands of kilo­me­ters away from Buenos Aires. Know­ing Istan­bul meant meet­ing Turk­ish his­to­ri­ans inves­ti­gat­ing the Geno­cide, it was under­stand­ing some­thing beyond the Armenian…it was a con­crete, real con­nec­tion in the Armen­ian-Turk­ish-Greek-Kur­dish tie…

I believe in emo­tion­al mem­o­ry as a fac­tor in iden­ti­ty, because this mem­o­ry evokes much more than a sim­ple remembrance.

As Pınar Selek says in her love­ly text, “it was hard for an Armen­ian to be hap­py in Turkey” and that mis­for­tune is root­ed in the fact of being some­thing that can­not be…
Thus, they want to make us say this,
.….….….You can­not be an Armen­ian in Turkey.
You can­not be a Mus­lim in Israel.
.….….….You can­not be a Lati­no in the United-States.
You can­not be an African in Europe…
You can­not be a left­ist in so many places…
You can­not be a woman, a fem­i­nist, trans, gay, les­bian, “odd”…
.….….….Yet, such is the case
.….….…..….….….Luck­i­ly, we are.

In Buenos Aires in Argenti­na, there are also things that can­not be…and Pinar Selek’s book has bro­ken the chain of these prohibitions.

Alex­is Papazian
Buenos Aires, August 2019


EPILOGUE

On April 24 1915, the high­est author­i­ties in the Turk­ish State decid­ed dur­ing the First World War to arrest, deport, then exe­cute over 600 Armen­ian intel­lec­tu­als, artists and activists in Con­stan­tino­ple. This date sym­bol­ized the launch­ing of the geno­cide of which the Arme­ni­ans were the vic­tims. The attempt to exter­mi­nate this peo­ple had in fact begun sev­er­al decades earlier.

If geno­cide is one of the worse atroc­i­ties human­i­ty can inflict upon itself, it is above else a crime. A crime the aim of which is the destruc­tion either of an entire pop­u­la­tion or of a part of it based on its char­ac­ter­is­tics. They were mas­sa­cred because they were Armen­ian. Between 1915 and 1923, over one and a half mil­lion Arme­ni­ans disappeared.

Although this crime takes on the appear­ance of a mur­der­ous mad­ness, it is nonethe­less thought out. A geno­cide takes place as part of a pol­i­cy: it is thought out, ratio­nal­ized, pre­pared. The State launch­es this crim­i­nal project with all its strength using all of its organs, agents, and judi­cia­ry sys­tem. The Geno­cide of Arme­ni­ans is the out­come of a racist and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry pol­i­cy to which Arme­ni­ans were sub­ject­ed and to which were also sub­ject­ed oth­er minori­ties in Turkey. They were slow­ly exclud­ed from soci­ety before being de-human­ized, then exterminated.

The “Young Turk­s’s” par­ty was build­ing a mod­ern State,  one that was eth­ni­cal­ly homo­ge­neous, rid of pop­u­la­tions that went against these nation­al­is­tic aims by the sim­ple fact of their exis­tence. This plan of exter­mi­na­tion formed the basis of the cur­rent Turkey, frac­tured by the rec­ol­lec­tions from a crim­i­nal past and the cur­rent oppres­sions against those oppos­ing the State through their dream of jus­tice and freedom.

The Geno­cide is often thought of in terms of the phys­i­cal dis­ap­pear­ance of a peo­ple, but it is also the destruc­tion of its cul­ture, its lan­guage, its his­to­ry and its beau­ty. Arme­ni­ans pro­vid­ed the life in vil­lages, plains, and moun­tains, on lands in Asia Minor they had occu­pied for millennia.

Today, even the slight­est trace of their pres­ence is will­ful­ly destroyed in Turkey, as if to say that here there is noth­ing and noth­ing ever was.  The Turk­ish State, respon­si­ble for the crimes com­mit­ted, has pur­sued its destruc­tion of the Armen­ian peo­ple through a wide­spread nega­tion­ist pol­i­cy. The dis­crim­i­na­tions and racism that presided over the geno­cide live on under dif­fer­ent forms. It is still because they are Arme­ni­ans that the grand-chil­dren and great-grand­chil­dren of the geno­cide cur­rent­ly liv­ing in Turkey are forced into silence.

In 2015, the cen­ten­ni­al of the geno­cide was a par­tic­u­lar­ly intense time of com­mem­o­ra­tion in Armen­ian com­mu­ni­ties around the world. But that year was also the occa­sion for the return of voic­es bear­ing demands for repa­ra­tions to the Armen­ian people.

This strug­gle look­ing for­ward to the future, is nec­es­sar­i­ly a part of the sol­i­dar­i­ty for all the peo­ples and groups dis­crim­i­nat­ed agains and resist­ing against all forms of dom­i­na­tion. Be they cul­tur­al, social, polit­i­cal, mil­i­tary, reli­gious, and many oth­ers still. Against sys­tems of oppres­sion built by auto­crat­ic, oli­garchic enti­ties of cap­i­tal­ist or impe­ri­al­ist exploitation.

The Armen­ian peo­ple are still shap­ing their own road. Between exile, despair, strug­gle and resis­tance, its tale is that of a peo­ple forged by those who refuse to sub­mit and who fight on relent­less­ly for the right to exist and to obtain justice.

CHARJOUM


Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges
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