Where do we start really?
Is it Bruce Jenner transgender confessions on ABC Network that drew 18.5 million viewers or the solidarity nail painting for Bruce Jenner campaign that followed drawing fans from Australia to the United Kingdom?
Or Kim’s wedding to Rap Maestro Kanye West , subsequent birthing and actual aspirations for more or the babies, the baptizing of baby North in Jerusalem or the Kardasians new $80.4 million four year television deal in February or the entrepreneurial sisters penchant for the good life and the true love that truly exist in the family.
What could be more smoothing than a family that truly loves it members and show it to our faces and we actually pay to watch them do it!
Well, welcome to the Kardasian clan reality party where everyone is a star. It all began with Bruce’s Olympic gold medal win in 1976. What a feat. Suddenly, every kid in America wanted to be Bruce Jenner.
Beneath the glitz and glamour, you can only realize that this feat is only possible today in America.
To the hard fact, this nation of immigrants has provided safety and sucour for millions of people of different convictions, orientation and identity who managed to step their feet on its shores over the generations.
The Kardiasians are half- Armenians and a bright part of the ten million strong Armenian Diaspora flung across the world in counties as Iran, the United States, Russia and much of Europe.
Ten million strong Diaspora is three times the population of the country itself.
Yerevan, Armenia: 24th of April reminded us once again the bestiality that exist in this world of ours.
What drove ethnic Armenians out of their homeland, which is part of modern Turkey today, exactly one hundred years ago?
Let us believe the Turks for once on this.
April 24, 1915. It was the in the reign of the Sultans. The Ottoman Empire was festering in it glory as was the Persian Empire a few regional blocks away. Official account mentioned an ‘incident’ which led to the death of thousands of people across the country.
Official count: None.
There is no official statement of the sanctioning of this mass murder by the ruling sultanate.
Official disposition: internal rumbling of the politics of the great empire lead to the death of thousands.
However, according to history, eye witness and survivor accounts; this was the pre-mediated murder of millions. Prisoners had been released from Jails for this purpose; State institutions, the police and army were corralled into this.
On the morning of 25th April 1915, about four thousand intellectuals of Armenian descent were marched to their death, summarily executed at the orders of the ruling overlords.
From that point onwards till about 1920, there was no redemption, mass murder and executions across the Armenian landscapes, forced dispossession and deportations. Between 800,000 and 1.5 million Armenians we killed within a pace of 3 years.
It truly have been a tragic moment for survivors. Those who could, fled the murderous regime to Tehran, Ukraine, Syria and The Lebanon. Those who could not were shot and killed. They had amazing faith, strength, courage, moral values and perseverance. They always had hope for better days.
At the end of the day, a whole ethnic nation was in tatters, gasping for breath in the face of the deformed identity.
Today, as the world comes to terms with that happenings on the edge of Europe, it calls it the first atrocity of the 20th century.
The present day Turks would have us believe it was an accident, desperately going at extreme length to convince us that it was no genocide on their part.
But it is good to have persons like his eminence , the Pope Francis call the ‘incident’, a genocide weeks before the date, angering the Turks but giving voices to the hidden Armenians who have for the most part borne this injustice with silence and grief.
The question to ask is: what is wrong with a people in this case, the Turks who have refused to recognize their past and make responsible atonements?
For the most part, the Armenians have moved on from those dark ages.
The nation has flourished, within and in the Diaspora. “If you have a scab, a sore, and you keep picking at it, it will never heal, and that’s the sad part of Turkey, they are hurting themselves by not acknowledging,” said Dr. Hajinian, the dentist from Wisconsin. “But for the rest of the world and for us, we know in our hearts what happened. We don’t need the acknowledgment of Turkey for our healing.”
The denials of genocide by Turkey roils politics in Asian Minor and beyond. The border between Turkey and Armenia is firmly shut in what amounts to an economic barrier for the entire region, and Armenia remains officially at war with its other Turkic Muslim neighbor, Azerbaijan, over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.
This piece of history has stunted Turkey, a NATO ally emergence as a regional hegemony of some sort in Asia Minor.
As Gevorg Tonoyan, 60, an elevator technician from the United States said: “Whatever happens, we will not forget. We will come; we will honor our victims, our martyrs.” The world will not forget.
The souls of the departed seek redemption and rest. It is time for Turkey to give them rest. Acknowledge these crimes and experience national redemption.
Some of the mourners expressed seething anger at the Turks. Sona Ghazaryan, 63, a religion teacher, said, “Only at a time when our neighbor apologizes, washes their bloody hands and gives us back our treasures” could there be reconciliation.
“How can you be neighbor with someone if they have a dagger and wants to stab you in your back?” she said.
By now, with the facts well established, it is largely a semantic debate that Turkey seems to be losing. And even some people in Turkey have called for recognition and reconciliation given the increasingly settled world opinion.
The Ottoman genocide of 1915 should not be viewed in isolation. Same going goes for the massacre and ethnic clenching seen in Rwanda in the 1990’s and today in parts of South Sudan, Darfur and Iraq.
The actions of those in power , no matter how long it takes must be put in perspective and view critically with the knowledge of hind sight.
While we had hoped that there will be no repeat of the atrocities of the past, Vigilance is required. Vigilance is the price of freedom. We should carefully review and vet the aspirations of nation states, the actions and accounts of those in control of state power especially when they constitute an ethnic majority.
Even today in the same view, we will not view kindly, the current Russian misadventure in The Ukraine. Actions committed in that region of the world amount to a diatribe against a people and a defined nation state.
In the new order of things, such actions should not be tolerated nor condoned.
I stand with the Armenians on this. May your lives be long and the memories never forgotten.