On Sunday April 12, H.H. Pope Francis has made an unequivocal declaration naming what he wanted to refer to, by its real name. Armenians suffered the first genocide of the 20th century he said, followed by similar crimes committed by the Nazis and Stalin.
The entire world media received an incredibly powerful wake-up shock by this most simple and sincere declaration of the Catholic Church Pontiff who, by now, has established an unprecedented record of being always at the side of the weak, the poor and anyone who is subject to injustice. He has shown that as a true leader of the followers of Christ’s teachings, for him, compromising truth and justice is not an option differently from many world leaders who so far still hesitate to call a spade a spade.
Most importantly for Armenians, at the very start of the numerous manifestations and events that will mark the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide in the coming few weeks and months, Pope Francis has broken the taboo and paved the way to any and all world leaders, such as President Obama and others, to join his lead and thus propel the movement for the universal recognition of the Armenian genocide to a status where the continuing Turkish denials and historic distortions would be buried deeper and deeper under the weight of Universal Uproar.
However, most crucially important for Armenians at this point, is to be one step ahead of these events, whatever specific shape the latter may take, in order to plan and organize themselves towards taking the next and even much more important step of standing up and putting their demands from Turkey on a legally valid and solid platform.
Indeed the Centennial celebrations will provide, to the enormous material and moral losses suffered by the Armenian Nation during the genocide of 1915, an unprecedented international exposure. We will have missed, however, the main issue that must be the ultimate objective that Armenians must seek at this point, which is our demands from Turkey for retributions.
No doubt, celebrations and markings will warm our hearts and will impress the world. However they will gradually fade away and we will be back at the same point next April 24th…
We need to get the Armenian world organized in the most agile and effective way in order to start talking business with Turkey on legal and financial grounds.
The Diaspora and the government of Armenia must work hand in hand, intelligently and efficiently in order to put all human resources together and get this action off the ground. Besides recovering innumerable properties that have immense moral and financial values, other retributions will amount to hundreds of billions of dollars. This is an extremely serious challenge for us all.
I am not talking yet of demands for our lands. Frankly the latter can only be taken, they are never given…Karabagh is the obvious example of that reality. Inevitably, I believe the time will come for that too. However, we need to be realistic enough to take one big step of demanding all other retributions before issues related to lands are referred to.
In order to conclude, I like to make reference to one particular valuable activity that has taken shape in the last few years, aiming at establishing the foundations of an organization in the Diaspora to help materialize this vital next duty of Armenians for the pursuit of retributions from Turkey. I refer to the Congress of Western Armenians which has had its last general meeting in Paris few weeks back on March 28th-29th , 2015. .
Unfortunately, not enough attention and collaboration has been given to this movement which is aiming exactly to do what I refer to in this article. Rather than finding arguments to criticize the shortcomings of what is being done by this organization, the challenge is to find ways to build on it, join it or expand it and if need be, give it a totally new format in the Diaspora and in Armenia, in order to bring this action for demands of retributions from Turkey to a level such that resistance to it becomes eventually unsurmountable for Turkey, the same way, we hope, its recognition of the Armenian Genocide will become inevitable very soon!
Dr. Arshavir Gundjian
Montreal, Canada, April 13th, 2015.
