SKOKIE, Ill.—The largest academic conference ever held focusing on the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek genocides concluded on Sat., May 11, after two days of presentations by more than a dozen scholars from Armenia, Australia, England, and across North America.
The event, titled “The Ottoman Turkish Genocides of Anatolian Christians: A Common Case Study,” was organized by the Armenian National Committee (ANC) of Illinois, the Assyrian Center for Genocide Studies, and the Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center, and was held at the prestigious Illinois Holocaust Museum and Educational Center in Skokie on May 10-11. With more than 120 participants each day, the conference was filled to capacity with an enthusiastic audience.
“There was a great deal of new and interesting research presented during the conference,” said ANC of Illinois activist Greg Bedian. “This conference clearly demonstrated the many shared aspects of the Greek, Assyrian, and Armenian Genocides and helped to drive home the concept that these three tragic events were conceived by the Turkish government to destroy the native Christian population and all traces of their existence from Anatolia.”
Prof. Hannibal Travis
The conference was opened by master of ceremonies John Davis, an Emmy award winner and long-time reporter and anchorman for CBS affiliate WBBM-TV in Chicago. In his introductory remarks, Davis thanked the many sponsors, volunteers, scholars, and participants for their contributions and for making the conference a reality. He then introduced Skokie Mayor George Van Dusen, who spoke about the significance of the conference being held at the Holocaust Museum. Mayor Van Dusen was followed by Greek Consul General Ionna Efthymiadou, who congratulated the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek communities for coming together to organize the conference, and encouraged the scholars to continue their research into the Ottoman Genocides.
Davis then introduced conference moderator George Shirinian, the executive director of the Zoryan Institute of Toronto. Shirinian’s introductory remarks focused on the importance of these types of conferences in the advancement of genocide research, and provided an outline of how the conference would proceed. He then opened the first session of the conference by introducing Dr. Paul Bartrop, the director of the Center of Judaic, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies at Florida Gulf Coast University. Bartrop presented the topic “Considering Genocide Testimony: Three Case Studies,” and discussed the importance of survivor memoirs as a historical resource, presenting examples from an Armenian, an Assyrian, and a Greek survivor. He noted that while historians sometimes view survivor accounts as unreliable due to trauma and bias, they often contain valuable details about massacres, and sometimes are the only accounts available of particular events.
Following Bartrop was Stavros Stavridis, a Ph.D. candidate and historical researcher at the Australian Institute of Macedonian Studies, who joined the conference via Skype.
Dr. Steven Leonard Jacobs responds to a question from the audience, as noted author Thea Halo looks on.
Stavridis’s presentation was titled, “The Assyrian Issue 1914-1935: Australian Documents and Press.” He reviewed how the Assyrian Genocide was reported on in the Australian press, as well as how the thoughts and actions of various government and private individuals impacted policy, based on documentation he had researched in the National Archives of Australia and the collections at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
The final speaker of the opening session was Dr. Anahit Khosroeva, a senior researcher at the Institute of History at the Armenian National Academy of Sciences, who spoke on “The Assyrian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire,” discussing the massacres of Assyrians, and Christians in general, as a continuum from the time of Abdul Hamid to the Young Turks and into the Republican period.
The Friday afternoon session was opened by Dr. Hannibal Travis, associate professor of law at Florida International University College of Law. During his presentation, titled “Cultural and Symbolic Reparations of the Ottoman Christian Genocide: From Memorials to Restitution of Historic and Sacred Sites,” Travis discussed the destruction of the culture of the victim group that accompanied the physical killing inherent in the Ottoman Genocides. As part of his discussion of restitution of cultural monuments, Travis contrasted the approaches and outcomes of the renovations of the Holy Cross Church in Aghtamar and the St. Giragos Church in Diyarbakir.
The next speaker was Dr. Robert Shenk, professor of English at the University of New Orleans. Speaking on the topic “American Women, Massacres, and the Admiral: Deep in Anatolia during the Turkish Nationalist Revolution,” Shenk described the devastating role American Admiral Mark Bristol played in the post-war period as America’s chief diplomat in the area, and how despite pleas from numerous female American missionaries and even his own officers, he placed the interests of American commerce ahead of protecting the remnants of the Christian populations in Anatolia from ongoing destruction, censoring reports of massacres from information relayed back to Washington. Shenk praised the women missionaries for their bravery, working in a foreign and often savage land, with no guarantees for their physical safety.
Moderator George Shirinian and Dr. Paul Bartrop.
Thea Halo, author of the book Not Even My Name, then spoke on the topic “The Genocide of the Ottoman Greeks 1913-1923: Myths and Facts.” Halo challenged some common assumptions often used to discount the brutal treatment of the Greeks during the period of the Great Catastrophe and offered valuable alternative views regarding Greek irredentism based on the Megali Idea and the role of King Constantine I in protecting Greeks under Ottoman rule. Prof. Ellene Phufas then closed out the first day of the conference by sharing an excerpt from her translation, along with Aris Tsilfidis, of These Are the Turks: First-Hand Accounts from the Slaughter of Nicomedia, the first book of Greek Genocide survivor accounts that was collected by journalist Kostas Faltaits and published in Greek in 1921.
The second and final day of the conference began with Davis opening the program with welcoming remarks, after which he invited Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) National Board Chairman Ken Hachikian to address the conference. In his comments, Hachikian emphasized that the ANCA has been able to make important strides in its lobbying activities because “we have the truth on our side.” He added that the research like that being presented at the conference played an important role in helping to make that truth better understood. Following Hachikian’s comments, Davis asked Shirinian to take the podium and open the third session of the program.
After brief comments Shirinian introduced Georgia Kouta, a Ph.D. candidate at King’s College in London, England, to present her paper titled, “Redeeming the Unredeemed: The Anglo-Hellenic League’s Campaign for the Greeks in Asia Minor.” Kouta discussed the role of the Anglo-Hellenic League in London in shaping Western public opinion and British policy on the Ottoman government’s treatment of its Greek minority. She described how the League, which was comprised of both Greek and British members, collected valuable documentation on the atrocities through Greek and non-Greek eye-witness reports, church and newspaper accounts, and published pamphlets to raise awareness of the atrocities.
Kouta was followed by Steven L. Jacobs, associate professor and Aaron Aronov Endowed Chair in Judaic Studies at the University of Alabama. Jacobs gave an interesting presentation about the writings of Raphael Lemkin, the author of the word “genocide” and the father of the UN Genocide Convention. He described Lemkin’s incomplete and unpublished three-volume history of genocide, and described Lemkin’s treatment of the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek Genocides.
Greek Consul General Ionna Efthymiadou
The Saturday morning session was concluded with a presentation by Dr. Tehmine Martoyan on “The International Legal Qualification and Liability of Smyrna’s September Tragedy.” In her presentation, Martoyan examined the possibilities of applying the legal term “genocide” to the destruction of Smyrna in September 1922. She reviewed evidence of the premeditated nature and implementation of the extermination of the Armenian and Greek populations of Smyrna, as well as the destruction of their homes and businesses that aimed to prevent the survivors’ return.
The fourth and final session of the conference opened with Dr. Gevorg Vardanyan of the Armenian Genocide Museum & Institute in Yerevan, Armenia, presenting his topic, “The Ottoman Genocide of the Armenians and Greeks: The Similarities and Structural Peculiarities.” Vardanyan pointed out that there were many common elements to the genocides of the Greeks and Armenians, including the methods used for organizing the massacres and the organizers themselves. Pointing out some of the major differences in the two genocides, Vardanyan noted that because of geography and demographics, the Kurds, who had played a significant role in the Armenian Genocide, were generally not involved in the Greek Genocide. He also noted that because of their proximity to Greece, many of the Greeks in Eastern Thrace were deported or escaped to Greece as opposed to being killed outright, like their Pontian and Armenian counterparts.
Professor Dikran Kaligian of Worcester State University spoke on the ”Security and Insecurity in the Ottoman Armenian and Greek Communities, 1908-1914.”
Participants during a presentation by Dr. Dikran Kaligian.
Kaligian described how the restoration of the Ottoman Constitution had provided a brief period of hope and an improvement in the personal security for the Armenians and Greeks living in the empire. He then traced various events that began to endanger those reforms, including the impact of the counter-revolutionary uprisings, the Balkan Wars, and the evolution of the Young Turk movement from its liberal Ottomanist orientation toward a chauvinistic pan-Turanist direction.
Dr. Gevorg Vardanyan of the Armenian Genocide Museum and Institute
The final presentation of the conference was provided by Dr. Suren Manukyan, a Fulbright Scholar on Sociology of the Armenian Genocide at Rutgers University and deputy director of the Armenian Genocide Museum and Institute in Yerevan. Manukyan’s topic was “Cultural Preconditions and Process of Social Indoctrination: Socio-Psychological Dimension of the Ottoman Genocides.” Noting that the ability to participate in mass murder is not an inherent human characteristic, he described how the state conditioned the Ottoman-Muslim population to be able to murder the Christians through propaganda via the mosques, by altering the legal system, and other methods. He contrasted the Armenian Genocide with the Holocaust, pointing out that many Armenians met violent deaths, sometimes at the hands of their neighbors, rather than in the more industrialized concentration camps.
The conference proceedings will be published in the near future.