1999_12 Hye Sharzhoom Newspaper December 1999

              December 1999
Hye Sharzhoom
5
Commentary — What Makes an Armenian an Armenian?
By Hasmik Khalachyan-
Canas
Staff Writer
Can a person be only one-
half Armenian? Which
side would be the Armenian side, the left or the right? If the
left side is the Armenian side, would
that make the right arm and right
leg the odar(non-Armenian) side?
Further more, how can a person be
one-quarter or one-third Armenian ?
I don't know about you but I have
never seen one-third of a person
walking down the street. As for the
term odar, who thought of it? As if
the world consists of Armenians
and others (what ever they may be).
Is a full-blooded Armenian better
than a partial-blooded Armenian?
Is there such a thing as a full-
blooded Armenian? All these questions boil down to the question of
what an Armenian is.
Some may think that if your
parents are Armenian, then you are
also an Armenian. I do not agree
with this statement. There are many
individuals who are the product of
two Armenians, but do not even
themselves consider them to be Armenians. Then what is an Armenian? I believe that an Armenian is
a person who is educated about
Armenia and Armenians, a person
who is active in the Armenian com
munity (wherever he or she may
live) and is involved in Armenian
issues. There are many individuals
who are not full-blooded Armenians, but are more educated and
involved with Armenian
issues than those who are
full-blooded Armenians.
There is no logic in
judging a person by what
their parents are because obviously that person is a separate individual from his or
her parents. The issue about
the location of one's birth is
also not a factor in determining whether one is an Armenian or not.   I, for example,
was born in Yerevan, Armenia, and both of my parents are
Armenian, but that is not what
makes me an Armenian.
An overwhelming majority
of my life has been spent here in
America, but I have always been
surrounded by a large Armenian
community. I have never lost my
language and continue to speak with
my family in Armenian. I have
also maintained the basic Armenian culture through a variety of
means such as church, music,
dance and of course, Armenian
food. Being an Armenian is also a
continuous learning process, not
only about one's culture, but about
the world because one thing affects
another. There is a lot I still don't
know about Armenians, but I am
learning.
What about an individual who
does not come from two Armenian
THERE     IS    NO
have a son that many call a half-
Armenian because my husband is
not an Armenian by biological definitions. His father was Arabic and
his mother is El Salvadoran.   A
mathematical
definition of
my son would
be considered
50 percent Armenian, 25 percent
Arab and 25 percent
El Salvadoran, but I do
not think that is the case.
My son, Razmik, is
only two and a half
years old, but he
is fully immersed   in
three separate and converging cultures. He is a
balanced tri-lin-
gual (Armenian, Spanish and English).   He
speaks with me in Armenian, to his father in
Spanish   and   to  his
FO R /A. LA LA American friends in English. There is no confusion in languages.
Sometimes
illustration by Hasmik Khalachyan-Canas
Razmik will also translate for
parents? Does that make them less
of an Armenian? I don't think so. I
us if we do not understand something.
There is a terrible myth, and I
emphasize myth, that an individual
must sacrifice one language for another. This is not true. There are
many linguistic studies done that
prove that a child who is a balanced
bilingual is more cognitively advanced than a monolingual child of
the same age. There is no such
thing as a limited amount of room
in the brain for language. Razmik
knows the alphabet and counts in
all three languages. He is accepted
and involved in all three communities. I do not think of him as less
than a full Armenian, full American and full El Salvadoran. Does
that make him three different
people? Idon'tthinkso. Razmik is
just one of many multicultural individuals like him.
I think that it is vital that we
judge individuals as individuals
without referring to biological or
mathematical formulas for a definition of someone that is standing
in front of you. An individual is an
individual and that is always more
than just the sum of his or her parts.
A person is one whole person; they
should not and cannot be divided
into parts, which will not function
without each other. Armenianness
is a spirit that can be inherent within
anybody without any biological explanations.
Scholars Discuss Adana Massacres of 1909 at Fresno State Conference
By John Jabagchourian
Staff Writer
Four scholars specializing in
Armenian history presented
papers on various issues surrounding the Adana massacres of
1909 at a conference sponsored by
the Armenian Studies Program, Ar-
.menian Students Organization and
Armenian National Committee of
Central California. The conference titled, "The Armenian Massacres of Adana (1909-1999): Ninety
Dr. Dickran Kouymjian
photo by Michael Harutinian
Years Later," was held at California State University, Fresno on Oct.
9, 1999.
"It is important to realize
history is not just the past, and in
fact it is this tragedy of Adana that
has had a tremendous impact on the
Fresno community years later," said
Luis Costa, Dean ofthe College of
Arts and Humanities, who opened
the conference.
The speakers of the conference were Aram Arkun, a specialist in modern Armenian history
from New York, Dr. Vahram
Shemmassian, Principal of the
Merdinian School in Los Angeles,
Hilmar Kaiser, a researcher and
specialist on the Ottoman Empire
from the European University Institute, Florence and Dr. Gregory
Goekjian, Professor of English at
Portland State University.
Topics covered the general
background and precursors of the
massacres, the effects of the massacres on the Armenian populated
regions surrounding Adana, the
politics that drove the victim relief
efforts and arguments ofthe Turkish denial of these events now 90
years later.
The Adana region was a rich
agricultural area in the Ottoman
Empire. A large, booming and
industrious city, Adana was home
to many Armenians and a temporary home to many migrant workers. In April of 1909, 30,000 Armenians were killed, others tortured, raped and abducted, homes
and shops looted and destroyed,
farms pillaged, tools and equipment damaged and churches
burned. And this after a'hew constitution was ratified in the Empire
that was to relieve Armenian fears
after the murderous and tyrannical
massacres of Abdul Hamid II in
1894-96.
"Of the tradition of Armenian massacres and Genocide, and
what a terrible tradition it is, [Adana
lies] in the middle and is the one
that is the most forgotten," said
Dickran Kouymjian, coordinator of
the conference and Director of the
Armenian Studies Program at
Fresno State.
Aram Arkun was the first
presenter and said, "It is very important to understand the whole
series of events that took place in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries." He brought forward a number of emerging con
flicts between the Armenians and
Muslims as the new democratic
constitution replaced the old regime ofthe Sultan and gave power
to the Committee of Union And
Progress (CUP).
"The new [local] branches
of the CUP formed in Cilicia frequently included notables and opportunistic pillars ofthe old regime
working for their own personal interest," Arkun said. Armenians
grew dissatisfied with the new regime as it looked more and more
like the tyrannical one of the Sultan.
Further problems of the
Empire created dissatisfaction on
the part of the Ottomans with the
new regime and rumors were spread
that Armenians were responsible
for this state of affairs. Tension
arose among Armenians and Muslims on the eve of April 9th when
the massacres began.
According to Dr.
Shemmassian, "The Armenian
presence at the turn of the century
in Northwest Syria constituted an
extension of the larger Armenian
habitation of Cilicia to the north."
He showed how the massacres
were not confined to Adana but
spread to the surrounding regions
affecting four major Armenian
concentrations of Alexandretta,
Beylan, Antioch and Jisr el-
Aram Arkun
photo by Michael Harutinian
Dr. Vahram Shemmassian (left) speaking with
Mr. Sarkis Sahatdjian.
photo by Bazlow Der Mugrdechian
Shughur. This resulted in the
murder of 15,000 Armenians.
The aftermath of the massacres
left the surviving Armenians destitute and brought many international relief agencies to the area.
Hilmar Kaiser discussed the politics behind relief and suggested
that these agencies were in competition. "Relief efforts are possibly more directed by political ends
than by the need ofthe sufferers,"
he said.
"Nice people have their own
agendas and ideologies," Kaiser
continued. According to him much
of those agendas and ideologies
were to gain a sphere of influence
in the Ottoman Empire, and relief
was an investment for future endeavors, like abusing relief money
and building institutions like hospitals that otherwise could not be
built.
D r .
Goekjian
raised many
aspects of
Turkish denial
of massacre
includingcall-
ing it an Armenian massacre of the
Turks. "The
Turkish position attempts
to make the
Armenians
aggressors
when in fact
they were the
victims,"
Goekjian said.
"Turkish
rhetoric is that
although Armenians were
the ones who died in the massacres,
Turks were the real victims," he
added.
Dr. Goekjian provided a
number of facts that demonstrate
these claims are wrong and unsupported. He also warned ofthe Turkish attempt to make the Genocide
of 1915-1922 just another "massacre" and to justify this position by
the same reasoning.
"Adana is the best example
ofthe difference between massacre
and Genocide," said Goekjian, defending his position that there was
See Adana Conference, Page 7