Recently, this controversy has flared up again. Andranik Kocharyan, a member of the Armenian National Assembly from the pro-Pashinyan Civil Contract bloc, came up with an initiative to compile a list of all “one and a half million victims of the Armenian genocide”. Needless to say, to do this, Armenian researchers will have to work in the archives of Türkiye. No doubt, he meant well. The Armenian leadership already knows that the stories, or rather, tales about the “genocide” have too few concrete details. It is impossible to convince the international community, especially the scientific community, with horror stories along the lines of “my grandmother told me so”. There are no facts. There are not even mass graves. And if the international public would be presented with the list of names, it would, of course, add credibility… if “one and a half million victims of genocide” had really existed. They do not. And they never did. There simply were not that many Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire.
Consequently, Andranik Kocharyan’s “initiative” gave a serious fright to … the French Dashnaks. Mourad Papazian, member of the bureau of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation “Dashnaktsutyun” and co-chairman of the Coordinating Council of Armenian Organizations of France, squealed: “You see what’s going on, don’t you? Pashinyan is questioning the fact of the ‘Armenian genocide’. We are reminded of Türkiye’s proposal to set up a committee of historians who will review history to determine whether the events of 1915 can be considered genocide or not. This approach is completely unacceptable, the fact of ‘genocide’ is a reality. 30 countries have recognized the ‘Armenian genocide’.”
Papazian most likely simply blabbed his mouth. Dashnaks know very well that, first of all, there is no “one and a half million” victims of the “genocide” and there never could have been. So, any attempt to make a “roll-call list” of the number of victims of the “genocide” inflated without measure has the same effect as poking a balloon with a needle: the myth about “one and a half million” will simply burst. Moreover, Armenian scientists will have to “make a list of names” in Turkish archives. Papazian recalled Türkiye’s proposal to set up a committee for a reason. Ankara opened its archives 10 years ago and encouraged scholars from other countries to work in them. But—and this is the worst part!—the Armenian authorities refused to allow their scientists into the Turkish archives. The first to make such a decision was then Armenian President and war criminal Serzh Sargsyan. And since then, the Armenian authorities have not dared to reconsider it.
Let us be realistic: excluding Armenian historians from working in the archives, where the richest materials on the history of the Armenian nation are collected, is a real crime, first and foremost, against the Armenian people! Armenia simply does not have its own archives to compare to those of Türkiye. There is nowhere to get them. The wealth of archives is closely intertwined with the history of statehood. Even then, this decision was made under the influence of Dashnak ideology. Even today, the Dashnaks continue to keep the Armenian people in the dark about its true history, first of all, with regard to the most painful and iconic pages. Meanwhile, scholars outside Armenia know perfectly well what is fake and what is true.
For example, the current director of the Hermitage, Boris Piotrovsky, son of Hripsime Djanpoladjian, points out with irony: the biblical Ararat is not at all where the residents and guests of Yerevan are being shown. It is not Ağrıdag: the biblical Ararat, or rather Sararad, is located in the Kurdian Mountains, near the current border between Syria and Türkiye. But the Armenian people are simply convinced that the opposite is true. And how many more mega fakes with which Armenians are fed can be uncovered, if scientists start working in the archives of Türkiye. (!)
Today, against the backdrop of the peace process between Baku and Yerevan, when Armenia is beginning to realize the price of its own aggressive policy, paradoxical as it may sound, Armenian society has a chance to cure itself of pseudo-historical nonsense. Not just to repeat the tattered clichés, but to really understand, with documents and facts in hand, what happened a century ago. But, as practice shows, even today Dashnaks prefer to keep the audience in ignorance, in the dark.
And the price they have to pay for these fakes is blood.
Fuad Akhundov, political scientist
