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106 years and 44 days of the Armenian Genocide
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“You have not seen Mount Ararat how I saw it growing up. I promise, one day I will take you back home.”

Since childhood, my grandfather grew up listening to these words of his great-grandfather, Baghdasar, who fled to Armenia with his family during the 1915 genocide.

My grandfather recollects how Baghdasar would tell stories of their home in Bayazet, or Doğubeyazıt in modern Turkey, in the shadow of Mount Ararat, and promise his grandchildren that one day they would return to their home. In 1915, to save his family from the massacres, Baghdasar closed the doors of his house, crossed the Araks River, which flows along the borders of Armenia and Turkey, and ended up in the Armenian city of Gavar. According to my grandfather, when Baghdasar died, he still had the key to his old house in his pocket.

Many Armenians left their Turkish homes, wealth and gardens in 1915 and fled to Armenia, knowing that they would one day return. Today, people build new houses close to the Armenian-Turkish border in order to be in sight of Mount Ararat, a symbol of Armenia.

But one of the best views is from the Tsitsernakaberd, Armenia’s Genocide Memorial in Yerevan. When you step on to the memorial’s roof, it feels like Mount Ararat is a few metres away, as the Ararat valley opens before you.

I was at the Tsitsernakaberd last month, on the day of Genocide Remembrance, 24 April, and so were a group of young Armenians, waving the flags of states that have recognised the genocide. On that date this year, the United States recognised the 1915 massacres of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire as genocide. When someone shouted out the news, the US flag quickly appeared at the front of the line.

President Biden’s decision has urgent relevance for Armenia in the wake of last year’s war in Nagorno Karabakh, a territory disputed by Armenia and Azerbaijan, a close ally of Turkey. Many Armenians draw a direct straight line between the 1915 genocide in Turkey and the war that began in Nagorno Karabakh in the 1980s for national self-determination – and which erupted last autumn.

[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/106-years-and-44-days-armenian-genocide/