FollowThe meeting on Wednesday, Feb. 18 was scheduled to start at 7:30. The Armenian Student Association would bring forth a proposal for the ASUC to approve divestment from the Republic of Turkey. I walked in five minutes late to find Anna Head Alumni Hall packed to the brim with Armenian students and others showing solidarity and support for the measure.
It is a rare occurrence for people of my culture to show up on time, but the issue lay near and dear to the hearts of many. Enthused chattering in my native tongue rose from the audience, and I felt a sense of belonging. Hearing my language spoken is like revisiting my upbringing, an immediate connection to the others in the room.
2015 marks the centennial of the Armenian Genocide, a deliberate and systematic massacre against Armenians conducted by the Young Turk regime of the Ottoman Empire in 1915.
My parents and I may not have experienced it directly, but every Armenian individual has ties to someone who did suffer firsthand — a grandparent, a great-grandparent, or another connection to a life destroyed. It is not an abstraction that hangs in our history, or an old story about a long-ago war. It is an ever-present reminder of our resilience as a people and a scar we all bear that allows for universal recognition among the Armenian diaspora.
A bill supporting UC divestment from Turkey first passed at UCLA. The rationale behind the Armenian Student Association’s bill is fairly simple: Investing over $70 million in the Turkish government violates the UC Regents’ policy of “ethical investments.” It is not an investment in a Turkish corporation, but an investment in a country that endorses measures that deny the genocide, such as printing textbooks for schoolchildren that either skew the facts or erase the genocide entirely, and passing measures such as Article 301 that reprimand acknowledgment of the wrongdoings of the Republic.
The bill defines genocide and outlines the government’s denial of the event and how misinformation about the genocide is perpetuated within the political discourse. In citing the specifics of the UC investments in Turkey and how our tuition payments fund these investments, the ASA effectively proposes changes in how the UC system spends its money.
Once the processions were over, the senate took a short break before the divestment presentation. The crowd awakened, eager to bring one hundred years of silent suffering to light. After two hours of restless fidgeting, the symbolism of the bill became a reality by actively raising awareness of the genocide.
Our individual participation in holding the Republic of Turkey responsible for the perpetuation and denial of its actions was empowering. The students emphasized the fact that the measure is in no way targeting any group of students on campus, nor is it a smear campaign against Turkey. Rather, the bill is a form of resistance against the allocation of tuition money, paid in part by Armenian students, toward a government that has repeatedly denied recognition of a horrible tragedy.
The Turkish student representative began his contestation of the bill, presenting the senate with a brief history of 1915 and context of the massacre. In the midst of WWI, the Ottoman Empire was falling, various Armenian militia groups aligned themselves with Russia.The opposition outlined the situation in an attempt to justify and legitimize the actions of the republic.
As he spoke, audience members expressed audible disbelief at what they were hearing.
A century of suffering being written off as the effects of a skirmish, as if our blood does not still run down Mount Ararat.
As if 1.6 million innocents and intellectuals had not perished unjustly.
As if countless more lives were not destroyed, as if a congenital fire and dispossession could be a result of exaggerated sufferings.
History may be elastic enough to dispute anything, but no amount of rhetoric will reconstruct someone’s definitive reality.
Moreover, according to Yusef Mercan, who spoke on behalf of the Turkish students, the language of the bill was one sided in its presentation of history. Mercan had an issue with the use of the word “genocide,” and argued it was used too loosely. This point was later countered by the Amnesty International definition of genocide, which encompassed the events of 1915. The challenge to the Armenian narrative of the event was claimed to be disposed by “scholarly research and personal anecdotes of the Turkish people,” though little to no real evidence was brought to light.
Christina Mehranbod, Caliber web content manager Sareen Habeshian, and Raffi Margossian, past and current members of the Armenian Student Association executive staff, presented the details of the bill, explaining the ethics of an investment that hurts and deeply offends a significant population of the student body.
The student presenters cited Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, which outlaws the “denigration of the Republic of Turkey,” as evidence of the perpetuation of genocide denial. The bill’s presentation was met with a roar of applause from the audience, reviving the nearly tangible feelings of solidarity.
Some Turkish students came in support of the Armenian students, standing among them as allies of justice. Henna Kushaal, representing the South and Southwest Asian and North African student umbrella group, took the microphone in solidarity with the Armenian student body, paralleling this struggle alongside that of the Sikhs in India.
Karineh Minissian, a senior and the president of the Armenian Student Association, presented the Senate with a moving speech about her personal connection to the genocide, and her responsibility as a student of Armenian descent in a privileged position. “This isn’t a matter of ‘the past is the past,’” she said, “Because the past is my present and will remain the future of my children and their children.”
Nearly an hour and a half of back and forth rebuttals and testimonies ensued as the Armenian students claimed their right to attend a university that didn’t spend their tuition money supporting oppression. The rhetoric flew freely, the passions grew, and patriotism bloomed. The Turkish students defended the article in question, expressed their feelings of victimization, and pleaded to leave the past in the past, but lacked the fervor of student support and intensity seen in the ASA.
The bill passed unanimously.
Image: Mt. Ararat, a landmark of Armenia and a symbol of the resiliency of its people in the face of genocide. The Armenian Student Association hopes its efforts to bring recognition to this tragedy will bring long awaited closure.
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