A long forgotten chapter from history was thrust into the news agenda this week when a delegation from the New South Wales Parliament was threatened with being banned from the 2015 Gallipoli Centenary celebrations by the Turkish Government.
Usually, the relations between the Turkish and Australian governments are surprisingly cordial for two nations once locked in deadly combat. With the exception of occasional spats over monument preservation, the two nations seem brothers-in-arms, victims of a proxy war between Britain and Germany. Equally in fact both nations derived considerable national pride from the battle despite the horrendous slaughter. While Australia's very character seems in many ways founded by "diggers" on those beaches and trenches on a small peninsular in the Dardanelles; modern Turkish Nationalism under Mustafa Ataturk can also be traced to that battlefield.
But a quite prickly and uncomfortable stand-off has already begun as a number of Armenian descendants now living in Australia are seeking recognition of a very dark - and mostly forgotten - chapter of World War One history. But it is one that I feel quite strongly about as well as State parliaments all over Australia are tabling official Genocide recognition motions.
One of the most disturbing, moving and profound hours of my life was walking around a tiny museum in the Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem*. The museum itself is proof that content overshadows environment as the quite modest and rudimentary display tells a story I had never heard of until then. But it has stayed with me as a memory just as starkly as my tour of the Yad Vashem museum commemorating the Jewish Holocaust did in that same city.
The events - the murder of 1.5 million people and deportation of many more - actually generated the word "Genocide" and is recognised as the first systematic attempt to erase an entire people. The link with Gallipoli stems from the fact that the battle and the genocide share the same birthday - April 25th, 1915. In fact, Australian POWs were among the only witnesses - a fact the Turkish Governments denies.
Many historians believe that Hitler pointed to the Armenian genocide as the model for the Jewish Holocaust - not only for its systematic nature, but also for the fact that, some 25 years later, no one could remember those events. This gave the Nazis confidence they'd get away with their gruesome plan. "Who speaks today of the extermination of the Armenians?" asked Hitler himself in 1939.
And thats the point. People often wonder why remembrance is so important. Why do we cling to the horrors of war from long ago when all those involved are dead. Why - as we approach the 100 years since the 1914-18 war - must we spend so much emotional energy commemorating these depressing events? Why - basically - is history so important?
If the Turks had not been so successful erasing their shocking crime from the consciousness of Europe after the First World War, perhaps the Holocaust might not have happened! As an Armenian neighbour - Syria - even today tortures its own people in barbaric ways, this lesson seems poignantly important.
So I applaud these petitions to Turkey and I hope they succeed in raising awareness of an awful innovation in cruelty.
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