1436 - European thought and Armenian cause

N. Lygeros
Translation from French: Ph. Alsina

The Turkish diplomacy must finally understand that any European thinker, any defender of the human rights is foremost Armenian. We do not find references to Armenia in the manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci merely by chance. This country always attracted Europe. Only from now on its people are even more important because the genocide of the Armenians of 1915 represents a paradigm in the field of the human rights. Its victims of an all-out war without name are evidences shouting in our memory because the men themselves keep silent. For now, we do not have any more excuses because we are not ourselves in direct danger. So we must show that the Armenian cause is one of the fundamental components of the European thought. We were certainly able to conceive the Declaration of the Human Rights. But other people had to endure the consequences of its transgression. These innocents gave a lesson to the righteous. They gave their life so that men sacrifice theirs to this cause. We cannot be satisfied to say that we are the children of the Declaration of the Human Rights, we are also the parents of the children victims of the genocide. Because the genocide of the Armenians, the first of the XXth century, modified our way of seeing the human rights. It enabled us to understand what the reality of a crime against humanity constitutes. The Turkish diplomacy tries by any means to exclude the Armenian claims, as it disputes the existence of Cyprus, in order to appear in a neutral way. But the European thought did not forget the past because it is imprescriptible and also because it is our past. We do not want to accept the genocide of the memory, this other genocide of the Turkish system. If we are Europeans it is also because we are Armenians too, because our own history was wounded by the genocide of these people. The Turkish diplomacy may well play the card of the new image, we keep in memory those of the “Petit Illustré” of our ancestors that illustrated the “massacre à la Turque”. As the grown up children still remember images of their school, our memory cannot forget the victims of the genocide, because it is the continuation of their deaths. The memory can transcend death but only the recognition of the genocide transcends barbarousness. If Turkey does not recognize the genocide, it will recognize that we are Armenians !