The Armenian Weekly Interviews Armenian Forum Editors

The Armenian Weekly Interviews
Armenian Forum Editors Vincent Lima
and Ara Sarafian

The following interview, conducted on 9 September 1998, appeared in the 28 November 1998 issue of The Armenian Weekly.

This past Spring a new title appeared in the world of Armenian scholarly publications, Armenian Forum. The quarterly, published by the Gomidas Institute of Princeton, NJ, offers fresh new perspectives on the study of contemporary Armenian issues, with topics that have already generated interest and controversy among its readers. Hairenik editor Vahakn Karakachian recently interviewed its editors, Vincent Lima and Ara Sarafian, to get a taste of what this first year of Armenian Forum has been like so far.

Weekly: Congratulations, Ara and Vincent, on an amazing publication. We were impressed when we got the first issue of Armenian Forum. Now you have blown us away with the second issue. The exchange about the Armenian Genocide, among Turkish and Armenian academic heavyweights, is a major coup. Especially because the truth of the Genocide is not at issue. How did you manage it?

Ara Sarafian: Thank you, Vahakn. Vincent and I have been in Armenian studies for over a decade now. We have cultivated relations with a whole spectrum of scholars. That is the reservoir from which we draw as editors of Armenian Forum.

I have myself been working in Ottoman archives in Turkey on and off for six years. I have had the opportunity of meeting many Turkish scholars. A lot of them are fascists who spout off the government line. But one finds that even among established scholars there are some who have academic integrity.

Often one does not agree with these scholars, just as one does not agree on every issue with every Armenian scholar. The point is, however, that it is possible to have a meaningful dialogue with them on substantive matters.

In April of 1997, at a conference at Washington, D.C., Professor Ronald Grigor Suny gave an extensive paper on the Armenian Genocide. The paper raised a number of contentious points. Vincent and I saw this paper as an opportunity to initiate a critical debate on the Armenian Genocide. Professor Suny graciously agreed to give us his paper. We proceeded from there.

Vincent Lima: Our purpose, mind you, was to have a critical debate. The fact that the Turkish scholars we approached agreed to participate was an added bonus.

Thoughtful Answers. Armenian Forum editors Vincent Lima and Ara Sarafian (at microphone) field questions at an event in Pasadena, California. (Hourik Diramarian photo courtesy of The Armenian Reporter International)

Lima: Professor Richard Hovannisian has often complained that responding to Turkish government-sponsored denial saps all our energies; it denies us the opportunity to come to grips with the actual events of the Genocide. He is right. But now, as a matter of scholarship, the veracity of the Armenian Genocide is unassailable. Now it's time to move forward with the work of analysis. The possibility of moving forward exists today thanks to the lifetime work of Vahakn Dadrian—whose contributions encompass both meticulous documentation and brilliant analysis; the key role of Professor Hovannisian; the solid work of Donald Miller and Lorna Touryan Miller; the path-breaking research of Raymond Kévorkian, to name a few scholars; and the unsung but vital contribution of all the survivors who have written their memoirs.

A handful of scholars—aside from Dadrian, Stephan Astourian's name comes immediately to mind—have offered analyses of matters like when genocidal decisions were made, what motivated the organizers, the mentality of bystanders, the role of the German government. In fact, on the last matter, there was recently a bitter debate between Vahakn Dadrian and Hilmar Kaiser. But for the most part, the scholars have not engaged each other's views.

The debate in Armenian Forum brings this sort of analytical question— rather than the non-question of whether there was a genocide—to the foreground.

Weekly: When confronted with good news like this—prominent Turkish scholars acknowledging the Genocide—our natural reaction is to wait for the other shoe to drop. Some people might ask, Aren't you being taken for a ride?

Sarafian: The answer is no. Especially not on this issue. Vincent and I have been intimately involved with the Genocide issue for over a decade. We know all the people and issues involved. We have been doing the drudgering work of documentation. We have been doing the analytical work at the cutting edge. And now this debate is happening at our initiative in our journal. I know this is a rather forceful answer to a rather inane question. But it has to be addressed.

Lima: What has to be addressed, I think, is the inanity of the question. So far, we have heard only incoherent, unsubstantiated objections and innuendo. Someone needs to make a serious case that an exchange of views between two of the most prominent Armenian scholars—Ron Suny and Vahakn Dadrian—is somehow dangerous. Or that the road to hell is publishing the instructive work of ethnically Turkish scholars who ask what motivated the Young Turks to organize Genocide. I think we should hold our heads up high and discuss the Genocide with confidence and without fear.

Sarafian: Vincent and I were at a Genocide conference in Paris this April. It was organized by the ARF. One of the participants was a well-respected Turkish historian, Professor Fikret Adanir of Bochum University. Dr. Adanir pointed out that twenty years ago, if we had spoken to him, we would have called him a denialist. Yet, through scholarly contacts and rational argument, he reevaluated his position. He is no longer a denialist. Indeed, Dr. Adanir is the author of a popular textbook on Turkish history, where he addresses the Genocide (and the treatment of the Kurds today) in unequivocal terms.

Weekly: It seems that good news travels slowly. Now, you mention the exchange of views between Vahakn Dadrian and Ronald Suny. I notice that Professor Dadrian's response is longer than Professor Suny's article. Would you tell us what they argue about?

Lima: Vahakn Dadrian is the author of numerous works on the Genocide. I think that the essay he has written for Armenian Forum is one of his best works. He responds to Professor Suny, but also makes forceful arguments on issues not covered by Suny.

The key disagreement between Suny and Dadrian revolves around the nature of the decision to annihilate Armenians in 1915. Suny presents a contingency model. He argues that the Young Turks made a decision to wipe out Armenians during World War I, in the unique set of circumstances created by the war. Dadrian disagrees. He argues according to a continuity model: that World War I was merely an opportunity to implement a long-laid secret plot to destroy the Armenians. These are important distinctions that have a direct bearing on our understanding of the Genocide itself.

Weekly: You also said that the comments of the Turkish scholars were instructive. What did we learn from them through the exchange in Armenian Forum?

Sarafian: In conventional Armenian accounts of the Genocide, it is argued that the ruling Young Turks organized the Genocide in furtherance of their Pan-Turkist fantasies of creating a Turkish state from the Aegean to China. Professor Suny, in his article, makes this argument. Both Professor Akarli and Professor Deringil challenge this notion.

Professor Deringil, for example, states categorically that Pan-Turkism was a marginal issue; that the Young Turks were more interested in recovering Egypt and Macedonia and enforcing a centralized authority over their dominions. The interventions of Professors Akarli and Deringil suggest the need for further work along these lines. This is just one example.

Armenian Forum is committed to a sustained and meaningful engagement of such questions.

Weekly: So Armenian Forum is going to be a journal focused on the Armenian Genocide?

Lima: Armenian Forum is a journal of contemporary affairs. We consider the Genocide, in the widest sense, to be a core contemporary issue. The journal, however, deals with a range of important matters. In our first issue we had a 26-page discussion of Caspian oil and Karabagh. We had an exchange about nationalism, sexuality, and Armenian diaspora identity. We had a report about the state of Armenian studies in the United States. Each of these items introduced promising new scholars to the community.

In the second issue, we have an important study on foreign aid and infant nutrition in Armenia. In fact, that's our cover story. The study is by Kim Hekimian Arzoumanian, who has spent years doing research and teaching in Armenia. She recently got her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins.

This is the range of subjects the journal has already dealt with, and there is a whole lot more to come. This is what our audience of educated Armenians craves. You know, Vahakn, people want to go beyond the ritual repetition of familiar themes. They want critical, informed debate and insights. Our role as editors of Armenian Forum is to facilitate such discussion.

Weekly: That's excellent. As an editor, I am always looking for research on current affairs to inform me in my work. Armenian Forum looks like its shaping up as a key resource. In addition to articles, I notice you have photo essays.

Sarafian: In the first issue, we had an exhibition of Polaroids by the artist Linda Ganjian. They served as a commentary on diasporan Armenians fantasies about Armenia confronted with reality.

In the second issue we have an exhibition of photographs from Project SAVE depicting Armenian families in the Ottoman Empire.

A couple of years ago, I was impressed by a comment Engin Akarli made at a conference in New York. He said that we should be aware that the words and images we use as scholars sometimes feed the hatred of people who see the world through the prism of blood feuds.

Engin is right. But I also see this poignant, graphic representation of the Armenian Genocide—photographs of ordinary Armenians who were later butchered—in conjunction with a somber conversation among Turkish and Armenian scholars today, as a positive step: confronting the reality of the Genocide in blatant, uncompromising terms, without seeing each other through the prism of blood feuds.