ANZACs and Armenia.
Lest we forget.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning.
We will remember them.
We shall remember them tomorrow. At the morning services. Dawn for the large ones, smaller community ones mid morning. In the RSAs after the parades. Echoes of those who marched for decades after their war, now unwearied by age.
It is a long time between ANZAC services with many remembrance events cancelled in recent years due to Covid. The government will be represented at Anzac commemorations in Turkey this year - the first time since before the pandemic. Joined no doubt by young Kiwis and Aussies making the pilgrimage to Gallipoli during their OEs.
Twenty years ago, 2003, Fi and I went to Gallipoli. Not on Anzac day, we went in the autumn. It always struck as a place to reflect alone, rather than in the company of a bunch of partying backpackers (regulations were much looser then).
Fi and I were travelling around Turkey starting in Istanbul. Inevitably of course the available transport to the various WWI sites was full of Aussies and Kiwis. There to pay respect, but if there was a party to be had along the way all the better. We had plenty of time for contemplation even with a soundtrack of classic Aussie rock.
Some today question the importance placed on ANZAC day, in our modern time. Perhaps concerned at the glorification of war, or of old ideas of empires and imperialism, which are not so popular as they once were.
Asking why we remember the date of the Gallipoli landing, the 25th of April 1915. Rather than, for example, a battle on the Western Front where NZ suffered greater casualties. Or why not have Remembrance day on armistice day, November the 11th?
But it’s what we have, and it is sacred to New Zealanders. We remember not in a way that glorifies war, but one in which we reflect on the terrible price paid by earlier generations. A price paid so that a family, whose members were the monarchs of the European empires of the time, didn’t have to learn to play nicely with each other.
I wrote about ANZAC day and Gallipoli in a newsletter last year. Maybe check it out. The newsletter didn’t have a lot of subscribers at that point, so chances are you won’t have read it. Also there is a magnificent piece of music at the end:
So tomorrow we, and our mates across the ditch, will remember ANZAC day. Reflecting on the tragedy of war, and for many the loss of family. Meanwhile today is a different day of remembrance. Today is Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.
On the 24th of April 1915, the day before the ANZACs landed at Gallipoli, what became the Armenian genocide began. On that day Armenian leaders and intellectuals were rounded up in Constantinople (now Istanbul), and other cities, and moved to holding centres. In time most of them were killed.
The event has been described by historians as a decapitation strike, which was intended to deprive the Armenian population of leadership and a chance for resistance.
To commemorate the victims of the Armenian genocide, 24 April is observed as Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. First observed in 1919 on the fourth anniversary of the events in Constantinople, the date is generally considered the date on which the genocide began.
Perhaps like me you don’t know much about Armenia, or the genocide that killed as many as 1.5 million people. We might have seen some old photos from the time. Maybe we could place it on a map.
Some of us might know the band System of a Down from California, whose members are all Armenian. Their frontman Serj Tankian has been living in Warkworth on and off for many years.
I remember learning about the genocide in a museum to Armenian history on a different trip to the region. We spent quite a while in Jerusalem, the old town of which is divided into quarters, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Armenian.
Whatever ANZAC story we were taught certainly did not include these terrible events starting just a few hundred kilometres away at the same time. You’d think we might know a bit more about one of the worst genocides in the history of mankind.
But for a very long time knowing about it, even talking about it, have not been encouraged by Turkish governments who have bitterly opposed anyone recognising the historical events.
Two years ago, after many years of effort to get them to do so, the US finally recognised the Armenian genocide.
“The American people honour all those Armenians who perished in the genocide that began 106 years ago today,” Biden said in a statement on Saturday.
“Beginning on 24 April 1915 with the arrest of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople by Ottoman authorities, one and a half million Armenians were deported, massacred or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination.”
It was recognised in France in 2019, and in Canada in 2015. In 2007 Argentina passed a law “designating 24 April as ‘Day of Action for Tolerance and Respect among Peoples’, in which Armenian Argentines are excused from work.”
“As of 2023, governments and parliaments of 34 countries — including Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Russia and the United States — have formally recognized the Armenian genocide. Three countries — Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Pakistan — deny that there was an Armenian genocide.”
Yet even as these other nations finally acknowledge what happened our country is still not prepared to do so.
No New Zealand Government has ever officially recognised the genocide, over fears Turkey, which committed the atrocities, will ban Kiwis from visiting the Gallipoli battlefields…
We're talking about children, and women, and elderly people, being bludgeoned to death with everyday weapons, axes, hammers, knives, bricks, as well as traditional weapons. Thrown into the sea, pushed into buildings and burned alive, drowned, their arms and legs broken so that they couldn't save themselves. This was one of the most brutal chapters in human history…
So while we acknowledge the Holocaust of the Jews, the killing fields of the Cambodian Genocide and the Rwandan Genocide New Zealand is yet to acknowledge the very Genocide which is tied undeniably to our own history.
I don’t know what the ANZACs thought they were fighting for. But I can’t imagine they’d be too impressed at turning a blind eye to genocide. No matter how many years afterwards it is. How can we say we will not forget, if we do not remember?
Ka maumahara tonu tātou ki a rātou - We will remember them.
The following clip is a report on the US recognition of the Armenian Genocide, with the afore mentioned Serj Tankian.
My apologies to paid subscribers. I had placed a paywall in this article but it just didn't feel right restricting access. Rest assured the next newsletter will be for paid subscribers who fund it :)
Thanks for this Nick - it was particularly valuable to be reminded of the Armenian holocaust. I had not known that it began the day before and was proceeding while our men caught and died as did the Turkish soldiers. But other Turkish soldiers savagely killed innocents in Constantinople and elsewhere in a huge massacre. Nor did I know that New Zealand has not acknowledged it. Gallipoli resulted in Churchill being stripped of his Lord of the Admiralty and he was given a desk job in the “Civil Service” in Whitehall. He didn’t take but chose to serve as a trooper in the trenches. Where he rose through lower ranks to become a significant commander relatively low in the British Army.