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Lost but not forgotten

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On April 24, 1915 hundreds of Armenian scholars and businessmen were rounded up and executed by a political group called the Young Turks. This horrendous act marked the beginning of the Armenian Genocide, during which 1.5 million Armenians were killed. Those who were caught running and weren’t immediately murdered were pushed out into the desert on death marches towards concentration camps. These death marches were hidden under the legal guise of “deportation.”

What occurred in the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1917 is not so much a lost narrative - it is far from forgotten - but it is a distorted and corrupted narrative. The Turkish government has gone to great lengths to deny the genocide, hiding their horrendous actions with mass propaganda. The Turkish Nationalists spread confusion through the erasure of records, publication of false “truths,” and interference of the raising of memorial monuments in countries that took in Armenian refugees. They even have given key members of the Young Turks posthumous honors

Only 28 countries recognize the Armenian Genocide as genocide. As of 2019, 49 states in America recognize the genocide but it is not recognized nationally by the U.S. government. It is not taught in schools. It is not in our textbooks. If it weren't for Armenian’s tirelessly telling their stories or their parents’ stories or their grandparents’ stories, most people would not even know about this mass killing.

In 2016, The Promise was released in theaters on April 24, known as Armenian Remembrance Day in Armenian culture, in hopes to teach the general public about the genocide through a fictional narrative. Armenian Weekly writer Slewo Oshana stated in an article regarding the movie, “Stories are one of the most effective tools there is in allowing something to continue to exist, and if it remains unspoken that is also a way of counteracting its power.” The movie grossed roughly $12.4 million and educated some.

However, the Turkish government tried again to cover up this important story. One of the actors in the movie was contacted by a Turkish ambassador before filming began. After the movie’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, there were 55,000 one-star votes on IMDB despite the fact that only a few thousand people had actually seen the movie at the premiere screenings. Then, six weeks before The Promise’s release, a movie titled The Ottoman Luietenant was released. The Ottoman Luietenant followed a similar story as The Promise, specifically the love triangle subplot, except with Turkish sympathies.

The continuous denial and distorting of truths by the Turks exemplify the fragility of narratives. Master narratives are not based on the truth, but the power of the teller and the teller’s rhetoric. It is going to take a lot more than a movie and word-of-mouth to combat the false narratives and reveal the true story of the Armenian Genocide to the public.

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