I’m not asking for an apology, but an answer to my question. Agos Weekly has released Nancy Krikorian’s letter in which she only asks Turkey one question and expects an answer. Nancy Krikorian was raised in the Armenian community of Watertown (Massachusetts), studied comparative literature at Dartmouth College and continued her education at the Universities of Paris and Columbia. In 1998, she released her first novel Zabel, which presents the experiences of an Armenian woman who witnessed the Armenian Genocide. Krikorian has also taught at Yale, Rutgers, Barnard and Queens Schools. She currently lives in New York. There’s an Armenian (also Turkish) saying that goes ,’Let’s sit crooked and talk straight’. Jesus said forgive your enemy, but I will never forget what happened to us Armenians. Mariam Gojapapian-Krikorian              A Palestinian friend once told a story: Years ago, one of the representatives of the national government of Palestine advised a fellow Israeli official, saying that apologizing for the events of 1948 could establish friendly relations. When the Israeli diplomat asked if the Palestinian wanted an apology from the Israeli, the Palestinian replied: “You demand that we confess that we are innately culpable? That is impossible.” What state hasn’t been established on the basis of crimes or hasn’t taken advantage of a crime? Israel was founded at the price of brutal deportations of thousands of Palestinians, and the modern-day Republic of Turkey was founded through the elimination and deportations of the Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks and the pressure on the Kurds. To perpetrate all this, one needs to have a narrow mindset of classifying those victims lower than the others. The stories that are told after the events make it seem like the ravished and even the murdered deserved that treatment and that even they were the criminals. My grandmother, Mariam Gojapapian-Krikorian was from Mersin city of Cilicia. In 1915, she and her family were compelled to leave their home. They were exiled to the desert in Syria. Her parents and little sisters died on the road. My grandmother and her brother joined the 8,000 orphans of Reslein. This wasn’t an event and it wasn’t the loss of peaceful civilians due to the war. This was part of the plan to solve the Armenian Cause by eliminating the Armenians. The goal was not only to empty Turkey of the Armenians, but also rob their homes, lands and properties. I don’t demand an apology from the Turks, but I expect them to answer my following question: What is the purpose of considering the respect for, equality of and justice for the Armenians too much?

Translation into Armenian by Araz Gaimagamian

yerkir.am