Century-long history of pain and suffering-National Geographic’s reference to Armenian Genocide

In the place where Armenians once flourished will be the permanent reminder of the genocide, pain and contradictions.

With these lines begins the article of the National Geographic’s journalist Paul Salopek and photographer John Stanmayer, which refers to the Armenian Genocide, memories of survivors and the modern approaches to the issues of Armenia and Turkey.

“One of the world’s oldest unsolved political controversies that has blocked the Armenian and Turkish generations into tension hatred, nationalist extremism, can be summarized in just one word, genocide.

The author has visited Ani, the medieval capital of the Kingdom, noting that it was once a wealthy metropolis.

“What is Ani, it is the ruin of a vanished World in modern Turkey: the remote and beautiful cite of a forgotten civilization.

Broken cathedrals , rotting ramparts that defend nothing from nothing, empty boulevards that go nowhere,” notes the author.

The author highlights the fact that it has been dangerous for many years in Turkey to describe what occurred in 1915 as a genocide.

Turkish judges have deemed this term provocative, insulting, a taboo.

Turkish writers and journalists who deploy these three syllables can face charges of slander against the Turkish state.

“ When is genocide officially over?

When the operation of massacre is documented, complete, resolved?

Obviously not at the very time when rifles stop shooting.

It stops when the individual disappears from the chain of humane memory?

Maybe at the very time when the last abandoned city again fills with residents,
with a new name and language?

And maybe when the regret eventually occurs? “the author notes.