THE CONFERENCE IN ARTSAKH ON FORCIBLE ISLAMIZATION OF THE ARMENAINS
On 20 April in Stepanakert, the capital of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, the NKR government and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation Dashnaktsutyun arranged conference on “The Forcible Islamization as a Component of the Genocide”. The event featured participants from Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia, France and USA.
The opening address was delivered by the head of the Artsakh Dioceses of the Armenian Apostolic Church Archbishop Pargev Martirosyan who underlined the importance of such conferences and called to continue the study of the subject. The first lecture on “The Issue of the Forcible Islamization of the Armenians: The Attempt to Outline the Issue” was delivered by the expert of “Noravank” Foundation, the vice-dean of the Faculty of the Oriental Studies at the YSU Rouben Melkonyan. The French sociologist Lorance Ritter in her report relying on her field researches spoke about the categories of the converted Armenians in Turkey. The lecture of the researcher of the Institute of the Armenian Studies and Ethnography of the National Academy of Sciences of the RA Sergei Vardanyan was devoted to the issues of the converted Hamsheni Armenians, and Haykazun Alvrtsyan, the head of the Western Armenians’ Issues Research Centre, referred to some aspects of the issue of the Crypto- and Islamized Armenians, particularly to the issues of their number. At the conference the “Secret Armenians” film by the editor of the ARFD “Droshak” magazine Karen Khanlaryan was shown, which was followed by the brief speech of the author and his answers to the questions of those who were present. The lecture (“The Splinters of the Islamized Armenians in Artsakh”) of Lernik Hovhannisyan, the lecturer of the Chair of History at Artsakh State University, during which the pre-history of the issue was presented as well as he spoke about the recent period (till 1988), was remarkable. The facts from the researches carried out by the author at the places in the NKR where the generations of the Islamized Armenians used to live were presented. At the conference the lecture was also delivered by the young researcher, the post-graduate student of the Chair of the Turkish Studies Mher Abrahamyan. It was devoted to the issue of the Armenians forcedly Islamized during the persecutions in 1894-96. For technical reasons the Professor of California University Roubina Pirumian could not be present at the conference but her report on “The Issue of the Converted Armenians in Literature” was presented.
The conference went in the atmosphere of eager discussions. This conference, which was devoted to the 95th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, was remarkable due to the fact that the forcible Islamization was presented as a component of the Genocide and it was shown that the study of the forcible Islamization of the Armenians could contribute to the spreading light of the scantly explored pages of the Armenian Genocide. In this context the extract from the speech of the Cathalicos Garegin II should be brought: “The forcedly Islamized Armenians and their generations who are afraid to speak about their identity are the victims of the Genocide”.
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