My great-grandmother, Takouhi Mikaelian, began her written testimony of the Armenian Genocide with words that, decades later, I still read with boiling blood:

“It is with great emotion and shaking hands that I undertake the writing of this, my story.” 

And she, who was 10 years old when the genocide began, ended it with this:

“Christ carried His cross to Golgatha and was crucified and we, 2 million Armenians, were martyred in the deserts of Arabia and Der Zor in 1915 as a result of the Ottoman Turkish government’s plan of genocide.”

Her account was published in a collection of survivors’ stories called “Armenian Genocide: Survivors and Heroes,” edited by my father, Albert Valencia. 

In her story, Mikaelian describes the heinous deaths of our family members, the 40-day march through the desert to a camp where “sickness and death was seemingly limitless” and what it took to build a life where her foundation was ripped away. 

Her story is just one of countless others, and I, separated from her by three generations, still have yet to see the world call 1915 what it starkly, irrefutably was: A genocide. 

As a great-granddaughter of an Armenian Genocide survivor, I grew up with the word “genocide” reverberating around me like a shout in an echo chamber. 

I was well acquainted with the date April 24, 1915, by the time I was in elementary school, and I, along with millions of others in the diaspora, share a bond and a pain so closely removed; it rests on our shoulders, acting neither as a devil nor an angel.

And yet, despite all of it — the evidence, the testimonies and the multi-generational demands — too many refuse to call it a genocide, but instead use euphemisms like “massacre,” “killing” and “tragedy.”

And these frightened words spread to our world leaders like the plague.

The forbidden word

A genocide is defined by Britannica as “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a group of people because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion or race.” 

The United Nations says that, for a genocide to be constituted, there must be proof of intent, but intent is, at times, difficult to prove. Then again, sometimes it’s in plain sight. 

Here are some events that took place in the months and years following April 24, 1915:

• The arrest and execution of several hundred Armenian intellectuals on April 24.
• The forced conversion of Armenians from Christianity to Islam
• The drowning, crucifixion and burning alive of Armenians.
• The forced marches through deserts, where countless fell dead from emaciation, sickness or age (if they stopped to rest, Ottoman officers would shoot them dead). They were often forced to walk naked and were not given food or water.
• The rape and slavery of women.

These events were deliberate, intentional attempts to eliminate the Armenian people.

Today, many Armenians visit the Syrian desert of Der Zor, which, in its near entirety, serves as a mass Armenian gravesite. 

Denial, denial, denial — why?

I see denial everywhere — most painfully by the country that nearly 1 million Armenians call home, the United States.

Just in February, Vice President JD Vance visited an Armenian Genocide memorial in Armenia. 

Vance shared an X post, where he initially used the words, “Armenian genocide,” but the post was quickly taken down and replaced with sorry, pathetic runarounds.

The White House blamed a staff member for its “mistake.”

“They asked us to visit the site,” Vance said to reporters. “Obviously, it’s a very terrible thing that happened a little over a hundred years ago and something that’s very, very important to them culturally.”

In the case of the Armenian Genocide, one might wonder what the difference is between the United States classifying 1915 as a genocide versus a massacre. The truth is, phrasing the events of 1915 as a genocide ultimately holds more weight.

When former president Joe Biden acknowledged the Armenian Genocide in 2021, it placed political pressure on Turkey, a U.S. ally. 

In theory, if the U.S. perpetually recognizes the Armenian Genocide, Turkey might want to relinquish its ties with us. Or they might be obliged to reconcile with the Armenians and quit their encouragement of Azerbaijan’s efforts at ethnic cleansing. 

Without accountability, however, there can be no change.

As recently as 2023, Azerbaijan, a close ally with Turkey, ethnically cleansed the historic region of Artsakh, forcing roughly 120,000 Armenians out with a blockade of food, water, electricity and basic medical supplies. 

Azeri forces continue to destroy ancient Armenian churches, cemeteries and any remnants of Armenian history that envelop the land.

If Turkey recognizes that it committed a genocide, it may be obligated to look into reparation efforts, similar to Germany after acknowledging the Holocaust. This, however, would look slightly different, since it has been over a century since 1915, and the survivors have since died.

All of these reasons — though complex and difficult to solve — are cowardly. They act as diseases in the broader effort for world peace, and this ideology of tip-toeing has bled into the discussion of other blatant humanitarian atrocities.

Ignorance spreads

I see genocide today in Palestine, I’ve seen it in Bosnia and I see it in Sudan — to name just three. I know others must be watching too, but where are they? 

I must ask, what good does security do when our so-called powerhouse country is only contributing to mass silence, which ultimately leads to further hate and polarization? How far can right be from wrong?

The true disgrace is that, thanks to modern technology, some brave journalists and terrified citizens, the genocides in Palestine and Sudan are being broadcast for all to see, and some still doubt their legitimacy. 

I saw a video of a mother and her two children hanging from a tree in Sudan. I saw Palestinian families carrying the detonated bodies of their loved ones in mass across the ruined Gaza streets. 

Are you watching yet?

As you read this and perhaps scoff at my words, a woman somewhere is losing her dignity, her life and her light because of her religion, culture, ethnicity and/or race. 

I dare you to watch. 

And while we sit and ponder our problems, perhaps about what we want to eat for our next meal, a husband somewhere is wondering if he’ll be able to provide for his family, or if they’ll be dead before dawn. 

Some are geographically lucky enough to be able to boil genocides down to politics. It’s a matter of life and death for some, and a mere topic of debatable discussion for others. 

I believe that those who use genocide and suffering to further a political agenda have lost the part of themselves that makes them human. How can you see footage and read accounts of these catastrophes and say, “The Middle East has always been this way,” or “But who attacked first?” 

I never got to meet my great-grandmother, but I grew up with her presence around me through words and stories. Through memory, she never left.

Each time I teach Sunday School and pray at St. Mary Armenian Apostolic Church, she’s there. Each time my family bakes her sweet choreg, she’s there. I see her in certain outlines of the Sierra Nevadas, like she once saw Mount Ararat in the Armenian Highlands. When purple flowers were just purple flowers, and our homeland was still our home.

We don’t have to be silent. It’s not a massacre, and it’s not a mass killing. 

It’s a genocide. 

I say this word for the bones of my people that lie, piled together like bleeding-red pomegranate seeds, in the fields of Turkey and the deserts of Syria. 

I say it for my people, my family, who, far beyond the hour of their deaths, are still waiting for justice.