Schools across Los Angeles County were closed on Thursday in observance of Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. This year marks the 110th anniversary of the mass murder of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 at the tail end of the Ottoman Turks.
On Thursday, protestors demonstrated outside the Turkish consulate in Beverly Hills in what they call the “March For Justice.”
Armenia has been in active conflict with the Turkish government since 2021, when Turkey backed Azerbaijan in the border conflict with Armenia.
To this day, the Turkish government refuses to acknowledge the events of 1915 as a genocide.
Last month, Azerbaijan and Armenia agreed on peace and relations between the two countries after more than 30 years of conflict.
This conflict was primarily over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, or Artsakh, which was inhabited mostly by ethnic Armenians until 2023. Two wars have occurred in the area, and most ethnic Armenians were forced to flee because of the conflict.
“A lot of our members here have been impacted by the ethnic cleansing in Artsakh,” Mane Berikyan, the president of USC’s Armenian Student Association, said. “Back when it was all taking place in 2023, USC Annenberg hosted the Turkish ambassador who perpetrated Armenian Genocide denialist narratives during an event that the Armenian Student Association here was protesting peacefully and asking for it to be shut down.”
Berikyan believes there is still work to be done when it comes to the recognition of the Armenian genocide.
“Unfortunately, our wounds are still open, and it’s something that we must keep on fighting for justice for, and we have to keep being our own voice because we know no one else will be. But it’s also to honor the victims of the original genocide and to make sure that their memory is not in vain. And so that’s something that we hold close to our values,” Berikyan said.
On Thursday morning, President Donald Trump’s statement was condemned by the Armenian National Committee of America for his failure to call the events of 1915 a genocide.
Berikyan, a descendant of genocide survivors, said the president’s statement was “disgraceful.”
“Every year, the United States White House releases a statement on April 24 in commemoration of the lives lost in 1915. And this year, President Trump did not use the word genocide in the statement,” Berikyan said. “President Biden had been the first U.S. president to recognize it, although Congress had recognized the genocide a few years prior. So it was extremely disheartening to see, as an Armenian American, that instead of progress, we have regression.”
To combat this regression, Berikyan urges non-Armenians to get involved and support the Armenian community through education.
“I think if we all do our part to educate ourselves on the Armenian Genocide, on genocides in general, on other communities and the hardships they’ve endured, I think there’s a common line there, and that’s humanity. There are very simple things you can do to raise awareness and be part of that amplification process,” Berikyan said.
One way Trojans can educate themselves is through USC’s Institute of Armenian Studies.
“All of our programming focuses on the contemporary Armenian experience. So temporally, we look at post 1915 genocide up until today. And that contemporary focus makes us very unique in the Armenian studies landscape, because our students are able to pursue research that is relevant to their lived experience. They’re not only looking back, but everything that we do at the institute is very much rooted in the present and looking toward the future,” said the Managing Director of the institute, Maral Tavitian.
Vitian urges younger generations to get involved with the institute’s efforts.
“Armenians are very much a living, breathing people that are contributing to society and creating new history, that while it is informed by the experience of dispossession and dispersion around the world, is also very contemporary and rooted in the present, looking toward the future,” she said.
USC and UCLA’s Armenian Student Associations will host a joint candlelight vigil at UCLA’s Royce Hall on Thursday evening to commemorate the event.
All proceeds from the event will go to the Armenian Medpack Project, providing first aid kits to Armenian service members in the Syunik region.