Armenians in NYC mark genocide and Mayor Adams’ ongoing silence
The allegation that Adams agreed to a Turkish government official’s request not to make any statements about the Armenian genocide in 2022 was part of a series of charges against the mayor, which were dropped after the Trump administration asked a federal judge to dismiss the corruption case.
Hrag Vartanian, a member of the city’s Armenian community and a descendant of genocide survivors, said he and several other Armenian New Yorkers gathered Thursday morning at the Armenian Grove Plaque in Union Square in order to mark the anniversary of the genocide, which took place between 1915 and 1923.
“We came together because last year we were really disturbed by the news that New York City mayor had possibly agreed not to recognize the Armenian genocide because of some sort of backroom deal,” Vartanian said.
Federal prosecutors accused Adams of using the power of his office in exchange for luxury travel upgrades and illegal campaign contributions from Turkish nationals. In the federal indictment against Adams, prosecutors said a Turkish official contacted an Adams staffer on April 21, 2022, noting that the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day was approaching and asking for assurance that Adams would not make a statement about it. Prosecutors said the staffer provided that assurance and that Adams did not make a statement.
Vartanian, the co-founder and editor of the online arts magazine Hyperallergic, started an online petition urging people “to tell the mayor that there is no room for genocide denial or equivocating about genocide in New York City!”
The petition had 149 signatures as of Thursday.
The Adams administration did not immediately respond to questions about whether he’d recognize the genocide or the petition. During an Easter service at the Temple of Restoration in Brooklyn, he invoked religious language to address the dismissal of charges.
“When the indictment was dismissed, people said, ‘Who was it dismissed by?’ I said it then and I’ll say it now. God uses who he uses,” he said. “And it is not me to question God. It’s me to understand God.”
For many years the Turkish government has actively worked to suppress talk about the genocide. According to the International Association of Genocide Scholars, “more than a million Armenians were exterminated through direct killing, starvation, torture and forced death marches,” at the hands of the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire. Some estimates put the death toll at more than 1.5 million people.
A number of New York City mayors have commemorated the genocide over the decades, including Bill de Blasio, Michael Bloomberg, Rudy Giuliani and Ed Koch.
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“There’s actually been a tradition of New York City mayors acknowledging the Armenian genocide, even before national political figures,” Vartanian said, “so the fact that a mayor of New York, a city that we love and a city that so many Armenian survivors came to after the genocide and found homes and built lives, it’s really a slap in the face to many of us.”
