Armenians Remember Genocide

Waving Armenia’s flag of red, blue and orange, about 2,500 Armenian Americans on Monday staged an annual protest of what they say was a Turk-sanctioned genocide of their ancestors.

The rally, held in front of the Turkish Consulate in the 6300 block of Wilshire Boulevard, was one of many events worldwide commemorating April 24, 1915, the day Armenians say the mass deportations, arrests and executions began.

Of the estimated 2 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire at the time, Armenian Americans say, more than 1 million died between 1915 and 1923. The empire became the modern republic of Turkey.

In West Hollywood, city flags flew at half-staff. Last week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared April 23-29 “Days of Remembrance of the Armenian Genocide.”

“We want all the world to know that this happened,” said Christine Hovananian, 50, of Glendale.

“Turkey should say that ‘we have done this to Armenian people.’ ”

For her, that means acknowledging the 1915 murders of her aunts, uncles and grandparents in the village of Van in eastern Turkey. Hovananian’s father and mother escaped separately to Iraq, where they eventually met and married.

For the three decades she has lived in Southern California, Hovananian has protested every year in front of the consulate in her relatives’ memory.

“Their blood is asking us ... get that ‘genocide’ name,” Hovananian said.

The Turkish government does not recognize what occurred as genocide, attributing the deaths to fighting between Turks and Armenians.

“Armenian allegations of genocide have never been historically or legally substantiated,” Turkish Ambassador Nabi Sensoy said in a statement in response to a PBS documentary aired last week. “Unlike the Holocaust, the numbers, dates, facts and the context associated with this period are all contested.”

More than 150,000 people of Armenian descent live in Los Angeles County, according to the 2000 census.

The Armenian National Committee of America says there are as many as 60,000 in Los Angeles alone.