By Adnan Morshed
 |
| Armenian Apostolic Church of the Holy Resurrection Dhaka, 1781 |
Turkey seems to have a burlesque history of genocide denial. On June 2, the German Parliament voted to recognise the 1,915 killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as "genocide." Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's reaction was predictable: “Germany has no right to comment on genocide.” Ankara recalled its ambassador from Berlin.
Sounds familiar? Ankara's recent withdrawal of its ambassador to Bangladesh following the execution of an indicted “war criminal” reveals the Erdogan regime's grotesquely negligent attitude toward the genocide in Bangladesh during 1971.
My goal here today is not to psychoanalyse Turkey's peculiar discomfort with histories of genocide. Rather, I am intrigued by the common history of massacre that Armenians and Bangladeshis share, and how this history, in many ways, shapes the national personality of these two peoples. More fascinating yet that Dhaka presents a robust Armenian history, which I propose to explore through the lens of the Armenian Church of the Holy Resurrection on Church Road in Old Dhaka.
The church is modest in its architectural scope, yet its history offers a rich tapestry of the Armenian footprint on the commerce, politics, and education of East Bengal. More important, the church is an architectural testament to the story of how the Armenian diasporas spread out from their historic homeland, located between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, to far-flung regions, and thrived as a versatile cosmopolitan community.
