There is a substantial Armenian community in Southern California—“Little Armenia” is a recognized neighborhood in Hollywood. In nearby Orange County, the annual Anatolian Cultures and Food Festival will soon get under way. These two worlds collided when the festival organizers planned to send an Ottoman-era-style Turkish military band marching down Hollywood Boulevard. It doesn’t take a genius to realize this was unlikely to go down smoothly.
Nothing was as likely to remind the Armenian community of the Armenian Genocide of 1914-1916 perpetrated by the Ottoman Turkish government as an Turkish military band. Since the Turkish government has stubbornly refused to admit that this was a case of deliberate mass murder, much less apologize or discuss restitution, this history remains a festering, bitter wound.
So when the Armenian community caught wind of the planned parade, it disapproved. The Armenian Youth Federation, the Armenian National Committee and other groups protested. The Armenian National Committee compared the parade to “hate speech,” and “incitement.”
Interestingly, no one seems to have compared this incident with the famous 1977 neo-Nazi march in the Chicago suburb of Skokie, with its large population of Holocaust survivors. The parallels seem obvious, but there is one key difference: the Nazis did march after the judicial system found that they had a constitutional right to do so, which the Turkish parade organizers called off their event. A spokeswoman for the Anatolian Festival said: “We are not here to offend anyone. That was never our intention.”
Giving offense to Holocaust survivors was exactly the political purpose of the Nazi march in Skokie. But the Anatolian Cultures Festival is for celebrating the cultures, Turkish and non-Turkish, of Turkey. Perhaps this is political, too; but the point remains, the Turkish military band is staying away from Little Armenia. A group can decide that not hurting feelings is as worthy as insisting on its First Amendment rights. Since the Armenians protested, but there's no evidence that they actually tried to prevent the march from taking place, there's no issue of a "heckler's veto." The only real losers are those folks in Hollywood, if any, who like Turkish military band music and lost a chance to hear it.
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