Denial of the Armenian Genocide
Encyclopedia
The denial of the Armenian Genocide is the assertion that the Armenian Genocide
did not occur in the manner or to the extent described by scholarship
. Denial of the Armenian Genocide is forbidden in some countries.
The Armenian Genocide is widely acknowledged by genocide scholars to have been one of the first modern, systematic genocide
s, as many Western
sources point to the sheer scale of the death toll
as evidence for a systematic, organized plan to eliminate the Armenians.
The Republic of Turkey, as well as the Republic of Azerbaijan, do not accept that the Ottoman authorities
attempted to exterminate the Armenian people. The Turkish government acknowledges that during World War I
many Armenians
died, but counters that Muslim Turks
died as well, and claims that the number of Armenian victims has been inflated, and that massacre
s were committed by both sides as a result of inter-ethnic violence and the wider conflict of World War I
.
However, three historians specializing in Near Eastern Studies - Bernard Lewis
, Justin McCarthy
, and Heath Lowry
, who are all members of the Institute of Turkish Studies
, as well as the late Stanford Shaw
from the Bilkent University
, Ankara
and independent scholars Guenter Lewy
and Eberhard Jäckel
are critical of the Armenian Genocide term. In 2004 the British historian Norman Stone
wrote from Ankara
to the Times Literary Supplement to deny "Armenian nationalist claims that a 'genocide' as classically defined had taken place".
The use of specific terminologies regarding the issue are debated, such as the word "deportation". Deniers claim that some of the specific words do not fit the realities of the period or they are not substantiated by the facts.
in 1943. In a 1949 CBS interview with Quincy Howe, Lemkin explained, "I became interested in Genocide because it happened so many times. First to the Armenians, then after the Armenians, Hitler took action."
The term "genocide" has been subject to critical consideration.
Turkey became a signatory to the Genocide Convention in 1950, two years after the United Nations General Assembly
voted on it.
. Under the convention the courts have adopted the common law
principle that both actus reus
(guilty act) and mens rea
(guilty mind) must be present for genocide to have been committed. This was highlighted by Alphons Orie in his summary judgement of the ICTY Momcilo Krajisnik
case. The summary judgement explains that:
The Krajisnik case made it clear that as the Genocide Convention specifically includes "intent to destroy", in whole or in part, a protected group, the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the suspect intended (or was part of a criminal conspiracy that intended) to destroy the group, and that this is different from crimes against humanity where there does not have to be intent to destroy a group, just an action that kills many people. This is why Krajisnik was found guilty of multiple instances of participation in crimes against humanity across Bosnia but not participating in a general Bosnian genocide.
To show that a genocide has occurred, it is not enough to prove that crimes against humanity were committed, because there must be intent to destroy a substantial part of the targeted group. It can be very difficult years or even decades after the event to prove the mens rea (intent) component of genocide even if there is ample evidence that crimes against humanity were committed that fulfil the actus reus (the destruction of the group requirement). This may be because there was no intent, or that the decision to commit genocide was not well documented at the time, or that given the odium attached to genocide that the perpetrators of a genocide, or their descendants, have destroyed any paper trail that could prove genocide. This means that determining if a genocide took place in the past is often a matter of judgement based on incomplete information about the intent of the perpetrators and whether they intended to commit genocide.
The Turkish and some other sources claim that the "intent to destroy," clause in the "Genocide Convention" has not been met, which means even if the "whole or in part" is met without intent it is not genocide. For example, the British Government made its position clear on this point in a statement to the House of Lords in 2007:
), which was a point raised by Rosalyn Higgins
the President of Bosnian Genocide Case at the International Court of Justice at a post trial press interview. She noted that while there was substantial evidence of events in Bosnia may have amounted to war crimes or crimes against humanity, the ICJ had no jurisdiction to make findings in that regard, because the case dealt "exclusively with genocide in a limited legal sense and not in the broader sense sometimes given to this term."
Turkish historians have conceptual problems with a "Broad Genocide of Armenians" which is presented as; "(a)The Turks invaded Armenia and seized its land. (b)They applied a systematic massacre against Armenians since the 1877-1878 war. (c)They resorted to a plan against Armenians from 1915 onward [extending 1922] Regarding this definition of "Armenian Genocide" Turkish sources claim that "...[the sources who use this definition] has never hesitated to go to such extremes as ... [removed the middle section which included claims not linked to issue] to make the claims of genocide against Armenians heard and their demands known [but impossible to respond]..." The roots of "broader sense" form of genocide definition lies in the unresolved conflict paradigm, this definition of genocide "remain in the clash of interest in the past and the present". If the Armenian Genocide begins with the events after 1877-1878 war, these events are more comprehensible if one looks with the concept of rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire
.
The term "Mets Yeghern" was used by John Paul II prayer during the visit to the memorial of Tsitsernakaberd
and by the US president Barack Obama
's statement of on Armenian Remembrance Day
, May 1915, the Republic of Turkey rejects the use of the word "deportation" and "refugee". Turkey uses the terminology "deportation
" for expulsion of foreigners (the expulsion of natives is usually called banishment, exile
, or transportation
) or extradition
. Turkey instead uses the words "relocation" and "immigrant," respectively. Turkey claims that all the destination regions were within the Ottoman Empire's borders. According to revisionist historians, the Ottoman government recognized these "immigrants" as its citizens and took extensive measures to record the type, quantity, and value of their property, as well as the names of the owners and where they were sent.
From the "Ottoman perspective", the term "denial of realities" applies to "conclusions" that are blind-sighted in the interpretation process, such as considering only one side of the casualties (Christian: Armenian, Greek, etc.) while ignoring the other side (Muslim: Kurds, Azeris, etc.). An example of this ignorance can be seen in the use of "çete"s (irregular units) being the origin of trouble for the Armenian population (long history of Kurdish-Armenian relations
). The assumption that the Kurdish chetes were under Ottoman control was presented as a "denial of realities." In truth, they allege, a civil war (waged by irregulars on both sides) took place, rather than a planned annihilation. There are "recent studies", which used to fall into the "denial" category, that present lack of monolithic political system or non unity between Three pashas
. The assumption is questioned that during this time the Committee of Union and Progress
was a monolithic political system or united political front performing empire level activities. The unity or power of the Three pashas
, which were presented as organizers of the annihiltion of 1.5 million Armenians, is also questioned. The same arguments, presented in the rest of the article, extend to many other positions, such as covert operations of Russo-British intelligence services
, the use of the Memoirs of Naim Bey
, etc. It is claimed that the "late response", "lack of communication" between the sides, the important part of the Armenian Archives, Ottoman Archives
, even the third parties archives being classified were the source of problematic use of the word "denial."
From the "Armenian perspective" use proffers an alternative account of the events, the inevitable norm of education in Turkey is a defense of this account. Thus, by virtue of merely being educated in Turkey, an unawareness of any tenable alternative viewpoint may cause a Turkish national to be accused of "denying" something she or he has never had an opportunity to know in the first place. Turkish state revisionism is further helped by the fact that, as a result of the alphabet reform of 1928 (which changed the Turkish script from an Arabic alphabet to a Latin-based alphabet) the vast majority of Turks are unable to read Ottoman-period newspapers, letters, or diaries.
said: "The best course, I believe, is not to dwell on this subject and allow both sides to forget (calm) this part of history." This view was shared by the foreign ministry of Turkey at the time. Zeki Kuneralp
, a former Turkish ambassador, had a different explanation, according to him "The liabilities of not publishing the historical documents outweigh the advantages."
Only in the 1980s did the controversy become public through the work of Kamuran Gürün. Other Turkish institutions followed Gürün. The basic thesis of genocide was only then tested by gathering and organizing the decades-old records and data on the conflict and its casualties. Also at this time, political and military analysis of the crisis began. Since the initial exposure, academic analysis has proceeded to find the underlying conditions of the Empire and the Armenians, with the aim of understanding history to prepare for the future, rather than preserving national pride.
came to power embracing the Armenians, and never developed an anti-Armenian doctrine even if Union and Progress turned to Turkism in time." According to the official Turkey, it is also historically evident that the Union and Progress was responsive to the needs, and desires of the Armenians citizens and they passed Armenian reform package
. They also say, there is great amount of historical data exits to support "within the conditions of the day Ottoman parliament adopted the “Tehcir Law” (27 May 1915), the reasons for the taking of this decision, which was contemplated as provisional were: The Armenians living at regions near the war zones hinder the movements of the Turkish armed forces; harden the logistical support to the soldiers; share the same goals and collaborate with the enemy; attack the troops and innocent civilians within the country’s boundaries; and show the fortified regions to the enemy forces."". The Turkish sources claim "intent of the process" (deportation or relocation) was written in the law. They also claim there was vast amounts of evidence which supports Ottoman Empire acted according to what the written law stated and legislated according to conditions. In support, the Ottoman Archives
are open (although to only a select number of historians) and Turkish historians published five volumes of Ottoman Security dispatches between 1914-1918 related to Ottoman Armenian insurgent activities, as "Arşiv Belgeleriyle Ermeni Faaliyetleri 1914-1918" Vol I Vol II Vol III Vol IV Vol V.
However, Heather Rae asserts that "scholars have long been denied access to Ottoman archives." In the late 1980s access was granted to some archives by the Turkish government, but it appears that the material was limited and the government took a very selective approach to who was allowed to study the material. Historian Taner Akcam
also writes about the "carefully selection" of Ottoman archive materials. "While we are missing a significant portion of these papers, what remains in the Ottoman archives and in court records is sufficiant to show that the CUP
Central Committee, and the Special Organization is set up to carry out its plan, did deliberately attempt to destroy the Armenian population".
was unfolding in the Middle East and shattering the Ottoman Empire, some members of the two primary nationalist groups within the state, the Armenians and the "Arab revolt
", called for armed struggle against the Ottomans. Christian Armenians were located in both the Russian and Ottoman Empires. Some Armenians insisted that their people support the Ottoman government, as Armenians were placed in the Ottoman bureaucracy, but other Armenians claimed that only the Russian Czar, by virtue of shared religion, was the protector of all Armenians. In eastern Anatolia, during the Caucasus Campaign
some of the Ottoman Armenian population, often following the Armenian radical nationalists, engaged in open warfare, these activities are summarized under Armenian resistance. The Zeitun Resistance
, which lasted three months from August 30, 1914 to December 1, 1914, resulted in the report that Armenians defeated all the Ottoman troops sent against them.
In April 1915, shortly after the Van resistance
, an Armenian government was proclaimed in Van, the Administration for Western Armenia
. Following these events, April 25 was the onset of the Allied campaign to drive towards the Ottoman capitol (see Battle of Gallipoli
). The day before Battle of Gallipoli
, Talat Pasha took a decision on April 24, 1915 with the internal codes given by the archive code BOA. DH. ŞFR, nr.52/96,97,98. Talat Pasha ordered the governors of the Ottoman Empire
to (a) arrest the members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation
, Hentchak
and other groups involved with the Armenian national liberation movement, (b) collect documents from party houses and (c) destroy all arms seized in the process. Beginning April 24, there were Armenian notables deported from the Ottoman capital in 1915
. The Ottoman Empire wanted to remove the threat of Armenian resistance and the Turkish authorities today hold the position that the deaths incurred by Armenians as a whole were the result of the turmoil of World War I
and that the Ottoman Empire
was fighting against Russia, Armenian volunteer units
, and the Armenian militia. The Turkish authorities further assert that claims of massacre which ignore the actions of the Armenian resistance movements, are not established historical fact, and therefore grounds for their denial that an Armenian Genocide
ever took place.
They note that in 1915 there was only one railway that connects west-east and that the path of what it considers relocation was not a conspiracy to exterminate Armenians. Turkish authorities strongly reject claims that the locations of the camps which are mentioned in some sources are a result of a conspiracy to bury Armenians in deserts. Deir ez-Zor is a district along the Euphrates and one of the unique places far away from any military activity; thus, Deir ez-Zor's selection as a burying site in a deserted location is rejected. They attribute the graves in these areas to difficulties of traveling under very hard conditions. The conditions of these camps reflected the condition of the Ottoman Empire. The Empire was facing the Gallipoli
landings in the west, and the Caucasus Campaign
in the east.
Regarding the "process of relocation" under the Tehcir Law, arguments disputing the similarities to the ethnic cleansing (Holocaust) are as follows: (a) there is no record of (neither from origination archives nor from destination archives in Syria) an effort to develop a systematic process and efficient means of killing, (b) there are no lists or other methods for tracing the Armenian population to assemble and kill as many people as possible, (c) there was no resource allocation to exterminate Armenians (biological, chemical warfare allocations), and the use of morphine
as a mass extermination agent is not accepted; in fact, there was a constant increase in food and support expenses and these efforts continued after the end of deportations, (d) there is no record of Armenians in forced deportations being treated as prisoners, (e) the claims regarding prisoners apply only to the leaders of the Armenian militia, but did not extend to ethnic profiling; the size of the security force needed to develop these claims was beyond the power of the Ottoman Empire
during 1915, (f) there is no record of prisons designed or built to match the claims of a Holocaust, (g) there were no public speeches organized by the central government targeting Armenians.
. The Ottoman authorities present the facts that some companies had been attacked before they reached their settlement regions. They summarize these attacks; present the fact that the roads between Aleppo and Meskene resulted in many deaths. Other events were located at Diyarbekir to Zor and from Saruc to Halep through Menbic road. Companies have also faced with local attacks from the local tribes in the Diyarbekir, Mamuretülaziz and Bitlis regions. Various eyewitness accounts of Armenian civilians being killed by the Ottoman soldiers they were under command of are usually discounted by revisionist historians.
The Turkish authorities present two positions regarding on this issue:
The Turkish authorities maintain the position that the Ottoman Empire did not exercise the degree of control which the opposing parties claim. Turkey accepts that there were Armenian deaths as a result of Ottoman decisions, but states that the responsible Ottoman bureaucrats and military personnel were tried. Bernard Lewis
believes that what he names the "tremendous massacres"
were not "a deliberate preconceived decision of the Ottoman government." The Dutch historian Erik Zürcher
believes that the reported killings during the application of Tehcir law
were ordered not by the Ottoman government itself, but only a small circle. He supported his claims, in particular, with the trials held by court martial involving several hundred soldiers guilty of massacres, as early as 1916. Zürcher believes that the killings are properly likened to the Srebrenica massacre
s rather than the Holocaust.
There is no consensus between Western scholars and some Turkish scholars on which casualties should be directly assigned to Ottoman Empire. Western historians say that the before and after World War I Armenian population difference should be used. The Ottoman Armenian population
before 1914 gains importance in this perspective. According to Turkey, Western publications use partial statistics (conflict regions) like Turkish Armenia, Anatolia, Ottoman Armenia, Asiatic Turkey, 6 Armenian Villeyets, 9 Armenian Villeyets etc. Historians such as Yusuf Halacoglu claim that the Ottoman Empire should only be responsible for "deportations" and brings forward lower figures of Armenian casualties.
Based on studies of the Ottoman census by Justin McCarthy
and on contemporary estimates, it is said that far fewer than 1.5 million Armenians lived in the relevant areas before the war. Estimates of deaths are thus lowered by 600,000 to 200,000 between 1914 and the Armistice of Mudros
--placing the official count, according to McCarthy and other experts, around 390,000 deaths. In addition, it is said that these deaths are not all related to the deportations, nor should they all be attributed to the Ottoman authorities.
Yusuf Halacoglu, president of the Turkish Historical Society (TTK), presented even lower figures of Armenian casualties. He estimates that with the deportations (excluding inter-ethnic violence) total of 56,000 Armenians perished during the period due to war conditions, and less than 10,000 were actually killed. This study is still absent from Turkish foreign affairs publications.
Some argue that according to the Ottoman Archives
, 517,955 Muslim civilians were massacred in this era by Armenian irregular units
and Armenian revolutionary groups
compromised of the Dashnaks
, the Hunchaks
, and the Ramgavars
, in addition to the French Armenian Legion
and the British
and Russian backed Armenian volunteer units
.
. Ottoman sources use similar arguments to Armenian nationalism
which they use to other non-Ottoman ethnic groups. They point to the famous patriotic speech “The Paper Ladle” of Catholicos Mgrdich Khrimian in which he advised Armenians to take the National awakening of Bulgaria
as a model as the hopes of the Armenian people for self-determination were ignored. “The Paper Ladle” was a turning point at the Armenian national awakening in the Ottoman Empire. Nationalism did not only influence the Armenians; Kurdish-Armenian relations
caused trouble for both the Armenian and Muslim populations of the region. The New York Times
quoted a Turkish embassy gazette in 1896 that stated: "It wasn't the Porte that caused the massacres in Armenia, but the Christian propaganda in Asia Minor where their cry, "Down with Islam," initiated the war of the crescent against the cross."
The plight of Ottoman Muslims throughout the 19th and 20th centuries is also mentioned. According to the historian Mark Mazower
, Turkey resents the fact that the West is ignorant of the fate of millions of Muslims expelled from the Balkans and Russia, and would consider any apology towards Armenians as a confirmation of the anti-Turkish sentiment held by Western powers for centuries. Mazower recognizes a genocide of the Armenians, but he notes "Even today, no connection is made between the genocide of the Armenians and Muslim civilian losses: the millions of Muslims expelled from the Balkans and the Russian Empire
through the long 19th century
remain part of Europe's own forgotten past. Indeed, the official Turkish response is invariably to remind critics of this fact — an unconvincing justification for genocide, to be sure, but an expression of underlying resentment".
According to some interpretations, such as that of the Prior of the Franciscan monks living in the region of where the events happened, claims this was not an act of genocide and that it was a two sided battle: "when they advanced victoriously under the protection of the Russian Army
, the same spectacle occurred as in 1915, but this time it was Turks who were attacked by Armenians, aided and possibly commanded and directed by Russia. Wherever the Armenians found a Turk he was mercilessly hacked down, wherever they saw a Turkish Mosque it was plundered and set on fire. Turkish quarters went up in smoke and flames just like the Armenian quarters. You are presently about to travel round the country and you will still be able to follow in the footsteps of war: Bayburt
, Erzincan
, Erzurum
, and Kars
. You will still see smoldering heaps of rubble; you will still smell blood and corpses, but it so happens that these were Turkish corpses." However, Turkey does not accuse Armenia or Russia of genocide currently (nor does it accuse Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and Montenegro), arguing that the whole thing was simply a brutal war. There are many Turkish people who nonetheless argue that if what they did to Armenians was genocide, then certainly what the Armenians and Russians did also was.
Another common claim made by not only Turks, but also other peoples of the region, is that the actions of Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro and Greece during the First Balkan War (against Albanians and Turks, as well as other peoples of the region) and of the same list minus Bulgaria during the Second (against Bulgarians) constituted genocide, especially those by the Serbs against Albanians and Turks in Kosovo and Macedonia. Whole villages were burnt to the ground and their inhabitants were massacred on spot and left in piles simply because they were inhabited by Turks or Albanians (and later, Bulgarians/Macedonians). The Serbian-orchestrated massacres of Albanians and other Balkan Muslims in Kosovo and Macedonia were soon discovered by the press- and not only the Hapsburg and Ottoman press, but even a number of disaffected Westerners and even Serbs. Even one Serb Social Democrat who had served in the army previously commented on the disgust he had for the crimes his own people had committed against the Albanians, describing in great detail heaps of dead, headless Albanians in the centers of a string of burnt towns near Kumanovo and Skopje:
Similarly, while Turks committed numerous atrocities against Bulgarians in Thrace during the First Balkan War, the Bulgarians also victimized the Turks (as well as Muslim Bulgarians)
Turks claim that since no country recognizes this behavior as genocide (well over 1 million Turks were killed during the Balkan Wars and World War I ), it is absurd to call what happened to the Armenians in Anatolia (with similar proportions) genocide, and that the genocide claim is just being used against the losing side in the First World War. It is notable that not only Turks but also Kurds (as well as, in cases, Circassians) were murdered and expelled in sensitive regions in the Northern Middle East and the Balkans, on the grounds of their Islam and relative loyalty to the Porte (though in the case of the Kurds, this loyalty was entering its last years as it dissipated when Kurds realized their lack of rights in an explicitly Turkish state). Albanians, too, who were not universally Muslim, nor were they loyal to the Empire, were subjected to a number of organized cleansing operations in the form of massacres at the hands of the Balkan pact members, especially the Serbs - yet no one calls this genocide except the Albanians themselves and sympathizers. The Armenian Genocide put into the context of the events of the disastrous Balkan Wars and World War I (as it is in Turkish history), is important for understanding why Turks cannot admit that it was a genocide.
Regarding the famine and starvation arguments; Turkish authorities acknowledge that many Armenians died, but say Muslim millet
of the Empire died too. The most horrible cases, which happened to occur around the region that is currently Syria (part of Ottoman Empire until end of war), were covered in a detailed article (the whole of Greater Syria, and thus including Akkar) by Linda Schatkowski Schilcher. This study lists what she views as eight basic factors, contributing to as many as 500,000 deaths of the Syrians in the 1915-1918 period: (a) The Entente powers
' total blockage of the Syrian coast; (b) the inadequacy of the Ottoman supply strategy; deficient harvest and inclement weather; (c) diversion of supplies from Syria as a consequence of the Arab revolt
; (d) the speculative frenzy of a number of unscrupulous local grain merchants; the callousness of German military officials in Syria, and systematic hoarding by the population at large.
In general, beginning with World War I every situation of the Empire got worse every year, with most of the able men being in the front lines. Signing of the Armistice of Mudros
by the Ottoman Empire was related with the breakdown of the public support under very bad conditions.
between Armenia and Turkic-speaking
Azerbaijan
. The borders have remained closed because the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute has not been settled to this day, and also because of a dispute over a matter of history: the death of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in eastern Turkey during the dying days of the Ottoman Empire; whether to label it 'genocide' or not.
In 2005 Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
invited Turkish, Armenian and international historians to form a commission to reevaluate the events of 1915 by using archives in Turkey, Armenia and other countries. Armenian president Robert Kocharian
responded, "It is the responsibility of governments to develop bilateral relations and we do not have the right to delegate that responsibility to historians. That is why we have proposed and propose again that, without pre-conditions, we establish normal relations between our two countries."
Additionally, Turkish foreign minister of the time, Abdullah Gül
, invited the United States
and other countries to contribute to such a commission by appointing scholars to "investigate this tragedy
and open ways for Turks and Armenians to come together".
Every original document of the Tehcir Law
is open. The Ottoman Archives were taken over by the Governmental Archives Directorate of the Prime Ministry. According to Turkish authorities, the Ottoman Archives have been researched by many historians. Besides the research made by thousands of historians, these documents were translated into English and published in order to enlighten the public.
Turkish authorities point out that without doing a triangulation, even if the facts were reported correctly, the conclusions drawn can be false. It is also possible to look at secondary sources in the Ottoman Archives
of the period such as budget, allocations, decisions/reasons of requests. There are also personal records such as Mehmed Talat Pasha
's personal notes. They also point out the general attitude (Sick man of Europe
) of the time and how it deforms perceptions. They state that the conclusions reached toward genocide
are highly biased.
Some very "central" (most cited) sources are actively questioned on the basis that they do not include a single reference from the Ottoman Archives
, mainly occupying forces' sources of the period (British, French) on the basis of their Intelligence (information gathering)
issues. There are concerns that these sources may promote propaganda.
Enver Zia Karal (former dean of history at Ankara University), Salahi R. Sonyel (British historian and public activist), Ismail Binark (General Director of State Archives, Ankara), Sinasi Orel (director of a much publicized project on declassifying documents on Ottoman Armenians), Kamuran Gurun (former diplomat), Mim Kemal Oke, Justin McCarthy
, and others have claimed that the "Blue Book" (The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-1916) by James Bryce
and Arnold J. Toynbee
lacks credibility. Their reasoning being that the Blue Book was originally censored to protect the identities of witnesses who were still living in the Ottoman Empire in 1916 and that eye witness accounts could not be considered without their identification. The referenced names of the witnesses were published separately in a sister publication and have since been combined in to an uncensored edition. The sister publication which was a confidential key was forwarded by Bryce and Toynbee to a number of trusted individuals in Britain and the United States who published it in 1916.
Reverse engineering of activities aimed to provide evidence without covering opposing reasoning, such as "Map of Genocide", contain factual problems according to these historians. In this map, the methodology developed, related to "Centers of Massacre and Deportation" and adding data from three different sources (the data in these sources are also aggregate data), is questionable. This map is used as a source of validation among Western scholars.
They argue that there was a secret arrangement which can be traced through mismatches on orders and distributions of the forced deportations. There are many periphery-to-center transmissions on how to deal with emerging issues, such as allocating more than 10% of the destination population and its consequences to the local economy.
, to constitute concrete evidence that the deaths were implemented as a state policy. Pasha was notoriously tied to the "Kill every Armenian man, woman, and child without concern" order in these documents (see Aram Andonian
's page for more on this topic). The genocidal intent of Mehmed Talat Pasha and even the correctness of this famous sentence is dependent on the authenticity of these documents.
and The Washington Post
a group of 69 American historians, on basis of an advertisement, has published a statement in which there was a call to the Congress of the USA not to adopt the resolution on the Armenian Genocide. A prominent historian Bernard Lewis was among them and so the case was named after him.
The publication of the announcement was made as paid advertisement by the Committee of the Turkish Associations. As remarked Richard Hovannisian, there was an important role in signing of this statement that played Heath Lowry, the director of the Institute of Turkish Studies. Lowry himself was labeled as one of the key deniers of the Armenian Genocide and according to Roger W. Smith, Eric Markusen
and Robert Jay Lifton
, he was also advising on how to prevent mention of the Armenian Genocide in scholarly works to and was "caught ghosting" for the Turkish ambassador in Washington regarding the denial of the Armenian Genocide. Most of the 69 academics apparently benefited directly or indirectly from Turkish largess. The Armenian Assembly of America
rapidly organised an investigation of the academic records and the history of research grants received by the signatories. The research revealed the majority of the scholars were not specialists in the subject matter of the period of the genocide and, more important, that a very large number of them were recipients of grants from Turkish government. Speros Vryonis
has analysed the data on 1993 and concluded, significant number of signatories and their institutions as well were direct recipients of Turkish funds. Yves Ternon
, a French historian specializing on historical research of the Jewish Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide, notes in this regard, that in their researches those scholars assume more “liberal” criteria. For example, Bernard Lewis uses the name “Turkey” instead of “Ottoman Empire” only in one of the chapters of his book “The Emergence of Modern Turkey.” As for their arguments for the term “Genocide” not to be used, Ternon calls them unacceptable.
After the publication of the subject statement, professor Gérard Chaliand
of Paris V – Sorbonne
University had expressed his disappointment by Lewis’ signature, who answered to it with a reasoning, that the statement made out of desire not to damage Turkish-American relationships and that it included a call for Turkey to open its archives. To this Chaliand replies, that it is ill-conditioned, if not untrue, to name as a reason, that there is lack of proof of a Genocide against the Armenians in the western Armenian Highlands (eastern Anatolia) during World War I, when, in fact, the real reason was the fears to destabilise NATO in some possible way.
The director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide
Israel Charny
, as he describes, was shocked from this statement and had addressed letters to each of the signatories with detailed questions in them: what their approach was to the massacres of the Armenians in Turkey, if they reject those actions constitute a Genocide, if they think, that Armenians distort facts and what opinion they have about those, who signed the subject advert-statement. Some had confessed, that there are deliberate attempts by the Turkish side to muddle and denial of the issue, others confirmed that there have been massacres but avoided the use of the term Genocide. The provisional data of the inquiry were published on the Internet in 1990.
According to Yair Auron
, an Israeli historian, scholar and expert specialising on Genocide studies and racism, this advert-letter calling for abstaining to recognise the Genocide of Armenians before the Turkish Archives are disclosed is a good example of another attempt by Turkey to influence the academia and that for the latter Turkey spends enormous funds.
In October 2000, when the House of Representatives of the USA was to discuss the resolution on the Armenian Genocide, Turkish politician Mustafa Shukru lamented that the statement of 69 scholars was pointless as this time none of them besides Justin McCarthy
have agreed to sign the new declaration.
The undersigned scientists of this declaration represented a variety of scientific studies: Medicine, Economics, Computer Sciences, Molecular genetics, Law, Nuclear Engineering etc. Among the signatories are scientists from the USA, Azerbaijan, Canada and other countries.
example of a state's denial of its past".
Historians mark that "the genocide of the Armenians has been denied to this day by succesive Turkish governments, with the exception of the short-lived imperial government that existed between the end of World War I
and the ascendance of the Kemalist nationalist regime in the early 1920s." To deny the Armenian genocide "is like Holocaust denial," notes Gregory Stanton
, vice president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars
and president of Genocide Watch
.
According to Intelligence Report journal of Southern Poverty Law Center
, "revisionist historians who conjure doubt about the Armenian genocide and are paid by the Turkish government provided the politicians with the intellectual cover they needed to claim they were refusing to dictate history rather than caving in to a foreign government's present-day interests". Mark Potok
, the editor of Intelligence Report, wrote:
Colin Tatz
, Professor of Macquarie University
, considers the nature of Turkish denial industry as "pernicious, outrageous and continued": "Here is a modern state, totally dedicated, at home and abroad, to extraordinary actions to have every hint or mention of an Armenian genocide removed, contradicted, explained, countered, justified, mitigated, rationalised, trivialised and relativised." In their book Criminological Perspectives, E. McLaughlin, J. Muncie and G. Hughes conclude: "If the Turkish government can deny that the Armenian genocide happened; if revisionist historians and neo-Nazis deny that Holocaust took place; if powerful states all around the world today can systematically deny the systematic violations of human rights they are carrying out - then we know that we're in bad shape".
In 1990, psychologist Robert Jay Lifton
received a letter from the Turkish Ambassador to the United States, questioning his inclusion of references to the Armenian Genocide in one of his books. The ambassador inadvertently included a draft of a letter, presented by scholar Heath W. Lowry
, advising the ambassador on how to prevent mention of the Armenian Genocide in scholarly works. Lowry was later named to the Atatürk chair of Ottoman Studies at Princeton University
, which had been endowed with a $750,000 grant from the Republic of Turkey. The incident has been the subject of numerous reports as to ethics in scholarship.
Another source notes: "In order to institutionalize this campaign of denial and try to invest it with an aura of legitimacy, a "think-tank" was established in Ankara in April 2001. Operating under the name "Institute for Armenian Research
" as a subsidiary of The Center For Eurasian Studies, with a staff of nine, this new outfit is now proactively engaged in contesting all claims of genocide by organizing a series of conferences, lectures, and interviews, and above all, through the medium of publications, including a quarterly".
Open University of Israel
scholar Yair Auron
has addressed the various means employed by the Turkish government to obscure the reality of the Armenian Genocide:
University of California, Los Angeles
scholar Leo Kuper
in a review on Ervin Staub's "The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence" research, wrote:
According to American scholars Roger W. Smith, Eric Markusen
and Robert Jay Lifton,
"Given the indisputable documentary record of the Armenian genocide, it would appear that at least some of those who refuse to go on record recognizing Turkey’s genocide of Armenians are, like those who refuse to recognize Germany’s genocide of European Jews, motivated by ignorance and bigotry", claims American scholar Stephen Zunes
.
On June 9, 2000, in a full-page statement in The New York Times
, 126 scholars, including Nobel Prize
-winner Elie Wiesel
, historian Yehuda Bauer
, and sociologist Irving Horowitz, signed a document "affirming that the World War I
Armenian genocide is an incontestable historical fact and accordingly urge the governments of Western democracies to likewise recognize it as such."
Wiesel himself has repeatedly called Turkey's 90-year-old campaign to cover up the Armenian genocide a double killing, since it strives to kill the memory of the original atrocities.
In an open letter by the "Danish Department for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the denial and relativization of the Armenian genocide", historians Torben Jorgensen
and Matthias Bjornlund
wrote:
Philip L. Kohl
and Clare Fawcett write that the "Armenian cultural remains in neighboring Turkey are frequently dismissed or referred to as "Ottoman period" monuments", and that the continued denial of the state-sponsored genocide is "related to these practices".
According to Taner Akçam
, Turkey "tried to erase the traces of a recent past that had become undesirable" through a series of reforms, so the collective memory "was replaced by an official history written by a few authorised academics, which became the sole recognised reference. Events prior to 1928 and the writings of past generations became a closed book."
In a lecture he delivered in June 2011, Akçam stated that he was told by a Turkish foreign ministry official that the Turkish government was trying to bribe historians and academics in the United States to deny the Armenian Genocide. Though he did not make any direct accusations, he noted the timing between what his source said with the recent publication of American historian Michael M. Gunter
's book Armenian History and the Question of Genocide. He also raised the point that the four individuals who praised Gunter's book – Hakan Yavuz of University of Utah, Guenter Lewy of University of Massachusetts, Jeremy Salt of Bilkent University, Ankara, and Edward J. Ericson of Marine Corps Command & Staff College, Virginia – "are well known for their denialist position and works regarding the genocide of 1915."
, Switzerland
and Uruguay
have adopted laws that punish genocide denial
. In October 2006, the French National Assembly
, despite the opposition of foreign minister Philippe Douste-Blazy
, passed a bill which if approved by the Senate and signed into law, will make Armenian Genocide denial a crime. On October 7, 2011 French President Nicolas Sarkozy
said that Turkey's refusal to recognize the genocide would force France to make such denials a criminal offense.
, found guilty of racial discrimination by a Swiss district court in Lausanne
in March 2007. Perinçek appealed the verdict. After the court's decision, he said, "I defend my right to freedom of expression." "I have not denied genocide because there was no genocide," he argued. Ferai Tinç, a foreign affairs columnist with Turkey's Hürriyet
newspaper, added, "we find these type of [penal] articles against freedom of opinion dangerous because we are struggling in our country to achieve freedom of thought." In December 2007, the Swiss Federal Court confirmed the sentence given to Perinçek.
In October, 2008 the Swiss court ruled that three Turks were guilty of racial discrimination after having claimed that the Armenian Genocide was an "international lie." The Europe
an representative of the Party of Turkish Workers
, Ali Mercan, was sentenced to pay a fine of 4,500 Swiss franc
s ($3,900), two others were ordered to pay 3,600 Swiss francs. In October 2010, the Swiss Federal Court confirmed the verdict.
In November 1993 American historian Bernard Lewis
said in an interview that calling the massacres committed by the Turks in 1915 a genocide was just "the Armenian version of this history". In a 1995 civil proceeding a French court censured his remarks as a denial of the Armenian Genocide and fined him one franc, as well as ordering the publication of the judgment at Lewis' cost in Le Monde
. The court ruled that while Lewis has the right to his views, they did damage to a third party and that "it is only by hiding elements which go against his thesis that the defendant was able to state that there was no 'serious proof' of the Armenian Genocide; consequently, he failed in his duties of objectivity and prudence by expressing himself without qualification on such a sensitive subject".
Azerbaijan
i Deputy Speaker said in April 2010, that "There were not such events as the "Armenian genocide" in history. It has been made up by Armenian politicians. http://en.trend.az/news/politics/foreign/1675705.html
. Time Europe later apologized for allowing the inclusion of the DVDs and published a critical letter signed by five French organizations. The February 12, 2007 edition of Time Europe included a full-page announcement and a DVD of a documentary by French director Laurence Jourdan, with an interview with Yves Ternon
.
Denial Websites
Armenian Genocide
The Armenian Genocide—also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, by Armenians, as the Great Crime—refers to the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I...
did not occur in the manner or to the extent described by scholarship
Scholarly method
Scholarly method or scholarship is the body of principles and practices used by scholars to make their claims about the world as valid and trustworthy as possible, and to make them known to the scholarly public.-Methods:...
. Denial of the Armenian Genocide is forbidden in some countries.
The Armenian Genocide is widely acknowledged by genocide scholars to have been one of the first modern, systematic genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
s, as many Western
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
sources point to the sheer scale of the death toll
Ottoman Armenian casualties
Ottoman Armenian casualties refers to the number of deaths of Ottoman Armenian people between 1914 to 1923. The Republic of Armenia and several other nations recognize the deaths to have occurred during an Armenian Genocide.Most estimates of related Armenian deaths between 1915 to 1918 range from...
as evidence for a systematic, organized plan to eliminate the Armenians.
The Republic of Turkey, as well as the Republic of Azerbaijan, do not accept that the Ottoman authorities
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
attempted to exterminate the Armenian people. The Turkish government acknowledges that during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
many Armenians
Armenians
Armenian people or Armenians are a nation and ethnic group native to the Armenian Highland.The largest concentration is in Armenia having a nearly-homogeneous population with 97.9% or 3,145,354 being ethnic Armenian....
died, but counters that Muslim Turks
Turkish people
Turkish people, also known as the "Turks" , are an ethnic group primarily living in Turkey and in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire where Turkish minorities had been established in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Romania...
died as well, and claims that the number of Armenian victims has been inflated, and that massacre
Massacre
A massacre is an event with a heavy death toll.Massacre may also refer to:-Entertainment:*Massacre , a DC Comics villain*Massacre , a 1932 drama film starring Richard Barthelmess*Massacre, a 1956 Western starring Dane Clark...
s were committed by both sides as a result of inter-ethnic violence and the wider conflict of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
.
Terminology
According to historians, while there is debate about its exact circumstances, "there can be no doubt about the fact of [Armenian] genocide itself. In this sense, the denial of the Armenian genocide is very similar to the denial of the Holocaust of the Jews."However, three historians specializing in Near Eastern Studies - Bernard Lewis
Bernard Lewis
Bernard Lewis, FBA is a British-American historian, scholar in Oriental studies, and political commentator. He is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University...
, Justin McCarthy
Justin McCarthy (American historian)
Justin A. McCarthy is an American demographer, professor of history at the University of Louisville, in Louisville, Kentucky. He holds an honorary doctorate from Boğaziçi University, Turkey, and is a board member of the Institute of Turkish Studies...
, and Heath Lowry
Heath W. Lowry
Heath Ward Lowry is the Ataturk Professor of Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies at Princeton University. He has written several books on the history of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey.-Background:...
, who are all members of the Institute of Turkish Studies
Institute of Turkish Studies
The Institute of Turkish Studies is a foundation based in the United States with the avowed objective of advancing Turkish studies at colleges and universities in the USA....
, as well as the late Stanford Shaw
Stanford J. Shaw
Stanford Jay Shaw was an American historian, best known for his works on the late Ottoman Empire, Turkish Jews, and the early Turkish Republic...
from the Bilkent University
Bilkent University
İhsan Doğramacı Bilkent University, commonly referred to as Bilkent University or Bilkent, is the first private, nonprofit university in Turkey with the fundamental aim of creating a center of excellence in higher education and research...
, Ankara
Ankara
Ankara is the capital of Turkey and the country's second largest city after Istanbul. The city has a mean elevation of , and as of 2010 the metropolitan area in the entire Ankara Province had a population of 4.4 million....
and independent scholars Guenter Lewy
Guenter Lewy
Guenter Lewy is an author and political scientist who is a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts. His works span several topics, but he is most often associated with his 1978 book on the Vietnam War, America in Vietnam, and several controversial works that deal with the...
and Eberhard Jäckel
Eberhard Jäckel
Eberhard Jäckel is a Social Democratic German historian, noted for his studies of Adolf Hitler's role in German history. Jäckel sees Hitler as being the historical equivalent to the Chernobyl disaster.-Career:...
are critical of the Armenian Genocide term. In 2004 the British historian Norman Stone
Norman Stone
Norman Stone is a British academic, historian, author and is currently a Professor in the Department of International Relations at Bilkent University, Ankara...
wrote from Ankara
Ankara
Ankara is the capital of Turkey and the country's second largest city after Istanbul. The city has a mean elevation of , and as of 2010 the metropolitan area in the entire Ankara Province had a population of 4.4 million....
to the Times Literary Supplement to deny "Armenian nationalist claims that a 'genocide' as classically defined had taken place".
The use of specific terminologies regarding the issue are debated, such as the word "deportation". Deniers claim that some of the specific words do not fit the realities of the period or they are not substantiated by the facts.
The term "genocide"
The term "genocide" was coined by Raphael LemkinRaphael Lemkin
Raphael Lemkin was a Polish lawyer of Jewish descent. He is best known for his work against genocide, a word he coined in 1943 from the root words genos and -cide...
in 1943. In a 1949 CBS interview with Quincy Howe, Lemkin explained, "I became interested in Genocide because it happened so many times. First to the Armenians, then after the Armenians, Hitler took action."
The term "genocide" has been subject to critical consideration.
Turkey became a signatory to the Genocide Convention in 1950, two years after the United Nations General Assembly
United Nations General Assembly
For two articles dealing with membership in the General Assembly, see:* General Assembly members* General Assembly observersThe United Nations General Assembly is one of the five principal organs of the United Nations and the only one in which all member nations have equal representation...
voted on it.
Genocide convention
The convention includes two qualifications for a genocide to have taken place. For the crime of genocide to have taken place there must be the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, [a protected group]". The qualifications are important under international law and have been clarified by the judgements of the ICTY and the International Court of JusticeInternational Court of Justice
The International Court of Justice is the primary judicial organ of the United Nations. It is based in the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands...
. Under the convention the courts have adopted the common law
Common law
Common law is law developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals rather than through legislative statutes or executive branch action...
principle that both actus reus
Actus reus
Actus reus, sometimes called the external element or the objective element of a crime, is the Latin term for the "guilty act" which, when proved beyond a reasonable doubt in combination with the mens rea, "guilty mind", produces criminal liability in the common law-based criminal law jurisdictions...
(guilty act) and mens rea
Mens rea
Mens rea is Latin for "guilty mind". In criminal law, it is viewed as one of the necessary elements of a crime. The standard common law test of criminal liability is usually expressed in the Latin phrase, actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea, which means "the act does not make a person guilty...
(guilty mind) must be present for genocide to have been committed. This was highlighted by Alphons Orie in his summary judgement of the ICTY Momcilo Krajisnik
Momcilo Krajišnik
Momčilo Krajišnik is a Bosnian Serb former politician convicted of murder and other crimes against humanity during the Bosnian war .He co-founded the Bosnian Serb nationalist Serbian Democratic Party with Radovan...
case. The summary judgement explains that:
The Krajisnik case made it clear that as the Genocide Convention specifically includes "intent to destroy", in whole or in part, a protected group, the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the suspect intended (or was part of a criminal conspiracy that intended) to destroy the group, and that this is different from crimes against humanity where there does not have to be intent to destroy a group, just an action that kills many people. This is why Krajisnik was found guilty of multiple instances of participation in crimes against humanity across Bosnia but not participating in a general Bosnian genocide.
To show that a genocide has occurred, it is not enough to prove that crimes against humanity were committed, because there must be intent to destroy a substantial part of the targeted group. It can be very difficult years or even decades after the event to prove the mens rea (intent) component of genocide even if there is ample evidence that crimes against humanity were committed that fulfil the actus reus (the destruction of the group requirement). This may be because there was no intent, or that the decision to commit genocide was not well documented at the time, or that given the odium attached to genocide that the perpetrators of a genocide, or their descendants, have destroyed any paper trail that could prove genocide. This means that determining if a genocide took place in the past is often a matter of judgement based on incomplete information about the intent of the perpetrators and whether they intended to commit genocide.
The Turkish and some other sources claim that the "intent to destroy," clause in the "Genocide Convention" has not been met, which means even if the "whole or in part" is met without intent it is not genocide. For example, the British Government made its position clear on this point in a statement to the House of Lords in 2007:
Broader sense
Agreement among scholars on whether a genocide took place is further complicated because not all scholars use the Genocide Convention as a definition of what constitutes genocide (see genocide definitionsGenocide definitions
This is a list of scholarly and international legal definitions of genocide, a word coined by Raphael Lemkin in 1944. While there are various definitions of the term, almost all international bodies of law officially adjudicate the crime of genocide pursuant to the Convention on the Prevention and...
), which was a point raised by Rosalyn Higgins
Rosalyn Higgins
Dame Rosalyn Higgins, DBE, QC is the former President of the International Court of Justice. Higgins was the first female judge to be appointed to the ICJ, and was elected President in 2006. Her term of office expired on 6 February 2009...
the President of Bosnian Genocide Case at the International Court of Justice at a post trial press interview. She noted that while there was substantial evidence of events in Bosnia may have amounted to war crimes or crimes against humanity, the ICJ had no jurisdiction to make findings in that regard, because the case dealt "exclusively with genocide in a limited legal sense and not in the broader sense sometimes given to this term."
Turkish historians have conceptual problems with a "Broad Genocide of Armenians" which is presented as; "(a)The Turks invaded Armenia and seized its land. (b)They applied a systematic massacre against Armenians since the 1877-1878 war. (c)They resorted to a plan against Armenians from 1915 onward [extending 1922] Regarding this definition of "Armenian Genocide" Turkish sources claim that "...[the sources who use this definition] has never hesitated to go to such extremes as ... [removed the middle section which included claims not linked to issue] to make the claims of genocide against Armenians heard and their demands known [but impossible to respond]..." The roots of "broader sense" form of genocide definition lies in the unresolved conflict paradigm, this definition of genocide "remain in the clash of interest in the past and the present". If the Armenian Genocide begins with the events after 1877-1878 war, these events are more comprehensible if one looks with the concept of rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire
Rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire
The rise of the Western notion of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire eventually caused the break-down of the Ottoman millet concept...
.
The term "Mets Yeghern"
"Meds Yeghern" (alternative spelled as Medz Yeghern, Mets Yeghern, Metz Yeghern) is used by Armenians synonymous with Հայոց ցեղասպանություն (Hayoc’ c’eġaspanut’yun), (“‘Genocide of Armenians’”) to refer to the Armenian Genocide the way Shoah is used by Jews to refer to the Holocaust.The term "Mets Yeghern" was used by John Paul II prayer during the visit to the memorial of Tsitsernakaberd
Tsitsernakaberd
Tsitsernakaberd is a memorial dedicated to the victims of the Armenian Genocide; it is located on a hill overlooking Yerevan, Armenia. Every year on April 24, hundreds of thousands of Armenians gather here to remember the victims of the 1915 Armenian Genocide that took place in the Ottoman Empire...
and by the US president Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
's statement of on Armenian Remembrance Day
- 2001 September 26, John Paul II, "Prayer of John Paul II at the Memorial of Tzitzernagaberd":
- Listen, O Lord, to the lament that rises from this place,
- to the call of the dead from the depths of the Metz Yeghérn,
- the cry of innocent blood that pleads like the blood of Abel,
- like Rachel weeping for her children because they are no more.
- 2009 April 24, Barack ObamaBarack ObamaBarack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
, "Statement of President Barack Obama on Armenian Remembrance Day":
- Ninety four years ago, one of the great atrocities of the 20th century began. Each year, we pause to remember the 1.5 million Armenians who were subsequently massacred or marched to their death in the final days of the Ottoman Empire. The Mets Yeghern must live on in our memories, just as it lives on in the hearts of the Armenian people.
The term "deportation"
Currently, regarding the activities performed under Tehcir LawTehcir Law
The Tehcir Law was passed by the Ottoman Parliament on May 27, 1915 and allegedly came into force on June 1, 1915, with publication in Takvim-i Vekayi, the official gazette of the Ottoman State...
, May 1915, the Republic of Turkey rejects the use of the word "deportation" and "refugee". Turkey uses the terminology "deportation
Deportation
Deportation means the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. Today it often refers to the expulsion of foreign nationals whereas the expulsion of nationals is called banishment, exile, or penal transportation...
" for expulsion of foreigners (the expulsion of natives is usually called banishment, exile
Exile
Exile means to be away from one's home , while either being explicitly refused permission to return and/or being threatened with imprisonment or death upon return...
, or transportation
Penal transportation
Transportation or penal transportation is the deporting of convicted criminals to a penal colony. Examples include transportation by France to Devil's Island and by the UK to its colonies in the Americas, from the 1610s through the American Revolution in the 1770s, and then to Australia between...
) or extradition
Extradition
Extradition is the official process whereby one nation or state surrenders a suspected or convicted criminal to another nation or state. Between nation states, extradition is regulated by treaties...
. Turkey instead uses the words "relocation" and "immigrant," respectively. Turkey claims that all the destination regions were within the Ottoman Empire's borders. According to revisionist historians, the Ottoman government recognized these "immigrants" as its citizens and took extensive measures to record the type, quantity, and value of their property, as well as the names of the owners and where they were sent.
The term "denial"
The term "denial" has itself been subject to critical consideration by deniers.From the "Ottoman perspective", the term "denial of realities" applies to "conclusions" that are blind-sighted in the interpretation process, such as considering only one side of the casualties (Christian: Armenian, Greek, etc.) while ignoring the other side (Muslim: Kurds, Azeris, etc.). An example of this ignorance can be seen in the use of "çete"s (irregular units) being the origin of trouble for the Armenian population (long history of Kurdish-Armenian relations
Kurdish-Armenian relations
Kurdish-Armenian relations covers the historical relations between the Kurds and the Armenians.-Ancient Armenia and Corduene:Ancient Corduene, identified as Kurdistan in some sources was twice incorporated into the Kingdom of Armenia. The first period was in the first century BCE from 90 to 66 BCE...
). The assumption that the Kurdish chetes were under Ottoman control was presented as a "denial of realities." In truth, they allege, a civil war (waged by irregulars on both sides) took place, rather than a planned annihilation. There are "recent studies", which used to fall into the "denial" category, that present lack of monolithic political system or non unity between Three pashas
Three Pashas
"The Three Pashas", also known as the "dictatorial triumvirate", of the Ottoman Empire included the Ottoman minister of the interior, Mehmed Talaat , the minister of war, Ismail Enver, and the minister of the Navy, Ahmed Djemal,...
. The assumption is questioned that during this time the Committee of Union and Progress
Committee of Union and Progress
The Committee of Union and Progress began as a secret society established as the "Committee of Ottoman Union" in 1889 by the medical students İbrahim Temo, Abdullah Cevdet, İshak Sükuti and Ali Hüseyinzade...
was a monolithic political system or united political front performing empire level activities. The unity or power of the Three pashas
Three Pashas
"The Three Pashas", also known as the "dictatorial triumvirate", of the Ottoman Empire included the Ottoman minister of the interior, Mehmed Talaat , the minister of war, Ismail Enver, and the minister of the Navy, Ahmed Djemal,...
, which were presented as organizers of the annihiltion of 1.5 million Armenians, is also questioned. The same arguments, presented in the rest of the article, extend to many other positions, such as covert operations of Russo-British intelligence services
Operation Nemesis
Operation Nemesis is the Armenian Revolutionary Federation's code-name for a covert operation in early 1920s to assassinate the Turkish planners of the Armenian Genocide. Those involved with the planning and execution of the operation were survivors of the massacres...
, the use of the Memoirs of Naim Bey
The Memoirs of Naim Bey
The Memoirs of Naim Bey: Turkish Official Documents Relating to the Deportation and the Massacres of Armenians, also known as the "Talat Pasha telegrams", is a book written by Aram Andonian and published in London by Hodder & Stoughton in 1920, originally in English, and later in a French version...
, etc. It is claimed that the "late response", "lack of communication" between the sides, the important part of the Armenian Archives, Ottoman Archives
Ottoman Archives
The Ottoman Archives is a collection of historical sources related to the Ottoman Empire. A total of 39 nations hold the collective information, including 19 in the Middle East, 11 in the EU and Balkan states, 3 in the Caucasus, 2 in Central Asia, Cyprus, as well as Israel and Turkey.The main...
, even the third parties archives being classified were the source of problematic use of the word "denial."
From the "Armenian perspective" use proffers an alternative account of the events, the inevitable norm of education in Turkey is a defense of this account. Thus, by virtue of merely being educated in Turkey, an unawareness of any tenable alternative viewpoint may cause a Turkish national to be accused of "denying" something she or he has never had an opportunity to know in the first place. Turkish state revisionism is further helped by the fact that, as a result of the alphabet reform of 1928 (which changed the Turkish script from an Arabic alphabet to a Latin-based alphabet) the vast majority of Turks are unable to read Ottoman-period newspapers, letters, or diaries.
Late response
The Turkish government was very slow in answering the genocide charges, though nearly a century had passed since the events. In 1975 Turkish historian and biographer Şevket Süreyya AydemirSevket Süreyya Aydemir
Sevket Surreya Aydemir was a Turkish intellectual, and was one of the founders and a key theorist of Kadro, an influential policy journal published in Turkey from 1932-1934. He was educated and became familiar with Marxism at Moscow University where he studied economics, and worked as a teacher...
said: "The best course, I believe, is not to dwell on this subject and allow both sides to forget (calm) this part of history." This view was shared by the foreign ministry of Turkey at the time. Zeki Kuneralp
Zeki Kuneralp
Zeki Kuneralp was a Turkish diplomat, who rose to the highest offices in his country's foreign ministry despite having been brought up as an exile in Switzerland, after the murder of his father, a pro-British journalist and politician, during the Turkish War of Independence...
, a former Turkish ambassador, had a different explanation, according to him "The liabilities of not publishing the historical documents outweigh the advantages."
Only in the 1980s did the controversy become public through the work of Kamuran Gürün. Other Turkish institutions followed Gürün. The basic thesis of genocide was only then tested by gathering and organizing the decades-old records and data on the conflict and its casualties. Also at this time, political and military analysis of the crisis began. Since the initial exposure, academic analysis has proceeded to find the underlying conditions of the Empire and the Armenians, with the aim of understanding history to prepare for the future, rather than preserving national pride.
Arguments brought forward
Turkish sources state: "the measures adopted regarding the Armenians in Eastern Anatolia was merely a replacement in another region within the Empire for security reasons". Turkish sources using Ottoman historical documents "on the other hand, the Party of Union and ProgressCommittee of Union and Progress
The Committee of Union and Progress began as a secret society established as the "Committee of Ottoman Union" in 1889 by the medical students İbrahim Temo, Abdullah Cevdet, İshak Sükuti and Ali Hüseyinzade...
came to power embracing the Armenians, and never developed an anti-Armenian doctrine even if Union and Progress turned to Turkism in time." According to the official Turkey, it is also historically evident that the Union and Progress was responsive to the needs, and desires of the Armenians citizens and they passed Armenian reform package
Armenian reform package
The Armenian reform package was an Ottoman Empire reform solution by which an inspector general would be appointed to oversee Armenian issues. The inspector general would be the highest position in vilayets where many Armenians lived. This project was prepared by A...
. They also say, there is great amount of historical data exits to support "within the conditions of the day Ottoman parliament adopted the “Tehcir Law” (27 May 1915), the reasons for the taking of this decision, which was contemplated as provisional were: The Armenians living at regions near the war zones hinder the movements of the Turkish armed forces; harden the logistical support to the soldiers; share the same goals and collaborate with the enemy; attack the troops and innocent civilians within the country’s boundaries; and show the fortified regions to the enemy forces."". The Turkish sources claim "intent of the process" (deportation or relocation) was written in the law. They also claim there was vast amounts of evidence which supports Ottoman Empire acted according to what the written law stated and legislated according to conditions. In support, the Ottoman Archives
Ottoman Archives
The Ottoman Archives is a collection of historical sources related to the Ottoman Empire. A total of 39 nations hold the collective information, including 19 in the Middle East, 11 in the EU and Balkan states, 3 in the Caucasus, 2 in Central Asia, Cyprus, as well as Israel and Turkey.The main...
are open (although to only a select number of historians) and Turkish historians published five volumes of Ottoman Security dispatches between 1914-1918 related to Ottoman Armenian insurgent activities, as "Arşiv Belgeleriyle Ermeni Faaliyetleri 1914-1918" Vol I Vol II Vol III Vol IV Vol V.
However, Heather Rae asserts that "scholars have long been denied access to Ottoman archives." In the late 1980s access was granted to some archives by the Turkish government, but it appears that the material was limited and the government took a very selective approach to who was allowed to study the material. Historian Taner Akcam
Taner Akçam
Altuğ Taner Akçam is a Turkish historian and sociologist. He is one of the first Turkish academics to acknowledge and openly discuss the Armenian Genocide, and is recognized as a "leading international authority" on the subject....
also writes about the "carefully selection" of Ottoman archive materials. "While we are missing a significant portion of these papers, what remains in the Ottoman archives and in court records is sufficiant to show that the CUP
Committee of Union and Progress
The Committee of Union and Progress began as a secret society established as the "Committee of Ottoman Union" in 1889 by the medical students İbrahim Temo, Abdullah Cevdet, İshak Sükuti and Ali Hüseyinzade...
Central Committee, and the Special Organization is set up to carry out its plan, did deliberately attempt to destroy the Armenian population".
April 24
While World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
was unfolding in the Middle East and shattering the Ottoman Empire, some members of the two primary nationalist groups within the state, the Armenians and the "Arab revolt
Arab Revolt
The Arab Revolt was initiated by the Sherif Hussein bin Ali with the aim of securing independence from the ruling Ottoman Turks and creating a single unified Arab state spanning from Aleppo in Syria to Aden in Yemen.- Background :...
", called for armed struggle against the Ottomans. Christian Armenians were located in both the Russian and Ottoman Empires. Some Armenians insisted that their people support the Ottoman government, as Armenians were placed in the Ottoman bureaucracy, but other Armenians claimed that only the Russian Czar, by virtue of shared religion, was the protector of all Armenians. In eastern Anatolia, during the Caucasus Campaign
Caucasus Campaign
The Caucasus Campaign comprised armed conflicts between the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire, later including Azerbaijan, Armenia, Central Caspian Dictatorship and the UK as part of the Middle Eastern theatre or alternatively named as part of the Caucasus Campaign during World War I...
some of the Ottoman Armenian population, often following the Armenian radical nationalists, engaged in open warfare, these activities are summarized under Armenian resistance. The Zeitun Resistance
Zeitun Resistance (1915)
The Armenian militia of Hunchaks of the city Zeitun had resisted on two armed conflicts, first between August 30-December 1, 1914 and second on March 25, 1915 to the Ottoman Empire.-First Resistance:...
, which lasted three months from August 30, 1914 to December 1, 1914, resulted in the report that Armenians defeated all the Ottoman troops sent against them.
In April 1915, shortly after the Van resistance
Van Resistance
The Siege of Van, Resistance at Van, Van Resistance or Van Rebellion, Van Revolt , Armenian Revolution at Van was an insurgency against the Ottoman Empire's attempts to massacre the Armenian population in the vilâyet of Van...
, an Armenian government was proclaimed in Van, the Administration for Western Armenia
Administration for Western Armenia
The Administration for Western Armenia was an temporary Armenian provisional government between 1915 and 1918, with the autonomous region initially set up around Lake Van after the Siege of Van of the Caucasus Campaign, with the leadership of Aram Manukian of Armenian Revolutionary Federation. It...
. Following these events, April 25 was the onset of the Allied campaign to drive towards the Ottoman capitol (see Battle of Gallipoli
Battle of Gallipoli
The Gallipoli Campaign, also known as the Dardanelles Campaign or the Battle of Gallipoli, took place at the peninsula of Gallipoli in the Ottoman Empire between 25 April 1915 and 9 January 1916, during the First World War...
). The day before Battle of Gallipoli
Battle of Gallipoli
The Gallipoli Campaign, also known as the Dardanelles Campaign or the Battle of Gallipoli, took place at the peninsula of Gallipoli in the Ottoman Empire between 25 April 1915 and 9 January 1916, during the First World War...
, Talat Pasha took a decision on April 24, 1915 with the internal codes given by the archive code BOA. DH. ŞFR, nr.52/96,97,98. Talat Pasha ordered the governors of the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
to (a) arrest the members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation
Armenian Revolutionary Federation
The Armenian Revolutionary Federation is an Armenian political party founded in Tiflis in 1890 by Christapor Mikaelian, Stepan Zorian, and Simon Zavarian...
, Hentchak
Social Democrat Hunchakian Party
The Social Democrat Hunchakian Party , is the oldest of the Armenian political parties and was the first Socialist party in the Ottoman Empire and in Persia...
and other groups involved with the Armenian national liberation movement, (b) collect documents from party houses and (c) destroy all arms seized in the process. Beginning April 24, there were Armenian notables deported from the Ottoman capital in 1915
Armenian notables deported from the Ottoman capital in 1915
The deportation of Armenian notables, also known as the Red Sunday refers to the night when leaders of the Armenian community of the Ottoman capital, Constantinople, and later other centers were arrested and moved to two holding centers near Ankara by the Minister of the Interior Mehmed Talaat Bey...
. The Ottoman Empire wanted to remove the threat of Armenian resistance and the Turkish authorities today hold the position that the deaths incurred by Armenians as a whole were the result of the turmoil of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
and that the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
was fighting against Russia, Armenian volunteer units
Armenian volunteer units
Armenian volunteer units, also known the Armenian volunteer corps were Armenian battalions in Russian and British armies during the World War I. Majority of these units support the military activities at the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I. The origin of these units were varied. Some units...
, and the Armenian militia. The Turkish authorities further assert that claims of massacre which ignore the actions of the Armenian resistance movements, are not established historical fact, and therefore grounds for their denial that an Armenian Genocide
Armenian Genocide
The Armenian Genocide—also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, by Armenians, as the Great Crime—refers to the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I...
ever took place.
Locations
They note that in 1915 there was only one railway that connects west-east and that the path of what it considers relocation was not a conspiracy to exterminate Armenians. Turkish authorities strongly reject claims that the locations of the camps which are mentioned in some sources are a result of a conspiracy to bury Armenians in deserts. Deir ez-Zor is a district along the Euphrates and one of the unique places far away from any military activity; thus, Deir ez-Zor's selection as a burying site in a deserted location is rejected. They attribute the graves in these areas to difficulties of traveling under very hard conditions. The conditions of these camps reflected the condition of the Ottoman Empire. The Empire was facing the Gallipoli
Battle of Gallipoli
The Gallipoli Campaign, also known as the Dardanelles Campaign or the Battle of Gallipoli, took place at the peninsula of Gallipoli in the Ottoman Empire between 25 April 1915 and 9 January 1916, during the First World War...
landings in the west, and the Caucasus Campaign
Caucasus Campaign
The Caucasus Campaign comprised armed conflicts between the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire, later including Azerbaijan, Armenia, Central Caspian Dictatorship and the UK as part of the Middle Eastern theatre or alternatively named as part of the Caucasus Campaign during World War I...
in the east.
Ethnic cleansing
Under international law, ethnic cleansing of itself is not enough to show that genocide has taken place as it must be accompanied by the biological destruction of the group.Regarding the "process of relocation" under the Tehcir Law, arguments disputing the similarities to the ethnic cleansing (Holocaust) are as follows: (a) there is no record of (neither from origination archives nor from destination archives in Syria) an effort to develop a systematic process and efficient means of killing, (b) there are no lists or other methods for tracing the Armenian population to assemble and kill as many people as possible, (c) there was no resource allocation to exterminate Armenians (biological, chemical warfare allocations), and the use of morphine
Morphine
Morphine is a potent opiate analgesic medication and is considered to be the prototypical opioid. It was first isolated in 1804 by Friedrich Sertürner, first distributed by same in 1817, and first commercially sold by Merck in 1827, which at the time was a single small chemists' shop. It was more...
as a mass extermination agent is not accepted; in fact, there was a constant increase in food and support expenses and these efforts continued after the end of deportations, (d) there is no record of Armenians in forced deportations being treated as prisoners, (e) the claims regarding prisoners apply only to the leaders of the Armenian militia, but did not extend to ethnic profiling; the size of the security force needed to develop these claims was beyond the power of the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
during 1915, (f) there is no record of prisons designed or built to match the claims of a Holocaust, (g) there were no public speeches organized by the central government targeting Armenians.
Security of Deportees
The security of the immigrants were under the responsibility of the Ottoman EmpireOttoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
. The Ottoman authorities present the facts that some companies had been attacked before they reached their settlement regions. They summarize these attacks; present the fact that the roads between Aleppo and Meskene resulted in many deaths. Other events were located at Diyarbekir to Zor and from Saruc to Halep through Menbic road. Companies have also faced with local attacks from the local tribes in the Diyarbekir, Mamuretülaziz and Bitlis regions. Various eyewitness accounts of Armenian civilians being killed by the Ottoman soldiers they were under command of are usually discounted by revisionist historians.
The Turkish authorities present two positions regarding on this issue:
- "Investigation Commissions": during the migration process determined the officers, who showed reluctance or unlawful actions, by visiting to the regions that events occurred and following the decisions they observed the appropriate actions taken. The appropriate actions were extended to the Court Martial and in accordance with the judgments at the Court Martial, guilty parts were sentenced to heavy punishments.
- "End of the World War IWorld War IWorld War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
": the issue opened one more time during the Turkish Courts-Martial of 1919-20Turkish Courts-Martial of 1919-20Turkish Courts-Martial of 1919–20 were courts-martial of the Ottoman Empire after the armistice of Mudros during the aftermath the World War I, which the leadership of the Committee of Union and Progress and selected former officials were court-martialled with/including the charges of subversion...
under the military occupation of Constantinople, which Ottoman courts generated one more analysis.
The Turkish authorities maintain the position that the Ottoman Empire did not exercise the degree of control which the opposing parties claim. Turkey accepts that there were Armenian deaths as a result of Ottoman decisions, but states that the responsible Ottoman bureaucrats and military personnel were tried. Bernard Lewis
Bernard Lewis
Bernard Lewis, FBA is a British-American historian, scholar in Oriental studies, and political commentator. He is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University...
believes that what he names the "tremendous massacres"
were not "a deliberate preconceived decision of the Ottoman government." The Dutch historian Erik Zürcher
Erik Zürcher
Erik Zürcher was a Dutch Sinologist.From 1962-1993, Zürcher was a professor of history of East Asia at the Leiden University. He was also Director of the Sinological Institute, between 1975 and 1990. His Chinese name was Xǔ Lǐhe .- Biography :He studied Sinology, Buddhism, specializing in Chinese...
believes that the reported killings during the application of Tehcir law
Tehcir Law
The Tehcir Law was passed by the Ottoman Parliament on May 27, 1915 and allegedly came into force on June 1, 1915, with publication in Takvim-i Vekayi, the official gazette of the Ottoman State...
were ordered not by the Ottoman government itself, but only a small circle. He supported his claims, in particular, with the trials held by court martial involving several hundred soldiers guilty of massacres, as early as 1916. Zürcher believes that the killings are properly likened to the Srebrenica massacre
Srebrenica massacre
The Srebrenica massacre, also known as the Srebrenica genocide, refers to the July 1995 killing, during the Bosnian War, of more than 8,000 Bosniaks , mainly men and boys, in and around the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by units of the Army of Republika Srpska under the command of...
s rather than the Holocaust.
Casualties
Ottoman Armenian population
The Ottoman Armenian population size within the Ottoman Empire between 1914 and 1915 is a controversial topic. Most estimates by Western scholars range from 1.3 to 2.0 million...
before 1914 gains importance in this perspective. According to Turkey, Western publications use partial statistics (conflict regions) like Turkish Armenia, Anatolia, Ottoman Armenia, Asiatic Turkey, 6 Armenian Villeyets, 9 Armenian Villeyets etc. Historians such as Yusuf Halacoglu claim that the Ottoman Empire should only be responsible for "deportations" and brings forward lower figures of Armenian casualties.
Based on studies of the Ottoman census by Justin McCarthy
Justin McCarthy (American historian)
Justin A. McCarthy is an American demographer, professor of history at the University of Louisville, in Louisville, Kentucky. He holds an honorary doctorate from Boğaziçi University, Turkey, and is a board member of the Institute of Turkish Studies...
and on contemporary estimates, it is said that far fewer than 1.5 million Armenians lived in the relevant areas before the war. Estimates of deaths are thus lowered by 600,000 to 200,000 between 1914 and the Armistice of Mudros
Armistice of Mudros
The Armistice of Moudros , concluded on 30 October 1918, ended the hostilities in the Middle Eastern theatre between the Ottoman Empire and the Allies of World War I...
--placing the official count, according to McCarthy and other experts, around 390,000 deaths. In addition, it is said that these deaths are not all related to the deportations, nor should they all be attributed to the Ottoman authorities.
Yusuf Halacoglu, president of the Turkish Historical Society (TTK), presented even lower figures of Armenian casualties. He estimates that with the deportations (excluding inter-ethnic violence) total of 56,000 Armenians perished during the period due to war conditions, and less than 10,000 were actually killed. This study is still absent from Turkish foreign affairs publications.
Some argue that according to the Ottoman Archives
Ottoman Archives
The Ottoman Archives is a collection of historical sources related to the Ottoman Empire. A total of 39 nations hold the collective information, including 19 in the Middle East, 11 in the EU and Balkan states, 3 in the Caucasus, 2 in Central Asia, Cyprus, as well as Israel and Turkey.The main...
, 517,955 Muslim civilians were massacred in this era by Armenian irregular units
Armenian irregular units
Armenian irregular units, also known as Fedayees were Armenian civilians who left their families to form armed brigades. Armenian fedayees were volunteers and, literally, "one who is ready to sacrifice his life" for his people)...
and Armenian revolutionary groups
Armenian national movement
Armenian national movement, also known as the "Armenian revolutionary movement" and Armenian national liberation movement was the Armenian national effort to re-establish an Armenian state in the historic Armenian homelands of eastern Asia Minor and the Transcaucasus...
compromised of the Dashnaks
Armenian Revolutionary Federation
The Armenian Revolutionary Federation is an Armenian political party founded in Tiflis in 1890 by Christapor Mikaelian, Stepan Zorian, and Simon Zavarian...
, the Hunchaks
Social Democrat Hunchakian Party
The Social Democrat Hunchakian Party , is the oldest of the Armenian political parties and was the first Socialist party in the Ottoman Empire and in Persia...
, and the Ramgavars
Ramgavar Party
The Armenian Democratic Liberal Party or the Ramgavar Party, , also known by its Armenian initials or its English initials ADL is an Armenian political party in Armenia and the Armenian diaspora including the Middle East, Europe, the Americas and Australia.It was established in the...
, in addition to the French Armenian Legion
French Armenian Legion
The Armenian Legion, established with the French-Armenian Agreement , was a foreign legion unit within French Army. The Armenian legion was established under the goals of the Armenian national liberation movement and was an armed unit besides the Armenian volunteer units and Armenian militia during...
and the British
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
and Russian backed Armenian volunteer units
Armenian volunteer units
Armenian volunteer units, also known the Armenian volunteer corps were Armenian battalions in Russian and British armies during the World War I. Majority of these units support the military activities at the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I. The origin of these units were varied. Some units...
.
Inter-ethnic violence
Ottoman Armenian history can not be understood in isolation especially without the consideration of rise of nationalism under the Ottoman EmpireRise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire
The rise of the Western notion of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire eventually caused the break-down of the Ottoman millet concept...
. Ottoman sources use similar arguments to Armenian nationalism
Armenian nationalism
Armenian nationalism in the modern period has its roots in the romantic nationalism of Mikayel Chamchian and generally defined as the creation of a free, independent and united Armenia formulated as the Armenian Cause . Armenian national awakening developed in the 1880s in the context of the...
which they use to other non-Ottoman ethnic groups. They point to the famous patriotic speech “The Paper Ladle” of Catholicos Mgrdich Khrimian in which he advised Armenians to take the National awakening of Bulgaria
National awakening of Bulgaria
Bulgarian nationalism emerged in the early 19th century under the influence of western ideas such as liberalism and nationalism, which trickled into the country after the French revolution, mostly via Greece, although there were stirrings in the 18th century. Russia, as fellow Orthodox Slavs, could...
as a model as the hopes of the Armenian people for self-determination were ignored. “The Paper Ladle” was a turning point at the Armenian national awakening in the Ottoman Empire. Nationalism did not only influence the Armenians; Kurdish-Armenian relations
Kurdish-Armenian relations
Kurdish-Armenian relations covers the historical relations between the Kurds and the Armenians.-Ancient Armenia and Corduene:Ancient Corduene, identified as Kurdistan in some sources was twice incorporated into the Kingdom of Armenia. The first period was in the first century BCE from 90 to 66 BCE...
caused trouble for both the Armenian and Muslim populations of the region. The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
quoted a Turkish embassy gazette in 1896 that stated: "It wasn't the Porte that caused the massacres in Armenia, but the Christian propaganda in Asia Minor where their cry, "Down with Islam," initiated the war of the crescent against the cross."
The plight of Ottoman Muslims throughout the 19th and 20th centuries is also mentioned. According to the historian Mark Mazower
Mark Mazower
Mark A. Mazower is a British historian. His expertise is Greece, the Balkans and, more generally, 20th century Europe. He is currently a professor of history at Columbia University in New York City.-Career:...
, Turkey resents the fact that the West is ignorant of the fate of millions of Muslims expelled from the Balkans and Russia, and would consider any apology towards Armenians as a confirmation of the anti-Turkish sentiment held by Western powers for centuries. Mazower recognizes a genocide of the Armenians, but he notes "Even today, no connection is made between the genocide of the Armenians and Muslim civilian losses: the millions of Muslims expelled from the Balkans and the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
through the long 19th century
The long 19th century
The long nineteenth century, defined by Eric Hobsbawm , a British Marxist historian and author, refers to the period between the years 1789 and 1914...
remain part of Europe's own forgotten past. Indeed, the official Turkish response is invariably to remind critics of this fact — an unconvincing justification for genocide, to be sure, but an expression of underlying resentment".
According to some interpretations, such as that of the Prior of the Franciscan monks living in the region of where the events happened, claims this was not an act of genocide and that it was a two sided battle: "when they advanced victoriously under the protection of the Russian Army
Imperial Russian Army
The Imperial Russian Army was the land armed force of the Russian Empire, active from around 1721 to the Russian Revolution of 1917. In the early 1850s, the Russian army consisted of around 938,731 regular soldiers and 245,850 irregulars . Until the time of military reform of Dmitry Milyutin in...
, the same spectacle occurred as in 1915, but this time it was Turks who were attacked by Armenians, aided and possibly commanded and directed by Russia. Wherever the Armenians found a Turk he was mercilessly hacked down, wherever they saw a Turkish Mosque it was plundered and set on fire. Turkish quarters went up in smoke and flames just like the Armenian quarters. You are presently about to travel round the country and you will still be able to follow in the footsteps of war: Bayburt
Bayburt
Bayburt is a city in northeast Turkey lying on the Çoruh River, and is the provincial capital of Turkey's Bayburt Province.Bayburt was once an important center on the ancient Silk Road and it was visited by Marco Polo and Turkish excursionist Evliya Celebi. Remains of its Byzantine castle still...
, Erzincan
Erzincan
-Trivia:Erzincan has the largest man made of Portrait of Atatürk, located north of the city, 176m×43m. It covers 7,500 square meter. Turkish Army made it 1982, in 29 days by 3,000 soldier, 100 tons of black and white paint was used...
, Erzurum
Erzurum
Erzurum is a city in Turkey. It is the largest city, the capital of Erzurum Province. The city is situated 1757 meters above sea level. Erzurum had a population of 361,235 in the 2000 census. .Erzurum, known as "The Rock" in NATO code, served as NATO's southeastern-most air force post during the...
, and Kars
Kars
Kars is a city in northeast Turkey and the capital of Kars Province. The population of the city is 73,826 as of 2010.-Etymology:As Chorzene, the town appears in Roman historiography as part of ancient Armenia...
. You will still see smoldering heaps of rubble; you will still smell blood and corpses, but it so happens that these were Turkish corpses." However, Turkey does not accuse Armenia or Russia of genocide currently (nor does it accuse Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and Montenegro), arguing that the whole thing was simply a brutal war. There are many Turkish people who nonetheless argue that if what they did to Armenians was genocide, then certainly what the Armenians and Russians did also was.
Another common claim made by not only Turks, but also other peoples of the region, is that the actions of Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro and Greece during the First Balkan War (against Albanians and Turks, as well as other peoples of the region) and of the same list minus Bulgaria during the Second (against Bulgarians) constituted genocide, especially those by the Serbs against Albanians and Turks in Kosovo and Macedonia. Whole villages were burnt to the ground and their inhabitants were massacred on spot and left in piles simply because they were inhabited by Turks or Albanians (and later, Bulgarians/Macedonians). The Serbian-orchestrated massacres of Albanians and other Balkan Muslims in Kosovo and Macedonia were soon discovered by the press- and not only the Hapsburg and Ottoman press, but even a number of disaffected Westerners and even Serbs. Even one Serb Social Democrat who had served in the army previously commented on the disgust he had for the crimes his own people had committed against the Albanians, describing in great detail heaps of dead, headless Albanians in the centers of a string of burnt towns near Kumanovo and Skopje:
...the horrors actually began as soon as we crossed the old frontier. By five p.m. we were approaching Kumanovo. The sun had set, it was starting to get dark. But the darker the sky became, the more brightly the fearful illumination of the fires stood out against it. Burning was going on all around us. Entire Albanian villages had been turned into pillars of fire... In all its fiery monotony this picture was repeated the whole way to Skopje... For two days before my arrival in Skopje the inhabitants had woken up in the morning to the sight, under the principal bridge over the Vardar- that is, in the very centre of the town- of heaps of Albanian corpses with severed heads. Some said that these were local Albanians, killed by the komitadjis [cjetniks], others that the corpses were brought down to the bridge by the waters of the Vardar. What was clear was that these headless men had not been killed in battle.
Similarly, while Turks committed numerous atrocities against Bulgarians in Thrace during the First Balkan War, the Bulgarians also victimized the Turks (as well as Muslim Bulgarians)
Turks claim that since no country recognizes this behavior as genocide (well over 1 million Turks were killed during the Balkan Wars and World War I ), it is absurd to call what happened to the Armenians in Anatolia (with similar proportions) genocide, and that the genocide claim is just being used against the losing side in the First World War. It is notable that not only Turks but also Kurds (as well as, in cases, Circassians) were murdered and expelled in sensitive regions in the Northern Middle East and the Balkans, on the grounds of their Islam and relative loyalty to the Porte (though in the case of the Kurds, this loyalty was entering its last years as it dissipated when Kurds realized their lack of rights in an explicitly Turkish state). Albanians, too, who were not universally Muslim, nor were they loyal to the Empire, were subjected to a number of organized cleansing operations in the form of massacres at the hands of the Balkan pact members, especially the Serbs - yet no one calls this genocide except the Albanians themselves and sympathizers. The Armenian Genocide put into the context of the events of the disastrous Balkan Wars and World War I (as it is in Turkish history), is important for understanding why Turks cannot admit that it was a genocide.
Famine
Millet (Ottoman Empire)
Millet is a term for the confessional communities in the Ottoman Empire. It refers to the separate legal courts pertaining to "personal law" under which communities were allowed to rule themselves under their own system...
of the Empire died too. The most horrible cases, which happened to occur around the region that is currently Syria (part of Ottoman Empire until end of war), were covered in a detailed article (the whole of Greater Syria, and thus including Akkar) by Linda Schatkowski Schilcher. This study lists what she views as eight basic factors, contributing to as many as 500,000 deaths of the Syrians in the 1915-1918 period: (a) The Entente powers
Allies of World War I
The Entente Powers were the countries at war with the Central Powers during World War I. The members of the Triple Entente were the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire; Italy entered the war on their side in 1915...
' total blockage of the Syrian coast; (b) the inadequacy of the Ottoman supply strategy; deficient harvest and inclement weather; (c) diversion of supplies from Syria as a consequence of the Arab revolt
Arab Revolt
The Arab Revolt was initiated by the Sherif Hussein bin Ali with the aim of securing independence from the ruling Ottoman Turks and creating a single unified Arab state spanning from Aleppo in Syria to Aden in Yemen.- Background :...
; (d) the speculative frenzy of a number of unscrupulous local grain merchants; the callousness of German military officials in Syria, and systematic hoarding by the population at large.
In general, beginning with World War I every situation of the Empire got worse every year, with most of the able men being in the front lines. Signing of the Armistice of Mudros
Armistice of Mudros
The Armistice of Moudros , concluded on 30 October 1918, ended the hostilities in the Middle Eastern theatre between the Ottoman Empire and the Allies of World War I...
by the Ottoman Empire was related with the breakdown of the public support under very bad conditions.
Conflict resolution
The Turkish authorities seek both historical and political reconciliation with Armenia, but has put forth certain conditions before reconciliation. Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 following the Nagorno-Karabakh WarNagorno-Karabakh War
The Nagorno-Karabakh War was an armed conflict that took place from February 1988 to May 1994, in the small enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in southwestern Azerbaijan, between the majority ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh backed by the Republic of Armenia, and the Republic of Azerbaijan...
between Armenia and Turkic-speaking
Turkic languages
The Turkic languages constitute a language family of at least thirty five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken...
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan , officially the Republic of Azerbaijan is the largest country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to...
. The borders have remained closed because the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute has not been settled to this day, and also because of a dispute over a matter of history: the death of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in eastern Turkey during the dying days of the Ottoman Empire; whether to label it 'genocide' or not.
In 2005 Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been Prime Minister of Turkey since 2003 and is chairman of the ruling Justice and Development Party , which holds a majority of the seats in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. Erdoğan served as Mayor of Istanbul from 1994 to 1998. He graduated in 1981 from Marmara...
invited Turkish, Armenian and international historians to form a commission to reevaluate the events of 1915 by using archives in Turkey, Armenia and other countries. Armenian president Robert Kocharian
Robert Kocharian
Robert Kocharyan was the second President of Armenia, serving from 1998 till 2008. He was previously President of Nagorno-Karabakh from 1994 to 1997 and Prime Minister of Armenia from 1997 to 1998.-Biography:...
responded, "It is the responsibility of governments to develop bilateral relations and we do not have the right to delegate that responsibility to historians. That is why we have proposed and propose again that, without pre-conditions, we establish normal relations between our two countries."
Additionally, Turkish foreign minister of the time, Abdullah Gül
Abdullah Gül
Dr. Abdullah Gül, GCB is the 11th and current President of the Republic of Turkey, serving in that office since 28 August 2007. He previously served for four months as Prime Minister from 2002-03, and as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2003-07....
, invited the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and other countries to contribute to such a commission by appointing scholars to "investigate this tragedy
Tragedy (event)
A tragedy is an event in which one or more losses, usually of human life, occurs that is viewed as mournful. Such an event is said to be tragic....
and open ways for Turks and Armenians to come together".
Documentation and historical study
The Concerned Scholars and Writers says the Turkish government tries "to sanitize its history now include the funding of chairs in Turkish studies - with strings attached - at American universities".Every original document of the Tehcir Law
Tehcir Law
The Tehcir Law was passed by the Ottoman Parliament on May 27, 1915 and allegedly came into force on June 1, 1915, with publication in Takvim-i Vekayi, the official gazette of the Ottoman State...
is open. The Ottoman Archives were taken over by the Governmental Archives Directorate of the Prime Ministry. According to Turkish authorities, the Ottoman Archives have been researched by many historians. Besides the research made by thousands of historians, these documents were translated into English and published in order to enlighten the public.
Turkish authorities point out that without doing a triangulation, even if the facts were reported correctly, the conclusions drawn can be false. It is also possible to look at secondary sources in the Ottoman Archives
Ottoman Archives
The Ottoman Archives is a collection of historical sources related to the Ottoman Empire. A total of 39 nations hold the collective information, including 19 in the Middle East, 11 in the EU and Balkan states, 3 in the Caucasus, 2 in Central Asia, Cyprus, as well as Israel and Turkey.The main...
of the period such as budget, allocations, decisions/reasons of requests. There are also personal records such as Mehmed Talat Pasha
Mehmed Talat Pasha
Talaat Pasha Talaat Pasha Talaat Pasha (also transliterated as Tala'at Pasha or Talat Pasha was one of the leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress that controlled the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.He was born in Edirne Vilayet. He was of Pomak descent...
's personal notes. They also point out the general attitude (Sick man of Europe
Sick man of Europe
"Sick man of Europe" is a nickname that has been used to describe a European country experiencing a time of economic difficulty and/or impoverishment...
) of the time and how it deforms perceptions. They state that the conclusions reached toward genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
are highly biased.
Some very "central" (most cited) sources are actively questioned on the basis that they do not include a single reference from the Ottoman Archives
Ottoman Archives
The Ottoman Archives is a collection of historical sources related to the Ottoman Empire. A total of 39 nations hold the collective information, including 19 in the Middle East, 11 in the EU and Balkan states, 3 in the Caucasus, 2 in Central Asia, Cyprus, as well as Israel and Turkey.The main...
, mainly occupying forces' sources of the period (British, French) on the basis of their Intelligence (information gathering)
Intelligence (information gathering)
Intelligence assessment is the development of forecasts of behaviour or recommended courses of action to the leadership of an organization, based on a wide range of available information sources both overt and covert. Assessments are developed in response to requirements declared by the leadership...
issues. There are concerns that these sources may promote propaganda.
Enver Zia Karal (former dean of history at Ankara University), Salahi R. Sonyel (British historian and public activist), Ismail Binark (General Director of State Archives, Ankara), Sinasi Orel (director of a much publicized project on declassifying documents on Ottoman Armenians), Kamuran Gurun (former diplomat), Mim Kemal Oke, Justin McCarthy
Justin McCarthy (American historian)
Justin A. McCarthy is an American demographer, professor of history at the University of Louisville, in Louisville, Kentucky. He holds an honorary doctorate from Boğaziçi University, Turkey, and is a board member of the Institute of Turkish Studies...
, and others have claimed that the "Blue Book" (The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-1916) by James Bryce
James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce
James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce OM, GCVO, PC, FRS, FBA was a British academic, jurist, historian and Liberal politician.-Background and education:...
and Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold Joseph Toynbee CH was a British historian whose twelve-volume analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations, A Study of History, 1934–1961, was a synthesis of world history, a metahistory based on universal rhythms of rise, flowering and decline, which examined history from a global...
lacks credibility. Their reasoning being that the Blue Book was originally censored to protect the identities of witnesses who were still living in the Ottoman Empire in 1916 and that eye witness accounts could not be considered without their identification. The referenced names of the witnesses were published separately in a sister publication and have since been combined in to an uncensored edition. The sister publication which was a confidential key was forwarded by Bryce and Toynbee to a number of trusted individuals in Britain and the United States who published it in 1916.
Reverse engineering of activities aimed to provide evidence without covering opposing reasoning, such as "Map of Genocide", contain factual problems according to these historians. In this map, the methodology developed, related to "Centers of Massacre and Deportation" and adding data from three different sources (the data in these sources are also aggregate data), is questionable. This map is used as a source of validation among Western scholars.
They argue that there was a secret arrangement which can be traced through mismatches on orders and distributions of the forced deportations. There are many periphery-to-center transmissions on how to deal with emerging issues, such as allocating more than 10% of the destination population and its consequences to the local economy.
Talat Pasha Telegrams
Many references that cite genocidal intent use "The Talat Pasha telegrams, (The Naim-Andonian documents)", which are a series of documents by the Interior Minister Mehmed Talat PashaMehmed Talat Pasha
Talaat Pasha Talaat Pasha Talaat Pasha (also transliterated as Tala'at Pasha or Talat Pasha was one of the leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress that controlled the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.He was born in Edirne Vilayet. He was of Pomak descent...
, to constitute concrete evidence that the deaths were implemented as a state policy. Pasha was notoriously tied to the "Kill every Armenian man, woman, and child without concern" order in these documents (see Aram Andonian
Aram Andonian
Aram Andonian was an Armenian journalist, historian and writer.In Istanbul Andonian edited "Luys" and "Dzaghik" Armenian journals and "Surhandak" newspaper. He was arrested by order of interior minister Talat Pasha of the Ottoman Empire on the eve of April 24, 1915 and joined Armenian notables...
's page for more on this topic). The genocidal intent of Mehmed Talat Pasha and even the correctness of this famous sentence is dependent on the authenticity of these documents.
The 69 American historians - the “Lewis Affair”
On March 19, 1985 in the newspapers of The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
and The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
a group of 69 American historians, on basis of an advertisement, has published a statement in which there was a call to the Congress of the USA not to adopt the resolution on the Armenian Genocide. A prominent historian Bernard Lewis was among them and so the case was named after him.
The publication of the announcement was made as paid advertisement by the Committee of the Turkish Associations. As remarked Richard Hovannisian, there was an important role in signing of this statement that played Heath Lowry, the director of the Institute of Turkish Studies. Lowry himself was labeled as one of the key deniers of the Armenian Genocide and according to Roger W. Smith, Eric Markusen
Eric Markusen
Eric Markusen was Professor of Sociology and Social Work at Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall, Minnesota, USA, and Research Director of the Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Copenhagen...
and Robert Jay Lifton
Robert Jay Lifton
Robert Jay Lifton is an American psychiatrist and author, chiefly known for his studies of the psychological causes and effects of war and political violence and for his theory of thought reform...
, he was also advising on how to prevent mention of the Armenian Genocide in scholarly works to and was "caught ghosting" for the Turkish ambassador in Washington regarding the denial of the Armenian Genocide. Most of the 69 academics apparently benefited directly or indirectly from Turkish largess. The Armenian Assembly of America
Armenian Assembly of America
The Armenian Assembly of America aims to "strengthen U.S./Armenia and U.S. relations, promotes Armenia's democratic development and economic prosperity and seeks universal affirmation of the Armenian Genocide" via "research, education and advocacy."...
rapidly organised an investigation of the academic records and the history of research grants received by the signatories. The research revealed the majority of the scholars were not specialists in the subject matter of the period of the genocide and, more important, that a very large number of them were recipients of grants from Turkish government. Speros Vryonis
Speros Vryonis
Speros Vryonis Jr. is an American historian of Greek descent and a specialist in Greek and Byzantine history. He is the author of a number of works on Byzantine/Greek-Turkish relations, including The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization from the Eleventh...
has analysed the data on 1993 and concluded, significant number of signatories and their institutions as well were direct recipients of Turkish funds. Yves Ternon
Yves Ternon
Yves Ternon is a French physician, author of historical books about the Jewish Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide. Doctor of medicine's history of University Paris IV Sorbonne...
, a French historian specializing on historical research of the Jewish Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide, notes in this regard, that in their researches those scholars assume more “liberal” criteria. For example, Bernard Lewis uses the name “Turkey” instead of “Ottoman Empire” only in one of the chapters of his book “The Emergence of Modern Turkey.” As for their arguments for the term “Genocide” not to be used, Ternon calls them unacceptable.
After the publication of the subject statement, professor Gérard Chaliand
Gérard Chaliand
Gérard Chaliand is a French-Armenian expert in armed-conflict studies and in international and strategic relations, especially asymmetric conflicts . He is one of the most prolific international theoricians on these subjects...
of Paris V – Sorbonne
University of Paris V: René Descartes
Paris Descartes University, is one of the main Paris universities, with a strong focus on:* Medical Sciences...
University had expressed his disappointment by Lewis’ signature, who answered to it with a reasoning, that the statement made out of desire not to damage Turkish-American relationships and that it included a call for Turkey to open its archives. To this Chaliand replies, that it is ill-conditioned, if not untrue, to name as a reason, that there is lack of proof of a Genocide against the Armenians in the western Armenian Highlands (eastern Anatolia) during World War I, when, in fact, the real reason was the fears to destabilise NATO in some possible way.
The director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide
Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide
The Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide was founded in Jerusalem, in 1979, by Israeli scholars Israel W. Charny, Shamai Davidson and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel....
Israel Charny
Israel Charny
Dr. Israel W. Charny is an Israeli psychologist and historian, world renowned genocide expert. He is the editor of two-volume Encyclopedia of Genocide, and Executive director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem....
, as he describes, was shocked from this statement and had addressed letters to each of the signatories with detailed questions in them: what their approach was to the massacres of the Armenians in Turkey, if they reject those actions constitute a Genocide, if they think, that Armenians distort facts and what opinion they have about those, who signed the subject advert-statement. Some had confessed, that there are deliberate attempts by the Turkish side to muddle and denial of the issue, others confirmed that there have been massacres but avoided the use of the term Genocide. The provisional data of the inquiry were published on the Internet in 1990.
According to Yair Auron
Yair Auron
Yair Auron is an Israeli historian, scholar and expert specializing on Holocaust and Genocide studies, racism and contemporary Jewry...
, an Israeli historian, scholar and expert specialising on Genocide studies and racism, this advert-letter calling for abstaining to recognise the Genocide of Armenians before the Turkish Archives are disclosed is a good example of another attempt by Turkey to influence the academia and that for the latter Turkey spends enormous funds.
In October 2000, when the House of Representatives of the USA was to discuss the resolution on the Armenian Genocide, Turkish politician Mustafa Shukru lamented that the statement of 69 scholars was pointless as this time none of them besides Justin McCarthy
Justin McCarthy (American historian)
Justin A. McCarthy is an American demographer, professor of history at the University of Louisville, in Louisville, Kentucky. He holds an honorary doctorate from Boğaziçi University, Turkey, and is a board member of the Institute of Turkish Studies...
have agreed to sign the new declaration.
The declaration of 125 Turkish scientists
Following the refusal of 68 of the 69 historians to sign the above statement of 1985 once again, on 23 April 2001 125 scientists signed the Declaration by Turkish Academicians on the Turkish-Armenian Problem:The undersigned scientists of this declaration represented a variety of scientific studies: Medicine, Economics, Computer Sciences, Molecular genetics, Law, Nuclear Engineering etc. Among the signatories are scientists from the USA, Azerbaijan, Canada and other countries.
The resignation of Donald Quataert
One of the 69 signatories of the 1985 statement to the US Congress was Donald Quataert. He resigned from the position of the chairman of the board of directors of the Institute of Turkish Studies, which he had held since 2001. As he announced, he had to resign due to the pressure of the Turkish ambassador Nabi Shensoy after he characterised the massacres of Armenians in Turkey as genocide. Shensoy rejected the allegations. Quataert’s resignation created a scandal among the academia and a number of members of the board of directors of the Institute resigned as well after the announcement. Mervat Hatem the director of Middle East Studies Association addressed the Prime Minister of Turkey Erdogan a harsh letter, whereby he expressed grave concerns with the announcements of Turkish officials to stop the financing of the Institute if Quataert didn’t renounce his assessments publicly. Hatem also noted, that "the resignations are in contradiction with those many requests to leave the discussion and the assessment of the Armenian Genocide to the academia (instead of discussing it on the political arena) that Turkey has been making." According to the announcement by Quataert, the members of the board of directors on the Institute of Turkish Studies were surprised to find out, that the funding of the institute by Turkey is not a sign of trust but a gift, that can be annulled at any moment.Institutional Study
According to the Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, the denial of Armenian genocide is "the most patentexample of a state's denial of its past".
Historians mark that "the genocide of the Armenians has been denied to this day by succesive Turkish governments, with the exception of the short-lived imperial government that existed between the end of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
and the ascendance of the Kemalist nationalist regime in the early 1920s." To deny the Armenian genocide "is like Holocaust denial," notes Gregory Stanton
Gregory Stanton
Gregory H. Stanton is the founder and president of Genocide Watch, the founder and director of the Cambodian Genocide Project, and the founder and Chair of the International Campaign to End Genocide...
, vice president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars
International Association of Genocide Scholars
The International Association of Genocide Scholars is a global, interdisciplinary, non-partisan organization that seeks to further research and teaching about the nature, causes, and consequences of genocide, and advance policy studies on prevention of genocide. The Association, founded in 1994 by...
and president of Genocide Watch
Genocide Watch
Genocide Watch is an international organization based in the United States which attempts to predict, prevent, limit, eliminate, and punish genocide throughout the world through reporting, public awareness campaigns, and judicial or quasi-judicial follow-up...
.
According to Intelligence Report journal of Southern Poverty Law Center
Southern Poverty Law Center
The Southern Poverty Law Center is an American nonprofit civil rights organization noted for its legal victories against white supremacist groups; legal representation for victims of hate groups; monitoring of alleged hate groups, militias and extremist organizations; and educational programs that...
, "revisionist historians who conjure doubt about the Armenian genocide and are paid by the Turkish government provided the politicians with the intellectual cover they needed to claim they were refusing to dictate history rather than caving in to a foreign government's present-day interests". Mark Potok
Mark Potok
Mark Potok is a spokesman and director of publications and information for the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, a nonprofit organization that arose from the anti-segregation movement to counter extremism and hate crimes....
, the editor of Intelligence Report, wrote:
Colin Tatz
Colin Tatz
Colin Tatz, a Natal University and Australian National University graduate, has been Professor of Politics at the University of New England, Armidale, and at Macquarie University, Sydney. He is the director of the Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the Shalom Institute,...
, Professor of Macquarie University
Macquarie University
Macquarie University is an Australian public teaching and research university located in Sydney, with its main campus situated in Macquarie Park. Founded in 1964 by the New South Wales Government, it was the third university to be established in the metropolitan area of Sydney...
, considers the nature of Turkish denial industry as "pernicious, outrageous and continued": "Here is a modern state, totally dedicated, at home and abroad, to extraordinary actions to have every hint or mention of an Armenian genocide removed, contradicted, explained, countered, justified, mitigated, rationalised, trivialised and relativised." In their book Criminological Perspectives, E. McLaughlin, J. Muncie and G. Hughes conclude: "If the Turkish government can deny that the Armenian genocide happened; if revisionist historians and neo-Nazis deny that Holocaust took place; if powerful states all around the world today can systematically deny the systematic violations of human rights they are carrying out - then we know that we're in bad shape".
In 1990, psychologist Robert Jay Lifton
Robert Jay Lifton
Robert Jay Lifton is an American psychiatrist and author, chiefly known for his studies of the psychological causes and effects of war and political violence and for his theory of thought reform...
received a letter from the Turkish Ambassador to the United States, questioning his inclusion of references to the Armenian Genocide in one of his books. The ambassador inadvertently included a draft of a letter, presented by scholar Heath W. Lowry
Heath W. Lowry
Heath Ward Lowry is the Ataturk Professor of Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies at Princeton University. He has written several books on the history of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey.-Background:...
, advising the ambassador on how to prevent mention of the Armenian Genocide in scholarly works. Lowry was later named to the Atatürk chair of Ottoman Studies at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, which had been endowed with a $750,000 grant from the Republic of Turkey. The incident has been the subject of numerous reports as to ethics in scholarship.
Another source notes: "In order to institutionalize this campaign of denial and try to invest it with an aura of legitimacy, a "think-tank" was established in Ankara in April 2001. Operating under the name "Institute for Armenian Research
Institute for Armenian Research
Institute for Armenian Research is a privately funded think tank in Turkey established in April 2001 by the Center for Eurasian Strategic Studies. Ömer Engin Lütem is the chairman.Jay Winter, Charles J...
" as a subsidiary of The Center For Eurasian Studies, with a staff of nine, this new outfit is now proactively engaged in contesting all claims of genocide by organizing a series of conferences, lectures, and interviews, and above all, through the medium of publications, including a quarterly".
Open University of Israel
Open University of Israel
The Open University of Israel is a distance-education university in Israel. , the Open University taught around 39,000 students.The Open University of Israel has more students than any other academic institution in Israel. The administration is based in the city of Ra'anana. Students from all over...
scholar Yair Auron
Yair Auron
Yair Auron is an Israeli historian, scholar and expert specializing on Holocaust and Genocide studies, racism and contemporary Jewry...
has addressed the various means employed by the Turkish government to obscure the reality of the Armenian Genocide:
Since the 1980s, the Turkish government has supported the establishment of "institutes" affiliated with respected universities, whose apparent purpose is to further research on Turkish history and culture, but which also tend to act in ways that further denial.
University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...
scholar Leo Kuper
Leo Kuper
Leo Kuper was a writer and philosopher. He was born to a Lithuanian Jewish family in South Africa. He trained as a lawyer before becoming a sociologist specialising in the study of genocide....
in a review on Ervin Staub's "The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence" research, wrote:
The Armenian genocide is a contemporary current issue, given the persistent aggressive denial of the crime by the Turkish government-not withstanding its own judgment in courts martial after the first World War, that its leading ministers had deliberately planned and carried out the annihilation of Armenians, with the participation of many regional administrators.
According to American scholars Roger W. Smith, Eric Markusen
Eric Markusen
Eric Markusen was Professor of Sociology and Social Work at Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall, Minnesota, USA, and Research Director of the Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Copenhagen...
and Robert Jay Lifton,
The government of Turkey has channeled funds into a supposedly objective research institute in the United States, which in turn paid the salary of a historian who served that government in its campaign to discredit scholarship on the Armenian genocide.
"Given the indisputable documentary record of the Armenian genocide, it would appear that at least some of those who refuse to go on record recognizing Turkey’s genocide of Armenians are, like those who refuse to recognize Germany’s genocide of European Jews, motivated by ignorance and bigotry", claims American scholar Stephen Zunes
Stephen Zunes
Stephen Zunes is an international relations scholar specializing in the Middle East specializing in Middle Eastern politics, U.S. foreign policy, and strategic nonviolent action. He is known internationally as a leading critic of United States policy in the Middle East, particularly under the...
.
On June 9, 2000, in a full-page statement in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, 126 scholars, including Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
-winner Elie Wiesel
Elie Wiesel
Sir Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel KBE; born September 30, 1928) is a Hungarian-born Jewish-American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He is the author of 57 books, including Night, a work based on his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz, Buna, and...
, historian Yehuda Bauer
Yehuda Bauer
Yehuda Bauer is a historian and scholar of the Holocaust. He is a Professor of Holocaust Studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.-Biography:...
, and sociologist Irving Horowitz, signed a document "affirming that the World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
Armenian genocide is an incontestable historical fact and accordingly urge the governments of Western democracies to likewise recognize it as such."
Wiesel himself has repeatedly called Turkey's 90-year-old campaign to cover up the Armenian genocide a double killing, since it strives to kill the memory of the original atrocities.
In an open letter by the "Danish Department for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the denial and relativization of the Armenian genocide", historians Torben Jorgensen
Torben Jorgensen
Torben Jørgensen is a Danish historian, Research Assistant at the Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. He is an author of articles on the Hereros and the Ibos and about the Turkish denial of the Armenian genocide...
and Matthias Bjornlund
Matthias Bjornlund
Matthias Bjørnlund is a Danish historian. In 2003-2005 he was the workshop leader of Department for Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Copenhagen in connection with the commemoration of the international Auschwitz Day....
wrote:
When it comes to the historical reality of the Armenian genocide, there is no “Armenian” or “Turkish” side of the “question,” any more than there is a “Jewish” or a “German” side of the historical reality of the Holocaust: There is a scientific side, and an unscientific side acknowledgment or denial. In the case of the denial of the Armenian genocide, it is even founded on a massive effort of falsification, distortion, cleansing of archives, and direct threats initiated or supported by the Turkish state, making any “dialogue” with Turkish deniers highly problematic.
Philip L. Kohl
Philip L. Kohl
Philip L. Kohl is a Professor of Anthropology at Wellesley College.He received his B.A. in Greek and Latin from Columbia University in 1969 and his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Harvard University in 1974...
and Clare Fawcett write that the "Armenian cultural remains in neighboring Turkey are frequently dismissed or referred to as "Ottoman period" monuments", and that the continued denial of the state-sponsored genocide is "related to these practices".
According to Taner Akçam
Taner Akçam
Altuğ Taner Akçam is a Turkish historian and sociologist. He is one of the first Turkish academics to acknowledge and openly discuss the Armenian Genocide, and is recognized as a "leading international authority" on the subject....
, Turkey "tried to erase the traces of a recent past that had become undesirable" through a series of reforms, so the collective memory "was replaced by an official history written by a few authorised academics, which became the sole recognised reference. Events prior to 1928 and the writings of past generations became a closed book."
In a lecture he delivered in June 2011, Akçam stated that he was told by a Turkish foreign ministry official that the Turkish government was trying to bribe historians and academics in the United States to deny the Armenian Genocide. Though he did not make any direct accusations, he noted the timing between what his source said with the recent publication of American historian Michael M. Gunter
Michael M. Gunter
Michael M. Gunter is an authority on Kurds in Turkey and Iraq and has written seven books on the Kurdish struggle. He is frequently consulted by media members for analysis and comment on breaking news in the Middle East. Gunter has written more than 75 articles in scholarly journals and books...
's book Armenian History and the Question of Genocide. He also raised the point that the four individuals who praised Gunter's book – Hakan Yavuz of University of Utah, Guenter Lewy of University of Massachusetts, Jeremy Salt of Bilkent University, Ankara, and Edward J. Ericson of Marine Corps Command & Staff College, Virginia – "are well known for their denialist position and works regarding the genocide of 1915."
Legislation
Some countries, including ArgentinaArgentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
and Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
have adopted laws that punish genocide denial
Genocide denial
Genocide denial occurs when an act of genocide is met with attempts to deny the occurrence and minimize the scale or death toll. The most well-known type is Holocaust denial, but its definition can extend to any genocide that has been minimized or met with excessive skepticism.Where there is near...
. In October 2006, the French National Assembly
French National Assembly
The French National Assembly is the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of France under the Fifth Republic. The upper house is the Senate ....
, despite the opposition of foreign minister Philippe Douste-Blazy
Philippe Douste-Blazy
Philippe Douste-Blazy is a French centre-right politician. He served as Minister for Health , Minister of Culture and Foreign Minister in the cabinet of Dominique de Villepin .Douste-Blazy is also a cardiologist and Christian Democrat politician from Lourdes...
, passed a bill which if approved by the Senate and signed into law, will make Armenian Genocide denial a crime. On October 7, 2011 French President Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Sarkozy is the 23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. He assumed the office on 16 May 2007 after defeating the Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal 10 days earlier....
said that Turkey's refusal to recognize the genocide would force France to make such denials a criminal offense.
Issues regarding deniers
The first person convicted in a court of law for denying the Armenian genocide is Turkish politician Doğu PerinçekDogu Perinçek
Doğu Perinçek is a Turkish politician, leader of the Workers' Party , a scientific socialist organization, and former chairman of the Workers' Party . His first name Doğu means "East" in Turkish.-Personal life:...
, found guilty of racial discrimination by a Swiss district court in Lausanne
Lausanne
Lausanne is a city in Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and is the capital of the canton of Vaud. The seat of the district of Lausanne, the city is situated on the shores of Lake Geneva . It faces the French town of Évian-les-Bains, with the Jura mountains to its north-west...
in March 2007. Perinçek appealed the verdict. After the court's decision, he said, "I defend my right to freedom of expression." "I have not denied genocide because there was no genocide," he argued. Ferai Tinç, a foreign affairs columnist with Turkey's Hürriyet
Hürriyet
-External links:* * ** * *...
newspaper, added, "we find these type of [penal] articles against freedom of opinion dangerous because we are struggling in our country to achieve freedom of thought." In December 2007, the Swiss Federal Court confirmed the sentence given to Perinçek.
In October, 2008 the Swiss court ruled that three Turks were guilty of racial discrimination after having claimed that the Armenian Genocide was an "international lie." The Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an representative of the Party of Turkish Workers
Workers' Party (Turkey)
Workers' Party is political party in Turkey led by Doğu Perinçek. İP has its roots in the Revolutionary Workers and Peasants Party of Turkey , Workers and Peasants Party of Turkey and Socialist Party...
, Ali Mercan, was sentenced to pay a fine of 4,500 Swiss franc
Swiss franc
The franc is the currency and legal tender of Switzerland and Liechtenstein; it is also legal tender in the Italian exclave Campione d'Italia. Although not formally legal tender in the German exclave Büsingen , it is in wide daily use there...
s ($3,900), two others were ordered to pay 3,600 Swiss francs. In October 2010, the Swiss Federal Court confirmed the verdict.
In November 1993 American historian Bernard Lewis
Bernard Lewis
Bernard Lewis, FBA is a British-American historian, scholar in Oriental studies, and political commentator. He is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University...
said in an interview that calling the massacres committed by the Turks in 1915 a genocide was just "the Armenian version of this history". In a 1995 civil proceeding a French court censured his remarks as a denial of the Armenian Genocide and fined him one franc, as well as ordering the publication of the judgment at Lewis' cost in Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
. The court ruled that while Lewis has the right to his views, they did damage to a third party and that "it is only by hiding elements which go against his thesis that the defendant was able to state that there was no 'serious proof' of the Armenian Genocide; consequently, he failed in his duties of objectivity and prudence by expressing himself without qualification on such a sensitive subject".
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan , officially the Republic of Azerbaijan is the largest country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to...
i Deputy Speaker said in April 2010, that "There were not such events as the "Armenian genocide" in history. It has been made up by Armenian politicians. http://en.trend.az/news/politics/foreign/1675705.html
Time DVD debacle
The Ankara Chamber of Commerce included DVDs, accusing the Armenian people of slaughtering Turks, with their paid tourism advertisements in the June 6, 2005 edition of the magazine TIME EuropeTime (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
. Time Europe later apologized for allowing the inclusion of the DVDs and published a critical letter signed by five French organizations. The February 12, 2007 edition of Time Europe included a full-page announcement and a DVD of a documentary by French director Laurence Jourdan, with an interview with Yves Ternon
Yves Ternon
Yves Ternon is a French physician, author of historical books about the Jewish Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide. Doctor of medicine's history of University Paris IV Sorbonne...
.
Miscellaneous
The denialist view on Armenian genocide is represented in Internet both by Turkish official and unofficial organizations. Among the web-sites representing this view are:Denial Websites
- Historyoftruth-Armenian Allegations created by the Genocide Denier Ergun Kirlikovali
- Ataturk organization
- Turkish Coalition of America
- Tall Armenian Tale
- Armenian Genocide Debate
- Grand National Assembly of TurkeyGrand National Assembly of TurkeyThe Grand National Assembly of Turkey , usually referred to simply as the Meclis , is the unicameral Turkish legislature. It is the sole body given the legislative prerogatives by the Turkish Constitution. It was founded in Ankara on 23 April 1920 in the midst of the Turkish War of Independence...
Report: - Turkish Ministry of Culture Report:
- Ottoman ArchivesOttoman ArchivesThe Ottoman Archives is a collection of historical sources related to the Ottoman Empire. A total of 39 nations hold the collective information, including 19 in the Middle East, 11 in the EU and Balkan states, 3 in the Caucasus, 2 in Central Asia, Cyprus, as well as Israel and Turkey.The main...
Document Center - Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkey Report:
- Center for Eurasian Strategic Studies Main Index
- Tete de Turc. French site with lots of articles opposing the genocide thesis.
- To reconcile Turks and Armenians, O. Faruk Logoglu, Washington Times (former ambassador of Turkey to the United States)
- Revisiting Armenian Genocide by Guenter Lewy Guenter Lewy is professor emeritus of political science, University of Massachusetts, and the author of The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide (University of Utah Press, 2005).
- Connecting the Dots on the "Alleged" Armenian Genocide
- British Sources Refuting the AAG
- American Sources that Refute the AAG
- Israeli and Jewish Sources that Refute the AAG
- Turkish Last Names: Honest History Tellers
- Armenian Terrorism: Then and Now
- 'Armenians' Excessive Aggression Somehow Created a Consciousness of Armenian Issue in Turkey', JTW, February 2009
- Track Two Diplomacy Program in Turkey and the Caucasus by Center for Global Studies, American University
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- Mutual Perceptions Research (Armenia/Turkey) (*.doc file) "The Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) and the Armenian Sociological Association (HASA) have organized a Mutual Perceptions Research Project. Each group is carrying out sociological research to identify key issues of cultural understanding between the neighboring countries, including the perception of Turks by Armenians and of Armenians by Turks. The study focuses on the perceptions of the majority populations in each country. The combined results will constitute study findings. Representatives from each team met in Yerevan and fieldwork was undertaken in both countries. The results of the research were presented at an international seminar jointly organized by TESEV and HASA in TbilisiTbilisiTbilisi is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Mt'k'vari River. The name is derived from an early Georgian form T'pilisi and it was officially known as Tiflis until 1936...
, Georgia (country)Georgia (country)Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
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- Mutual Perceptions Research (Armenia/Turkey) (*.doc file) "The Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) and the Armenian Sociological Association (HASA) have organized a Mutual Perceptions Research Project. Each group is carrying out sociological research to identify key issues of cultural understanding between the neighboring countries, including the perception of Turks by Armenians and of Armenians by Turks. The study focuses on the perceptions of the majority populations in each country. The combined results will constitute study findings. Representatives from each team met in Yerevan and fieldwork was undertaken in both countries. The results of the research were presented at an international seminar jointly organized by TESEV and HASA in Tbilisi
See also
- ASALAAsalaAsala may refer to:* Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia, a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla organization.* Asalah Nasri, Syrian singer* Al Asalah, a Salafist political party in Bahrain...
- Holocaust denialHolocaust denialHolocaust denial is the act of denying the genocide of Jews in World War II, usually referred to as the Holocaust. The key claims of Holocaust denial are: the German Nazi government had no official policy or intention of exterminating Jews, Nazi authorities did not use extermination camps and gas...
- Armenian quoteArmenian quoteThe Armenian quote is a paragraph understood to have been included in a speech by Adolf Hitler to Wehrmacht commanders at his Obersalzberg home on August 22, 1939, a week before the German invasion of Poland...
- Recognition of the Armenian GenocideRecognition of the Armenian GenocideArmenian Genocide recognition refers to the formal acceptance that the massacre and forced deportation of Armenians committed by the Ottoman Empire in 1915-1923 constitute genocide...
- Kurdish recognition of the Armenian genocideKurdish recognition of the Armenian genocideKurdish recognition of the Armenian Genocide is the recognition of the Kurdish participation in the ethnic cleansing of Armenians during World War I, when Kurdish tribal forces attacked and killed Armenian civilians and refugees.In several of the Kurdish regions, the Kurds participated in the...
Further reading
- The Banality of Denial, by Yair AuronYair AuronYair Auron is an Israeli historian, scholar and expert specializing on Holocaust and Genocide studies, racism and contemporary Jewry...
, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, 2003, ISBN 076580834X, 338 pp. - Investigation into the negation of a genocide, by Yves TernonYves TernonYves Ternon is a French physician, author of historical books about the Jewish Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide. Doctor of medicine's history of University Paris IV Sorbonne...
, Brackets, 1989 - Revolution and Genocide, by Robert Melson, 1992, 386 p.
- Encyclopedia of Genocide, ed. by Israel CharnyIsrael CharnyDr. Israel W. Charny is an Israeli psychologist and historian, world renowned genocide expert. He is the editor of two-volume Encyclopedia of Genocide, and Executive director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem....
, 1999. - The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies, by Kurt Jonassohn, 1990, 480 p.
- A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, by Ward ChurchillWard ChurchillWard LeRoy Churchill is an author and political activist. He was a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder from 1990 to 2007. The primary focus of his work is on the historical treatment of political dissenters and Native Americans by the United States government...
, 1997, City Lights Books, ISBN 0872863239 - The Crime of Destruction and the Law of Genocide, by Caroline Fournet, 2007, Ashgate Publishing, 182 p., ISBN 0754670015
- Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals, by Gary Jonathan Bass, Princeton University Press, pp. 106–146
- A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, by Samantha PowerSamantha PowerSamantha Power is an Irish American academic, governmental official and writer. She is currently a Special Assistant to President Barack Obama and runs the Office of Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights as Senior Director of Multilateral Affairs on the Staff of the National Security Council...
, NY: Basic Books, 2002, pp. 1–16 - Armenia: The Survival of a Nation, by Christopher J. WalkerChristopher J. WalkerChristopher J. Walker is a British historian and author.He worked in Sotheby's department of historical and literary manuscripts. After the winning of Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship he wrote a book on Armenian history which was reissued in 1990. In 1975 with the support of "Minority...
. Revised Second Edition. New YorkNew YorkNew York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, NY: St. Martin's Press, 1990. 476 pp. - Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide, by Richard G. HovannisianRichard G. HovannisianRichard G. Hovannisian is an American historian and scholar. He was born and raised in Tulare, California. He received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, and his Ph.D. from University of California, Los Angeles. He was also Associate Professor of History at...
, 1998 - The Key Elements in the Turkish Denial of the Armenian Genocide, by Vahakn DadrianVahakn DadrianVahakn N. Dadrian , currently the director of Genocide Research at Zoryan Institute, is a professor of sociology, and an internationally-renowned expert on the Armenian genocide.-Biography:...
, 1999 - The Psychological Satisfaction of Denials of the Holocaust or Other Genocides by Non-Extremists or Bigots, and Even by Known Scholars, by Israel W. Charny, "IDEA" journal, July 17, 2001, Vol.6, no.1
- Professional ethics and the denial of the Armenian genocide, by Smith, Roger W.; Markusen, Eric; and Lifton, Robert Jay // Holocaust and Genocide Studies, # 9 (1), 1995, p. 1-22
- Le Monde Diplomatique - The long denied Armenian Genocide: Turkey's carefully forgotten history, by Taner AkçamTaner AkçamAltuğ Taner Akçam is a Turkish historian and sociologist. He is one of the first Turkish academics to acknowledge and openly discuss the Armenian Genocide, and is recognized as a "leading international authority" on the subject....
, Le Monde Diplomatique, 2000 - U.S. Denial of the Armenian Genocide, by Stephen Zunes, "Foreign Policy in Focus", October 22, 2007
External links
- Denial of the Armenian Genocide, Armenian Genocide Resource Library for Teachers
- Armenian genocide denial by Turkey, Genocide Watch
- A source of news and information on the No Place for Hate/Anti-Defamation League Armenian Genocide denial issue
- Armenian Genocide Denial and Free Speech, by FacingHistory.ORG, 2008
- Selected Bibliography on Denial of the Armenian Genocide, Zoryan InstituteZoryan InstituteThe Zoryan Institute was established in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1982, and The Zoryan Institute of Canada, was merged in Toronto in 1984, as a non-profit research institute...
, 2001. - The Armenian Genocide at the German Bundestag (Parliament)
- The Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute