armenian genocide denial

[4][5] The Kingdom of Armenia adopted Christianity as its national religion in the fourth century CE, establishing the Armenian Apostolic Church. [108][109] During the siege, Armenians in surrounding villages were massacred at Djevdet's orders. [333], Fringe theory that the Armenian genocide did not occur. Van Krikorian and Anthony Barsamian. Genocide Denial. [250][253][255], In a lecture he delivered in June 2011, Akam stated that a Turkish foreign ministry official told him that the Turkish government was offering money to academics in the United States for denial of the genocide, noting the coincidence between what his source said and Gunter's book Armenian History and the Question of Genocide. [54][152][153], Most Turks support the state's policies with regard to genocide denial. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content. [305][344], 19151917 mass murder in the Ottoman Empire, loss of almost all of the empire's European territory, Causes of the Armenian genocide Wartime radicalization, rounded up in Constantinople and across the empire, Directorate for the Settlement of Tribes and Immigrants, may have at least one Armenian grandparent, Confiscation of Armenian properties in Turkey, The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 100,000 Armenians lived in Constantinople, belief that Turkey is constantly under threat, have recognized and condemned the genocide, systematic purges of incriminating documents by Turkey, "Countries that Recognize the Armenian Genocide", Talaat Pasha: Father of Modern Turkey, Architect of Genocide, "Earth, Fire, Water: or How to Make the Armenian Corpses Disappear", The Cambridge History of the First World War, NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, "Recognition of the Armenian Genocide after its Centenary: A Comparative Analysis of Changing Parliamentary Positions", Comparative Studies in Society and History, "Financing the Ruling Party and Its Militants in Wartime:The Armenian Genocide and the Kemah Massacres of 1915", "Cultural Erasure: The Absorption and Forced Conversion of Armenian Women and Children, 19151916", Deportation of Armenian intellectuals on 24 April 1915, Armistice between Russia and the Central Powers, Association for Defence of National Rights, Alfortville Armenian Genocide Memorial bombings, How happy is the one who says I am a Turk, Sovereignty unconditionally belongs to the People, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Faceted Application of Subject Terminology, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Armenian_genocide&oldid=1117134318, Persecution of Christians in the Ottoman Empire, Short description is different from Wikidata, Wikipedia pages semi-protected against vandalism, Articles containing potentially dated statements from 2022, All articles containing potentially dated statements, Articles containing Ottoman Turkish (1500-1928)-language text, Pages using Sister project links with hidden wikidata, Pages using Sister project links with default search, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 20 October 2022, at 03:08. [154][155] Many still consider Armenians to be a fifth column. [79][80][81] Historian Matthias Bjrnlund states that the perceived success of the Greek deportations allowed CUP leaders to envision even more radical policies "as yet another extension of a policy of social engineering through Turkification". Denial also affects Turkey's domestic policies and is taught in Turkish schools; some Turkish citizens who acknowledge the genocide have faced prosecution for "insulting Turkishness". [199] Some were sold in Arabian slave markets to Muslim Hajj pilgrims and ended up as far away as Tunisia or Algeria. This therefore highlights the risk in recognising Armenian genocide for foreign nations. [113] During the night of 2324April 1915 hundreds of Armenian political activists, intellectuals, and community leaders were rounded up in Constantinople and across the empire. Despite this hopeful step in restoring faith in Armenian communities, this has not lead to the UK officially recognising the Armenian Genocide. The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) national office, along with its Eastern U.S. regional and Pennsylvania local affiliates have teamed up with the Hellenic American Leadership Council (HALC) in running a grassroots campaign calling attention to Dr. Oz's genocide denial. Driven forward by paramilitary escorts, the deportees were deprived of food and water and subjected to robbery, rape, and massacres. Paul Bessemer (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006)Google Scholar. Katie Bedrossian is a recent Sociology graduate from Coventry University. [314], Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day is commemorated on 24 April each year in Armenia and abroad, the anniversary of the deportation of Armenian intellectuals. [25], During the Ottoman invasion of Russian and Persian territory in late 1914, Ottoman paramilitaries massacred local Armenians. [310] Since the ECtHR has ruled that member states may criminalize Holocaust denial, the verdict has been criticized for creating a double standard between the Holocaust and other genocides, along with failure to acknowledge anti-Armenianism as a motivation for genocide denial. As Pope Francis said so eloquently at his Mass marking the 100th time period of the genocide, quote, ``Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it.'' [174], At least 150,000 Armenians passed through Erzindjan from June 1915, where a series of transit camps were set up to control the flow of victims to the killing site at the nearby Kemah gorge. [158] A dual-track system was used to communicate orders; those for the deportation of Armenians were communicated to the provincial governors through official channels, but orders of a criminal character, such as those calling for annihilation, were sent through party channels and destroyed upon receipt. [259] In line with the CUP's justification of its actions, denialist works portray Armenians as an existential threat to the empire in a time of war, while rejecting the CUP's intent to exterminate the Armenian people. Family members of a 29-years-old soldier killed during clashes with Armenia, grieve as the crouch next to his grave, near Agdam city during the military conflict over the breakaway region of . Several members of the board resigned and both the Middle East Studies Association and Turkish Studies Association criticized the violation of Quataert's academic freedom. [128] Ottoman records show the government aimed to reduce Armenians to no more than five percent of the local population in the sources of deportation and ten percent in the destination areas. [250][253][254] Weeks later, he resigned as chairman of the board of directors of the Institute of Turkish Studies after Turkish officials threatened that if he did not retract his statements, the institute's funding would be withdrawn. Historian Ronald Grigor Suny summarizes the main argument as "There was no genocide, and the Armenians were to blame for it. The project will encourage comparative, multidisciplinary perspectives on the study of denial, the production of alternative facts, and the manufacturing of controversy by merchants of doubt. The academic disciplines associated with the projects research will primarily be History, Political Science, and Philosophy. It is what Elie Wiesel has called a "double killing." [316] Vicken Cheterian says that genocide denial "pollutes the political culture of entire societies, where violence and threats become part of a political exercise degrading basic rights and democratic practice". [139][140] For decades, these textbooks did not mention Armenians as part of Ottoman history. [338] There are also thousands of eyewitness accounts from Western missionaries and Armenian survivors. [67] According to Halil Karaveli, "the word [genocide] incites strong, emotional reactions among Turks from all walks of society and of every ideological inclination". [336], The genocide is extensively documented in the archives of Germany, Austria, the United States, Russia, France, and the United Kingdom,[337] as well as the Ottoman archives, despite systematic purges of incriminating documents by Turkey. [173][192] Some children were forcibly seized, while others were sold or given up by their parents to save their lives. [318], Denial has also affected Armenians, particularly those who live in Turkey. [184] The resulting Treaty of Lausanne annulled the previous Treaty of Svres which had mandated the prosecution of Ottoman war criminals and the restoration of property to Christian survivors. [269][270] The role of the Special Organization is denied[271][272] and massacres are instead blamed on Kurds,[59] "brigands", and "armed gangs" that supposedly operated outside the control of the central government. ". [124] In 2005, academics at three Turkish universities organized an academic conference dealing with the genocide. [189], From 1915 to 1918, Germany and the Ottoman Empire undertook "joint propaganda efforts of denial". It is estimated that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed at the hands of the Ottoman Empire. Turkish embassies, with the support of the US State Department, shot down attempts to revive the film in the 1950s and 1960s. Neither the ECHR ruling and nor the file we have presented as third party concerns itself with the historical reality of the 1915-1917 massacres or their precise legal definition. [289][290], Armenian survivors were left mainly in three locations. These examples suggest that once a country supports or recognises the suffering of Armenians as a genocide, Turkey become more frustrated. how [219][220] In late 1915, the camps around Aleppo were liquidated and the survivors were forced to march to Ras al-Ayn; the camps around Ras al-Ayn were closed in early 1916 and the survivors sent to Deir ez-Zor. [190][179] Motivated by belief in a global Jewish conspiracy, the Turkish foreign ministry has recruited Turkish Jews to participate in denialist efforts. [34] In 1891, Abdul Hamid created the Hamidiye regiments from Kurdish tribes, allowing them to act with impunity against Armenians. The ambassador inadvertently included a draft of a letter from Lowry advising the ambassador on how to prevent mention of the Armenian genocide in scholarly works. 5 Akam, , The Young Turks Crime, 128Google Scholar. Turkey threatened that if the conference was held, it would close its borders to Jewish refugees from Iran and Syria, putting their lives in danger. [262][263] According to this logic, the deportations of Armenian civilians was a justified and proportionate response to Armenian treachery, either real or as perceived by the Ottoman authorities. Likewise, there is pressure on the US to overlook the Armenian Genocide due to their strategic alliance with Turkey. - Armenian Americans again called on Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz to end his complicity in Turkey's Armenian Genocide denial, at a protest organized by the ANC. 2 Akam, Taner, Trk Ulusal Kimlii ve Ermeni Sorunu (stanbul: letiim Yaynlar, 1992)Google Scholar. The Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia , founded in 1975, took matters further and began carrying out attacks on Turkish targets, demanding the country atone for the genocide. [157] The Directorate for the Settlement of Tribes and Immigrants (IAMM) coordinated the deportation and the resettlement of Muslim immigrants in the vacant houses and lands. [120][121][122], Around 1990, Taner Akam, working in Germany, was the first Turkish historian to acknowledge and study the genocide. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings. [34] The defense of Van served as a pretext for anti-Armenian actions at the time and remains a crucial element in works that seek to deny or justify the genocide. Both forms of negationism share the goal of rehabilitating the ideologies which brought genocide about. [179][180] Historians have described the role of other countries in enabling Turkey's genocide denial as a form of collusion. On 24 April 1915, the Ottoman Empire began the systematic ethnic cleansing of Armenian people. Honoring those responsible for. Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan, Armenia. [114][115][116] The same day, Talaat banned all Armenian political organizations[117] and ordered that the Armenians who had previously been removed from Cilicia be deported again, from central Anatoliawhere they would likely have survivedto the Syrian Desert.[118][119]. The presence of Armenians in Anatolia has been documented since the sixth century BCE, about 1,500 years before the arrival of Turkmens under the Seljuk dynasty. [83][84] Many of the main perpetrators, including Talat Pasha, were hailed as national heroes of Turkey; many schools, streets, and mosques are still named after them. [14][15] Beginning in 1839, the Ottoman government issued a series of reforms to centralize power and equalize the status of Ottoman subjects regardless of religion. [9] Sharia law encoded Islamic superiority but guaranteed property rights and freedom of worship to non-Muslims (dhimmis) in exchange for a special tax. [64] From the founding of the republic, the genocide has been viewed as a necessity and raison d'tat. [229] At the beginning of 1916 some 500,000 deportees were alive in Syria and Mesopotamia. [218] In 2006, in response to a debate initiated by MP Steven Pound, a representative of the FCO claimed the United Kingdom did not recognize the genocide because "the evidence is not sufficiently unequivocal". [44] Although skeptical of a growing, exclusionary Turkish nationalism in the Young Turk movement, the ARF decided to ally with the CUP in December 1907. [249], In 2006, Ottomanist historian Donald Quataertone of the 69 signatories of the 1985 statement to the United States Congress[250]reviewed The Great Game of Genocide, a book about the Armenian genocide, agreeing that "genocide" was the right word to use;[251] the article challenged what Quataert termed "the Ottomanist wall of silence"[252] on the issue. [302] In postwar Turkey, the perpetrators of the genocide were hailed as "martyrs" of the national cause. They had to convert to Islam or face deportation to another area. [130][131] Western scholars generally ignore the Turkish denialist historiography because they consider its methods unscholarlyespecially the selective use of sources. Turkey's continued denial has meant that more than 95 years after the commencement of the Armenian Genocide, a just resolution, ensuring the sustainability and viability of the Armenian state and solace for the Armenian people, has not been reached. [156] TurkishArmenian journalist Hrant Dink was outspoken in his advocacy for facing historical truths to achieve a better society and reconciliation between ethnic groups. [54] The Ottoman government denied that massacres of Armenians had occurred, and claimed that Armenians colluded with the enemy, while asserting that national sovereignty allowed them to take measures against the Armenians. [322], In response to continuing denial by the Turkish state, many Armenian diaspora activists have lobbied for formal recognition of the Armenian genocide, an effort that has become a central concern of the Armenian diaspora. New York, NY April 8, 2022 Discovery, Inc. today . Retired diplomats were recruited to write denialist works, completed without professional methodology or ethical standards and based on cherry-picking archival information favorable to Turks and unfavorable to Armenians. [283] Historian Raymond Kvorkian states that the war of independence was "intended to complete the genocide by finally eradicating Armenian, Greek, and Syriac survivors". Almost all. However, with a little bit of courage, I am certain that the Republic of Turkey can take steps towards . The Armenian Genocide stands out, perhaps, not so much for its scale or particular brutalitythough these were certainly sizablebut for the Turkish republic's long-standing denial of its occurrence, or scale, or the intentions of those behind it. [43][44] During the Russian occupation of eastern Anatolia, Russian and Armenian forces massacred as many as 60,000 Muslims. [95] These requests were endorsed by the central government already before 1915. 13 Ibid. [253] The First Republic of Armenia was proclaimed in May 1918, at which time 50 percent of its population were refugees and 60 percent of its territory was under Ottoman occupation. [266] The postwar Ottoman government held the Ottoman Special Military Tribunal, by which it sought to pin the Armenian genocide onto the CUP leadership while exonerating the Ottoman Empire as a whole, therefore avoiding partition by the Allies. Not to mention that Justin McCarthy himself is an Armenian Genocide denier, and therefore not a reasonable person to quote in such an article. HARRISBURG, Penn. [12] Armenians were a minority in most places where they lived, alongside Turkish and Kurdish Muslim and Greek Orthodox Christian neighbors. Burn their houses and their churches. Ottoman Empire, 1918-20. In the Syrian Desert, the survivors were dispersed into concentration camps. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a new Armenia. Executive produced by former daytime talk show host Montel Williams and actor Dean Cain, and directed by David Lee George, "Architects of Denial" tackles the organized mass murder of an estimated 1.5 million Christian citizens, most of them Armenian, by the Ottoman Empire during World War I (between 1915 and 1923), and the resistance by the . The Obama administration, citing its relations with Turkey, has pledged to block the passage in the full House of Representatives of a resolution passed this past Thursday by the Foreign Relations Committee acknowledging the 1915 genocide by the Ottoman Empire of a 1.5 million Armenians. Ottoman leaders took isolated indications of Armenian resistance as evidence of a widespread rebellion, though no such rebellion existed. [198] Deportees were displayed naked in Damascus and sold as sex slaves in some areas, constituting an important source of income for accompanying gendarmes. [246], Many scholars consider it unethical for academics to deny the Armenian genocide. They make buzz-words and T-Shirts like "The Turkish Denial Machine". Also see de Waal, Thomas, Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 212213Google Scholar, 257. [47][48] Abdul Hamid was forced to reinstate the 1876 constitution and restore parliament, which was celebrated by Ottomans of all ethnicities and religions. [231] More than 200,000 Armenians were killed between March and October 1916, often in remote areas near Deir ez-Zor and on parts of the Khabur valley, where their bodies would not create a public health hazard. It is a double edged matter: on the one hand, their pain about the denial and their efforts to gain acknowledgment are central elements in the strong community they have created in diaspora, like the U.S. On the other hand, the denial continuously re-victimizes them. We have been blamed for not making a distinction between guilty and innocent Armenians. [320] Gek argues "the lack of acknowledgement literally prevents the wounds opened by past violence to ever heal". 42 https://www.ictj.org/sites/default/files/ICTJ-Turkey-Armenian-Reconciliation-2002-English.pdf. [13], Armenians in the eastern provinces lived in semi-feudal conditions and commonly encountered forced labor, illegal taxation, and unpunished crimes against them including robberies, murders, and sexual assaults. [192] Akam stated in 2020 that Turkey has definitively lost the information war over the Armenian genocide on both the academic and diplomatic fronts, its official narrative being treated like ordinary denialism. The annual commemoration day for the genocide is April 24th, 1915, the date held by many scholars to mark the start Armenian Genocide which began with the arrests of Armenian political and communal leaders in Istanbul and throughout the Ottoman Empire. Tehlirian was acquitted by a German jury. The Turkish government maintains that the deportation of Armenians was a legitimate action that cannot be described as genocide. [225], Until the twenty-first century, Ottoman and Turkish studies marginalized the killings of Armenians, which many academics portrayed as a wartime measure justified by emergency and avoided discussing in depth. On 24April 1915, the Ottoman authorities arrested and deported hundreds of Armenian intellectuals and leaders from Constantinople. [250] Between 800,000 and 1.2million Armenians were deported,[250][251] and contemporaries estimated that by late 1916 only 200,000 were still alive. [143] Some deportees from western Anatolia were allowed to travel by rail. There were approximately 1.5 million Armenians living in the multiethnic Ottoman Empire in 1915. [212] Committee members of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum reported Elekda told them that the safety of Jews in Turkey was not guaranteed if the museum covered the Armenian genocide. 15 Gek, Fatma Mge, Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective Violence against the Armenians, 17892009 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 4Google Scholar. About 295,000 Armenians had fled to Russian-controlled territory during the genocide and ended up mostly in Soviet Armenia. [333] Azerbaijani nationalists accused Armenians of staging the Sumgait pogrom and other anti-Armenian pogroms, similar to the Turkish discourse on the Armenian genocide. [177][295], According to former International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) judge Flavia Lattanzi, the present Turkish government's "den[ial of] past Ottoman and Turkish authorities' wrongdoings is a new violation of international law". [11] By the 1890s, Armenians faced forced conversions to Islam and increasing land seizures, which led a handful to join revolutionary parties such as the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF, also known as Dashnaktsutyun). Violators were threatened with arrest. [86] On 29October 1914, the empire entered World WarI on the side of the Central Powers by launching a surprise attack on Russian ports in the Black Sea. [226][222] Thousands of Armenian children were sold to childless Turks, Arabs, and Jews, who would come to the camps to buy them from their parents. [267] The court ruled that "the crime of mass murder" of Armenians was "organized and carried out by the top leaders of CUP". Ambassador Morgenthau's son, Henry Morgenthau Jr. , was secretary of the treasury in the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt . [124][125] At the same time, the war provided an opportunity to enact, in Talaat's words, the "definitive solution to the Armenian Question". [38] In a cable dated 13 July 1915, Talat stated that "the aim of the Armenian deportations is the final solution of the Armenian Question". [183] For example, around 99 percent of Armenians deported from Erzerum did not reach their destination. [206][207] In 1922, before receiving the Chester concession, Colby Chester argued that Christians of Anatolia were not massacred; his writing exhibited many of the themes of later genocide denial. [92] Talat Pasha had decreed that "everything must be done to abolish even the word 'Armenia' in Turkey". Large-scale massacres of Armenians occurred in the 1890s and 1909. [107] By the twenty-first century, the Turkish Historical Society, known for publications upholding the official position of the Turkish government, had as one of its main functions the countering of genocide claims. "The United States, the state of Utah and the University of Utah (as a state entity) recognize the historical events of 1915 as the Armenian genocide. [246] Both contemporaries[247][248] and later historians have estimated that around 1million Armenians died during the genocide,[3][249] with figures ranging from 600,000 to 1.5 million deaths. In 1916, another wave of massacres was ordered, leaving about 200,000 deportees alive by the end of the year. [197] On 11January 1916, socialist deputy Karl Liebknecht raised the issue of the Armenian genocide in the Reichstag, receiving the reply that the Ottoman government "has been forced, due to the seditious machinations of our enemies, to transfer the Armenian population of certain areas, and to assign them new places of residence".