Posted on 02/15/2009 10:08:01 AM PST by SJackson
"The persecution of Armenians is assuming unprecedented proportions. Reports from widely scattered districts indicate a systematic attempt to uproot peaceful populations and through arbitrary efforts, terrible tortures, wholesale expulsions and deportations from one end of the Empire to the other, accompanied by frequent instances of rape, pillage and murder turning into massacre, to bring destruction and destitution on them." - Henry Morgenthau Sr., US ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, July 10, 1915
But did this constitute genocide? Not according to Israel which, for reasons of "practical realpolitik" regarding relations with Turkey has long refused to recognize the 1915-1923 massacre of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks as an act of ethnic extermination.
Nor according to the United States, which bases its refusal on similar grounds.
And not without cause. Most recently, Turkey responded to an October 2007 draft congressional resolution calling on president George Bush to characterize the killings as genocide by threatening to cut its logistical support for US operations in Iraq and close its strategic Incirlik air base to American aircraft. Turkey spent $300,000 a month on Washington lobbyists to ensure its message hit home. The resolution, which had already passed the committee stage and had 225 cosponsors in the House of Representatives, was quickly withdrawn.
Ankara's indefatigable efforts to prevent international recognition of the Armenian genocide derive from the fact that its denial is part of Turkey's founding mythology, a plank of official policy since the 1922 Lausanne Conference, where claims of mass killings were dismissed as "Christian propaganda." In 1934, it successfully lobbied Washington to persuade MGM to drop plans to film The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, Franz Werfel's best-selling novel about the Armenian experience, by threatening to boycott American films.
This campaign of denial intensified after 1965 when Armenian commemorations of the 50th anniversary brought the issue to international attention. By the mid-1970s, Turkey was engaged in what Richard Falk described as "a major, proactive, deliberate effort to... keep the truth about the Armenian genocide from general acknowledgment." By the 1990s, this included the endowment of chairs in Turkish studies at several US universities with the aim of disseminating Ankara's version of events.
ACCORDING TO THIS VERSION, Armenians have willfully painted an inaccurate picture of what happened in the World War I period and why. And there is certainly truth in Turkey's claim that the situation was not as clear-cut as generally presented. Rarely acknowledged, for instance, is that the rise of Armenian nationalism in the 19th century led to enormous tensions between Armenians and their Ottoman overlords, and that many had sided against the empire in the 1828, 1854 and 1877 wars.
It is also infrequently admitted that although 250,000 Armenians were conscripted into the Ottoman armies during World War I, another 150,000, out of a sense of religious affinity with the Orthodox Slavs and in the hope that a Russian victory would lead to an independent Armenian state, volunteered to serve under the czar, while a further 50,000 joined Armenian guerrilla groups which openly sided with him. Seldom spoken of either is the fact that hundreds of thousands of Muslim, Greek and Jewish civilians died directly at their hands.
But while Constantinople may have gained grounds for viewing the Armenians as a fifth column, nonpartisan sources make clear that their deportation and murder began before any attempted insurrection. As David Fromkin, who studied German sources, has written: "There are historians today who continue to support the claim... that the Ottoman rulers acted only after Armenia had risen against them. But observers at the time who were by no means anti-Turk reported that such was not the case. German officers stationed there agreed that the area was quiet until the deportations began."
Ankara also denies that 1.5 million Armenians actually died. While some Turkish historians allow that up to 600,000 were killed, the semi-official Turkish Historical Society puts the figure closer to 300,000 and argues that, of these, only 10,000 were massacred, the remainder dying of starvation and disease. It further claims that these 10,000 were killed, not as part of a genocidal plan, but in the heat of battle and more often than not by Kurds.
But it is a matter of historical record that the Special Organization, an official arm of the Defense Ministry, oversaw the activities of Einsatzgruppen-style killing squads that, in the words of one US diplomat, "swept the countryside, massacring [Armenian] men, women and children." And while Kurds were certainly involved in the killing, they were deliberately coopted for the task by the Turkish War Ministry in the knowledge that, as the Armenians' historic blood enemies, they would lose no opportunity to avenge ancient grudges.
Ankara's distinction between those directly murdered and those who died indirectly from starvation, disease and exposure is also highly questionable. With no provision made for clothing, food or shelter, the anticipated outcome of the deportations into the Syrian desert was obviously death. In fact, the Turkish interior minister termed them "marches to eternity" and his meaning was clear to his appalled German allies who distanced themselves from the policy. To say that the Armenians who died during the deportations were not deliberately killed is like claiming there were no intentional Jewish deaths during their "relocation" to the East or on the death marches to the West during World War II.
THE FACT IS that the Armenian massacres constituted genocide by any international standard, conforming to the UN's criterion of having been "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." Indeed, Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term 'genocide' in 1944, used the Armenian massacres as an illustrative example.
Today Turkey's campaign to prevent its recognition is assuming a Canute-like quality. Some 21 countries have already formally acknowledged it, including Russia, Canada and France, as has the European Parliament, the World Council of Churches and the International Association of Genocide Scholars. And with President Barack Obama (who twice pledged to recognize the genocide during his election campaign), Joe Biden, Hilary Clinton, CIA chief Leon Panetta and the NSC's director of multilateral affairs Samantha Power also on board, we now have what the Turkish daily Hurriyet described as the "most pro-Armenian [administration] in history," and the Armenian National Committee of America is currently preparing to place another "recognition resolution" before Congress. In fact, Obama may well use this year's April 24 White House statement commemorating the killings to recognize them as genocide.
Furthermore, an official with a leading American Jewish organization recently told The Jerusalem Post that the post-Cast Lead "deterioration in Israel-Turkey relations might prompt his group and others to reconsider" their traditional support for Ankara's stance. And Israel, which Yair Auron, author of The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide, describes as Turkey's "principal partner" in denial, has itself made similar noises, with Deputy Foreign Minister Majallie Whbee warning that if Turkey persists in its claims that genocide is taking place in Gaza, "we will then recognize the Armenian-related events as genocide."
Albeit for the wrong reasons, this is surely the right thing to do. For, while fears regarding repercussions for both bilateral relations and Turkey's 25,000-strong Jewish community are unfortunately well-founded, Israel, perhaps more than other nations, has a moral obligation to call this crime by its name.
If you'd like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
----------------------------
The term genocide was coined by Raphael Lempkin, a somewhat quirky Polish Jew, who devoted his life to raising the issue of genocide, and who was largely responsible for the Genocide treaty, which the US signed onto under Ronald Reagan, apparently the first post-war President who had a clear moral compass. Lempkin warned early on of the future horrors to come in Germany, and was inspired in his career choice by the genocides in Armenia and the Ukraine. So it's hard to say it's not genocide, it inspired the term.
That said, I'm not sure it's the business of governments to be weighing in on the issue, other than when it raises it's head today. In which case it provides historical context. Perhaps Turkey should acknowledge the genocide carried out against Jews throughout the Arab world, more effective than Hitler in destroying millinea long traditions of Jewish life.
I keep seeing this pop up time and again.
Could you explain, in simple terms, why as a 21st Centry American, I should care/worry over this as an historical event?
Curious, to say the least.
I think it's worth remembering, it could have served as a warning of things to come had the world paid attention. And genocide is still with us.
I think it's legitimate for governments to be involved in issues like payment of insurance policies and bank deposits to heirs. The loss of life and property in Turkey, well that's Turkey's issue to face up to, nothing we can do much about.
As an issue for nations to deal with, I'm not sure it's that significant, but Turkey keeps bringing it up. If it's a tripwire for them, the moral thing is to state that sure, you carried out genocide.
My guess is that it's because there are a lot of Americans of Armenian decent. I went to high school in Ardsley, NY, and there was a very high population of Americans of Armenian decent there. In geography and world history classes, Turkey was a sore subject for many of them. No different really than was NAZI Germany for Jews, and the Soviet Union for many of Russian decent.
Mark
“But did this constitute genocide? Not according to Israel which, for reasons of “practical realpolitik” regarding relations with Turkey has long refused to recognize the 1915-1923 massacre of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks as an act of ethnic extermination.”
Is this the same group that raised hell about an excommunicated bishop who refused to acknowledge the holocaust?
Israel simply doesn't take a position one way or the other, whether it's genocide or simply politically motivated mass murder.
I don't believe the United States does either, which doesn't mean we're a nation of Holocaust deniers.
Israel along with many others should take a position. The Germans have apologized ...the Turks just laugh.
They laugh, and say it was a different government.
I think it would be good for Israel to acknowledge the genocide. But given the fact that they weren't a nation at the time, and weren't a combatant in the war with Turkey, and aren't even a leader of world opinion, I could probably think of a nation or two who could better step up to the plate.
There is a strain of post-Holocaust Jewish apologetics that requires that the Shoah be unique and unprecedented. Hence Armenian-genocide-denial among Zionists.
I think that position ill-serves both Judaism and the State of Israel, but as a non-Jew it isn't really my place to say.
Because if we can establish the "historical fact" of the "Armenian Genocide", then we can establish an "American Indian Genocide", a "Palestinian Genocide", a "Vietnamese Genocide", etc., etc. ad nauseum. I know that the Turks did dirt to the Turkish Armenians, much of which was "malignant neglect" and expulsion, rather than outright butchery, but there are way too many Armenians in the world to use the term "Armenian Genocide". It was an Turkish Armenian Massacre, followed by an Armenian Diaspora.
The only stance is the truth. This was attempted genocide commited by the Ottoman Empire. However, the Turkish Republic is not the Ottoman Empire any more than the USSR was Czarist Russia.
Whether it’s worth remembering is up to the people.
The issue here is should a foreign government be able to tell the U.S. what to think. There has been a longstanding attempt to make the Armenian Holocaust disappear from American view.
That is what we, as U.S. Americans should be concerned about. Do we really want our history books and minds controlled by another country. If we allow that, why should it stop there.
Iranian President Ahmadinejad held a conference denying the Holocaust a few years ago, just like earlier conferences that promoted denying the Armenian Holocaust. Why shouldn’t foreign governments start requesting the U.S. not believe in that too, in return for their assistance?
We already practically ignore all the murders in the USSR and China. How can learn anything from history when have to pretend the worst parts didn’t happen?
For that he should be pilloried. But I'm not sure if it it should be by groups like the ADL, since they can ignore the Armenian holocaust. The ADL isn't a nation, so it doesn't have to worry about kissing up to Turkey, does it?
I tend to agree, it isn’t America’s business. But to the extent we’re injected into it, and things like insurance claims do that, we (the administration) should be direct and acknowledge the killing for what it was, genocide. Or simply not comment at all, other than as is necessary in the Courts. What Congress does, Congress does. But certainly we shouldn't be succombing to Turkish, or Armenian, pressure.
I am not an expert, but in the video clip I saw recently, he didn't say anything about Israel, he said no one died in gas chambers and disputed the numbers of Jews that died….For that he should be pilloried. But I'm not sure if it it should be by groups like the ADL, since they can ignore the Armenian holocaust. The ADL isn't a nation, so it doesn't have to worry about kissing up to Turkey, does it?
It may not be in the clip, however he’s held and verbalized these positions for years, and they’re not limited to the “narrow” issue of gas chambers. In fact you could read about the Jewish plot to persecute Christians and control the world on the SSPX website till last week. Google for Mystery of Jews which they just pulled down, I’m sure someone archived it. He’re a link to a couple of Williamson’s pages from a few years ago. Not sure when they were pulled. http://jloughnan.tripod.com/sparwill.htm. The guys a nut, but after the initial stumble (lack of acknowledgement and condemnation of his views), the Vatican seems to have handled it well.
As to the ADL, they don’t deny it, they simply refuse to “comment” on it. In general I don’t think they should take political positions, things like gay rights, gun control, and I suppose this could fit in the same category. However they do, so IMO they’ve an obligation to condemn the conduct of the Ottoman’s, particularly since it does go to the periphery of their mission, genocide and mass murder.
Yes, but the Turkish Republic, unlike (both) successor states to Nazi Germany is complicit in the genocide as an accomplice after the fact by refusing to acknowledge the genocide as such, and by its continued persecution (albeit milder, at least since the end of the Second Greco-Turkish War, of Christian minorities, the Armenians included).
You seem to partially agree with my point: the refusal among some Jews to accept the Armenian genocide for what it was ill-serves Judaism and the State of Israel.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.