The Truth?

The more I read about what some call the Armenian genocide, the more I understand how difficult and confusing the subject actually is. There is a lot of material available for free on the web and in just about every library. Some of the sources – many of them – indicate that their was a genocide, others deny it, again others speak about mass killings but not genocide as such. Today, the Jerusalem Post published a good and interesting article by Lenny Ben-David about this. Ben-David writes:

AS AN adviser for five years to the Turkish embassy in Washington, until earlier this summer, I understood why the Turkish government and people jump to deny claims that their ancestors committed a “genocide” against Armenians some 90 years ago.

It occurred during a maelstrom of battles and massacres. It was allegedly carried out by founding fathers who were bringing their country into an enlightened 20th century. And it was waged against an enemy guilty of the still unspoken crime of massacring hundreds of thousands of Muslims and thousands of Jews.

Armenians and Turks see no shades of grey, and for now, at least, demands are made only of Turkey to change its monochromatic narrative.

He then lists some of the autrocities committed by the Armenians (who, no matter what source you read, were not exactly innocent either). Some of the atrocities are:

- There are accounts of Armenian massacres, between 1914 and 1920, of 2.5 million of Armenia’s Muslim population. From this source:

I killed Muslims by every means possible. Yet it is sometimes a pity to waste bullets for this. The best way is to gather all of these dogs and throw them into wells and then fill the wells with big and heavy stones, as I did. I gathered all of the women, men and children, threw big stones down on top of them. They must never live on this earth.

- Recently, Mountain Jews in Azerbaijan requested assistance in building a monument to 3,000 Azeri Jews killed by Armenians in 1918 in a pogrom about which little is known.

- AND WITHIN our own lifetime – just some 15 years ago – Armenian troops massacred hundreds of Azeri Muslims. In this regard, Ben-David cites Newsweek from March 16, 1992:

“Azerbaijan was a charnel house again last week: a place of mourning refugees and dozens of mangled corpses dragged to a makeshift morgue behind the mosque. They were ordinary Azerbaijani men, women and children of Khojaly, a small village in war-torn Nagorno-Karabakh overrun by Armenian forces on Feb. 25-26. Many were killed at close range while trying to flee; some had their faces mutilated, others were scalped.”

The author of the article concludes, and I fully agree with him:

Both Turks and Armenians have their grisly tales of persecution and their vehement denials of genocidal designs. It is the task of the Jewish community to express sympathy for all the victims and outrage at all the perpetrators on both sides of the conflict. The US Congress and the Jewish community should encourage historians on both sides to objectively examine what took place.

Nations mature when they can look at themselves in the mirror and see the grey, the wrinkles and the blemishes.

I would also like to point out that mass killings – yes even killings on a grand scale – do not necessarily constitute genocide.

I agree with Ben-David: let everybody open up the archives, let historians in and let’s find out what exactly happened. For this to happen, though, every country and people involved has to be willing to live with the consequences. The attitude some have, which means that the Armenians basically did nothing wrong and have done nothing wrong but that the Turks are ruthless killers and today’s generation is dedicated to covering-up the misdeeds of their ancestors, has to change. Turks, on the other hand, have to stop automatically dismissing any claims as well. Do the research, open up the archives, and let’s see what happens.