The Armenian Genocide (Guest Voice)
May 27th, 2008 | 6 responses
In this Guest Voice post, blogger Kathy Kattenburg calls on Congress to again take up a controversial resolution on Armenian Genocide. This Guest Voice is cross posted at Comments from Left Field. Guest Voice posts do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Moderate Voice or its writers.
The Armenian Genocide
by Kathy Kattenburg
Remember back in October when a resolution to acknowledge and remember the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923 was blocked because Turkey threatened to cut off relations with the United States if it was passed?
Well, the resolution did not go anywhere. It was adopted by the House Foreign Affairs Committee on October 10, and could be brought back to life if a majority in Congress could overcome their terror of Turkish temper tantrums.
The deliberate extermination of roughly 1,500,000 Armenian men, women, and children was widely reported and acknowledged as genocide while it was happening and in the years after the fall of the Ottoman Empire following World War I.
Whether or not Hitler explicitly pointed to the Armenians as evidence that mass murder on such a scale could be done with impunity, there is no reasonable doubt that the Armenian Genocide was used by Nazi Germany as a template for the Holocaust. Germany and Turkey were allies in World War I. German military officers were in Turkey while the genocide was going on. Most of the vast collection of photographs documenting the atrocities were taken by a German national, Armin Wegner. And when you read about the logistics of how the Armenian population was rounded up, deported, and murdered, the influence becomes very clear.
The argument that our present-day political alliance with Turkey is too important to our national security to risk alienating the Turks over something that happened 90 years ago is unpersuasive, to say the least.
The Turkish government has been denying that a genocide took place for those entire 90 years, and for almost that length of time, the major European powers and the United States have gone along with that denial, because the West did not want to jeopardize its oil interests in what came to be called the Middle East.
The oil addiction began almost immediately after the first world war ended, when Britain and France carved up the old Ottoman Empire between them. The absolute inviolable priority of European and American economic interests in that region began then, and has gone on continuously since then. The United States does not want to piss off Turkey now; it did not want to piss off Turkey back then; and as long as there is oil in the Middle East, that is going to be more important than even a simple statement of acknowledgment and remembrance. Memory takes a back seat to money.
Clearly, many people both inside Turkey and elsewhere in the world believe this to be appropriate and understandable. I do not.
It’s neither appropriate nor understandable. It’s evil and immoral. It’s appalling that one country has persisted in denying, for almost a century, the intentional elimination of an entire people, through mass murder and forced removal, and that the world has allowed that country to get away with such a crime.
The time is long, long past to stand up with the remnant of the Armenian people, and the very few survivors still alive, and say: We acknowledge this genocide, we call it by its proper name, we remember that it happened, and we commit ourselves to do all we can to prevent its ever happening again.
The summary of the Armenian Genocide Resolution reads as follows:
A resolution calling on the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide.
The full text (of the Senate version) is here. The House version is here. To send a message to your representatives in the House and Senate urging them to take up this resolution again and pass it, go here.
There are mountains of documentation of and information about the facts of the Armenian genocide. If you want one source that is reliable, exhaustively and meticulously researched, readable, and readily available, I recommend Peter Balakian’s The Burning Tigris
6 Responses to “The Armenian Genocide (Guest Voice)”
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Historical consensus and contemporary accounts suggest that the actual number of Armenian deaths was 600-800 thousand. Still very very nasty, but well short of the 1.5 million claimed by Armenian activists. Turkey continues to deny that the events were “genocide” and point at their own dead killed by Armenians who sided with the Russians in the war, but the numbers of the non-military dead speak for themselves.
Once again notable in the House and Senate bills (links are bad, BTW) is the dating of the genocide from 1915 to 1923, even though historians agree that the correct period is 1915-1918. Identical language from the House and Senate bills:
Whereas the Armenian Genocide was conceived and carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923…
So why the continuing insistence on the 1923 dating? The answer is simple. One immediately notes that the Sultanate was abolished in November of 1922, that the current Turkish government was formally recognized in October of 1923, and that the 1948 U.N. Convention on Genocide could conceivably permit lawsuits for reparations. By extending the dating of the genocide to 1923, the bills could potentially enable lawsuits against the current Turkish government for reparations of genocide carried out by the Ottoman Empire. And not just against the current Turkish government, but also potentially against the nations that controlled the post-war Ottoman Empire under the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, namely Great Britain, France, Italy, and Greece. All the nations involved are signatories to the 1948 Convention.
Also notable is that of the many nations that have officially reconized the events as genocide, all have done so using dating within the 1915-1918 period, inclusive. Hmmm….
I'm rather cynical about the effect of resolutions, no matter how well intentioned.
Congress passed a resolution in 2000 stating that the occupation of the Baltic States by the USSR was illegal. The effectfs of that amount to zero. Russia still interferes and tries to continue its dominance in a myriad of ways, the latest being the cyber attack on Estona. There is symbolic value, but practically speaking, the world goes on in the same manner as iif the resoluiton had never been.
The timing of the Armenian Genocide resoluton was particularly unforutante, as US involvement in Iraq places the relationlhsip with Turkey ivery much in a current context, as opposed to a historical one. In the name of national inteests, countires like the US often balance principle against political expediency. As cynical as that may sound, considering consequences, by necessity, must also be considered.
The European nations who have signed similar resolutions also have a different relationship with Turkety. Presently the inlcusion of Tureky in the EU is a hotly deabated topic.
The significance of using a different end date (1923) in the US has also to be explored further. The question of reparations is a thorny issue. The Baltic States raise the question periodically, but Russia has been successful in averting responsibility for a previous regime. Aside from the rights and wrongs of the idea,
it brings in an entirely new layer of complexity .
The choice has to be made between,possibly passing a less contentious version of such a resolution at a more portentious time, or sticking with the current version and risk failure.
This has a similar smell to the Dems-in-the-House fun and games last year.
What's next, trying to get the candidates to issue opinions? (Obama immediately says it's the right thing to do, Obama earns cheers, from several of his fans even before he even has expressed his opinion; McCain says Congress shouldn't try, again, to meddle in foreign policy and harm foreign relations in a trouble-ridden Middle East, again, and earns “evil Bush clone” jeers; Clinton waits and goes last and either is jeered, mainly by Obama fans, or gets little to no response at all.)
The significance of the end date as 1923 rather than 1918 is that, although most of the genocide was complete by 1918, there were still a number of Armenians living in areas that, in the aftermath of the war, were part of their ancient homeland but were controlled either by Turkey or the Soviets. One part of that area was at one point controlled by the Soviets, but then fell back into Turkish hands. Also, the Western powers were busily coming up with various plans to carve up the area, and basically it was very uncertain where the Armenian homeland would end up being, what its borders would be, etc. Armenian survivors living in areas that were controlled by the Turkish government were massacred in large numbers well after 1918. There were many such massacres between 1918 and 1923, and thousands of Armenians who had survived the main genocide during the war were murdered at that time.
So that is why some sources use the date period 1915-1923. When all is said and done, whether you include those later massacres as part of the genocide or not, the fact and the truth of the genocide — that it happened and that it *was* genocide — does not change.
Great Article -
The historical concensus is up to 1.5 million armenians murdered. The numbers are slighted less by a handful of turkish paid historians to make it seem like 'genocide light'.
The false turkish reasoning of the Armenians 'colluding with the enemy' is identicle to Hitler accusing the Jews of being the fifth enemy colums. To this day, the turks block the Armenian border until the Armenians stop damanding justice for their own murder, as if that is going to happen.
Turks are no US allies. It is a human rights violating, genocide perpetrating, pariah state. After extorting 26 billion US dollars at the beginning of the Iraq War they then block our US troops, the 4th ID, causing harm and cacualties to our soldiers. Then threaten to cut supplies if the truth be told of the Armenian Genocide.
The Armenian Genocide is a Fact! It is accepted by ALL genocide historians including the 126 members of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. And so needs to be regarded as such. HS res 106 is a bipartisan bill, equally supported by both democrats and republicans and will be voted upon after the next election.
We would live in a sad world if we were to pick and choose which mass crimes against humanity to condem purely based by our 'interests'. No one, including the turks, are worth lying about the Armenian Genocide.