Armenian genocide: open and shut case, or no?

[Jackmannii]

@Inbred Mm domesticus

I also get a bit confused because the two main instigators of this genocide were punished (Enver and Talaat Pasha) for their crimes and if the country that committed the atrocity is gone, if the leaders who ordered the atrocity are gone, then what is the benefit of continuing to discuss it?

Genocide should never be forgotten, to help prevent it from occurring again. It is unforgivably vicious that large numbers of a people should first be targets of extermination, then the remainder subjected to self-serving historical revision that denies or minimizes what occurred.

Denial of the Armenian genocide is a continuing black mark against Turkey and I’m not at all convinced it needs to be swept under the rug for current political advantage. I doubt Congressional resolutions do a lot of good, but if Turkey wants to be fully accepted among civilized nations it needs to acknowledge the past and move on.

Past threads have resulted in infestations by professional Armenian genocide deniers who descend like flies on these discussions. If any appear this time out, it’d be nice if they brought facts for a change.

[BrainGlutton]

@Recovering_Republican

The thing about the HOlocaust or the Armenian Genocide is that they occurred within a larger attrocity. The sensible rules about decent human behavior went out the window a long time ago.

The “larger atrocity” in each case was a war. War is ordinary. War is unremarkable. Any “sensible rules about decent human behavior” are meaningless unless they allow for decency – that is, unless they distinguish indecent conduct from the brutal-but-decently-necessary – in warriors.

Genocide is a different matter.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Recovering_Republican

I think the problem is, Armenians don’t control Hollywood, and feel the need to make a movie every year reminding us - again- how they were done wrong.

In the interest of fighting ignorance, one of the more shocking things about Hollywood is how little Jewish studio heads did to raise awareness about the plight of Jews in Europe during WWII.

In fact, not only did they do nothing, some (like Sam Goldwyn) actually tried to torpedo films about anti-Semitism made by Gentiles, such as Gentleman’s Agreement and Orson Welles’ The Stranger.

Even today, very few of the commercial films about the Holocaust are produced by Jews.

[Inbred_Mm_domesticus]

@Jackmannii

Genocide should never be forgotten, to help prevent it from occurring again.

There is no evidence that recognition prevents genocide in any way. This statement is often made in these discussions like it is proper format or something, but it is one of the most unsupported beliefs out there.

@Jackmannii

It is unforgivably vicious that large numbers of a people should first be targets of extermination, then the remainder subjected to self-serving historical revision that denies or minimizes what occurred.

Denial of the Armenian genocide is a continuing black mark against Turkey and I’m not at all convinced it needs to be swept under the rug for current political advantage. I doubt Congressional resolutions do a lot of good, but if Turkey wants to be fully accepted among civilized nations it needs to acknowledge the past and move on.

About the only thing that makes a bit of modern sense in this quote is the end of the first sentence.

It’s not being swept under the rug, it just serves no purpose. The only people who will convince the Turks that it was genocide will be the Turks. There are plenty of Turks who do try and get the discussion going. The pseudo pressure of ineffective declarations coming from other governments does not help those looking to change the Turkish view. It is easy to attack it as foreign aggression and then maintain the nationalism that keeps the discussion out of the public sphere.

As much as Turkey can be accepted among civilized nations, it will be as its economy grows, as it sheds a need to limit freedom of expression, and as it is needed as an ally. Genocide recognition is a niche issue that plays almost no role; it does not even factor into admittance into the EU.

More cynically, Turkey will never be truly accepted among civilized nations because it isn’t Christian enough. The Turks know this. Recent years have made it clear to them that their accepted role among civilized nations is ‘lap dog’.

As I said before, Turkey is primarily discussed by our Congress and President in terms of the genocide and given the current context, in terms of the Mavi Marmara. These insubstantial issues are what dominates our government’s declared understanding of at least one part of the Middle East. It shows how ineffectual our mideast policy is and betrays the arrogance with which we deal with these countries.

@Jackmannii

Past threads have resulted in infestations by professional Armenian genocide deniers who descend like flies on these discussions. If any appear this time out, it’d be nice if they brought facts for a change.

It is not possible that they could have any to support their view.

[BrainGlutton]

The Master Speaks:

May 20, 2005

*Dear Cecil:

I keep hearing about the Armenian genocide that happened early in the 20th century. The Turkish have done a good job of denial, and there doesn’t seem to be that much public recognition of the deed. So, what’s the real scoop–genocide or not?

— monkeykarma, via e-mail*

Cecil replies:

It tells you something about human nature and the century just past that the typical response to this question is: What Armenian genocide? Hardly anyone remembers this appalling crime, even though at a million-plus deaths it was the first modern holocaust, ranking eighth on the list of high-body-count butcherings 1900-'87 compiled by genocide historian R. J. Rummel.

Few can even tell you where Armenia is. (The traditional Armenian homeland covers the modern republic of Armenia plus some of Turkey, Iran, and Iraq, but the killings were confined to Turkey and other parts of the old Ottoman empire.) It’s not like the murders were conducted in secret or were over before anybody noticed — on the contrary, they spanned 30 years and received sustained worldwide publicity. So why the amnesia? Turkey’s adamant refusal to acknowledge the massacres is part of it, but equally important is the West’s agreement to forget.

The story of the Armenian extermination has filled books and resists easy summary. Suffice it to say that successive Ottoman and Turkish governments using the machinery of state organized a campaign of ethnic cleansing in which hundreds of thousands of Armenian men, women, and children were shot, beheaded, burned alive, or otherwise done away with. Thousands more succumbed to starvation or disease, and still more were driven into exile.

What had the Armenians done to deserve all this? Not much — their main offense was to be a Christian minority in a crumbling Islamic empire. Like another much-persecuted Middle Eastern ethnic group whose sufferings are better known, the Armenians had an ancient language and culture plus a reputation for clannishness and a knack for finance, and they became the target of a similar type of unreasoning bigotry.

After years of low-level harassment by the Ottoman regime, the first large-scale killings took place from 1894 through 1896, when by conservative estimate 200,000 Armenians died, half murdered by Ottoman forces and the balance dying in the subsequent chaos. The “starving Armenians” became a cause celebre among European and U.S. humanitarians. (Sixty years later your columnist’s guilt-tripping great aunts were still admonishing their young relations to eat their veggies because the starving Armenians didn’t have any.) To no avail — the British government found the Ottomans a useful ally against the Russians and refused to impose sanctions.

When a 1908 revolt by the Young Turks, secular modernizers with a support base in the Turkish army, forced the Ottoman sultan to cede power to a constitutional government, the Armenians thought they might get a break, but the new nationalist leaders proved no more tolerant than the old religious ones. A massacre of 15,000 to 25,000 Armenians in 1909 set the table for the main event during World War I. Blaming the supposedly disloyal Christian minority for an early defeat by the Russians, the Turkish government starting in 1915 rounded up Armenians throughout the country, murdered vast numbers outright and deported the rest, with many dying on forced marches or in refugee camps. The brutal work was carried out by an elaborate bureaucracy that some historians consider a model for the extermination program of the Nazis. Add in a couple of additional massacres in the early 1920s and the Armenian death toll for 1915-1922 totals a million to a million and a half.

For a time after the war it seemed that the surviving Armenians would get a homeland protected by an American mandate, but resurgent U.S. isolationism doomed the effort. (Russian Armenia wound up as a Maryland-sized republic in the Soviet Union; it’s now the site of present-day Armenia.) Attempts to try the Ottoman officials responsible for atrocities came to little. In the 1923 Lausanne treaty, the Western powers abandoned the Armenians in return for commercial guarantees from Turkey, where the no-longer-so-young Turks under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk had consolidated their power.

Though Congress never ratified the treaty, the U.S. made its peace with the Kemal government and Turkey has been a reliable ally in a volatile part of the world ever since. For that reason the U.S. has remained largely silent in the face of Turkish insistence that the Armenian genocide is a myth, was the Armenians’ fault, etc. (One difficulty in researching this topic now is that much of what’s written about it is the work of Armenian or Turkish partisans and so of uncertain reliability. For this column I’ve relied on The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response by Peter Balakian, a persuasive 2003 account by an Armenian-American university professor.) One understands the political realities; still, it’s creepy that a million deaths could be expunged from human memory so thoroughly that 90 years later barely anyone would know.

— Cecil Adams

[BrainGlutton]

@Jackmannii

Past threads have resulted in infestations by professional Armenian genocide deniers who descend like flies on these discussions. If any appear this time out, it’d be nice if they brought facts for a change.

Paging Serdar Argic!

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@BrainGlutton

The Master Speaks:

An article so thorough you could quote it twice.

[Jackmannii]

@Inbred_Mm_domesticus

There is no evidence that recognition prevents genocide in any way. This statement is often made in these discussions like it is proper format or something, but it is one of the most unsupported beliefs out there.

So why prosecute those involved in genocide and otherwise make life uncomfortable for them and their enablers and excusers? Once it’s over, it’s over, it’ll just happen again, so shhh! don’t talk about it.
And why bother teaching about the downsides of any aspect of history? It isn’t like there’s conclusive evidentiary support that failure to remember past mistakes dooms us to repeat them. :dubious:

We’ll have to wait for controlled studies on the usefulness of recognizing and remembering history, I suppose.

The only people who will convince the Turks that it was genocide will be the Turks. There are plenty of Turks who do try and get the discussion going. The pseudo pressure of ineffective declarations coming from other governments does not help those looking to change the Turkish view. It is easy to attack it as foreign aggression and then maintain the nationalism that keeps the discussion out of the public sphere.

So the rest of the world should also shut up about Chinese violations of foreign rights, or Syrian oppression, or misdeeds anywhere else. Only the locals can correct their problems, foreign pressure is counterproductive, so shhh!

Uh-huh.

As much as Turkey can be accepted among civilized nations, it will be as its economy grows, as it sheds a need to limit freedom of expression, and as it is needed as an ally. Genocide recognition is a niche issue that plays almost no role; it does not even factor into admittance into the EU.

That “niche” seems to be a bit larger than you are acknowledging. “…the EU acknowledges that Turkey needs to “Substantially improve respect for the rights of non-Muslim religious communities to meet European standards.”…Additionally, many are concerned about the rights of Kurds in Turkey. The Kurdish people have limited human rights and there are accounts of genocidal activities that need to stop for Turkey to be considered for European Union membership.” More about the Turkish Kurds here.

More cynically, Turkey will never be truly accepted among civilized nations because it isn’t Christian enough. The Turks know this. Recent years have made it clear to them that their accepted role among civilized nations is ‘lap dog’.

Self-pity is no more attractive than moral blindness.

I would agree that Congress and the E.U. need to pay more attention to current violations of the rights of ethnic and religious minorities in Turkey than to the Armenian genocide.

[Martin_Hyde]

@CitizenPained

On a domestic front, we were acting as though we had some moral imperative. We had no problems sensationalizing Pearl Harbor or the effect the war had on our troops or families. Anyway, we knew about it and did nothing - not even absorb a decent amount of refugees. That was my point. I’m not sure what yours is.

edit: Our European allies were also partially responsible for tens of thousands of Jewish deaths. Thanks a lot, France.

My point is that issue was irrelevant to the United States and its strategic aims. We were not fighting a war to save Jews but a war to defeat two dangerous powers who were extremely aggressive and militaristic and who were a threat to peace in general.

It wasn’t the job of FDR to care that France or the Soviets were also killing lots of Jews.

[clairobscur]

@BrainGlutton

Map of currently Kurdish-inhabited areas.

Six Armenian Vilayets of the Ottoman Empire –

Russian Armenia (what is now the independent state of Armenia, more or less).

Linguistic map of Europe, extending as far east as the Caspian.

I think those maps make for a very compelling argument. Thanks.

[Inbred_Mm_domesticus]

@Jackmannii

So why prosecute those involved in genocide and otherwise make life uncomfortable for them and their enablers and excusers? Once it’s over, it’s over, it’ll just happen again, so shhh! don’t talk about it.
And why bother teaching about the downsides of any aspect of history? It isn’t like there’s conclusive evidentiary support that failure to remember past mistakes dooms us to repeat them. :dubious:

Those involved with genocide were prosecuted. Why do you act as if they were not? You can take the idea to its absurd extreme if you wish but the fact remains there is no evidence that remembering genocides prevents them. You punish the perpetrators because they have committed a crime.

@Jackmannii

We’ll have to wait for controlled studies on the usefulness of recognizing and remembering history, I suppose. So the rest of the world should also shut up about Chinese violations of foreign rights, or Syrian oppression, or misdeeds anywhere else. Only the locals can correct their problems, foreign pressure is counterproductive, so shhh!

This is true more often than not. The pronouncements of governments against these behaviors are just feel good measures. Look at the Middle East, it isn’t the Iraq War and our endless support of dictators that is democratizing the entire region. It’s just them.

@Jackmannii

Uh-huh.That “niche” seems to be a bit larger than you are acknowledging. “…the EU acknowledges that Turkey needs to “Substantially improve respect for the rights of non-Muslim religious communities to meet European standards.”…Additionally, many are concerned about the rights of Kurds in Turkey. The Kurdish people have limited human rights and there are accounts of genocidal activities that need to stop for Turkey to be considered for European Union membership.” More about the Turkish Kurds here.

In other words you can’t find the slightest bit of evidence that Armenian Genocide recognition is a prerequisite for EU membership. That’s because it is not. The overriding concerns regarding Turkish EU membership are in the paragraphs that follow. Regardless, the Kurdish situation is improving in Turkey and the Turkish relationship with Iraqi Kurdistan is currently quite good. The article I linked to also points out the massive number of things that need to be improved.

@Jackmannii

Self-pity is no more attractive than moral blindness.

It’s not self-pity. It’s recognition of facts. The Turkish economy and regional influence has taken off as this recognition of the West’s one-dimensional view of the nation has become part of the political mindset. They aren’t pitying themselves, they are improving their country.

@Jackmannii

I would agree that Congress and the E.U. need to pay more attention to current violations of the rights of ethnic and religious minorities in Turkey than to the Armenian genocide.

It’s too bad Congress has forgotten, that wise body of sexters. Thankfully, the Turks haven’t:

@http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2011/0616_turkey_taspinar.aspx

Now that elections are over a complex domestic and international agenda awaits Ankara. Despite the dangerous turn the Arab Spring took for Turkey with bloodshed in neighboring Syria and a growing refugee problem on the southern border, the most urgent issue facing the AKP is the Kurdish problem at home. The AKP has been promising a reformist and inclusive brand new constitution since 2009. Yet, somewhat against the spirit of democratic inclusivity, it was also widely known that Prime Minister Erdogan wanted to change Turkey’s political system from its current parliamentary form to a presidential one. Without a supermajority of 376 seats, he now will be unable to pursue such a polarizing agenda. Instead, the AKP will have to focus on constitutional reforms in order to find viable solutions to Turkey’s Kurdish dilemma.

[Sablicious]

Cristoforo Colon: case open.

[Sablicious]

EDIT: Thought it read ‘American’! :smack:

EDIT²: And after all, who remembers the Armenians anyway…?!

[Ibn_Warraq]

@antonio107

I always thought I had a relative understanding of the Armenian genocide. Or, at least, that it happened.

But there was a poster campaign at my university, presumably by Turkish students or Turkish community members, which was stating that the Armenian genocide was a “fabrication,” was “grossly exaggerated,” and that “reputable scholars” (all Turkish, by the sounds of their names) had serious doubts about what transpired.

Now, I would normally not give these sorts of claims a second thought. Obviously if you said any of these things about the Holocaust, you would be branded a bigot and an anti-semite. And rightly so. These posters would have never been allowed up by the student government of my school (despite their many failings…:rolleyes:). But I simply don’t know enough beyond a quick wikipedia reading of what happened to the Armenians from 1917 onwards. It seems the argument from Turkish scholars is that Armenians were Russian allies, and treated as enemy combatants? Is that a fair assessment?

Is there any reason to doubt the sincerity of claims of an Armenian genocide, or their severity, or anything else regarding this moment in history? I suspect there’s no clearcut answer, but I’m wondering if there’s any sort of intellectual consensus, I suppose.

I’m quite shocked that they only referred to “Turkish scholars” since anyone who actually looks into it rather than accepting the party line put out by activists can find huge numbers of historians specializing in the Middle East who challenge the idea that what happened constituted a genocide and who argue that the “1.5 million figure” of dead Armenians is complete crap.

I’d also advise against using wikipedia as a resource regarding the Armenian massacres.

Here was a letter put forth by 69 academics in America specializing in the Middle East in 1985 that was published in the New York Times and the Washington Post in response to a proposed House resolution.

The undersigned American academicians who specialize in Turkish, Ottoman and Middle Eastern studies are concerned that the current language embodied In House Joint Resolution 192 is misleading and/or inaccurate in several respects. Specifically, while fully supporting the concept of a “National Day of Remembrance of Man’s Inhumanity to Man,” we respectfully take exception to that portion of the text which singles out for special recognition: “… the one and one half million people of Armenian ancestry who were victims of genocide perpetrated in Turkey between 1915 and 1923…”

Our reservations focus on the use of the words “Turkey” and “genocide” and may be summarized as follows:

• From the fourteenth century until 1922, the area currently known as Turkey, or more correctly, the Republic of Turkey, was part of the territory encompassing the multi-national, multi-religious state known as the Ottoman Empire. It is wrong to equate the Ottoman Empire with the Republic of Turkey in the same way that it is wrong to equate the Hapsburg Empire with the Republic of Austria. The Ottoman Empire, which was brought to an end in 1922, by the successful conclusion of the Turkish Revolution which established the present day Republic of Turkey in 1923, incorporated lands and peoples which today account for more than twenty-five distinct countries in Southeastern Europe. North Africa, and the Middle East, only one of which is the Republic of Turkey. The Republic of Turkey bears no responsibility for any events which occurred in Ottoman times, yet by naming “Turkey” in the Resolution, its authors have implicitly labeled it as guilty of the “genocide” it charges transpired between 1915 and 1923;

• As for the charge of “genocide:” No signatory of this statement wishes to minimize the scope of Armenian suffering. We are likewise cognizant that it cannot be viewed as separate from the suffering experienced by the Muslim inhabitants of the region. The weight of evidence so far uncovered points in the direction of serious inter-communal warfare (perpetrated by Muslim and Christian irregular forces), complicated by disease, famine, suffering and massacres in Anatolia and adjoining areas during the First World War. Indeed, throughout the years in question. the region was the scene of more or less continuous warfare, not unlike the tragedy which has gone on in Lebanon for the past decade. The resulting death toll among both Muslim and Christian communities of the region was immense. But much more remains to be discovered before historians will be able to sort out precisely responsibility between warring and innocent, and to identify the causes for the events which resulted in the death or removal of large numbers of the eastern Anatolian population, Christian and Muslim alike.

Statesmen and politicians make history, and scholars write it. For this process to work scholars must be given access to the written records of the statesmen and politicians of the past. To date, the relevant archives in the Soviet Union, Syria, Bulgaria and Turkey all remain, for the most part, closed* to dispassionate historians. Until they become available the history of the Ottoman Empire in the period encompassed by H.J. Res. 192 (1915—1923) cannot be adequately known.

We believe that the proper position for the United States Congress to take on this and related issues, is to encourage full and open access to all historical archives, and not to make charges on historical events before they are fully understood. Such charges as those contained in H.J. Res. 192 would inevitably reflect unjustly upon the people of Turkey, and perhaps set back irreparably progress historians are just now beginning to achieve in understanding these tragic events.

As the above comments illustrate, the history of the Ottoman-Armenians is much debated among scholars, many of whom do not agree with the historical assumptions embodied in the wording of H.J. Res. 192. By passing the resolution Congress will be attempting to determine by legislation which side of a historical question is correct. Such a resolution, based on historically questionable assumptions, can only damage the cause of honest historical enquiry, and damage the credibility of the American legislative process.

Here are the historians who felt this way.

Rifaat Abou-EI-HaJ

Professor of History

California Stale University

at Long Beach

Sarah Moment Atis

Associate Professor of Turkish

Language & Literature

Univ. of Wisconsin at Madison

Karl Barbir

Associate Professor of History

Siena College (New York)

Ilhan Basgoz

Director of the Turkish Studies

Program at the Department of

Uralic & Altaic Studies

Indiana University

Daniel G. Bates

Professor of Anthropology

Hunter College, City

University of New York

Luke Bates

Professor of Art History

Hunter College, City College

of New York

Gustav Bayerie

Professor of Uralic & Altaic

Studies

Indiana University

Andras G.E. Bodrogligetti

Professor of Turkic & Iranian

Languages

University of California at

Los Angeles

Kathleen BurriIl

Associate Professor of Turkish

Studies

Columbia University

Timothy Childs

Professorial Lecturer

SAIS, Johns Hopkins University

Shafiga Daulet

Associate Professor of Political

Science

University of Connecticut

Roderic Davison

Professor of History

George Washington University

Washington. D.C.

Walter Denny

Professor of Art History &

Near Eastern Studies

University of Massachusetts

Dr. Alan Duben

Anthropologist Researcher

New York City

Ellen Ervin

Research Assistant Professor

of Turkish

New York University

Caesar Farah

Professor of Islamic & Middle

Eastern History

University of Minnesota

Carter Findley

Associate Professor of History

The Ohio State University

Michael Finefrock

Professor of History

College of Charleston

Alan Fisher

Professor of History

Michigan Stale University

Cornell Fischer

Assistant Professor of History

Washington University (Missouri)

Peter Golden

Professor of History

Rutgers University, Newark

Tom Goodrich

Professor of History

Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Andrew Gould

PhD. in Ottoman History

Flagstaff, Arizona

William Griswold

Professor of History

Colorado State University

Tibor Halasi-Kun

Professor Emeritus of Turkish

Studies

Columbia University

William Hickman

Associate Professor of Turkish

University of California, Berkeley

J.C. Hurewitz

Professor of Government Emeritus

Former Director of the Middle

East Institute (1971-1984)

Columbia University

John Hymn

Professor of History

Glenville State College

West Virginia

Halil Inalcik

University Professor of Ottoman

History & Member of The

American Academy of Art

& Sciences

University of Chicago

Ralph Jaeckel

Visiting Assistant Professor of

Turkish

University of California

at Los Angeles

Ronald Jennings

Associate Professor of History

Asian Studies

University of Illinois

James Kelly

Associate Professor of Turkish

University of Utah
Kerim Key

Adjunct Professor

Southeastern University

Washington, D.C.

Metin Kunt

Professor of Ottoman History

New York City

Frederick Latimer

Associate Professor of History,

Retired

University of Utah

Avigdor Levy

Professor of History

Brandeis University

Bernard Lewis

Cleveland E. Dodge Professor

of Near Eastern History

Princeton University

Dr. Heath W. Lowry

Institute of Turkish Studies, Inc.

Washington, D.C.

Justin McCarthy

Associate Professor of History

University of Louisville

Jon Mandaville

Professor of the History of

tire Middle East

Portland State University (Oregon)

Michael Meeker

Professor of Anthropology

University of California

at San Diego

Rhoads Murphey

Assistant Professor of Middle

Eastern Languages & Cultures

and History

Columbia University

Thomas Naff

Professor of History & Director,

Middle East Research Institute

University of Pennsylvania

Pierre Oberling

Professor of History

Hunter College of the City

University of New York

William Ochsenwald

Associate Professor of History

Virginia Polytechnic Institute

Robert Olson

Associate Professor of History

University of Kentucky

William Peachy

Assistant Professor of the Judaic &

Near Eastern Languages &

Literatures

The Ohio State University

Donald Quataert

Associate Professor of History

University of Houston

Howard Reed

Professor of History

University of Connecticut

Dankwart Rustow

Distinguished University

Professor of Political Science

City University Graduate School

New York

Ezel Kural Shaw

Associate Professor of History

California State University,

Northridge

Stanford Shaw

Professor of History

University of California

at Los Angeles

Elaine Smith

PhD. In Turkish History

Retired Foreign Service Officer

Washington, D.C.

Grace M. Smith

Visiting Lecturer In Turkish

University of California

at Berkeley

John Masson Smith, Jr.

Professor of History

University of California

at Berkeley

Dr. Svat Soucek

Turcologist, New york City

Robert Stash

Assistant Director of the Middle

East Center

University of Utah

June Starr

Associate Professor of

Anthropology

SUNY Stoneybrook

James Stewart-Robinson

Professor of Turkish Studies

University of Michigan

Dr. Philip Stoddard

Executive Director Middle

East Institute

Washington, D.C.

Frank Tachau

Professor of Political Science

University of Illinois

at Chicago

Metin Tamkoc

Professor of International Law

& Relations

Texas Tech University

David Thomas

Associate Professor of History

Rhode Island College

Margaret L. Venzke

Assistant Professor of History

Dickinson College (Pennsylvania)

Warren S. Walker

Horn Professor of English &

Director of the Archive of

Turkish Oral Narrative

Texas Tech University

Donald Webster

Professor of Turkish History,

Retired

Walter Welker

Professor of Political Science

Rutgers University

John Woods

Associate Professor of Middle

Eastern History

University of Chicago

Madeline Zilfi

Associate Professor of History

University of Maryland

The “Armenian genocide” is, in the words of Charles Haberl, the director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers, one of those issues that historians in the Middle East try and stay away from because those who question the idea that it was a genocide often face massive criticism and pressure from activists groups. The most prominent example being Bernard Lewis, probably foremost currently living expert on the Ottoman Empire being tried in Paris for the crime of offering his opinion on the subject and Stanford Shaw of UCLA having his house blown up.

It was a vast tragedy, but it wasn’t remotely as obvious as Cecil makes it out and the reason can be made clear by this statement.

For this column I’ve relied on The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response by Peter Balakian, a persuasive 2003 account by an Armenian-American university professor.)

Peter Balakian is a poet and an English Professor at Colgate(IIRC) and the descendant of survivors of the massacres but he doesn’t read or write Ottoman and tended to rely on biased sources and by his own admission had an axe to grind.

An excellent book on the subject that I’d recommend in Guenter Lewy’s The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide.

Admittedly, he’s not a Middle Easter Historian with the same credentials of Justin McCarty, Heath Lowry, or Bernard Lewis, but he’s a Professor of Political Science at UMASS and being neither Armenian or Turkish, Muslim or Christian, wouldn’t have any particular reason to be biased one way or the other.

Anyway when so many Middle Eastern historians dispute the idea that it constituted a genocide, though all agree that several hundred thousand Armenians, and about the same number of Muslims were killed during this time period and that it constituted one of the most brutal ethnic cleansings of the 20th Century, it’s ridiculous to argue that the case is closed, regardless of what some activists have edited wikipedia to say.

[Capitaine_Zombie]

@CitizenPained

Thanks a lot, France.

You’re welcome.

[Jackmannii]

@Ibn_Warraq

I’m quite shocked that they only referred to “Turkish scholars” since anyone who actually looks into it rather than accepting the party line put out by activists can find huge numbers of historians specializing in the Middle East who challenge the idea that what happened constituted a genocide and who argue that the “1.5 million figure” of dead Armenians is complete crap…Here was a letter put forth by 69 academics in America…

I’m less than impressed by these sorts of lists, citing a small minority of academics as though they are representative of the whole (I see a similar tactic used to denounce vaccination, fluoridation and other “controversial” health interventions, where antis indicate that there must be something to their claims since they’re able to drum up all these impressive-sounding types who support them. It is never acknowledged that the vast majority of knowledgeable specialists hold opposing views).

Turkey has spent large sums of money on public relations and grants to American universities to fund Chairs in history, to scrub its image and foster denial of the Armenian genocide (as well as pressuring those who want to discuss it, as was the case when a conference in Israel was cancelled due to concerns about the threat to Jews in Turkey). I’m not surprised some denialists could be found among all the historians and other academics in America.

While I’m not going to take up double-space with all the names, one can readily find a lengthy list of academics organized to acknowledge and promote remembrance of the Armenian genocide.

@Inbred Mm domesticus

Those involved with genocide were prosecuted. Why do you act as if they were not?

Where have I said no one involved in the Armenian genocide was prosecuted? And while one could have gotten the idea from you earlier that the leaders paid for their crimes via government prosecution, this was not the case.

The post-war Ottoman government convened tribunals in 1919 to hear testimony on the conduct of the war and the implementation of the Armenian Genocide. While many second rank figures were prosecuted individually, the party as a whole was indicted for the crimes of conspiracy and massacre. The verdicts found the accused guilty of capital crimes, but the principal culprits were only tried in absentia. To bring them to justice, a clandestine group was formed by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnak Party) to seek out and execute the Ittihadists in hiding in Germany and Italy. Vowing vengeance they tracked down Talaat in Berlin where he was assassinated in 1921. Behaeddin Shakir was also killed in Berlin in 1922, and Jemal in Tbilisi in 1922. Enver in a last adventure met his end in 1922 in Central Asia leading a cavalry charge against an advancing Red Army unit."

The pronouncements of governments against these behaviors are just feel good measures.

So let’s give them more teeth, not just sweep oppression and murder under the rug while saying “boys will be boys”.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

Thanks, Ibn Warraq. I found your post even-handed and enlightening.

[wmfellows]

@Jackmannii

I’m less than impressed by these sorts of lists, citing a small minority of academics … It is never acknowledged that the vast majority of knowledgeable specialists hold opposing views).

Do they? That does not seem to be clearly the case. Also those are serious universities in that list.

Turkey has spent large sums of money on public relations and grants to American universities to fund Chairs in history, to scrub its image and foster denial of the Armenian genocide

Cite please, in these debates there so often spurious claims of X lobby providing funding that do not stand up to scrutiny.

While I’m not going to take up double-space with all the names, one can readily find a lengthy list of academics organized to acknowledge and promote remembrance of the Armenian genocide.

I do not see many historians or regional specialists in that list. I see English literature professors, poets theologians, etc. - indeed the vast majority seem to have no particular reason to be seen as expert in this matter.

Afraid as a list, it is a partisan fail.

I also find it weird the argument about an ethnic cleansing event is being made on ethnic grounds - Turkey is getting the blame by being Turkish as far as I can tell, as it is not the same state that committed the cleansings (I recall reading by the way in some history that a large portion of the Muslim millitias were in fact Kurdish tribesmen who hated the Armenians, rendering the entire affaire even more ironic).

[Tom_Scud]

@Ibn_Warraq

Jon Mandaville

Professor of the History of the Middle East

Portland State University (Oregon)

Holy crap. That is the best name for a Middle East History Professor ever.

[Jackmannii]

@wmfellows

Cite please, in these debates there so often spurious claims of X lobby providing funding that do not stand up to scrutiny.

From the link provided in my last post (which you apparently didn’t bother looking at):

“The Turkish government is funding Chairs at prestigious American universities in order to cleanse its image and deny its past. Recently, Professor Heath W. Lowry, who holds the Ataturk Chair of Turkish Studies at Princeton University (endowed by $1.5 million by the Republic of Turkey) and formerly executive director of the Institute of Turkish Studies, Inc., in Washington, DC, has been exposed as working closely with the Turkish government to discredit scholarship which mentions the Armenian Genocide. Documentation of his collaboration with the Turkish government, including drafting of letters for the Ambassador’s signature in an effort to further Turkey’s Denial, is provided in the Spring 1995 issue of Holocaust and Genocide Studies.”

Lowry is listed as one of the signees to that 1985 letter from academics questioning accepted history of the Armenian genocide.

I do not see many historians or regional specialists in (the list in your link acknowledging the Armenian genocide). I see English literature professors, poets theologians, etc. - indeed the vast majority seem to have no particular reason to be seen as expert in this matter.

I didn’t quibble about the non-historians (and there are quite a few) on Ibn Warraq’s list, but since you’re taking that tack with the one I provided, I note that there are more than 20 professors of history, political science and genocide studies on it. Cherry-picking those who work in other disciplines constitutes a partisan fail.

Battle Of The Letter-Writers aside, I think you’d have considerable trouble arguing that the Armenian genocide is a “he said, she said” affair. The vast majority of genocide scholars and historians in general have for many years been in essential agreement that the killings constituted genocide.

As for wmfellows’ credibility as a historian, note that he’s the poster who insisted repeatedly in a previous thread that Britain gave up its colonies after WWII not because it was bankrupt, militarily exhausted and unable to muster the force necessary to keep them - but because it had a moral revelation about the evils of colonialism. :dubious: