The bonds of history
12/05/06
The Globe and Mail
By PATRICIA MARCHAK
acting director, Liu Institute for Global Issues
University of British Columbia -- Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan says he wants a bilateral academic inquiry into the mass killing of Armenians in the early 1900s (Turkey Tried To Head Off PM's Verdict On 'Genocide' -- May 11), but I can save him the trouble. A few years ago, for a book I was then writing on genocide and crimes against humanity, I conducted a search of the academic and journalistic literature on the Armenian deaths of 1915-16 in the Ottoman Empire. I found many references to the genocide, including exhaustive histories and analyses of why it occurred, even some sympathetic accounts of why Turks felt threatened by European attempts to carve up the empire and Armenian attempts to get Europeans involved.
Sympathetic accounts by non-Turks, however, did not go so far as to pretend it was not a genocide. The only accounts that denied the genocide were by Turks, who claimed variously that the deaths were caused by the chaos of the First World War and by Armenian political actions. What seems to be difficult for Turks to understand is that the motivations (fear of political opponents, for example) do not constitute an acceptable reason for committing genocide.
The Globe and Mail
By PATRICIA MARCHAK
acting director, Liu Institute for Global Issues
University of British Columbia -- Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan says he wants a bilateral academic inquiry into the mass killing of Armenians in the early 1900s (Turkey Tried To Head Off PM's Verdict On 'Genocide' -- May 11), but I can save him the trouble. A few years ago, for a book I was then writing on genocide and crimes against humanity, I conducted a search of the academic and journalistic literature on the Armenian deaths of 1915-16 in the Ottoman Empire. I found many references to the genocide, including exhaustive histories and analyses of why it occurred, even some sympathetic accounts of why Turks felt threatened by European attempts to carve up the empire and Armenian attempts to get Europeans involved.
Sympathetic accounts by non-Turks, however, did not go so far as to pretend it was not a genocide. The only accounts that denied the genocide were by Turks, who claimed variously that the deaths were caused by the chaos of the First World War and by Armenian political actions. What seems to be difficult for Turks to understand is that the motivations (fear of political opponents, for example) do not constitute an acceptable reason for committing genocide.
posted by Vahe Balabanian at 8:29 AM
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