Stop denying the Armenian genocide

National Post (Canada)
April 27, 2007 Friday
National Edition

Imagine a country that denies the Holocaust.

Imagine that the same country insists that Jews were killed because they were disloyal to Germany and were also guilty of killing German soldiers during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Bizarre? Fiendish? Ridiculous statements that do not deserve a response? Yet something very similar has been asserted for the past 92 years by Turkey. A recent example appeared in these pages recently ("Bridging the divide between Turkey and Armenia," Aydemir Erman, April 24). Despite countless books by genocide scholars, tons of documents in American, Austrian, British, French, German (Turkey's wartime ally) and Russian archives, eyewitness accounts and Western (including Canadian) newspaper reports, the Turkish government denies that in 1915 it committed a deliberate, government-organized genocide against Armenians. That genocide has also been acknowledged by the UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities.

The International Genocide Scholars Association (IAGS), in its 1997 convention, adopted a resolution unanimously reaffirming that: "The mass murder of over a million Armenians in Turkey in 1915 is a case of genocide which conforms to the statutes of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide."

The IAGS in its June 16, 2005, open letter to the Prime Minister of Turkey, put to rest the issue of an "historians" commission to study the Armenian Genocide when they declared: "We are concerned that you may not be fully aware of the extent of the scholarly and intellectual record on the Armenian Genocide and how this event conforms to the definition of the United Nations Genocide Convention. We want to underscore that it is not just Armenians who are affirming the Armenian Genocide but it is the overwhelming opinion of scholars who study genocide ... to deny [the Armenian Genocide] its factual and moral reality as genocide is not to engage in scholarship but in propaganda and efforts to absolve the perpetrator, blame the victims and erase the ethical meaning of this history."

On June 9, 2000, 126 Holocaust scholars, including author Elie Wiesel, published a statement in The New York Times affirming "that the World War I Armenian Genocide is an incontestable historical fact." Raphael Lemkin, who drafted the UN Convention on Genocide and coined the word Genocide in 1948, on many occasions cited the attempt to annihilate the Armenians as a clear case of genocide as defined by the UN Convention on Genocide.

In recent years, righteous Turks -- particularly scholars and journalists -- have spoken against their government's denial of the Armenian Genocide.

It's clear that what happened to the Armenians was not the result of "civil strife," "rebellion" or "military necessity," as Turkish governments have claimed. The Armenian Genocide was a state-sponsored and state-sanctioned plan. At a 1910 conference in Salonika, the Young Turks leader Talaat Pasha stated: "There can be no question of equality [for minorities] until we have concluded our task of Ottomanizing the empire." Three months later the Young Turks leadership approved Talaat's plan in a secret meeting.

The Turkish Government's attempt to divert the attention of the international community from recognition through disingenuous proposals, such as the creation of "historians commission," is a bankrupt strategy.

The reaffirmation of the Armenian Genocide serves to address the injustice that took place 92 years ago and to play a positive role in the healing process for Armenians. The reaffirmation is about condemning attempts to rewrite history.

Because of Turkey's refusal to face its dark past, the process of healing, which is essential to peace, has not begun for Armenians. As genocide scholars have said, the last act of genocide is the denial of that act.

- Aris Babikian writes for the Horizon Weekly and is a member of the Media Council of Canada.