The McGill International Review, QC, Canada
Feb 14 2015
“We continue to bleed red, blue, and orange:” The costs of the denial
of the Armenian Genocide
Posted by Emma Noradounkian
Though Polish Jewish lawyer and drafter of the 1948 United Nations
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
(CPPCG) Raphael Lemkin officially coined the term “genocide” in 1944,
there can be no doubt that the Young Turk government’s deliberate and
centrally-planned extermination of 1.5 million Armenians in the
Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1917 should be labelled as such.[1]
With the intention of purifying the region of Anatolia of its
“cancerous” Christian population, the Young Turks undertook a series
of “ethnoreligious homogenization” policies consisting of murder, mass
rape, deportations, and forced death marches against hundreds of
thousands of Armenians.[2] These atrocities fall under Article II of
the CPPCG, which provides a definition for the crime of genocide:
“acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a
national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”[3]
Yet, the classification of this crime as genocide has consistently
been denied by the successive Turkish governments and a number of
Turkish and non-Turkish scholars alike.[4] The reluctance of defining
the extermination of Armenians as a genocide has also been widespread
amongst the majority of the world’s states, with only twenty-two
states officially acknowledging the Armenian Genocide.[5] The
international community continues to suffer from what Lipmann calls
“denial syndrome,” in which it is “reluctant to invoke the morally and
politically significant term genocide” with regards to the Armenian
massacres from 1915 to 1917.[6] This commonly-held denial of its
reality as a genocide not only enables cross-generational trauma
within the Armenian community, thereby preventing it from healing from
its traumatic history, but its denial also allows for its repetition
in addition to the continuation of other present-day and future
genocidal episodes.[7] Before examining the consequences of denying
the Armenian Genocide-which extend to the denial of all other
genocides-it is important to consider the reasons for and the ways in
which several scholars and the Turkish government have taken pains to
utterly deny it themselves.
Hovannisian argues that “following the physical destruction of a
people and their material culture, memory is all that is left and is
targeted as the final victim.”[8] Thus, denial, by which the memory of
a peoples’ physical annihilation is destroyed and forever forgotten,
marks the final stage of genocide.[9] In the process of denial,
eyewitness and survivor accounts are discredited, archives on the
genocide are destroyed, and scholars supporting the actuality of the
genocide are bribed and/or persecuted and executed.[10] Moreover, the
perpetrators aim to reshape historical facts, exonerate themselves of
all blame, and demonize victims, reversing the victim-perpetrator
roles and claiming that they instead suffered at the hands of the
other.[11] Such intentions for the denial of the Armenian Genocide
transpire in the writings of Kamuran Gürün, Stanford Shaw, Justin
McCarthy, and Heath Lowry amongst others, and in the actions of the
Turkish government.[12] The denial tactics of the Turkish government
over the years have included its scapegoating of Kurdish officials who
were allegedly blamed for this atrocity following the First World War;
its continued coercion of journalists and foreign scholars to write
about “the other side of the story” since the 1960s; its disruption of
genocide talks and conventions such as that of Tel Aviv in 1982; and
most recently, its invitation to the anniversary of the Battle of
Gallipoli to 102 countries, including Armenia, which conveniently
coincides with the centenary of the commemoration of the Armenian
Genocide on April 24, 2015.[13]
Whether tacitly or explicitly, the denial of genocide may encourage
further instances of genocide by the same perpetrators and by other
groups.[14] Denial absolves the wrongdoers from responsibility for
genocide; they are undeterred from recommitting the same crime, either
towards the same victim group or to others.[15] A more recent instance
of the Turkish government’s complicity in an an alleged assault on
Armenians, according to the Armenian National Committee-International,
occurred in March 2014 when Turkey was claimed to have played an
active role in aiding al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist groups in their
three-day attack on Armenians in Kessab, Syria.[16] The same logic
applies to other possible perpetrator groups, who, in turn, are also
empowered to make similar genocidal attempts, as they are guaranteed
impunity like their Turkish counterpart.[17] In fact, Alayarian
contends that, had the international community officially recognized
the Armenian Genocide, the first genocide of the twentieth-century,
and punished its perpetrators, the Jewish Holocaust and subsequent
genocides could have been averted.[18]
The denial of the Armenian Genocide also prevents Armenians across the
globe from fully healing from the cross-generational trauma that they
continue to suffer.[19] While the present diasporans of Armenian
Genocide survivors did not experience the Genocide themselves, they
undeniably identify with their Armenian ancestors who were victimized
a hundred years ago and who have orally transmitted their trauma
throughout the generations.[20] Staub argues that the members of
victims of genocide remain in fear of a future genocide, unable to
trust the majority of the international community that failed and
continues to fail to protect them by virtue of their denial: “They
mistrust people and see the world as a dangerous place. They feel
disconnected from the people and a world that has harmed them and, at
the very least, has not protected them.”[21] If the world were to
recognize the suffering that the Armenians endured from 1915 to 1917,
Staub holds that they could begin to recover from their trauma.[22] If
the perpetrators were to acknowledge their own pain and guilt, they
could, in turn, also heal themselves, “stop blaming the people they
harmed, […] and begin [assuming] responsibility for having harmed
them.”[23]
On the eve of the Jewish Holocaust, when an aide had noted to Hitler
that the world would not allow the Nazis to conduct a genocide against
the Jewish people, he replied, “Who, after all, remembers the
annihilation of the Armenians?,” suggesting that he could expect to
get away with his obliteration of the Jews without any intervention on
his inhumane actions and with the guarantee of impunity, as had the
Turkish government in 1915-1917.[24] In the wake of the commemoration
of the centenary of the Armenian Genocide on April 24, Armenians
around the world hope that the entirety of the international community
will fully acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, and in the process,
deter those who continue to partake in Hitler’s and other genocidists’
thoughts and repair the wound from which so many have bled red, blue,
and orange.
____________________________
References:
[1] Payam Akhavan, Reducing Genocide to Law: Definition, Meaning, and
the Ultimate Crime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 6,
90; Aida Alayarian, Consequences of Denial: The Armenian Genocide
(London: Karnac Books,2008), 8.
[2] Taner Akçam, The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian
Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 2012), 29.
[3] UN General Assembly, Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide, 9 December 1948, United Nations, no. 1021, 280,
(accessed 6 February 2015).
[4] Alayarian, Consequences of Denial, XXX, 8.
[5] “The White House and State Department Have Once Again Shown Their
Fear of Turkey,”
,
accessed February 8.
[6] Matthew Lippman, “Darfur: The Politics Of Genocide Denial
Syndrome.” Journal of Genocide Research 9, no. 2 (2007): 195, accessed
February 7, 2015, doi: 10.1080/14623520701368594.
[7] Alayarian, Consequences of Denial, XXVII; Richard G. Hovannisian,
Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide (Detroit:
Wayne State University Press, 1998), 229.
[8] Hovannisian, Remembrance and Denial, 202.
[9] Hovannisian, Remembrance and Denial, 201, 202; Sévane Garibian,
“Taking Denial Seriously: Genocide Denial and Freedom of Speech in
French Law,” Cordoso J. Of Conflict Resolution 9, no. 479 (2008): 487,
accessed February 8, 2015,
[10] Alayarian, Consequences of Denial, XXX; Lippman, “Darfur: The
Politics Of Genocide Denial Syndrome,” 210.
[11] Hovannisian, Remembrance and Denial, 229.
[12] Hovannisian, Remembrance and Denial, 208; See Gurun’s “The
Armenian File: The Myth of Innocence Exposed,” Shaw’s “History of the
Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey,” McCarthy’s “Death and Exile: The
Ethnic Cleansing of the Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922,” and Lowry’s “The
Story Behind Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story,” for examples of Armenian
Genocide denial scholarship.
[13] Roger W. Smith, Eric Markusen, and Robert Jay Lifton,
“Professional Ethics And The Denial Of Armenian Genocide,” Holocaust
and Genocide Studies 9, no. 1 (1995): 1-22, accessed February 7, 2015,
html. 5; Marvine
Howe, “Turkey Denies It Threatened Jewes Over Tel Aviv Parley On;
Genocide,” The New York Times, June 5, 1982, accessed February 8,
2015. ;
Robert Fisk, “The Gallipoli Centenary Is a Shameful Attempt to Hide
the Armenian Holocaust,” The Independent, January 19, 2015, accessed
February 7, 2015.
[14] Smith, Markusen, and Lifton, “Professional Ethics And The Denial
Of Armenian Genocide,” 14.
[15] Gregory H.Stanton, “The Eight Stages of Genocide,” Keene,
accessed February 8, 2015.
; UN
Human Rights Council, Report on the Question of the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide Benjamin Witaker, 2 July 1985, UN
Document E/CN.4/Sub.2/ 1985/6,
accessed 7
February 2015.
[16] “Reports Cite 80 Dead in Kessab; Churches Desecrated,” Asbarez,
March 24, 2014, accessed February 7, 2015,
[17] Alayarian, Consequences of Denial, XXX.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ervin Staub, “The Origins And Prevention of Genocide, Mass
Killing, and Other Collective Violence,” Peace and Conflict: Journal
of Peace Psychology 5, no. 4 (1999): 303-36, accessed February 9,
2015, , 308, 321.
[20] Ibid., 320, 323.
[21] Ibid., 320.
[22] Ibid., 321.
[23] Ibid., 321.
[24] Gregory H. Stanton, “The Eight Stages of Genocide;” “U.S.
Congress and Adolf Hitler on the Armenians,” Armenian, Assyrian, and
Hellenic Genocide News, January 7, 2004, accessed February 8, 2015,
https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%2078/volume-78-I-1021-English.pdf
https://armeniangenocideblog.wordpress.com/tag/list-of-countries-officially-recognizing-the-armenian-genocide/
http://cardozojcr.com/vol9no2/479-488.pdf.
http://hgs.oxfordjournals.org/content/9/1/1.full.pdf
http://www.nytimes.com/1982/06/05/world/turkey-denies-it-threatened-jewes-over-tel-aviv-parley-on-genocide.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-gallipoli-centenary-is-a-shameful-attempt-to-hide-the-armenian-holocaust-9988227.html.
http://www.keene.edu/ksc/assets/files/10074/p_genocide_8stages.pdf
http://www.preventgenocide.org/prevent/UNdocs/whitaker/.
http://asbarez.com/121007/reports-cite-80-dead-in-kessab-churches-desecrated/.
http://people.umass.edu/estaub/opcm.pdf
http://www.atour.com/~aahgn/news/20040107c.html.
http://mironline.ca/?p=3682