ARMENIAN GENOCIDE DENIAL: AN AMERICAN PROBLEM
by Dimitri Anastasopolous
Artvoice, NY
Nov 1 2007
Photo: Armenians being marched to a prison in Mezireh by Turkish
soldiers.
Kharpert, Armenia, Ottoman Empire. April, 1915.
The US House Foreign Relations Committee this week voted to bring a
resolution (HR106) to the floor commemorating the Armenian genocide of
1915-1923. After a firestorm of criticism warning of the potential
negative impact of the resolution on US-Turkish relations, many
of the resolution’s co-sponsors quickly flip-flopped on the issue:
They’re now set to vote against it.
The opponents of the resolution in Congress and in the news media
tend to argue that, since the facts surrounding this genocide are in
dispute, the Armenian genocide is a matter best resolved by historians,
not politicians. Ironically, even as many in the US media advise the
political elite to kill the resolution, the reasons cited for doing
so tend toward a denial that the Armenian genocide ever occurred. As
a result, a resolution ostensibly designed to respond to the massive
denial of genocide inside Turkey inadvertently reveals a form of
genocide denial inside the United States.
For the purposes of this commentary, however, let’s put aside the
genocide resolution issue. It has its positives and negatives, of
course, but for now I’ll let others weigh the scales.
Many opinion pieces and news editorials repeat the idea that the issue
of the Armenian genocide should be left to historians, because, after
all, it is a historical dispute. Of course, this is a paradoxical
point. This stance ignores the fact that nationalist historians are
the ones disputing the genocide in the first place.
Representative John Murtha took this very approach to the resolution
this week: "This happened a long time ago," he noted, "and I don’t
know whether it was a massacre or a genocide, that is beside the
point." Unsurprisingly, George Bush declared that the last thing
Congress should be doing is deciding the "history of an empire [the
Ottoman] that doesn’t even exist any more."
Evidently, Bush has forgotten that he promised in 2000 to officially
recognize the genocide if elected president. Moreover, Bush once again
got his history wrong. The Armenian genocide resolution actually
includes the post-Ottoman period up until 1923. Indeed, many of
the genocide perpetrators were part of the Young Turk movement that
succeeded the Ottoman Empire, including the modern Turkish state’s
third president, Mahmut Celal Bayar, who served from 1950 until
1960. That fact alone explains why the Turkish government wants to
kill the resolution. Turkey clearly feels that their modern state
is a direct successor of the great empire. This week, one Turkish
diplomat, Egemin Bagis, made a point of comparing the youth, folly
and foolishness of the United States’ "mere" 200-year-old government
with the fact that the Turks "have had a state for 1,000 years."
Obviously, Turks are quite proud of Ottoman accomplishments-as they
should be. The Ottomans were among the most beneficent rulers of the
era that spanned from 1500 to 1850.
Bush is obviously hanging by his nails in Iraq, and he’s grasping
for any kind of logic that will prevent the resolution from coming
to the floor. After all, he is not totally against politicians
making judgments on history, even when they inflame and offend other
nations. Just this week, a controversy erupted when Bush cozied up
to the Dalai Lama and China took umbrage at the implied recognition
of their atrocities in Tibet. Several months ago, he supported a
resolution on the Holocaust at the United Nations as a response
to the denials coming from the president of Iran. Bush, moreover,
has never demurred from labeling the massacres in Rwanda, Sudan,
Bosnia and Saddam’s Iraq as genocides. Indeed, US officials often
make both political and historical judgments on massacres when they
refer to genocides as genocides, but only in the case of the Armenian
genocide is this designation withheld. Why is that?
The answer is simple: Genocide denial in the United States occurs
only when one of our allies is also in denial. It also helps that
Turkey spends millions each year in an effort to deny the genocide
before our Congress, in our media and at our universities. A few
years ago Microsoft became embroiled in a controversy after being
pressured by the Turkish government to whitewash the genocide in its
Encarta Encyclopedia. There is indeed a concerted effort to "cleanse"
American recognition of the genocide-not only in our Congress but in
our culture as well. One wonders if this resolution would even be at
issue were it not for the concerted efforts to continually deny it.
In a sense, the resolution addresses the denial of history more than
it commemorates those who died in the genocide.
The New York Times this week revealed that former Representatives Bob
Livingston and Richard Gephardt were traipsing around the Capitol
delivering campaign funds to congressmen-such as Bobby Jindal, now
governor-elect of Louisiana, and Mississippi’s Roger Wicker, who,
after their visits, quickly dropped sponsorship of the resolution
and declared their opposition to it. Both Livingston and Gephardt
represent lobbying firms under contract with the Turkish government,
which is paying these firms tens of millions to stay on top of the
issue. The New York Times article quotes former congressman Stephen
Solarz-whose firm received $165,000 this summer lobbying for Turkey
under an arrangement with Livingston: "The Turks have done everything
they possibly could" to dismiss HR106. Meanwhile, Representative
Adam B. Schiff of California, a resolution sponsor, called Turkey’s
lobbying "the most intense I’ve ever seen." Gephardt, who supported
Armenian genocide recognition when he was in Congress, has produced
a pamphlet that contests the genocide now that he’s a lobbyist.
There’s a lot of collateral damage in the media in the wake of
official pronouncements casting some doubt on the genocide. Left-wing
and right-wing organs such as The Nation, the Washington Times, the
Atlantic Monthly, the Wall Street Journal, etc., have all bought
into the idea that there is some question about the authenticity
of the genocide-a question, they go on to argue, that is best left
to academics. In fact, the editor of the Washington Post openly
speculated that the genocide did not occur in the fashion that
the Armenian lobby claims. The truth is that it is easy to find a
historian that will counter the Armenian claims. There are university
press publications that do so as well. Until this week, however, few
news organizations or political weeklies went so far as to actually
delve into the history. In the latest issue of the National Review,
the editors cite several of the more well known Armenian genocide
deniers in the United States:
Only a few cranks dispute the Gulag and the Holocaust. Indeed,
Holocaust denial is not denial at all; it is really a sly endorsement
of murdering Jews. But historians of the first rank-Norman Stone,
Gunter Lewy, Justin McCarthy and Bernard Lewis-firmly dispute that the
Ottomans ordered an Armenian genocide. They point out that no orders to
exterminate have ever been produced (some were incompetently forged);
that Ottoman files examined after defeat found no incriminating
evidence; and that investigations afterwards by British and American
military officials led to the release of their Ottoman suspects.
To be sure, there are also arguments on the other side by able
historians-and the sheer number of deaths is suspicious. What that
means, however, is that this is a historical dispute to be settled by
historians rather than by legislators who in this matter are simply
ignoramuses. It is an absurdity as well as an outrage that Bernard
Lewis, our leading scholar of the Ottoman world, should have been
fined by a French court for violating a law that condemns and seeks
to punish "denial" of the Armenian genocide. America and Europe must
abandon these foolish attempts to resolve disputes in history and
other disciplines by legislative fiat. The costs are too high: for
Professor Lewis, one franc; for the French court, a revelation of its
own Keystone Kops ridiculousness; and for America-let’s not find out.
The opening phrase in this argument is at once telling.
Characterizing critics of Holocaust recognition as "Only a few cranks,"
the editors immediately set the Armenian issue apart as one on which
judgment must be reserved because it is in dispute. It is worth also
remarking on the concerted effort here to present the Democratic
sponsors of the genocide resolution as unfit to lead the country
in foreign policy. Of course, the editors of the National Review
firmly supported (and are still firmly in support of) the current
administration’s invasion of Iraq; hardly the best judges of US foreign
policy. Yet the editorial itself is a piece of amazing mendacity. The
editors enlist a few fringe historians (with the exception of Bernard
Lewis) who are willing to contest the genocide, and then they go on to
hail such historians as scholars of the first rank. Even more suspect
is the fact that these historians (including Lewis) work for, or are
on the board of, institutes endowed by the Turkish government, such
as the Institute of Turkish Studies at Georgetown University. In one
infamous incident, Heath Lowry, who had formerly worked as a lobbyist
for the Turkish government, was appointed as professor of Turkish
Studies after the Turkish government had endowed a chair at Princeton
University. Lowry had not held an academic position at an American
university prior to that and had never published in academic journals
or presses. His ties with the Turkish government were exposed when a
memo ghost-written for the Turkish ambassador to the US was attached
to a letter sent to Holocaust scholar Robert Jay Lifton attacking
Lifton’s work on the Armenian genocide. This incident reveals some
of the power plays and connections between historical scholarship,
certain academics, political elites, foreign governments and the
national news media.
Scott Jaschik’s article ("Genocide Deniers") of October 16 in the
Chronicle of Higher Education highlighted the complicated web of
Turkish political influence in academia. "The problem with encouraging
the [historical] debate," Jaschik writes, "is that so many experts
in the field say that the debate over genocide is settled, and that
credible arguments against the idea of a genocide just don’t much
exist. The problem, many say, is that the evidence the Turks say
doesn’t exist does exist, so people have moved on."
Genocide scholars specifically criticize some of the historians
mentioned by the National Review editorial for "ignoring or dismissing
massive amounts of evidence, not only in accounts from Armenians,
but from foreign diplomats who observed what was going on-evidence
about the marshaling of resources and organizing of groups to attack
the Armenians and kick them out of their homes."
Furthermore, historians (whose International Association of Genocide
Scholars officially recognizes the genocide) argue that Turkey has
ably exploited the insistence in the American media that two sides
to every story must always be presented. A seemingly noble idea. Yet
when the president of Iran shows up in New York claiming there are
historical sources that cast the Holocaust into doubt, few take up
the historical debate-with good reason.
It must be noted that Turkey has, in fact, engaged Armenia on the
genocide issue. Turkey has even offered to have a team of historians
look through their archives in order to decide, once and for all,
whether genocide took place. A fair offer. While the Armenians aren’t
keen to accept it because of their distrust of Turkish historians,
they further fear that by accepting the Turks’ offer, their involvement
in the investigation would actually (ironically) cement the issue in
perpetual dispute.
I would propose, however, that the Armenians should trust Turkish
historians such as Dr. Taner Akcam of the University of Minnesota,
one of the few scholars to have undertaken research in the Turkish
state archives. Or Dr. Fatma Gocek from the University of Michigan,
who has written several important articles on the Armenian genocide
from the perspective of a Turkish scholar of the Ottoman Empire’s
dissolution. Akcam’s book, A Shameful Act, describes his research in
the archives. It then goes on to conclude not only that a genocide
sponsored and systematically exploited by the Turkish state (such
as it was at the time) was undoubtedly committed, but also that its
premeditated nature was evident.
This makes the Turkish offer of a joint Turkish-Armenian commission
curious, since the few historians who have seen the state’s documents
seem to draw the same conclusion. Perhaps Turkey is relying on a form
of intimidation through its national laws which criminalize statements
claiming the Armenian genocide occurred. Akcam himself was charged with
treason after declaring the massacres a genocide, and other Turks who
have noted the genocide, such as the Nobel Prize novelist from Turkey,
Orhan Pamuk, have also been charged under the notorious Article 301
for insulting "Turkishness." Another Turk who fell afoul of the law was
the news editor Hrant Dink, of Armenian heritage, who was gunned down
by a right-wing fanatic. Dink’s son was convicted just this past week
for publishing his father’s last news article citing the genocide. Is
there a disincentive for a Turkish historian to go into the archives
and risk being jailed? The answer is obvious. Outside Turkey, the vast
majority of the academic world-with access to documents from Armenian
archives, the firsthand eyewitness accounts of Western diplomats such
as US Ambassador to Turkey, Robert Morgenthau, the evidence that has
arisen in Akcam’s research-views the Armenian genocide as a dead issue.
If, as genocide scholars maintain, the final crime of genocide is
denial, then after reading this week’s editorials in the US news media,
one gets the feeling that the Armenian genocide has not yet ended.
In a Tom Toles cartoon this week, a character remarked: "Never
forgetting is easier…if you don’t remember." Ain’t that the truth?
Dimitri Anastasopoulos is Assistant Professor of English at SUNY
Buffalo.
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