Affiliated with the University of Nicosia |
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DENIAL OF GENOCIDE: HISTORY OR POLITICS By Arda Jabejian
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Lecturer of Applied Linguistics, University of Nicosia |
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“Who after all, speaks of the annihilation of the Armenians?” Hitler
posed this rhetorical question in a speech in 1939, before embarking on
the extermination of the Jews.
Hitler’s apparent conclusion, that no one remembered what befell
the Armenians in 1915, emboldened him to perpetrate the Holocaust.
The strategy of the perpetrators and
their successor government, that of the Republic of Turkey, was to avoid
public discussion of the Armenian genocide, believing that in the course
of time the survivors would pass from the scene, their children would
become acculturated and assimilated in the diaspora, and the issue would
be forgotten. In fact by the
outbreak of World War II, the Armenian Genocide had virtually become the
“forgotten genocide”. In
some ways, it became even more remote as new millions of victims were
claimed in the conflagration of warfare and the Holocaust.
However, when
Raphael Lemkin coined the word “genocide” in 1944 he cited the 1915
annihilation of the Armenians as a seminal example of genocide. After
much toil, the
1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide, defining genocide as a crime under international law, was the
first-ever United Nations human rights treaty.
The Convention defined genocide thus: “Genocide means any of the
following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a
national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such:
What is compelling in the Armenian case is that the victims were
subjected to each and every one of the five categories.
Such drastic and absolute methods not only underscore the
premeditated nature of the violence but the single-minded determination
of the perpetrator regime to expunge the Armenians from the new society
it was determined to create.
This year marks the 95th anniversary of the Genocide.
Still, the abuse of Armenians’ memory by the continuing denial of
Turkish governments is probably the most agonizing of the Armenians’
tribulations, a fact confirmed by the statement issued by 150 scholars
and writers on April 24, 1998:
Denial of genocide strives to reshape history in order to demonize the
victims and rehabilitate the perpetrators.
Denial of genocide is the final stage of genocide. It is what
Elie Weisel has called “double killing”.
Denial murders the dignity of the survivors and seeks to destroy
remembrance of the crime. In
a century plagued by genocide, we affirm the moral necessity of
remembering.
Recognizing the enormity of the crime and its consequences on some of
its citizens, the House of the Representatives of the Republic of Cyprus
unanimously adopted the following resolution on April 29, 1982:
The
House of Representatives, on the occasion of the anniversary of the
genocide of the Armenian people which was started in 1915 in an
organized manner by the then Turkish regime,
Nearly two dozen countries, including France, Canada, Russia,
Switzerland and Chile, have formally recognized the Armenian Genocide.
So has the European Parliament.
Most recently, the Swedish parliament approved on March
11, 2010, a resolution that brands the killing of 1.5 million Armenians
by Ottoman forces during World War I as genocide.
Armenia’s leaders thanked Sweden’s parliament for adopting the
resolution, which was passed by a 131-130 vote, while Turkey quickly denounced the
vote, cancelled a visit to Stockholm by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan scheduled in March, and recalled its ambassador in protest.
Armenian President Serge Sarkisian said, “Recognition of and
condemnation of crimes against humanity is the best way to avert such
crimes.” Turkish Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned, meanwhile, that the Swedish vote
“can hurt relations between Turkey and Armenia,” referring to the
agreements signed by the two nations last October.
The Turks were already fuming over a similar resolution that was passed
by 23 to 22 on March 4 by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S.
House of Representatives. In his speech, Howard Berman, chairman, quoted
what the International Association of Genocide
Scholars had stated in a letter to members of congress two years ago:
The historical record on the Armenian
Genocide is unambiguous and documented by overwhelming evidence. It is
proven by foreign office records of the United States, France, Great
Britain, Russia, and perhaps most importantly, of Turkey’s World War I
allies, Germany and Austria-Hungary, as well as by the records of the
Ottoman Courts-Martial of 1918-1920, and by decades of scholarship… As
crimes of genocide continue to plague the world, Turkey’s policy of
denying the Armenian Genocide gives license to those who perpetrate
genocide everywhere.
Then, it was reported that Turkish parliamentary speaker Mehmet Ali
Sahin had said that Western countries whose assemblies have passed such
resolutions should “look in the mirror, if they want to find criminals.”
“Our ‘friend’ Sweden has stabbed us in the back with one vote!” read a
front-page headline in Sabah,
a leading Turkish daily.
Fatih Altayli, editor-in-chief of
Haberturk daily, was more sardonic: “Soon, there will be no Turkish
ambassadors left abroad and no foreign country our officials can visit.”
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt immediately announced that the
position of his government, which supports Turkey's entry into the
European Union, "remains unchanged".
"We think it is a mistake to politicize history," Bildt wrote on
his blog.
“It
is thus no coincidence that genocide rages on.” From
A problem from hell: America and the age of genocide, 2002, Samantha
Power
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