The Key Distortions and Falsehoods in the Denial of the Armenian Genocide

[Hovik]

While I don't think Turks are welcomed in host societies, I don't think that makes them all rapists. I don't think posting one incidence of a turk who raped women in Germany proves that Turkish communities are raping the women of their host nations in any considerable realm of the world.

Remember, many Russians don't exactly look at Armenians in the Russian community with the highest regard...

[Hovik]

About Genocide Denial,
by Deborah Lipstadt, Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish Studies at Emory University, a statement from Concerned Writers and Scholars

About the moral issue of genocide denial, the country's leading scholar on Holocaust and genocide denial, Deborah Lipstadt, Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish Studies at Emory University, has written in conjunction with a dozen other leading genocide scholars and intellectuals:
Denial of genocide--whether that of the Turks against Armenians or the Nazis against Jews--is not an act of historical reinterpretation. Rather, it sows confusion by appearing to be engaged in a genuine scholarly effort. Those who deny genocide always dismiss the abundance of documents and testimony as contrived or coerced, or as forgeries and falsehoods. Free speech does not guarantee the deniers the right to be treated as the "other" side of a legitimate debate when there is no credible "other side;" nor does it guarantee the deniers space in the classroom or curriculum, or in any other forum.

Genocide denial is an insidious form of intellectual and moral degradation and a violation of what a university represents.
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 Wiesel has called a "double killing." Denial murders the dignity of the survivors and seeks to destroy the remembrance of the crime.
William Styron, Writer; Arthur Miller, Writer; Susan Sontag, Writer; Yehuda Bauer, Professor of Holocaust Studies, Hebrew University; Robert N, Bellah, Elliot Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley; Jean Bethke Elshtain, Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics, University of Chicago Divinity School; Robert Jay Lifton, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology, CUNY Graduate Center; Roger Smith, Professor of Government and President of the Association of Genocide Scholars.
from A Statement by Concerned Writers and Scholars, 1996.

Association of Genocide Scholars
Department of Government
College of William and Mary
Williamsburg, Virginia 23187-8795 USA
757/221-3038, Fax 757/221-1868

Executive Board
Roger W. Smith, President
Frank Chalk, Vice President
Jack Nusen Porter, Vice President
Steven L. Jacobs, Treasurer
The Armenian Genocide Resolution Unanimously Passed By The Association of Genocide Scholars of North America
The Armenian Genocide Resolution was unanimously passed at the Association of Genocide Scholars' conference in Montreal on June 13, 1997.

Resolution

That this assembly of the Association of Genocide Scholars in its conference held in Montreal, June 11-13, 1997, reaffirms 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. It further condemns the denial of the Armenian Genocide by the Turkish government and its official and unofficial agents and supporters.
Among the prominent scholars who supported the resolution were: Roger W. Smith (College of William & Mary; President of AGS); Israel Charny (Hebrew University, Jerusalem); Helen Fein, Past President AGS); Frank Chalk (Concordia University, Montreal); Ben Kiernan (Yale University); Anthony Oberschall (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill); Mark Levene (Warwick University, UK); Rhoda Howard (McMaster University, Canada), Michael Freeman (Essex University, UK), Gunnar Heinsohn (Bremen University, Germany)
The Association of Genocide scholars is an international, inter-disciplinary, non-partisan organization dedicated to the understanding and prevention of Genocide. The Association is an affiliate of The Institute For the Study of Genocide, New York, Dr. Helen Fein, Executive Director.

The New York Times

To the Editor:



On June 13, 2005, the International Association of Genocide Scholars sent a letter to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey in response to Turkey’s call for a “Joint Commission of Historians to study the historical facts.” Turkey's call was republished in a full page advertisement in the New York Times on Monday, 24 April 2007.



The Turkish proposal is one more attempt by the Turkish government to continue its ninety-year denial of the facts of the Armenian genocide. Turkey’s proposal is part of a multi-million dollar public relations smokescreen to defeat a Resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives to recognize and commemorate the Armenian genocide. Such recognition has already been made by 26 other countries, including many of our European allies, which have not given in to Turkish black-mail about stopping weapons sales and closing NATO military bases.



Prof. Gregory Stanton, Vice President, International Association of Genocide Scholars





Contact: Prof. Gregory Stanton

POB 809

Washington, DC 20044

E-mail: [email protected]

Phone: MWF 703-448-0222

TTh 540-654-1391

Evenings: 703-448-0222

Cell: 703-448-6665

[Joseph]

Twelve Ways To Deny A Genocide
From Armeniapedia.org
Jump to: navigation, search

By Israel Charny, these 12 methods were originally called "Templates for Gross Denial of a Known Genocide: A Manual" in The Encyclopedia of Genocide, volume 1, page 168. These 12 tactics have all been followed (or perhaps more the more accurate word is pioneered) by the Turkish Government, in its genocide denial campaign.

1. Question and minimize the statistics.

This is one of the biggest distractions to the main issue itself. By claiming that the numbers are exaggerated or inflated, and that only a few hundred thousand were killed, not over a million, they try to completely side-track the entire issue. As if a few hundred thousand would not have been a genocide as well.

2. Attack the motivations of the truth-tellers.
The claim that Armenians cannot be trusted because they may want reparations is like saying no victim should ever be heard, because they are biased in their pursuit of justice.

3. Claim that the deaths were inadvertent.

As a result of famine, migration, or disease, not because of willful murder. Also mention that Turks/Muslims died too at that time - without mentioning that they died on the battlefield, not at the hands of their very own government.

4. Emphasize the strangeness of the victims.

The victims were infidels (Christians), a fifth-column, and not "good" Ottoman Turks.

5. Rationalize the deaths as the result of tribal conflict, coming to the victims out of the inevitability of their history of relationships.
Check. Armenians and Turks could not share that land anymore since some Armenians might prefer independence to being second class citizens.

6. Blame “out of control” forces for committing the killings.

They often blame the very Kurds they later struggled to keep down.

7. Avoid antagonizing the genocidists, who might walk out of “the peace process.”
Turkey refuses to even open diplomatic relations with Armenia because it talks about the Armenian Genocide.

8. Justify denial in favor of current economic interests.

Undoubtedly Turkey's number one weapon in denying the Armenian Genocide. Constant threats to the west the military contracts worth billions will be canceled have worked wonders in legislatures considering the issue. In fact, the debate over whether to officially recognize the genocide in the west is clearly not about whether it happened or not - since it very clearly did - but on just what economic/diplomatic repercussions Turkey has threatened or might retaliate with if they do recognize a 90 year old truth.

9. Claim that the victims are receiving good treatment, while baldly denying the charges of genocide outright.
Show how a few thousand Armenians were not killed in Istanbul as evidence that 2.5 million were not killed/driven out in Anatolia.

10. Claim that what is going on doesn’t fit the definition of genocide. At the time of writing (September 2004), the European Union, the Secretary General of the United Nations and even Amnesty International still avoid calling the crimes in Darfur by their proper name. There are three reasons for such reluctance:
A. Another misconception is the “all or none” concept of genocide. The all-or-none school considers killings to be genocide only if their intent is to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group “in whole.” Their model is the Holocaust. They ignore the “in part” in the definition in the Genocide Convention, which they often haven’t read.

B. Since the 1990’s, a new obstacle to calling genocide by its proper name has been the distinction between genocide and “ethnic cleansing,” a term originally invented as a euphemism for genocide in the Balkans. Genocide and “ethnic cleansing” are sometimes portrayed as mutually exclusive crimes, but they are not. Prof. Schabas, for example, says that the intent of “ethnic cleansing” is expulsion of a group, whereas the intent of “genocide” is its destruction, in whole or in part. He illustrates with a simplistic distinction: in “ethnic cleansing,” borders are left open and a group is driven out; in “genocide,” borders are closed and a group is killed.

C. Claim that the “intent” of the perpetrator is merely “ethnic cleansing” not “genocide,” which requires the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. The U.N. Commission of Experts report of 2005 took this way out. It confused motive with intent. (Ironically, the U.N. Commission report even included a paragraph saying motive and intent should not be confused, an exhortation the Commission promptly violated, itself.) Even if the motive of a perpetrator is to drive a group off its land (“ethnic cleansing”), killing members of the group and other acts enumerated in the Genocide Convention may still have the specific intent to destroy the group, in whole or in part. That’s genocide.

11. Blame the victims.

Perhaps the most insulting tactic of all. Saying that actually it was the Armenians who were massacring and wiping out Turks.

12. Say that peace and reconciliation are more important that blaming people for genocide.
This is often heard from Turks, American government officials and others who have clearly never been victims of genocide. Much like telling a man whose mother was raped and murdered by the next door neighbor that it is more important to get along with your neighbors, this will never be accepted by Armenians who deserve and need an apology and reparations. They need an apology from Turkey now not only for the genocide, but for the nearly century long denial and miseducation campaign that took place, the continued mistreatment of Armenians in Turkey, the blockade of Armenia since the early 1990s and the post-genocidal war taking even more Armenian land.