Genocide By Any Other Name

On Friday House Leader Nancy Pelosi agreed to put on hold a resolution she supported in Congress that would have formally recognized the Armenian Genocide—the systematic murder of a million and a half Armenians by the Ottomon Turks beginning in 1915. For a while it seemed like this resolution was going to pass, despite vigorous objections from the Turkish government who said that it was a complete distortion of history and that there was no genocide at all, just a series of deportations for security purposes during World War I. Sure, there were some isolated incidents in which the local rabble got out of control, they admitted, but then were quick to point out the long list of offenses by Armenian militants who they believed were conspiring against Turkey before, during, and after the war.

I admit that I was perplexed that so much time was being spent on this resolution which, after all, was about something that happened over 90 years ago. Condoleeza Rice begged lawmakers to reconsider the vote, saying “I continue to believe that the passage of the…Armenian genocide resolution would severely harm our relationship with Turkey.” No duh. President Bush and others campaigned against the resolution because they were afraid Turkey would follow through on its threats to deny access to our troops. Some right wingers said that Pelosi & Company were specifically hoping to enrage the Turks so that our operations in Iraq would be affected. Others felt the supporters of this action were simply trying to curry favor with their Armenian-American constituents.

The whole thing wreaks of politics, and I can’t say I disagree with former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski who said in an interview:

As far as a resolution is concerned, I never realized that the House of Representatives was some sort of an academy of learning that passes judgment on historical events. History is full of terrible crimes, and there is no doubt that many Armenians were massacred in World War I. But whether the House of Representatives should be passing resolutions whether that should be classified as a genocide or a huge massacre is I don’t think any of its business. It has nothing to do with passing laws about how to run the United States. That’s what the constitution created the House of Representatives for.

It IS something of a joke that Congress would start pointing fingers at Turkey and the Ottoman Empire while ignoring some of the ugliest episodes in our own past. Any new resolutions about the displacement and devastation of Indian nations? How about our country’s long history of slavery?

On the other hand, I find myself appalled at the way our government is kowtowing to the Turks, so afraid of upsetting them that we’re willing to buy into their lies and disinformation about what happened to the Armenians almost a century ago. Can you imagine the United States refusing to acknowledge that the Holocaust had ever taken place for fear of antagonizing the present-day German government? Would there not be massive public outcries? I remember in the excellent book “Fatherland,” novelist Robert Harris described a fictional world in which Germany had won World War II. Set in 1964, one of the important subplots of the book involved the Greater German Reich’s successful denial of the Holocaust. The disappearance of the Jews had been explained away as merely the relocation of most of the Jewish population to the East. Sounds something like Turkey’s explanations.

The Armenian Genocide was cited by Adolf Hitler himself on more than one occasion as his own plans for the “Final Solution” were taking shape. “Who after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” Hitler said in 1939, just before the invasion of Poland.

While not as organized as the Nazis, the Turks left behind a mountain of evidence about the mass killings of Armenians. It is astounding that they are so unwilling to face the facts of their own history and have succeeded in intimidating their own scholars and much of the world, including the United States, from even acknowledging it. It is illegal to speak or write about the Armenian Genocide in Turkey. Nobel Prize-winning Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk was prosecuted by the government for stating that “a million Armenians were killed in these lands.” Many others who have commented on the events of that period have been arrested for “denigrating Turkishness.”

No wonder Armenian-Americans, whose ancestors suffered so greatly, have made this such a passionate cause here in the United States and have fought to have Congress pass a resolution that acknowledges their ancestors’ horrific plight. This isn’t the first time this issue has come up. I remember when California’s Armenian-American governor, George Deukmejian, a Republican, pleaded with President Reagan to support a Congressional resolution that would have marked the 70th anniversary of the genocide. “I’m sure you know the depth of my support for your efforts to lead our nation,” he wrote. “On this issue, however, I am in disagreement with both your policy and your recent statements.” Reagan, like many American leaders before and since, had opposed the resolution out of fear of offending our military ally. This despite promises of solidarity with the Armenian-American community when he was running for office, promises of support that Bush, Clinton, and Bush Jr. also made…until they were elected.

A few weeks ago I posted excerpts from newspaper articles I found about the persecution of Jews in Russia in the 1880s. I was fascinated by the firsthand reports from eyewitnesses, survivors, and the journalists of that era. I don’t want to repeat such a litany of horror regularly on my blog, God knows, but reading about this issue, I couldn’t help but go straight to the 1915 newspapers and read some of the hundreds of reports that were coming in daily from reporters, missionaries, government officials, and victims. Turkey claims that the history of this episode has been adulterated by people who are sympathetic to Armenian nationalist groups and terrorists. This is so clearly not the case when you read the actual news reports as these events were unfolding. Here’s a tiny sample:

An Englishman, who recently arrived at a Mediterranean port from Turkey, writes in reference to the Armenian massacres that “the tale is awful; the outlook is hopeless.” He continues:

“The inhabitants of cities like Zeitun and Hadjin have been driven out like cattle and made to march long distances under the burning sun, hungry and thirsty. A large number from Zeitun recently reached Adana utterly destitute, many others having been left to die on the road. More than 1000 families from Hadjin recently arrived at Aleppo in the last degree of misery, and yet the purpose is to send them much farther. Husbands were forcibly separated from their wives and sent to places long distances apart. Children similarly were separated from their parents.”

Another journalist in 1915 compared the world’s inaction on behalf of the Armenians to the public outcry the year before when dealing with Belgian refugees:

A year ago the plight of Belgium aroused the world to unparalleled acts of mercy, but if the worst that was ever feared for Belgium had come true, conditions would not be at all comparable with the atrocities that have befallen the Armenians. And the end is not yet, unless some agency intervenes, the whole nation is to be wiped out—and the Jews in Turkey are to follow!

Among the few noble figures attempting to do something to help the Armenians were American missionary women who risked their lives in their vain attempts to provide aid to the suffering people.

A heroic story is hidden behind the brief message that an American missionary, Miss Mary Graffam, in Sivas, secured permission from the Turkish Governor-General to accompany a party of Armenian women and children into exile. Their destination is unknown. Somewhere in the vastness of Armenia, or possibly in the farther wastes of Arabia, this fearless, devoted American woman has gone with the defenseless hunted woman and children, not only to minister to the dying and the living, but also, by her presence as an American, to save them, if possible, from the worse horrors of this exile.

Miss Graffam survived that trek but incurred the wrath of Turkish officials who at one point issued an order for her execution. She died in Turkey in 1921.

Many articles described the atrocities, sometimes using euphemisms for the more horrific acts.

A particularly revolting aspect of the method followed by the Turks in exterminating their victims is their skill in eliminating the men first and then in driving off such of the women and children as are not selected for Turkish harems into remote and deserted places by forced marches with no supplies provided. Thus a large proportion of the women and children and aged men die from starvation and hardship, rather than from the more merciful sword.

The sick drop by the wayside, women in a critical condition giving birth to children, which, according to reports, many mothers strangle or drown because of the lack of means to care for them. Fathers are exiled in one direction, mothers in another, and young girls and small children in still another. The accompanying gendarmes are told that they may do as they wish with the women and girls.

Most eyewitnesses tell of massive gang rapes of women and girls, some extremely young. By October 1915, there were many calls for action in this country.

Resolutions calling on the government of the United States to use its influence in stopping atrocities against Armenians in Turkey were adopted today by delegates attending the meeting marking the opening of the Laymen’s Missionary Movements campaign. The appeal will be send to President Wilson.

Rev. Ernest C. Partridge, who just returned from Sivas, Turkey, declared tonight that more than 800,000 Armenians had been massacred by Turks.

“At the present rate,” Rev. Partridge said, “It would not be very long before the entire race would be wiped out.”

And yet, unluckily for the Armenians under siege, the position of the U.S. was that our primary focus had to be the war in Europe and there was a strong feeling, as there is now, that it wasn’t in our best interest to anger the Turks.

Not everyone agreed. Englishman James Bryce was the first to speak on this subject to the British Parliament.

Viscount Bryce made public tonight the details of further Armenian massacres, which, in a letter accompanying them, he says “surpass in horror, if that were possible, what has been published already.”

“I feel,” his letter continues, “that such crimes ought to be exposed to the utmost and that the charity of other nations will, more than ever, be drawn to the unhappy refugees when it is known what their friends and fellow countrymen have suffered.”

Viscount Bryce says the details confirm and amplify the ghastly history of deportations by which Armenians in Northern and Eastern Anatolia were driven to a death of fiendish cruelty. Every successive piece of evidence increases the horror of the story and confirms the dreadful certainty of its truth.

“These atrocities were not produced by imagination. Many of them are vouched for by several coincident testimonies. They are all in keeping and the evidence is most complete.”

“On June 25, the Turks surrounded the town of Bitlis and cut its communication with neighboring Armenian villages. Then most of the able-bodied men were taken away from their women. During the following few days, all the men under arrest were shot outside the town and buried in deep trenches dug by the victims themselves. The young women and children were distributed among the rabble.”

“The head men of the village were subjected to revolting tortures. Their fingernails and their toenails were forcibly extracted; teeth were knocked out and in some cases, noses were whittled down, the victims thus being done to death, under shocking, lingering agony. The female relatives of the victims who came to the rescue were assaulted in public before the very eyes of their mutilated men. The shrieks and death cries of the victims filled the air.”

Sorry for the graphic nature of these reports but I can’t help but share some of them after reading more in this morning’s papers about our government’s fear of “insulting” Turkey. In 1916 Bryce published an exhaustive account of the treatment of the Armenians by the Turks (which is available online in its entirety) full of hundreds of eyewitness accounts and other evidence of the brutality. But officials in Turkey today refuse to accept any of these historical documents.

Even if few Americans know much about the Armenian Genocide, the details probably sound familiar. That’s because the Nazis followed (and expanded on) many of the same tactics, as have all subsequent governments engaged in mass murder including the current dire situation in Darfur where such acts of violence are happening RIGHT NOW.

Comments

[BOB]

I agree with you wholeheartedly...how dare the Turks tell the US Congress what they can and cannot debate...it goes to show you what a spineless president we have...he can talk to the Dali Lama and offend China but he is afraid to stand up against Turkey...where does our morality lie...as a 3rd generation Armenian-American who lost his grandparents in the genocide I will not give up and will never rest until Turkey acknowledges what it did in 1915...

[Special Needs Mama]

I have been waiting for a cogent analysis of this issue. Thank you.

[Larry]

Yeah, I've had more waffles about this issue recently than IHOP as well. On the one hand I wholeheartedly agree with you (and Bob above) that the Turk regime (past or present) has no business dictating what we recognize and don't.

On the other hand, such a resolution will ALWAYS have political currency on both sides, and the GOP will certainly claim it's purely political in motive, regardless of intent, when we're entrenched in the Middle East.

On the OTHER hand, when we ARE in the Middle East (when are we not?), what better time to put a horrifyingly little-known atrocity to the light of day, while we still have the evidence and 2nd, 3rd, and 4th generations alive to hear and pass it on.

On the OTHER hand (I feel like Tevye across the bridge in "Fiddler"), the final tip on opinions on this for me is Brzezinski's, that you quoted above. In the end, at least in my never humble opinion, Congress' job is to help run the United States, not sit in judgment of what did or did not happen in another country.

Much like your post "Tevye Never Had It So Good", the realities of Holocausts MUST be remembered...and evidence preserved and re-shown... But not made political whiffle bats to fight with.

[Julie]

Thanks for this posting. I've never completely understood why the people of Turkey refuse to acknowledge what whole world knows! I was recently told that their whole modern, secular state rests upon the authority of Ataturk who is implicated in these crimes. That autocratic secular state is not one I would want to live under and yet it seems that today a truly representative democracy would lead to an Islamic state. It is hard to know what to hope for in Turkey's future.
For the Armenian families it is so painful to bear this awful legacy. It must be somewhat healing to have the crimes acknowledged here and in Europe, but until Turkey admits their culpability the nightmare seems to live on.

[Andrew]

And the current genocide in West Papua ? http://wpik.org/Src/Genocide.html Money talks, the mighty Bechtel corporation is head of the US Indonesia Society, was the U.S. firm that supported G.W. Bush's election in 2000, tried to make money selling Bolivia's fresh water, and is making money in Iraq. He who has the money makes the decisions, what the newspapers print and whom the U.S. should view as the enemy. Was Israel and Palestine ever that important themselves? The Ford Foundation and Rockefeller's were jointly making ten times the money in Indonesia than what it cost to keep the Middle East in the news papers. The world's largest Gold & Copper mine, visible from space, dumping over 300,000 tons of waste into the Pacific Ocean each day; American built and owned. And yet just like Bechtel's proud work in Iraq and Bolivia and elsewhere; who many Americans know of this great U.S. geographic achievement?

[Vahe]

May I say that Congress is making a statement for its nearly 1 million Armenian Americans in affirming their history. Looking after its citizens is the interest of the Congress. No one is looking at this side of the equation. It is not the first time that politicians spin to their advantage. Zbigniew Brzezinski is no different in saying "It has nothing to do with passing laws about how to run the United States." Yes if you do not consider the Armenian American as full citizens. For Heavens sake they are carrying this horrible burden. Does it matter? Apparently not for Zbigniew Brzezinski and to many Americans who think like him.

[Dawa]

I love Germans, Chinese and Turkish people.
I hate holocaust denial.
When the U.S., European countries & Israel are doing it
I hate it all the more.
What more is there to say?

[Gary Kasparian Hovagimian]

For 900 years (over 15 generations.. take a moment and absorb the enormity of how long that is) Armenians lived their life on their historical lands under the Occupied rule. They faced enormous pressures -financially, socially, professionally, civilly- but they stayed true to their creed, their language, their heritage and their beliefs (just like many Jewish and other occupied races have done). But many could not because the Turkish Ottoman Gov't levied special taxes on them just for not being Muslim! They faced discrimination and disatvantages in every facets of their life, while the muslim citizens enjoyed the perks.

Now the Gov't of Turkey is doing everything it can to erase us from that land. For my Grand-parents, and Great-Gradparents legacies that I seek the truth. They are not in my imagination, but my grandparents were real and their village was real, and their family died for real, and the city that they lived nearby URFA is real.

Turkey's museums, historical books, and education system have no mention of my people (even the islamized ones).

Puff.... they're gone. That's a successful genocide and the U.S is aiding in covering those crimes by not taking action like many other countries have.

Emagine if the U.S. gov't rounded up all the Black people and marched them by foot to the northern and southern borders. As they were walking, they denied them water and food. The gov't then organized killing squads made up of their most violent prisoners and they had them attacking Black population areas and those marching caravans.

The reason given! some black groups (let's say the Black panthers) had taken up arms and committed crimes. plus, some blacks had spied for U.S. enemies.

Now, none of the museums in the United States, nor any history books ever mention
that Blacks ever lived here!! Can you imagine how upsetting that would be to wipeout the legacy of all those famillies that suffered and persevered to make it from being owned like animals to the United States presidency?

Well, that's how the Turkish gov't is justifying the genocide (except they won't call it that). They use similar reasoning --taking up armes by some Armenian groups and attacking Turkish soldiers, and some for spying for Russia--.

The only difference in the "U.S. committing Genocide against the blacks" and the Turkish Ottoman Gov't committing Genocide against the Armenians is that Armenians were on that land for thousands of years before the Turks arrived in Eastern Asia Minor from their ancestral land near Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Turkmanistan.

Their 900 plus years of taxation and civil pressures were so effective in converting ethnic Anatolians to Turk muslims that majority of Turkey's population does not even look Turkic. They live in a fabricated history and live and die without knowing their true identity (that includes Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, Jews, Laz, Georgians, Bulgarians and many more).

It's time for America to not only join the majority of the world's countries in recognizing the Armenian Genocide, but also, in taking a lead in pressuring Turkey to allow it's museums and educational institutions to represent the true history on Anatolia without prejudice.