How do wars in other places impact human relations elsewhere? And how are such instances appropriated to justify violence? (The 1912 war in the Balkans cause Muslim refugees to come to Turkey with stories about the violent Christians. Young Turks, 1913, CUP: Does a constitution make a civilized government? Or is a promise of rights yet another rhetorical and political move for power? Nationalist slogan "Turkey for Turks." And World War II, 1914, Turks aligned with Germany, attacked Russia hoping for an empire, and lost only to see Armenians join Russia. 1915, the intellectual heads of the Armenian culture were rounded up and killed beginning deportation proclamation of sorts to organize marches of Armenians across the country by foot of 60 days or more over mountains and in circles dying during the mark or at camps across the desert. .Box cars that we would see again in the Holocaust (a strategy Hitler adopted) also moved Armenians to camps. Prisoners were released and organized into death squads to massacre Armenians during the march or in the camp. There were some uprisings (as early as 1896) and organized attacks by Armenians on Turks.
1915 textual and oral attempts to intervene without action -- New York Times, American consuls
4000 pages of evidence; 1 million died or 1.5 million; Turkish government denies this historical fact for nearly a century
1919 -- The British pushed the Turks for a series of trials for crimes against humanity. Tallat and Enver Pasha expelled from their service and found guilty and sentenced to death. They tried in absentia because they had fled the country.
1921 -- A man found Talaat Pasha and killed him; he was found not guilty of murder
1922-- Two Armenians killed _____
1922 -- Enver Pasha was shot while fighting with a local army where he had fled.
1953 -- A new Turkey was established. It became a Westernized city that industrialized moving from the old Turkey to the new embarking on an all out program of Westernization -- constitution, style, constitution, secular (not religious) civil code, etc. They did not want to purse the 1915 genocide, which made it undesirable to maintain an honest memory of what happened, so the national memory is constructed and fabricated. The official state position is one of active denial. The head of the Turkish historical society says that no one talks about the Muslims who were killed and that it was, in fact, a civil war.
2000 -- A senior Turkish diplomat said this same thing to United States officials calling it a relocation away from a war zone in which the Armenians were collaborating with invading Russian armies trying to establish a nation of their own and trying to cleanse the area of Turks saying that Turks were killed as well. They say that there was never any systematic killing of Armenians. First, they deny it because it is officially a crime against humanity with consequences -- thus political; then there is the new national identity that they do not want to be associated with in the same category of Hitler as they try to get into the club of Western nations. People and officials in Turkey say there was no genocide. They say that the portrayal is a portrayal because they show only Armenians crying and so the Turks are not heard or acknowledged as victims.
Why not tragedy, catastrophe or disaster? Genocide is not about the number or the cruelty but the intent to destroy a group. Turkey says that the victims of genocide must be innocent, but experts of genocide say that the campaign of slaughter and deportation was methodical and thus intent to destroy Armenians.
1943 was the official beginning of the word genocide (by Raphael Lemkin). 1948, the Convention on the Intervention and Prevention of Genocide was signed into international law for progress, social, and international peace. The Turkish state still denies it, but an increasing number of Turkish intellectuals have spoken out in disgust of the hypocrisy of the state line phrases about the Armenian slanders, the so-called genocide, the false Armenian allegations, but some how the state was signalling the press that this is how they should be talking -- the press, the TV. Those who speak against the signal are seen as traitors and received death threats. A book was published in Turkey in the 1990s about the Armenian genocide, and the authors were attacked by a bomb in 1994 and sent to prison for 2 years. They have been taken to trial 40 times. Armenian efforts for genocide recognition have also led to over 100 attacks of Turkish diplomats (and civilians).
An education should include this story, yet the Turkish government ordered that the schools must teach as part of the curriculum in the national schools of Turkey to deny the Armenians' claims of genocide. The government also interferes with any movies to depict it as well -- forcing MGM to shut down a production. Treason, treachery-- questions of scholarly truth, of history.
Does the genocide need to be recognized in order to grieve?
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