US governments had held back for decades, partly because Turkey is the second-biggest military power in Nato and strategically vital for the West. The US hosts the largest Armenian diaspora after Russia, estimated at more than a million. Turkey reacted angrily after Pope Francis called it "the first genocide of the 20th Century" in the run-up to the centenary commemorations.
Turkey recalled its Vatican ambassador and accused the Pope of having "discriminated about people's suffering". The Pope "overlooked atrocities that Turks and Muslims suffered in World War One and only highlighted the Christian suffering, especially that of the Armenian people", the Turkish foreign ministry said.
France has a large Armenian diaspora and since it has officially commemorated "the Armenian genocide" on 24 April, including a ceremony at a Paris monument.
The killings are regarded as the seminal event of modern Armenian history, binding the diaspora together. Armenians are one of the world's most dispersed peoples. In Turkey, public debate on the issue has been stifled.
Article of the penal code, on "insulting Turkishness", has been used to prosecute prominent writers who highlight the mass killings of Armenians. A teenage ultra-nationalist, Ogun Samast, was jailed for nearly 23 years in July for murdering Dink, a Turkish-Armenian who edited a bilingual newspaper.
And in March two Turkish ex-police chiefs were jailed for life over the murder of Dink. The European Union has said Turkish acceptance of the Armenian genocide is not a condition for Turkey's entry into the bloc. Yes - they have no official diplomatic ties. After decades of hostility there was a slight thaw, but since there has been no real rapprochement. In a six-week war over Nagorno-Karabakh aggravated Armenian-Turkish tension.
Turkey backed Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory inside Azerbaijan held by ethnic Armenians since a war in the s. Azerbaijan made big territorial gains and pushed Armenian forces out of adjacent areas. Weeks before the outbreak of fighting in September Turkey had held large-scale military exercises with Azerbaijan. Why did Armenia and Azerbaijan go to war? Turkey has also sponsored publications challenging the basic facts of the Armenian Genocide in a well-financed campaign to spread confusion and plant seeds of doubt even among informed circles.
Turkey's overseas embassies have been engaged as its primary instruments for the dissemination of this denial literature. Its ambassadors regularly challenge mention of the Armenian Genocide by the media. Turkey has also pressured governments in an attempt to prevent the convening of international conferences, such as one planned in Israel in , where despite strong pressures to cancel it, the Armenian Genocide was one of the topics presented.
This campaign to rewrite history extends to the point of seeking to influence universities worldwide through sophisticated grant-making programs attendant with the expectation of generating scholarship placing Turkey in a better light. These programs constitute part of the overall design to legitimate internationally the viewpoint denying the Armenian Genocide through purportedly disinterested academic production. Turkey's policy of denial has had more than an obstructionist character. The Turks were extremely friendly to Jews in the wake of the expulsion of Jews from Spain.
Their role in World War II is problematic, but there were individual Turkish diplomats who risked their lives to rescue Jews. So, to say that I have anything against Turks or Turkey would be simply wrong. I am a great admirer of Turkey. But a denial of the Armenian genocide is something that no honest academic can suffer, can stand.
And so, I completely identify with the demand of Armenians that this should be recognized. They don't demand anything else, just the fact that it happened. It is for -- they, like the Jews, are a traumatized society. Eighty years, ninety years after it happened, it's still there, and it will remain there inevitably, just as it will remain with the Jews.
The voices present at Sultanahmet Square earlier this year need to be heard; or, better put, allowed to be heard, considering Article and its accompanying democratic restrictions. Taken together, criticism must go to state policies of non-recognition, which only serve to aid socially and politically destructive denial of a historical legacy. Domestic Politics of Denial On 24 th April , Armenians, Turks and Kurds gathered in Taksim Square, Istanbul, to commemorate the chilling events of years prior: the destruction of Armenian Christians, otherwise known as the second Genocide of the twentieth century.
International Dynamics of Non Recognition Currently, twenty-seven countries, along with the Vatican and the European Parliament, have passed resolutions, laws or declarations, which, in line with the consensus of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, recognise the historical deportations and massacres of Armenian Christians as a Genocide.
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