The New York Times
Editorial
Turkey and the U.N.’s Cover-Up
Published: April 13, 2007

More than 90 years ago, when Turkey was still part of the Ottoman
Empire, Turkish nationalists launched an extermination campaign there
that killed 1.5 million Armenians. It was the 20th century’s first
genocide. The world noticed, but did nothing, setting an example that
surely emboldened such later practitioners as Hitler, the Hutu leaders
of Rwanda in 1994 and today’s Sudanese president, Omar Hassan
al-Bashir.

Turkey has long tried to deny the Armenian genocide. Even in the
modern-day Turkish republic, which was not a party to the killings,
using the word genocide in reference to these events is prosecuted as
a serious crime. Which makes it all the more disgraceful that United
Nations officials are bowing to Turkey’s demands and blocking this
week’s scheduled opening of an exhibit at U.N. headquarters
commemorating the 13th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide because it
mentions the mass murder of the Armenians.

Ankara was offended by a sentence that explained how genocide came to
be recognized as a crime under international law: `Following World War
I, during which one million Armenians were murdered in Turkey, Polish
lawyer Raphael Lemkin urged the League of Nations to recognize crimes
of barbarity as international crimes.’ The exhibit’s organizer, a
British-based antigenocide group, was willing to omit the words `in
Turkey.’ But that was not enough for the U.N.’s craven new leadership,
and the exhibit has been indefinitely postponed.

It’s odd that Turkey’s leaders have not figured out by now that every
time they try to censor discussion of the Armenian genocide, they only
bring wider attention to the subject and link today’s democratic
Turkey with the now distant crime. As for Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon and his inexperienced new leadership team, they have once
again shown how much they have to learn if they are to honorably and
effectively serve the United Nations, which is supposed to be the
embodiment of international law and a leading voice against genocide.