EDITORIAL: THE FORGOTTEN HOLOCAUST
UT The Daily Texan, TX
University of Texas at Austen
April 27 2007
Much lies hidden in the hills of Turkey. Buried beneath them, the
bones of countless thousands of Armenians bear silent witness to a
mass murder considered one of the greatest atrocities in a century
stained with blood. Yet, even as remains from mass graves continue
to be exhumed, there are still many – including some students on
this campus – who continue to deny the scope of these massacres,
refusing to call them by the only appropriate name: genocide.
The Armenian Genocide, or the Armenian "Tragedy" as it is
euphemistically called, began in 1915, as the Ottoman Empire was
fighting off an invasion from Russia during World War I. Burgeoning
Armenian nationalism caused uprisings at the Armenian-controlled city
of Van and elsewhere, where some Armenians joined invading Russian
forces. Fearing a nationwide revolt, the Committee for Union and
Progress Â- the ultra-nationalist wing of the ruling Young Turk
Party – began liquidating the leadership of the Armenian resistance
movement through imprisonment and executions.
Almost immediately afterward, the CUP party started "relocating"
Armenians, citing a security threat from the minority group. Many argue
the relocation was a legitimate measure, the unintended consequences
of which were massacres of Armenians by groups of Kurdish and Muslim
"bandits." The killing of anywhere between 800,000 and 1 million
Armenians was a "tragedy" rather than a "genocide," because it wasn’t
the Ottoman government’s intention to exterminate the Armenians,
or so the argument goes.
Those who refute the genocide allegation point to the original
government decree, which calls for the protection of Armenian
relocation convoys, and the provision of food and supplies for
Armenians. However, there is a mountain of evidence to the contrary,
showing that killings did, in fact, have government support.
Authenticated documents from a war crimes tribunal following the war,
at which top CUP members were convicted and sentenced to death in
absentia, show high levels of government involvement.
CUP leader Ismali Enver Pasha organized the Teshkilâti Mahsusa,
meaning "Special Organization," which recruited bands known as "chetas"
composed of Turkish refugees, violent criminals released from prison
and Kurds to carry out massacres. The brutality of their methods
was matched only by their efficiency. In some cases, men, women and
children were bound together in a river, where one person was shot,
dragging the rest down, drowning them. Other methods included herding
Armenians into a cave and lighting a fire at the entrance, suffocating
those inside – a primitive gas chamber.
Far from providing for Armenians, as the relocation decree dictated,
the deportations were a death march. In addition to the thousands who
died from the direct slaughter of Turkish troops and their civilian
accomplices, many thousand more died of starvation.
U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire Henry Morgenthau said of
his meeting with a CUP member, "He made no secret of the fact that
the government had instigated [the massacres]. Each new method of
inflicting pain was hailed as a splendid discovery … They even
delved into the records of the Spanish Inquisition and other historic
institutions of torture and adopted all the suggestions found there."
Despite all of this, some in the Turkish University Students
Association continue to push the claim that while the killings did
happen, they were an unfortunate "tragedy" of a communal civil war,
where both sides committed massacres. The group will be showing a video
called "Sari Gelin," which attempts to debunk the Armenian Genocide
"myth." It is fuzzy moral math to excuse the mass extermination of
Armenians as a response to isolated Armenian massacres.
It’s time for Turkey and the Turkish University Students Association to
own up to the crimes of Turkey’s past. Why is it important to remember
the Armenian Genocide? Adolf Hitler’s remarks in response to a question
about the international community’s reaction to a possible invasion
of Poland gives a good enough reason: "Who, after all, remembers the
annihilation of the Armenians?"
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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
