ARMENIAN GENOCIDE DENIAL: THE CASE AGAINST TURKEY
By Alan S. Rosenbaum, Special to the CJN
Cleveland Jewish News, OH
May 18 2007
The official policy of the government of Turkey continues to deny
the Armenian genocide ever happened.
The genocide occurred in the twilight years of the Muslim Ottoman
Empire at the outset of World War I.
Jews ought to be in the forefront of those who condemn this policy
of denial because many scholars refer to the Armenian genocide as "a
dress rehearsal for the Holocaust." (In fact, a number of officials
in the Nazi Reich got their early training by helping the Ottoman
Turks deal with their so-called "Armenian problem." In addition,
the Jewish community grasps well the malicious, cynical effects of
government-sponsored Holocaust denials.
The deliberate falsification of historical realities denies to an
aggrieved people (the Armenians) the right to have their history
publicly validated and to have claims for restorative justice
fulfilled. Yet, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League
(ADL), Abraham Foxman, recently advised against our involvement in
this matter since it is between Turkey and Armenia. Unlike Foxman,
I believe no political considerations are sufficiently worthy to
falsify or ignore genocide.
The Turkish Penal Code (Art. 301) makes it officially punishable to
"insult Turkishness." This code has been used to prosecute prominent
Turks like Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk (2006), who write or speak about
the Armenian genocide; some, like journalist H. Dink, have even been
killed. The Turkish government insists that Turks, Armenians and
Kurds were all victims of killings and of the chaos that enveloped
the region as the Ottoman Empire collapsed.
Countries like Canada, Germany and Austria criminalize the teaching or
preaching of Holocaust denial. In France, it is now illegal to deny an
instance of genocide when history proves otherwise. The European Union
has just ratified a law "banning incitement to or denial of genocide"
(arguably including both the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide).
In a full-page statement in The New York Times (June 9, 2000),
I and 125 other scholars, including Nobel Prize-winner Elie
Wiesel, historian Yehuda Bauer, and sociologist Irving Horowitz,
signed a document "affirming that the WW I Armenian genocide is an
incontestable historical fact and accordingly urge the governments
of Western democracies to likewise recognize it as such." We called
the genocide "a dark chapter of Ottoman-Turkish history."
Subsequently, the U.S. Congress has repeatedly tried and failed to
pass a non-binding resolution to ask the government of Turkey to
acknowledge this reality.
In any case, a true friendship between Turkey and America, Israel
(with whom it often shares military exercises and intelligence), and
some other nations should not be based on sidestepping or supporting
a deliberate falsification of history as important as genocide.
Like promoting hate speech, it degrades the humanity of the truly
"victimized" by denying them the right to possess their own history.
Alan S. Rosenbaum, Ph.D., is professor of philosophy, Cleveland State
University and editor of Is the Holocaust Unique? (2nd edition).
cles/2007/05/18/community/letters_opinion/arosenba um0518.txt