Armenian genocide denial

Human remains from the massacre of the Armenians at Erzincan

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Armenian genocide denial refers to the denial of the genocide against (already systematically discriminated) Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians committed by the Ottoman Empire under the rule of the Young Turks^{[note 1]} from 1915 to 1918. Turkey denies that the Ottomans were responsible for the killing of one million Armenians during World War I, arguing that:

• The death toll has been inflated;
• Ethnic violence killed Turks as well;
• Deportations and death marches were simply "temporary relocation" of Armenians for "security reasons" (i.e. the pesky Armenians were being overtly "rebellious", "hostile", or pro-Russian); and
• The Ottoman leadership didn't intend to exterminate the Armenians, so it can't be called a "genocide."^[2]

World War I and aftermath[edit]

As early as 1915, Britain, France, and Russia issued a statement that the Armenians were the victims of crimes against humanity and civilization (the term "genocide" didn't exist then).^[3] The Treaty of Sèvres, signed in 1920, created an Armenian state. However, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the first president of the Great National Assembly, refused to abide by the treaty. An Armenian Republic had been founded and new borders (which changed in Turkey's favor) were drawn between Armenia and Turkey by the Treaty of Kars,^[4] signed with Armenians and Soviet Russia. This Armenian Republic, much smaller than that which was intended in Sèvres, was then subsumed into the Soviet Union by the Treaty of Moscow.^[5]

Many more deportations of Armenians took place in the process.^[6] Turkey escaped being held responsible by the international community.

Nope, not a genocide!

Recognition[edit]

Turkish nationalist rally outside the White House.

Recognition of the Armenian Genocide is a thorny issue since Turkey occupies a very strategic position in the world. Currently, 43 nations provide some level of recognition of the event. Historically, Turkey has leveraged its position as an important ally in the Middle East to keep the United States from recognizing the genocide, but the United States in 2021, as well as 49/50 of its states,^{[note 2]} joined the group of nations that recognize what the Ottomans did. Another holdout is Israel, which has only tepidly recognized the genocide. This is largely because the Israelis are in between a rock and a hard place: Turkey is one of the few predominantly Muslim nations in their region which maintains some level of diplomatic ties with them. Nevertheless, some government agencies of Israel, such as the Knesset Education Committee, recognize the genocide.^[7] Azerbaijan also refuses to recognize the genocide due to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and institutionalized anti-Armenianism in Azeri society, which further complicates matters since Azerbaijan is also a major Israeli ally and purchaser of weapons. In contrast, due to deteriorating relations with Turkey in the 2010s, Egypt^[8], Saudi Arabia^[9], and United Arab Emirates^[10] all slowly began taking measures to recognize the Armenian genocide in some form.

Within Turkey[edit]

The Turkish government, as well as its nationalist supporters, is probably the most outspoken objector to the term "genocide." In fact, a Turk, in Turkey, can even be arrested for acknowledging that one took place (a strange inversion of laws that criminalize Holocaust denial). This falls under Article 301 of the Turkish penal code, which makes it a crime to "insult Turkishness" (regardless of whether it's true).^[11] Prosecutors brought such a case in 2005 against writer Orhan Pamuk, who later won the Nobel Prize in Literature.^[12]

There are other Turks outside the Armenian community who recognize the Armenian Genocide. This includes scholars like Fatma Muge Cocek (a.k.a. Fatma Müge Göçek),^[13] and Taner Akçam as well as one of Turkey's most notable contemporary novelists Orhan Pamuk.^[14][15][16] This has not gone over well with much of the Turkish public, especially nationalists.

Red herrings in CUP genocide denialism[edit]

The CUP (Committee of Union and Progress) was a Turkish political faction that basically controlled the nation's politics during and slightly before the First World War.^[17] During and slightly after that war, it engaged in genocide against Turkey's religious minorities, mostly Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks.^[18] It was a branch of the Young Turks (no, not those).^[19] Since then, the Turkish governments and especially Turkish nationalists have adopted a denialist stance on the issue, using deceit and tricks in order to attempt to obscure and justify the atrocities, including numerous red herrings, in order to deceive the public.

"Armenians/Greeks were rebelling and killing Turks/Turks also died"[edit]

Corpses of Armenian children slaughtered by the Ottomans during the 1895 Hamidian massacres.

Turkish nationalists often claim that Armenians were rebelling against the Ottoman state and collaborating with the Russian army in order to justify their slaughter, with hilarious anecdotes that include Armenians boiling pregnant Muslim women in vats of jam.^[20][21][22] This is usually followed with a ton of blaming the victim and making themselves out to be the victims of the violence. However, such a stand is historically problematic for a number of reasons.

An Armenian slave woman in Turkey after the genocide carrying thistles for fuel.

• Turks and Kurds had already been slaughtering Armenians for decades in an attempt to eliminate them. In 1895, Turkish leader Sultan Abdulhamid II, confronted with the horrifying spectacle of Armenians defending themselves against Muslim depredations, ordered his troops to "give them a box on the ear" launching pogroms that killed hundreds of thousands.^[23]

In fact, Turkish oppression of Christians went back hundreds of years, with two major bursts of slaughter that could easily be characterized as genocide in 1019.^{[24][better sources needed]} and another one conducted in 1369 by the Turkic warlord Tamerlane whose mass slaughter of Assyrians could also constitute a genocide^[25] The Ottoman devshirme Janissary gathering system also counts as genocide.^{[note 3]}

• All Armenian rebellion and resistance was completely justified as an act of self-defense. All Armenian resistance was preceded by massacres of Armenian civilians. If they had not resisted, they would have died.^[26] As it was, mass rapes and forced conversions (about 200,000) still occurred. Armenian slaughter of Turks was non-systematic, and there was no organized plan to slaughter the Turkish population of Anatolia. Turkish and, especially, Kurdish women participated in the atrocities and were, therefore, legitimate targets of Armenian retaliation.^[27][28] Such actions had the added advantage of damaging the CUP's demographic plans. Turkish children also served as child soldiers and provided vital war labor services to the Ottoman state.^[29]

Further Turkish propaganda aims to portray Armenians as collaborating with the Tsar in order to justify their slaughter.^[30] However, as noted above, to the degree this actually happened it was perfectly excusable as self-defense. In fact, despite the horrors they had been subjected to, Ottoman Armenians in 1914 generally were loyal to and fought for the Ottoman army.^[31] Most Armenians fighting in the Russian army before the Tehcir decree were Eastern (that is, living in areas the Russians already controlled) Armenians, and the first victims of the genocide were ethnic Armenian soldiers in the Ottoman army, who were about the most loyal people possible. Until they realized they were being subjected to wholesale massacre, Armenians generally even complied with Turkish deportation orders.^[32] 550,000 Greeks were killed by the Turks before the war even started, during a period where the Greek government was pro-German (and hence friendly to the Ottomans.)^[33][34] Thus, it is clear that the genocide was not for legitimate wartime reasons, or caused by fear of Armenian collaboration, but rather the product of bigotry against religious minorities.

Furthermore, it is usually conveniently forgotten by Turkish apologists that a significant portion (in fact, probably a majority) of Muslim deaths in Anatolia during the First World War were caused by seizures of property and food by the Ottoman government, which even forced Muslim poor and peasants to be worked to death in forced labor gangs (along, of course, with Christians).^[35] Similarly, the massive quantities of dead bodies from victims of genocide led to considerable numbers of Muslim deaths from disease due to all the rotting flesh.^[36] The amnesia over these events, with the corresponding shift of blame onto "Armenian gangs", is, therefore, a convenient method of hiding embarrassing and unappetizing history. Additionally, Turkish historians have taken to exhuming the mass graves of dead Armenians slaughtered in the genocide and portraying these as corpses of Muslims in order to pretend the perpetrators of the genocide were in fact its victims.^[33]

"There was no intent to exterminate Christians/It was just deportation"[edit]

Excavation of Armenian remains at the former Deir-ez-Zor concentration camp in 1938. Armenian intellectual Harutyun Hovakimian is holding the skull, local tavern owner Murat Gilichian is at left, the bell ringer of a local church (St. Hripsime) and an unidentified worker are in the background.

Turkish denialists similarly claim that because "there was no intent" to exterminate Christian minorities, it wasn't a genocide.^[37][38] This is similarly false. The Ottoman state created "butcher battalions" to slaughter Christians and engaged in the mass rape of women of Christian ethnicities while kidnapping children and forcibly converting them to Islam.^[39] From this, we know that either the massacres were intended or the Turks made organizations to do things they didn't want to do.

An Armenian mother with the corpses of her five children.

It is well documented that the deportation marches were specifically designed to slaughter minorities. Disease outbreaks among deportees went deliberately untreated.^[36] Turkish gendarmes knowingly left Armenians in deserts without water. Pregnant women were forced to leave their young babies to die in those same deserts. Kurds tortured Armenian children to death. Entire families were slaughtered by rifle fire or killed by means of knives, axes, or daggers. Women and children were tied up to be thrown to their deaths from heights. Others were burned up in straw barns or drowned in the Euphrates. The Ottomans deliberately put turbans on the bodies of dead Armenians in order to portray them as Muslims then hired Kurdish women to weep over the bodies. They then photographed the scene in order to portray the Armenians as aggressors and the Kurds as independently moving against the Armenians in revenge.^{[note 4]} Armenians, especially women and children, were widely sold as slaves by their tormentors. Soldiers were ordered to slaughter Armenian civilians, and bounties were paid for their deaths. Property of the deceased was confiscated, and those who caused the deaths were generally allowed to keep a sizable portion. An Armenian woman from Ras al-Ain, where even today the Turkish government is directing its genocidal attentions, was tortured for money by one of the gendarmes who then raped her daughter.^[40][41][42] In Diyarbakir, nearly every house had at least one Armenian slave-maid, with an estimated 5,000 in the city at the time of the genocide.^[43]

Armenian corpses along the "deportation" route.

Nor was this the limit of the atrocities. The Turks and Kurds would forcibly undress young girls, make them bend over, rape them, then have them impaled through their vaginas with sharpened wooden stakes shaped like crosses.^[44] Armenians were massacred around Van without regard for age or sex.^[45]:22 The Muslims would kill young girls after raping them, slaughter young children by bashing their heads together, and cut off Armenian women's breasts.^[45]:78 One Turkish effendi provided an interesting perspective by pointing out that the Christians' God seemed to have no interest in saving them.^[45]:93 Ottoman gendarmes purposely threw bodies of dead Armenians into wells after killing them in order to make the water undrinkable for others.^[45]Special bands (the aforementioned butcher battalions) were commissioned to provide young girls for the harems of Constantinople.^[45]:118-119 Ottoman leader Talaat Pasha remarked that what was being done to the Armenians was "amusing".^[45]:121 Young Muslim boys of all ethnicities would throw stones and sticks at refugees, and, if they were near their own age, would kidnap and sexually assault them.^[45]:139 One prominent Malatian Muslim, Hadji Ghafour, ordered an Armenian slave girl stripped of her clothes and beaten to death with a whip by his black slave for refusing to convert to Islam.^[45]:153-157 Chechen auxiliaries in Ottoman pay enjoyed grabbing young girls, throwing them up in the air, and spearing them with their swords until they died, making a communal game out of the process, with dismounted Chechens providing the initial throws. Those who survived the first spearing were "reused" until they finally died. Jews, meanwhile, were forced by the Muslims to dispose of Armenians' bodies, although they were not killed.^[45]:176-183 Djevdet Bey, the Ottoman governor of Van vilayet, referring to his job of killing Armenians, stated that he "had no job to do [but] so much fun". His statement became a slogan for Ottoman soldiers doing the same thing. Gendarmes would sell Armenian girls to the highest bidder as concubines and field laborers.^[45]:201 Babies born on the deportation marches were generally killed.^[45]:203 At Sheitan Deressi (Satan's Gorge), the Turks killed all the men and mutilated the women, sparing only those who could later be sold as slaves.^[45]:205-207 German soldiers also participated in massacres.^[45]:218-210 Armenian monks were forced to convert to Islam or die, and their monasteries were looted and transformed into "government schools" to turn children into Turks.^[45]:213

German soldiers posing with bones of dead Armenians killed in a massacre near Hekimhan on November 18, 1918.

There is similarly no lack of proof or intent. It was official Ottoman policy that "Armenians girls be married to Muslims" in order to decimate their communities and use their bodies to breed more Mahommetans.^[46][47]:259 Muslim physicians were allowed to use Armenian children for medical experiments.^{[48][note 5]} Cemal Azmi Bey, the governor of Trebizond, ordered Armenians, especially women and children, to be rowed out to sea and drowned. He also ordered a local Red Crescent building to be turned into a "pleasure den", where he and his 14-year-old son raped young Armenian girls and drowned those they did not rape in the Black Sea, joking that "the anchovies will multiply due to the waters being choked with bodies". In fact, a more moderate sultan's government later sentenced him to death for his crimes, supported by numerous sworn accounts of his wrongdoing.^[49] Unsurprisingly, however, modern Turkey has named a school after the guy, with a glowing biography glorifying the genocide and referring to him as a "martyr" on its website.^[50]

The genocide was based on clear orders from above. Ottoman Interior Affairs Minister Talaat Pasha ordered Diyarbakir governor Reshid Bey to exterminate the Armenians within his jurisdiction in a telegram containing three words-"Burn-Destroy-Kill".^{[51][note 6]} He gladly admitted that he was completely intolerant of any Armenians remaining in their ancestral homeland in eastern Anatolia, stating that they should be forced to die in the Syrian desert.^[52][53] Since Talaat had planned to exterminate the Armenians since at least 1910, confiding his desire to the Danish ambassador, it can safely be said that the deportations were not a legitimate war measure. The CUP government had similarly been providing funding to units of Turkish irregulars, ordering them to slaughter the Greek population of Ionia around Smyrna since even before the war, killing about 100,000 in the area before the war even started.^[54] Similarly, mass slaughters by Ottoman troops and pro-Ottoman irregulars of Armenian and Assyrian civilians occurred in Urmia, which was not even Ottoman (Urmia was, and still is, Persian territory).^[55][56] In fact, the Assyrian genocide began there, in a country that attempted to be neutral during the war.^[57][58] Note that very few deportations actually occurred it Urmia (it was basically just butchery.)

This is not to even mention the explicit quotes from various Ottoman officials conceding that the genocide happened, of which there are many, some of the most the most important including: ^[59][60]

"Turkey is taking advantage of the war in order to thoroughly liquidate its' internal foes, i.e., the indigenous Christians, without being thereby disturbed by foreign intervention. What on earth do you want? The question is settled. There are no more Armenians." - Talat Pasha, in a conversation with Dr. Mordtmann of the German Embassy^[61]

"The Ottoman Empire should be cleaned up of the Armenians and the Lebanese. We have destroyed the former by the sword, we shall destroy the latter through starvation." - Enver Pasha, 19 May 1916

He also declared:

"You are greatly mistaken. We have this country absolutely under our control. I have no desire to shift the blame onto our underlings and I am entirely willing to accept the responsibility myself for everything that has taken place." ^[62]

"Surely a few Armenians aided and abetted our enemy, and a few Armenian Deputies committed crimes against the Turkish nation ... it is incumbent upon a government to pursue the guilty ones. Unfortunately, our wartime leaders, imbued with a spirit of brigandage, carried out the law of deportation in a manner that could surpass the proclivities of the most bloodthirsty bandits. They decided to exterminate the Armenians, and they did exterminate them. This decision was taken by the central committee of the Young Turks and was implemented by the government." - Mustafa Arif Deymer, Ottoman Minister of Interior from 1918-1919, stated on 13 December 1918. ^[63]:52

In addition to Cemal Pasha stating

"I am ashamed of my nation" and that "800,000 Armenian deportees were actually killed...by holding the guilty accountable the government is intent on cleansing the bloody past."^[64]

His grandson also recognizes the genocide and even wrote a book about it.^[65]

Also, there are plenty of letters from German ambassadors talking about how the Ottomans were murdering and exterminating Armenians.^{[66][67][68][69][70]}

"Negligible numbers of Christians died/There were less than 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey in 1914"[edit]

Other common tactics by Turkish denialists are to claim that the number of dead Armenians was far lower than it actually was (usually put by the revisionist slime in the mere hundreds of thousands) or that 1.5 million Armenians couldn't have been killed because there weren't 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey in 1914. The Turkish government itself, the denier-in-chief, puts the death toll at around 300,000.^[71] This number, however, is based on the Ottoman census, which was known to be highly inaccurate, generally undercounting populations severely, especially those of ethnic and religious minorities. Populations of non-Muslims often were not re-counted for decades.^[72] The Armenian church, which had the benefit of being able to collate all records of births and deaths within the Armenian community, gave a figure of 1,914,620 in 1914, although the church failed to assess populations in significant parts of western Turkey.^[73]

In 1844, the Ottoman Armenian population was given as 2.4 million, and a reliable French historian at the time (Ubicini) said that number was almost certainly too low, by a significant amount.^[74] In 1878, after the war, the same census gave the population as 3 million.^[75] If we assume that 300,000 Armenians were killed in Hamidian massacres (the standard figure), and that the effects of emigration and loss of Armenian-populated Ottoman territories in the aftermath of the 1877-1878 war between the Ottoman and the Russians were balanced out or more than balanced by natural Armenian population growth (as all data, including the official Ottoman censuses, seems to suggest), we are left with a figure of at least 2.7-2.8 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1914 from the later data.

Talaat Pasha's own report on the genocide^[76] notes that 90% of Armenians outside of Constantinople/Istanbul were deported, and 90% of these were unaccounted for after the conclusion of the genocide and that there was significant undercounting on the part of the Ottomans. While the official Ottoman figures state that 1,256,403 Gregorian and Catholic Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire in 1914, Talaat Pasha notes in the report that this is an undercount of at least 30%, meaning the population of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire right before the genocide was at least 1,500,000 according to Talaat Pasha himself. This does not account for Protestant Armenians either, who, according to historian Ara Sarafian, would increase the total Armenian population to at least 1,700,000. By the conclusion of the genocide in 1917, only 284,157 Armenians were accounted for in the Empire, which, when adjusted for undercounts and the like, leaves a total of 350,000-400,000 survivors.

Considerable numbers of Armenians were killed in areas not under Ottoman control in 1914, such as Urmia (which was Persian), and in the oblasts of Kars and Batum and the Erivan Governorate (which contained the Armenian iconic site of Mount Ararat), which were Russian before the war.^{[77][78][79][80]} Obviously, these regions would not have been included in the Ottoman census, and thus their inhabitants would not have been included in any estimate for the pre-genocide Ottoman Armenian population. This fact seems to be oddly missing from Turkish literature.

"Ottoman officials made sure deportees were well cared for and fed them"[edit]

Armenian refugees squatting around a dead horse in the Deir-ez-Zor concentration camp. These fellows sure look well fed!

An Armenian girl dead of starvation in the fields near Aleppo, with her mother and sister looking on. In the visionary, comprehensive, and well thought-out model of the universe proposed by Turco-denialists, well-fed people provided for by the government often mysteriously drop dead of starvation.

This is a bullshit claim made by denialists, similar to claim No. #2 above. It is usually coupled with a claim that "Ottoman officers ordered Armenians to be protected".^[81]

However:

• The document cited is from the Turkish archives. It could have easily been written afterward in an attempt to shield the Turks from justice and turn the evidence towards their position. There is no proof that it was "intended for internal consumption" as Dadrian (allegedly) said.
• Acts by individual officials are not necessarily reflective of official policy.
• It would be advantageous to ensure that Armenians were massacred and looted in an orderly manner. Otherwise, some might escape death, and a significant portion of the loot might go to normal people instead of the central government or Ottoman officials. Order was a means of preventing underlings from siphoning off wealth.
• The fact that food was (allegedly) provided to the concentration camps does not necessarily mean the inmates were the ones being fed. Concentration camp guards need to eat too.^{[citation NOT needed]}
• The Turks engaged in a process of purging their archives of incriminating material. As a result, what remains can be regarded as suspicious with respect to authenticity and useless in determining the truth of the matter.^[82]
• As documented above, Armenian females were kept as slaves and sexually abused. Starving them would make them useless for those purposes. Unfed people obviously can't work well. In addition, nobody wants to fuck a skeleton.^{[citation NOT needed]}

"The Kajaznuni manifesto exposes Armenian lies"[edit]

Turkish denialists claim that a manifesto written by Ovanes Kajaznuni, the first Armenian prime minister, is evidence of Armenian deceit or... something along those lines. They have not exactly been specific on what Mr. Kajaznuni's manifesto allegedly proves, although they all hold it to be some sort of "smoking gun" that apparently blows the lid off of some giant Armenian conspiracy.^[83] Their method of achieving this has been to forge a fake alternative translation of the manifesto in which Turkish atrocities are not mentioned.^{[84][note 7][85]} It is also customary for Turkish denialists to claim, without evidence, that his manifesto was banned in Armenia and that publications of it were systematically destroyed. The reality is that although Kajaznuni criticizes the Armenian rebels in his manifesto he doesn't deny the tragedy that fell upon the Armenian people and numerous times condemns the Ottomans in the manifesto

The deportations and mass exiles and massacres which took place during the Summer and Autumn of 1915 were mortal blows to the Armenian Cause. Half of historical Armenia – the same half where the foundations of our independence would be laid according to the traditions inherited by European diplomacy – that half was denuded of Armenians: the Armenian provinces of Turkey were without Armenians. The Turks knew what they were doing and have no reason to regret today. It was the most decisive method of extirpating the Armenian Question from Turkey.

Civilized humanity might very well be shaken with rage in the face of this unspeakable crime. Statesmen might utter menacing words against criminal Turkey. “Blue”, “yellow”, “orange” books and papers might be published condemning them. Divine punishment against the criminals might be invoked in churches by clergymen of all denominations. The press of all countries might be filled with horrible descriptions and details and the testimony of eye-witnesses. . . Let them say this or that. . . but the work was already done and words would not revive the corpses fallen in the Arabian deserts, rebuild the ruined hearths, repopulate the country now become desolate. The Turks knew what they ought to do and did it. The second half of 1915 and the entire year of 1916 were periods of hopelessness, desperation and mourning for us. The refugees, all those who had survived the Holocaust, were filling Russian provinces by tens and hundreds of thousands. They were famished, naked, sick, horrified and desperate floods of humanity, flooding our villages and cities. They had come to a country which was itself ruined and famished. They piled upon each other, before our own eyes, on our threshold dying of famine and sickness. . .

When, in final desperation -- with Turkey again threatening to loot, massacre and rape survivors of the holocaust since 1915

"OMG Armenians were involved in Turkish society"[edit]

This is a moronic in content and completely irrelevant attempted red herring used by Turkish denialists as a distraction tactic in order to obscure actual events. However, unlike the others listed, not only is it technically true, but the fact of its truth has no effect on the historicity of the Armenian Genocide. It is thus complete, unadulterated bullshit and deceit.^[86]

In order to deal more thoroughly with this argument, it might be useful to note participation of minorities in certain areas prior to their being subjected to genocide.

For example, here is a comparatively short and by no means exhaustive list of prominent German Jews prior to the Holocaust:

• Gustav Mahler, composer.
• Albert Einstein, physicist.
• Fritz Haber, chemist.
• Rosa Luxemburg, communist revolutionary.
• Felix Mendelssohn, composer.
• Karl Marx, economist.

"Turkey opened archives, Armenians keep theirs closed"[edit]

Turkish denialists, including the government, are fond of stating that Ottoman archives contain no proof of Turkish genocides and that the Armenians are hiding their archives.^[87] It is then implied that within secret Armenian archives is proof of some sort of massive conspiracy to make up a fake genocide or... something.^[88] This is intellectual dishonesty because:

• The documents actually known to be in Armenian archives are consistent with the Armenian position.^[89][90]
• Turkey has had decades to destroy evidence of genocide and has taken full advantage of this time. Even now their archives are not particularly accessible for researchers.^[91][92]
• The Turkish government has banned scholars such as Taner Akcam, Mehmet Uluışık and Ayhan Aktar from entering Turkey's "Open Archives".^[93][94][95]

The Harbord Report[edit]

After World War I, the United States sent general James Guthrie Harbord to investigate the claims of genocide. Similar to the Manifesto of Kajaznuni, Turkish deniers lie about the conclusion of the report and say that he claimed that there wasn't a genocide when, in fact, he claimed the opposite:

The dead, from this wholesale attempt on the race, are variously estimated at from five hundred thousand to a million, the usual figure being about eight hundred thousand. Driven on foot under a hot sun, robbed of their clothing and such petty articles as they carried, prodded by bayonets if they lagged, starvation, typhus, and dysentery left thousands dead by the trail side.^[96]

"The Malta Trials"[edit]

Turkish deniers often cite the Malta trials where a few hundred Turkish officers were unsuccessfully tried for war crimes as proof that no genocide took place. However, deniers leave out the part that the Turkish officers were tried not for crimes against Armenians but for mistreatment of British officers and breaking armistice. Moreover, the trials failed not because the Turkish officers were found to be innocent but because of a lack of legal framework, and thus the prisoners were given back in exchange for British POWs held by Mustafa Kemal.^[97]

"Perincek v Switzerland"[edit]

In 2013, Turkish political activist Doğu Perinçek was put on trial for his denialist remarks about the Armenian genocide during his trip to Switzerland. Perincek was acquitted, and Turkish nationalists have used this case as proof that the Armenian genocide didn't happen. However, they misrepresent the verdict: Perincek was acquitted not because he was able to prove that the genocide didn't happen but because he claimed that his statements were protected under freedom of speech.^[98][99]

Conclusion[edit]

An accomplished Turkish statesman presents his loyal ally with souvenirs from his favorite hobby.

A proud, independent Turkish citizen and honest tradesman expressing righteous indignation at the attempted restriction of his people's traditional and habitual occupation by interfering globalists.

The Turkish government and its supporters have gone to great lengths to deceive the public on the matter of the CUP genocides, especially that of the Armenians. They have forged evidence and attempted to discredit legitimate evidence as worthless, even going so far as to redefine genocide in the process. They have used numerous red herrings and distractions and inflated and conjured up imaginary bogeymen such as the "Armenian gangs", Turkish stories of whose alleged mass atrocities against Muslims amount to an Anatolian version of the blood libel, applied to their own personal hated, marginalized, and persecuted minority on whom blame must be shifted. They have made up an alternative history in which they have committed no genocide or colonialism, despite the fact that Turkish settlement in Anatolia is solely the product of a millennium-long colonialist policy by the Turks themselves.^[100]There is no limit to the deceitfulness of Turkish revisionists.

However, defense against these tactics is fairly simple. None of their arguments have any real substance, and most are complete lies. When in doubt, ignore or demand sources. They will nearly always fail to provide any, or, when they do, their source will be a fringe website that can be rightly dismissed as unreliable. Meanwhile, reliable citations for the consensus position are easy to find.

Not only this, but Turkish impunity has led to the continuation of anti-Armenian sentiment within Turkey and among the Turkish community. A disturbingly large number of Turks engage in open celebration of the Armenian Genocide, calling for all remaining Armenian land to be seized and the people to be killed.^[101][102] This also occurs outside Turkey, suggesting that Turkish education policies are merely part of the problem.^[103] Those areas in Turkey that were not completely depopulated of Armenians in the early 20th century have been subject to a new wave of harassment, vandalism, and hate crimes.^[104] People closely affiliated with the ruling Turkish government and its associated political party are threatening another genocide against what remains of Turkey's Armenian population.^[105] Ethnic Kurdish separatist PKK rebels are referred to as "Armenians", in an attempt at guilt by association.^[106] PKK and Turkish leftists are also alleged to be collaborating with Armenian freedom fighters.^[107] The term "Armenian" is now used in Turkey as an insult.^[108]

The Turkish government itself has also sought to spread Armenian genocide denial abroad. For example, Eric Adams, the federally indicted mayor of New York, was paid bribe money by the Turkish government to "ignore" Armenian Remembrance Day.^[109] In addition to this, while not officially sponsored by the Turkish government, on August 21, 2016 New Yorkers looked up to the skies above to see airplanes write sky messages saying shit like "100 year geno-lie" and "BFF = Russia + Armenia."^[110] This stunt was part of a genocide denial campaign orchestrated by "ArmeniaFactCheck.com".^[110] The company that was hired to perform the stunt was GEICO Skytypers.^[110] A mixed-race flash mob was also orchestrated to promote Armenian genocide denial in the streets of New York at the same time as the aerial stunt.^[111]

Genocide denial goes woke.^[111]

Propaganda[edit]

Turkish nationalists engaging in their other favorite hobby. Such very fine people, aren't they?

The Turkish government and other pro-Turkish organisations have tried to distort facts about the Armenian genocide by spreading propaganda through ads, campaigns, and other means.^{[112][113][114]} This has been successful to some degree because content denying the genocide is one Google search away,^[115] whereas Holocaust denial and Neo-Nazi material are typically found in the darker corners of the Internet.

FactCheckArmenia.com[edit]

FactCheckArmenia.com is a propaganda website dedicated to spreading misinformation and denialism about the Armenian genocide. It has been alleged that the website is funded by — or has connections with — the Turkish government.^[116][117] The website has also bought several online ads promoting its content.^[118][119]

University of Minnesota Lawsuit[edit]

In 2010, the Turkish Coalition of America filed a lawsuit against the University of Minnesota for its denunciation of the group's genocide denial and misinformation. This was essentially an attempt by the TCA to silence the University, but fortunately, a federal court ruled in the University's favor by concluding that its statements weren't defamatory and were protected under freedom of speech.^{[120][121][122]}

The Khojaly massacre[edit]

During the First Nagorno-Karabakh War in 1992, a regiment of the Armenian army approached the important strategic city of Khojaly and slaughtered over 600+ Azeri civilians during the capture of the city. This event is known as the Khojaly massacre. Though it's a sad event, it has been used by the Turkish and Azerbaijani governments alongside Turkish and Azeri nationalists for propaganda purposes,^[123] in which they blow the event way out of proportion and go as far as calling it the Khojaly Genocide in order to make an equivalence with the Armenian genocide by saying that the Armenians have also committed a genocide. There are several problems with this argument:

• What happened in 1992 is unrelated with what happened in 1915, this is pure whataboutism
• The death toll of 600+ people completely pales in comparison with the approx. 1 million Armenians killed in the 1915 genocide
• If the killing of 600+ people can be called a genocide, then the killing of 1 million people can easily be regarded as genocide
• Azerbaijan isn't innocent either here since it has also commited several war crimes during the Nagorno-Karabakh war

Similarities with Holocaust denial[edit]

Although Turkish deniers try to claim that comparing the Armenian Genocide to the Holocaust is like comparing apples to oranges,^[124] the arguments they make are very similar to the arguments Holocaust deniers make:

"But Armenians collaborated with the Nazis"[edit]

Turkish nationalists often respond to comparisons with the Holocaust and Nazi Germany by pointing out that Armenians served in the Nazi Wehrmacht such as the infamous Armenian Nazi legion comprising of about 30,000 soldiers; they mention this to demonize the Armenians and to try to nullify comparisons to the Holocaust by saying that Armenians were Nazis, but they are do not mention that many Turks also supported the Nazis, such as the Turkestan Legion and Azerbaijani Legion comprising of 70,000 soldiers,^[126] the Azerbaijani Nazi Legion together with German Wehrmacht were responsible for the Wola massacre where they slaughtered between 50,000 and 100,000 Poles and, in addition, many Armenians helped to defeat Nazi Germany as about 500,000 Armenians fought for the Soviet Union in WWII.^[127][128]

Antisemitic inversion[edit]

Certain bigots have accused Jews of deliberately not giving the Armenian Genocide (as well as other genocides) enough attention in the media (as they supposedly run it) in order to focus solely on the Holocaust. This conveniently overlooks the fact that unlike the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust had the benefit of the occupation of the Allies who made sure to scrupulously document, photograph, and film as much of it as they could, as well as put as many perpetrators as they could find on trial, thus creating a lot more historical material to study. But who needs things like logic when you can blame the Jews for everything?

That said, Israel (as opposed to the nebulous group of Joooz!!!11!) has been rather loath to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide and careful about not drawing parallels with the Holocaust so as not to offend Turkish officialdom, a fact eagerly snapped up by the aforementioned bigots. This has less to do with any anti-Armenianism and more to do with Turkey being pretty much the only country in the region not hostile to Israel.

Some particularly stupid individuals have stated that the perpetrators of the genocide were Crypto-Jews.^[129]

Anti-Islamic inversion[edit]

As if the above wasn't enough, the infamous conservative tabloid Breitbart launched an article on the 100^th anniversary of the genocide claiming that the world refused to recognize the genocide out of fear of offending Muslims.^[130] The article also claims that the genocide, which was committed by the secular Young Turks, actually had been done out of Islamism. The article conveniently ignores that Syria,^[131] Lebanon^[132] and Iran all recognize the genocide and that Armenian Christians often live closely with the Arab Muslims in many of the countries they reside in.

Needless to say, Armenians are probably not too thrilled about either bigoted inversion listed above, as they're primarily meant to detract from focus on the genocide itself to other bigoted conspiracies.

See also[edit]

• Holocaust denial
• Nationalism in history textbooks
• Nationalist pseudohistory
• Rwandan genocide
• Turkish nationalism

External links[edit]

• See the Wikipedia article on Armenian Genocide.
• See the Wikipedia article on Armenian Genocide recognition.
• Armenian National Institute genocide research library
• State of Denial by Peter Balakian
• The Centennial of the Armenian Genocide
• Denying Your History | Armenian Genocide video on "Knowing Better" YouTube channel
• Timeline of the Armenian genocide
• Le Génocide des Arméniens PHDN on the Armenian genocide and denialism (French)
• Armenisches Leben im Osmanischen Reich vor 1915 (German)
• the University of Minnesota on the Armenian genocide

Notes[edit]

References[edit]