Mick Hartley

Jake Romin at Forward:

Imagine, for a moment, that after the Holocaust the official German position was one of denial. That the German heads of state have, since 1945, consistently asserted that the events of the Holocaust were nasty, yes, but both the Jews and the Germans bear some responsibility, and in the end, well, such things happen in times of war. It’s a disgusting thought. But now, imagine further – not only do the Germans take this position, but much of the world, including the United States, a country whose leaders and soldiers saw the camps and the corpses, participates in the denial. They allude to certain “facts” and “regrettable horrors” but they refuse to utter the only responsible word – genocide. Putrid, no?

This is the present situation of the Armenians. I should not have to ground the Armenian Genocide in comparisons to the Holocaust to illustrate its horror, it was a genocide, and is thus reserved a special, terrible place in human history all its own (indeed, the word “genocide” was coined by Raphael Lemkin precisely in response to the Armenian Genocide). It should be enough to say, “here a genocide occurred, and it remains unacknowledged,” but, as we have seen, this is not enough. The United States has not yet formally recognized the Armenian Genocide, nor has the U.K., nor (most upsettingly) has Israel, nor have a host of other countries. Even the countries that do formally recognize the Armenian Genocide only adopted this position, largely, within the past 20 years despite the fact that the genocide occurred in 1915 (though, the events directly leading up to the genocide began far earlier, and killings took place until 1923).

The fact of the Armenian Genocide is beyond dispute. The Armenians, a Christian people living primarily in eastern Anatolia, had long been the subject of Ottoman animus due to religious and ethnic tensions….

Unlike the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide was not a rigidly structured, mechanized, industrial effort. Rather, the killings largely took the form of death marches, in which Armenians were forced from their homes for “relocation,” then marched through the Empire until they perished from exhaustion, disease, exposure, or starvation. In addition to the marches, there were more straightforward mass killings by the Ottoman military as well as bands of mobile executioners (many of whom were criminals released from prison precisely for this purpose) that operated much like the Nazi Einsatzgruppen. Those Armenians that weren’t killed were either used as slave labor (and then murdered), sold into sex slavery, or forcibly converted to Islam.

When the genocide finally ended in 1923, around 1.5 million Armenians had been killed or displaced, the region of Armenia almost entirely purged of its historic people. To further drive this devastation home, the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire, prior to the genocide comprised only 2 million people. The genocide destroyed 75% of the entire Ottoman-Armenian population.

So why, in the face of such indisputable and monstrous facts, do we continue to the deny the existence of the Armenian Genocide? This refusal stems from a moral cowardice in the face of Turkish threats. The official position of the Turkish government, which has remained consistent since 1914, has been to deny the facts and to reframe the narrative of the genocide. The Turkish government frames the events of the Armenian Genocide as the natural consequence of war. The genocide largely took place during World War I, and the Turkish government often cites examples of Armenian self defense (like the uprising at Van) as proof that the Armenian population represented a genuine fifth column during the war, and thus it was relocated due to military concerns. Some go further and assert that the genocide was in actuality, nothing more than particularly bloody civil war, in which the Armenians committed as many atrocities as the Turks.

The world knows that this is false, and yet, in order to preserve “good” relations with Turkey (how one can maintain positive relations with a genocide denying dictator is another question), countries around the world commit moral suicide and acquiesce to the demands of those who would cover the perpetration of a genocide at the expense of the victims.

This is by way of introduction to a new film "The Promise", due soon for general release, which is, apparently, a love story set against the background of World War 1 and the Armenian Genocide. Romin doesn't rate it overmuch – "a routine, incredibly maudlin, somewhat disjointed affair" – but welcomes it nonetheless simply because, as the first big budget film to cover the Genocide, it will bring the subject to an audience previously unaware of the history.

Fair enough, I suppose – though personally I don't understand the need to present such subjects through the medium of sentimental fictions. [Life is Beautiful comes to mind. No, I haven't seen it. And no, I don't intend to.] If you want to learn about these things, there are enough documentaries around – here, for instance.

The Turks, meanwhile, despite all the evidence, continue their denial.