Armenian genocide denial

Armenian genocide denial refers to the false belief that the Armenian genocide[a] did not happen or was not as bad as it was. From 1915 until 1923, the Islamic Ottoman Empire tried to wipe out the Armenians. About 1,500,000 Armenians were killed.[1][2]

Denialist claims

Below is a summary of the common claims made by Armenian genocide deniers:

History

Origins of Armenian genocide denial in Turkey

The Armenian genocide started in 1915, but since 1789, Turkey has denied many acts of violence towards the Armenian people.[10] Fatma Gocek, who studies the Armenian genocide, believes that because Turkey has denied violence towards Armenians since 1789, Turkey was more likely to deny the Armenian genocide.[10]

Since the Armenian genocide happened, the main claim of denial used by the Ottoman Empire (later the Republic of Turkey) has remained the same.[11]The Ottoman Empire believes that the genocide never happened, that Turkey is not responsible for the genocide and that “Genocide” is too strong word to use to describe what happened.[11]

The leaders of the Ottoman Empire thought they could not say the Armenian Genocide was real.[12] This was because most of the countries the Ottoman Empire was allied with had mainly Christian people.[12] Armenians were also Christian, and if the Ottoman Empire’s allies found out the Ottoman Empire used violence against other Christians, the allies would have been upset.[12] Thus, the leaders of the Ottoman Empire attempted to frame the deportations as a response to a national security threat posed by the Armenians.[12]

During the time the genocide was happening, Enver Pasha, told the American ambassador Henry Morgenthau Sr. that the Armenians were separatists, traitors and violent towards Ottoman soldiers and that was why the Ottoman government had to displace them.[4] This was untrue, Armenians were only violent after the genocide had started.[4]

After World War I, Talat Pasha followed Enver's strategy to deny the Armenian Genocide.[4] The Armenians did not participate in violence against the government until after the genocide had started.[4] The violence the Armenians participated in was for their self-defense.[4] The Ottoman Empire tried to prove they were not responsible for the genocide by trying to place the blame on other groups.[11] The Ottoman Empire blamed corrupt officials, Kurds, and criminals for the events of the genocide.[11]

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was the founder of Turkey, and still holds a very important role in how Turkish people see themselves.[13] Ataturk originally supported justice for people responsible for the genocide.[13] He said the genocide was

  • “[A] Shameful [act]”[14]
    • and said
  • “What were the Allied powers waiting for before hanging these scoundrels”[14]
    • Ataturk meant that the Allied powers of World War 1 should have sentenced the people responsible for the genocide to death.

In 1920, the Treaty of Sevres was signed.[13] This would have resulted in a loss of land and loss of sovereignty (the ability for a country to govern itself independently) for Turkey.[13] In 1921 Greece invaded Turkey.[13] In two ways Turkey’s territory and sovereignty were threatened.[13] Because of this, Ataturk changed his opinion on the Armenian Genocide so he could bring Turks together. Ataturk denied the Armenian Genocide to promote nationalism and unity against the two major threats (The Treaty of Sevres and the Greek invasion).[13]

Later, Turkey began a campaign claiming that people who survived the genocide were lying.[15] Turkey also said that foreigners who said the Armenian Genocide happened were part of a group conspiring against Turkey (trying to cause harm to Turkey).[15] Also, Turkey said any documents proving the Armenian Genocide happened were fake.[15]

Armenian genocide denial in modern Turkey

Today, denial of the Armenian Genocide is a large part of Turkish nationalism and how Turks define themselves.[16] If a Turk agreed that the Armenian Genocide was real, this would go against how Turks see their country.[16] This would cause problems with self and national-identity.[16] Many in Turkey still do not believe the Armenian Genocide happened.[17] This is because of five reasons.

Firstly, there were laws which said that people who publicly said they believe the Armenian Genocide is real could go to jail.[18] Secondly, people who believe in the Armenian Genocide are seen as traitors.[17] This creates a lot of social pressure to continue denial.[17] Thirdly, many Turkish people do not learn about Armenian history.[17] Fourthly, many Turkish and Kurdish people gained property and wealth because of the genocide.[17] When Armenian people were removed from their homes, their homes and belongings were divided between other people.[17] Fifthly, Turkish people were affected by social amnesia (a group of people start to forget their past because other people remove evidence of the truth).[18]

Research

In 1990, psychologist Robert Jay Lifton got a letter from the Turkish Ambassador to the United States. In the letter, the Ambassador asked Lifton how he could have talked about the Armenian Genocide in one of his books (because the Ambassador believed the Genocide never happened). By mistake, the Ambassador also included a draft of a letter written by scholar Heath Lowry, which told him how to keep the Armenian Genocide from being talked about in books. Lowry was later named to a chair (an important position) at Princeton University. Princeton had been given a $750,000 grant from the Republic of Turkey. This led to many arguments about ethics in scholarship.[1][2]

Open University of Israel scholar Yair Auron has talked about the different ways the Turkish government has tried to make it seem like the Armenian Genocide never happened:[19]

Since the 1980s, the Turkish government has supported the establishment of "institutes" affiliated with respected universities, whose apparent purpose is to further research on Turkish history and culture, but which also tend to act in ways that further denial.

Auron is saying that since the 1980s, the Turkish government has given money to some good universities to create "institutes" that should study Turkish history and culture more in details. However, these institutes helped to deny the Genocide and the events of it even more.

University of California, Los Angeles scholar Leo Kuper, in a review on Ervin Staub's The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence, wrote:[20]

The Armenian genocide is a contemporary current issue, given the persistent aggressive denial of the crime by the Turkish government - not withstanding its own judgment in courts martial after the first World War, that its leading ministers had deliberately planned and carried out the annihilation of Armenians, with the participation of many regional administrators.

Kuper is saying that the Turkish government keeps saying the Genocide never happened. But in courts-martial after World War I, the Turkish government admitted that it organized, planned, and committed the genocide of Armenians.

Issues

Laws in Turkey

In the aftermath of the Armenian Genocide, the newly founded Republic of Turkey created an organization that investigated how many Armenians had died between 1915 and 1918. It was discovered that 800.000 people had died during this time, though many historians believe the death toll is much higher.

The founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, admitted to the killing of Armenians more than once after the World War I, and many within his movement agreed accountability was needed. This changed in the following years, when it was discovered that many of Turkey's founders were involved in the genocide. Since these men were celebrated as heroes during the First World War, their crimes were not recognized by Turkey.

Turkey continues to deny the murder of the Armenian people in the Ottoman Empire was a genocide. While there is no a specific law in Turkey today that forbids people from talking about the genocide, there have been many cases of Turkey using the law to stop education on the Armenian Genocide. Scholars of history have named several reasons why does Turkey still continues to deny the Armenian Genocide. [21] For instance, many Turkish policymakers have expressed that admitting to the genocide would result in Armenia calling for reparations, or even demand back the territories they lost in World War I.[22]

International Laws

Some countries, for example, Switzerland, have laws which punish thoese people who deny genocides or crimes against humanity.[23] A Turkish politician Dogu Perinçek was found guilty by this Swiss law in March 2007 because he said that the Armenian genocide is “a great international lie.” [24] He did not agree with the court`s decision, and he said that the decision went against his freedom of speech (the right to express ones opinion without legal intervention). He went against the court`s decision, and his law case went to the European Court of Human Rights. The court decided that Dogu Perinçek is not guilty and that this law is against the freedom of expression.[23]

Mass media

In the June 6, 2005 edition of the TIME Europe magazine, the Ankara Chamber of Commerce paid for tourism advertisements. These advertisements included DVDs accusing Armenian people of killing Turkish people. [25] TIME Europe later apologized for sharing the DVD and published a letter saying the DVDs were wrong. The February 12, 2007 edition of TIME Europe had a page that said that the Armenian genocide did really happen. It also included a DVD of a documentary by French director Laurence Jourdan about the genocide.[26]

In 2014, Armenian-American singer-songwriter Serj Tankian wrote a letter addressed to the "People of Turkey" in which he posed the question "Must I fight propoganda and corruption internationally to regain justice?" In it he talks about how the Denial of the Armenian Genocide has impacted him, and how he feels Turkey could do better moving forward.[27]

Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day

The 24th of April is the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. In 2015, exactly 100 years after the genocide, lots of seminars, workshops, and events were organized in the capital city of Armenia, Yerevan. Presidents, politicians and important people from all around the world were invited, and the Turkish President Recip Tayyip Erdogan as well.[28] Erdogan answered back with an invitation for a celebration of the battle of Gallipoli.[29] For the first time, the celebration of this battle was on the same day as the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. This decision might have been a trick to turn international attention away from the Armenian Genocide. Armenian president at that time, Armen Sargystan, said in his answer to Erdogan`s invitation that “it is not our rule to be hosted by guests.”[30]

On this day, there were protests all around the world. For example, in Tehran, around 1,000 people protested in front of the Turkish embassy. Even in Istanbul around 100 people called for the recognition of the Armenian genocide.[28]

Countries that recognise the Armenian genocide

The following countries recognize the Armenian genocide:[31]

  1. Argentina
  2. Austria
  3. Belgium
  4. Bolivia
  5. Brazil
  6. Canada
  7. Chile
  8. Cyprus
  9. Czech Republic
  10. Denmark
  11. France
  12. Germany
  13. Greece
  14. Italy
  15. Latvia
  16. Lebanon
  17. Lithuania
  18. Luxembourg
  19. Mexico
  20. Netherlands
  21. Paraguay
  22. Poland
  23. Portugal
  24. Russia
  25. Slovakia
  26. Sweden
  27. Switzerland
  28. Syria
  29. Vatican City
  30. Venezuela
  31. United States
  32. Uruguay

United States

Ronald Reagan

On April 22 1981, US President Ronald Reagan talked about the Armenian Genocide in reference to a speech he made about the Holocaust, saying "Like the genocide of the Armenians before it ... the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten".[32]

Joe Biden

In 2021, US President Joe Biden said that the killing of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire was a genocide.[33] This was the first time when an American president formally and publicly recognised this event as a genocide.[33] This decision made relationships between USA and Turkey more complicated but was important for Armenians living in the United States.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Introduction to the Armenian genocide:
    • "The Armenian Genocide (1915-16): In Depth". Holocaust Encyclopedia. Retrieved May 28, 2025.
    • "24 April 1915: Deportation of Armenian Intellectuals". Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. Retrieved May 28, 2025.
    • Kévorkian, Raymond (2011). The Armenian genocide: a complete history. I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd. ISBN 9781848855618. Retrieved November 16, 2024.
    • Suny, Ronald Grigor (2015). ""They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else": A History of the Armenian Genocide". De Gruyter. 23. Princeton University Press. doi:10.1515/9781400865581. ISBN 978-1-4008-6558-1. Retrieved November 16, 2024.

References

  1. ↑ "8 facts about the Armenian genocide 100 years ago - CNN.com". CNN. 23 April 2015. Retrieved 2015-12-13.
  2. ↑ "100 Years Ago, 1.5 Million Armenians Were Systematically Killed. Today, It's Still Not A 'Genocide.'". The Huffington Post. 23 April 2015. Retrieved 2015-12-13.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Akçam, Taner (2012). The Young Turks' Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-15333-9. What must be understood is that the thesis known in Turkey as the 'official version' ... takes as its starting point the assumption that the events of 1915 were derived from governmental actions that were, in essence, within the bounds of what are considered normal and legal actions for a state entity and cannot therefore be explained through a recourse to criminality or criminal law. According to this assumption, under certain conditions a government or a state can resort to actions such as 'forcible deportation,' even if they result in the deaths of its own citizens, and there are no moral or legal grounds upon which such actions can be faulted.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 Suny, Ronald Grigory (2015). "They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else": A History of the Armenian Genocide. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-6558-1. The Turkish state and those few historians who reject the notion of genocide have argued that the tragedy was the result of a reasonable and understandable response of a government to a rebellious and seditious population in time of war and mortal danger to the state's survival ... There was no genocide, and the Armenians were to blame for it. They were rebellious, seditious subjects who presented a danger to the empire and got what they deserved ... Still—the denialists claim—despite the existential threat posed by the Armenians and their Russian allies to the survival of the empire, there was no intention or effort by the Young Turk regime to eliminate the Armenians as a people.
  5. ↑
    • Moses, A. Dirk (2013). "Genocide vs. Security: a False Opposition". Journal of Genocide Research. 15 (4): 463–509. doi:10.1080/14623528.2013.856095. This is a telling slip; Lewy is talking about 'the Armenians' as if the defenceless women and children who comprised the deportation columns were vicariously responsible for Armenian rebels in other parts of the country. The collective guilt accusation is unacceptable in scholarship, let alone in normal discourse and is, I think, one of the key ingredients in genocidal thinking. It fails to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, on which international humanitarian law has been insisting for over a hundred years now.
    • Kaligian, Dikran (2014). "Anatomy of Denial: Manipulating Sources and Manufacturing a Rebellion". Genocide Studies International. 8 (2): 208–223. doi:10.3138/gsi.8.2.06. One of the key arguments made by genocide deniers is that the deportations, and whatever 'unfortunate excesses' occurred during them, were not part of a plan of extermination but rather a response to an Armenian rebellion in the eastern provinces in collaboration with Russia.
    • Robertson, Geoffrey (2015). An Inconvenient Genocide: Who Now Remembers the Armenians?. Biteback Publishing. p. 117. ISBN 978-1-84954-822-9. 'Necessity' in war can never justify the deliberate killing of civilians: if they are suspected of treason or loyalty to the enemy they may be detained or interned, or prosecuted, but not sent on marches from which they are expected not to return.
  6. ↑ Hovannisian, Richard G. (2001). "Denial: The Armenian Genocide as a Prototype". Remembering for the Future: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 796–812. ISBN 978-1-349-66019-3.
  7. ↑ Bloxham, Donald (2005). The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-922688-7.
  8. ↑ Akçam, Taner (2018). Killing Orders: Talat Pasha's Telegrams and the Armenian Genocide. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-3-319-69787-1. On one hand, there are successive Turkish governments that have destroyed any and all evidence that would show the events of 1915 to have been a systematic program of annihilation; this has included all of the case files from the post-war trials of the Unionists (1919–1921) ... On the other hand, there is the chorus of historians who reiterate the line that, in the absence of solid, reliable documentary evidence—in other words, 'smoking guns' from the Ottoman archives or elsewhere—proving otherwise, there can be no objective claim of a government-sponsored genocide against the Armenians ...
  9. ↑
    • Marchand, Laure; Perrier, Guillaume (2015). Turkey and the Armenian Ghost: On the Trail of the Genocide. McGill-Queen's Press. pp. 111–112. ISBN 978-0-7735-9720-4. The Iğdır genocide monument is the ultimate caricature of the Turkish government's policy of denying the 1915 genocide by rewriting history and transforming victims into guilty parties.
    • Cheterian, Vicken (2015). Open Wounds: Armenians, Turks and a Century of Genocide. Hurst. ISBN 978-1-84904-458-5. Some of the proponents of this official narrative have even gone so far as to claim that the Armenians were the real aggressors, and that Muslim losses were greater than those of the Armenians.
    • Gürpınar, Doğan (2016). "The Manufacturing of Denial: the Making of the Turkish 'Official Thesis' on the Armenian Genocide Between 1974 and 1990". Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies. 18 (3): 217–240. doi:10.1080/19448953.2016.1176397. Maintaining that 'the best defence is a good offence', the new strategy involved accusing Armenians in response for perpetrating genocide against the Turks. The violence committed by the Armenian committees under the Russian occupation of Eastern Anatolia and massacring of tens of thousands of Muslims (Turks and Kurds) in revenge killings in 1916–17 was extravagantly displayed, magnified and decontextualized.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Göçek, Fatma Müge (2014-11-03), "Young Turk Denial of the Act of Violence, 1908–1918", Denial of Violence, Oxford University Press, pp. 151–257, doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199334209.003.0003, ISBN 978-0-19-933420-9, retrieved 2023-05-15
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 Hovannisian, Richard G. (1998). Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide. Wayne State University. p. 273.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 Akçam, Taner (2012-04-15). The Young Turks' Crime against Humanity. Princeton University Press. pp. xi. doi:10.23943/princeton/9780691153339.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-691-15333-9.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5 13.6 Melson, Robert (2008). "A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, Taner Akçam (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), xii + 467 pp., $30.00". Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 22: 113–114.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Akcam, Taner (2006). A shameful act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility. New York: Metropolitan Books. pp. 345–346.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 Marchand, Guillame Perrier, Debbie Blythe, Laure (2015). Turkey and the Armenian Ghost: On the Trail of the Genocide. Montreal: MQUP. p. 116.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 Bilali, Rezarta (2013). "National Narrative and Social Psychological Influences in Turks' Denial of the Mass Killings of Armenians as Genocide". Journal of Social Issues. 69 (1): 20. doi:10.1111/josi.12001. ISSN 0022-4537.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 17.3 17.4 17.5 Oranlı, Imge (2020-11-24). "Epistemic Injustice from Afar: Rethinking the Denial of Armenian Genocide". Social Epistemology. 35 (2): 121–122. doi:10.1080/02691728.2020.1839593. ISSN 0269-1728.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Alayarian, Aida (2008). Consequences of Denial: The Armenian Genocide. London: Karnac Books. pp. xiv, 125.
  19. ↑ Auron, Yair. The Banality of Denial, p. 47
  20. ↑ "Review (The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence. by Ervin Staub)", Leo Kuper // Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 19, No. 5. (Sep., 1990), p. 683
  21. ↑ Cooper, Belinda; Akcam, Taner (2005). "Turks, Armenians, and the "G-Word"". World Policy Journal. 22 (3): 81–93. ISSN 0740-2775. JSTOR 40209979.
  22. ↑ de Waal, Thomas (2015). "The G-Word: The Armenian Massacre and the Politics of Genocide". Foreign Affairs. 94 (1): 136–148. ISSN 0015-7120. JSTOR 24483226.
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 "Article". merlin.obs.coe.int. Retrieved 2023-05-02.
  24. ↑ "Human Rights Court: Denial of Armenian genocide is not a crime". www.euractiv.com. 2015-10-16. Retrieved 2023-05-02.
  25. ↑ Vick, Karl (2005-09-30). "In Turkey, a Clash of Nationalism and History". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2023-05-09.
  26. ↑ fm (2007-02-02). "TIME carries documentary, adopts policy on Armenian Genocide". Financial Mirror. Retrieved 2023-05-09.
  27. ↑ "Serj Tankian writes a letter to the people of Turkey | Music of Armenia". 2018-02-05. Archived from the original on 2018-02-05. Retrieved 2023-05-09.
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 "Armenians mark 100 years since genocide". France 24. 2015-04-24. Retrieved 2023-04-25.
  29. ↑ "Turkey invites Armenian president to 100th anniversary of Gallipoli War". www.tert.am. Archived from the original on 2023-04-25. Retrieved 2023-04-25.
  30. ↑ "It isn't our rule to be hosted by guest - Armenian leader to Turkey's Erdogan". www.tert.am. Archived from the original on 2023-04-25. Retrieved 2023-04-25.
  31. ↑ "Countries that Recognize the Armenian Genocide". www.armenian-genocide.org. Retrieved 2023-04-18.
  32. ↑ "Ronald Reagan". www.armenian-genocide.org. Retrieved 2023-05-09.
  33. ↑ 33.0 33.1 "What Biden's Recognition of Armenian Genocide Means to Armenian-Americans". Time. 2021-04-27. Retrieved 2023-04-28.
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