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Why hasn't Turkey acknowledged the Armenian Genocide?

This is a great question.

In no particular order:

·         It happened during the Ottoman Empire, not when "Turkey" was a state. The Turkish state really had to distance itself from its past.

·         The financial implications and reparations that Turkey would have to pay are not insignificant. (And what about giving land back? That's huge.)

·         Turkey has a Kurdish problem to deal with that means that the Armenian problem takes a backseat.

·         Turkey has done such a good job erasing the Genocide/Armenian past out of its history, most Turkish adults today don't know anything about it and/or have been made to believe the framing that Turkey has done.

·         There hasn't been a lot of "unbiased" investigation. Ethnic Armenian scholars do most of the research and ethnic Armenian groups do a lot of the lobbying and sometimes they go a little TOO far, which lessens their credibility.

·         Turkey is of strategic importance to many countries (US, EU) and thus international pressure is another question entirely.

·         Turkey is a pretty closed/authoritarian society (not as much as others, but...) and discussion of the issue is touchy and can get people in trouble.

On a positive note, some Turkish intellectuals have started discussing it more and more.

The Turks and the Armenians agree on most things here. That a bunch of Armenians were killed, that Turkey forced the evacuation of many citizens, that the evacuation camps were under-provisioned, that individual Turkish commanders, militias and civilians mistreated and massacred masses of Armenians, and so on. There are disagreements to the extent of what happened: Turks say 500K killed, Armenians say 2M, but the general outlines are clear.

What they disagree on is intent. 
The Turks look for an unambiguous official statement of policy of genocide: a “Final Solution” speech from a ruler, an official “kill them all and let god decide” telegram. But nobody has come up with that*. The Armenians, on the other hand, say that the facts prove the genocide: there are a lot of dead people, therefore there was a genocide.

Which one is right? 
Well, the Turks, obviously, do not want to cop to committing an atrocity if there is not strong proof.  For some, as in any country, nothing will be sufficient to convince them. For many though, they are looking for a  clear statement of intent - a high bar.

The Armenians are in a tougher position. As a diaspora, in danger of being assimilated into other cultures, they need bonds to maintain their identity. A story of overcoming shared hardship is not just desirable, but even necessary to keep their shared cultural heritage alive. So they will emphasize the hardships and destruction, and the massive killings that we know happened.

So no agreement is possible until a standard of proof is agreed on.
----
* Other than the probably forged Naim Bey telegrams.

Written 19 Oct 2014 • View Upvotes

Stravo Lukos

6.6k Views • Upvoted by Serdar Yalçın, I am a Turk, living in Istanbul.

My papou's (grandpa's) older brother was killed during the halcyon days of the fall of the Ottoman Empire. I've been taught that the Turks are cruel  beasts all my life. But the Turks I've met have been much nicer to me than many Greeks, so I began to question the smears, jingoisms, & hate. The whole issue became so confusing that it took me years to clear the facts from the smoke. Even now, we are left w/ little more than one side or the other pointing fingers & yelling inanities. 
 
First of all, Ataturk, that great atheistic, ethnically mixed father of the Turks, was never a genocidal proponent. You will find even Armenian docents in Istanbul who sing the praises of his name. Even Venizelos, founder of the modern Greek republic, became fast friends w/Ataturk. So to blame the "genocides" on official commitment is very flimsy. There simply is no solid evidence. Yes, this could be indicative of plausible denial; however, that was not in vogue during this age of war & negative eugenics (e.g., ethnic cleansing). What Kemal was was a highly trained & experienced soldier, a very hardened soldier who would do anything it took to save his country from annihilation by the Russians & Armenians, & the Greek nationalists who wanted back their ancient lands. 
 
The second thing we must realize is that this whole area of the Balkans & Asia Minor had been embroiled in wars since 1912-- the latest fighting ending 10 years later. The Balkan Wars had been fought. WW1 was recently ended. The Ottoman Empire collapsed under the attacks of the Young Turks. Old scores were being settled among the prior nations of the region. They continue to this day! Treaty of Versailles, the allies led the Greeks to believe that they would be supported in toppling the Ottomans & reestablishing old borders among the Greeks, Assyrians, & Armenians. Recall that Ottoman Turkiye was allied to Germany. By the '20s, attitudes had changed, however, & the Ottomans were finished anyway, so the agreement was broken. The Greeks et al attacked, were not supplied, & had to fall back & lick their wounds. Meanwhile, the Turks were furious bc they had ousted the Ottomans in favor of a modern, westernized republic yet were attacked for the crimes of their oppressors/predecessors.
 
Third, Kemal/Ataturk, had to keep former Ottomans in his armies to lead the troops. That some of those officers were psychopaths seems a fair judgment. Old grudges against ethnic minorities were carried out w/ a flair among some of the regiments. This happens on any battlefield, esp. in a nation of mixed cultures that hate each other. All sides were guilty of rampaging in a most medieval manner. Those who say different are ignorant, brainwashed, or liars. I will not waste time arguing the point. I've been everything from a boot recruit to an officer in the American military. & America still tries to hide the facts of war from its people. Btw, Kemal actively pursued those he felt actually did commit genocide. That seems to elude modern history books. 
 
Fourth, today's western student has absolutely no idea how battles were fought in the Balkans & Middle East. Modern Serbian "atrocities" pale in comparison to what happened in cities like Smyrna during the invasion of Turkiye. During the Second Balkan War (in which Greece & Turkiye were allies), for example, one of the cherished heroes of the day was a Greek soldier who cannibalized Bulgarians. There were postcards of the monster! The word hate simply doesn't do justice to the ferocity & horror of such a mindset. Yes, there were many tales of compassion as well; however, today's nationalist is all about waving the bloody shirt. Fine. Just make sure to wave all the bloody shirts. 
 
Finally, where are all the bodies? Doesn't that bother anyone but the Turks? I'm not saying it didn't happen that thousands or maybe  millions were killed during the invasions, just that a true judicial system requires the bodies be shown. Then we need to prove beyond any doubt that this was official policy. So far, zilch has been put forward. We see heart-rending photos, but who were those people? Many pics simply aren't labeled or captioned in any manner. What exactly are we supposed to be seeing? Both sides foam at the mouth over this even though the battles were fought a century ago. 
 
In a sense, I cannot blame Turkiye for resisting the accusations. Who wants to see his people as raving mass murders? And what would a forced confession entail? Would the affected groups demand reparations? How would that affect the present government which is fighting extreme elements in Turkiye today? Do we really want to see Turkish secularism replaced by some Sharia Taliban? Really, I'm sick of listening to the idiocy screaming from both sides. By now, Greece & Turkiye should be the closest of friends & allies. Think what that would do for the economies of both nations, let alone the cooperation among all ethnicities in each. To fight battles of a century past is pure lunacy. If anyone has justifiable grievances against an invading nation, it has to be the American Indian. Yet most indigenous peoples don't want to see Whites driven out of what is now their native land, nor do they wish to return to a pre-agricultural, nomadic lifestyle no matter how romanticized that has become. We all must deal w/ the realities of today. Let the past rot. My two cents. Let the mud-slinging begin!
 

There are some here in Turkey who believe that the events of the 1915 are a genocide. But the majority, I mean may be more than the 90% percent of the majority, believe otherwise. Let's see the reasons:

1.       Turkish education system, does no mention of Armenian genocide whatsoever. However the history textbooks I read contained lots of information on Armenian atrocities against the muslim population of the Eastern Anatolia (Turks & Kurds). (Which are also true)

2.      Armenians then wanted an independent Armenia, where they were not a majority. (Kurds were and are). They revolted and take up arms against the Ottoman Empire along with the Russian Empire. Seeing the same pattern with Serbs, Greeks etc. Ottoman Government, led by the nationalistic "Itttihat ve Terakki" (Committee of Union and Progress Party), decided that Armenians should go to Dar-el Zor in Syria (then within Ottoman Empire), where they would have no chance to revolt and no chance to carve a state of their own.

3.      Most Turks believe that the Ottoman government then moved just about 500.000 Armenians across the empire. (There are  other sources that claim 1.500.000 to 2 million Armenians have been moved or killed, but does the number really matter?). But they believe the intent was not to kill any Armenians, instead to provide security to both Muslims and Armenians.

4.      Some Turks believe Armenians just got what they deserved because of their ungratefulness and backstabbing.

5.      Most Turks believe that Ottoman Empire provided security and religious freedom to non muslims (true to a point) across the empire. They think that, if they wanted to have destroyed infidels, they would have long ago, with ease.

6.      Turkish media (most of them anyway), reacts strongly to any mention of an Armenian Genocide. They sometimes provide or coordinate action against personal or international recognitions.

7.      Turkish law forbids saying "Turks did ... (insert nation) Genocide", because it insults Turkishness. (As a Turk, I really don't understand what that means)

8.      They are reminding everybody who recognizes the genocide, the Armenian terrorist organization of ASALA, who killed many Turkish diplomats across the world.

9.      Some are angry because of Armenia's occupation of Azerbaijan.

So it may not be such an obvious case for most Turks as you put it. 
But no one here asks or answers a simple question of why in the hell defenseless people mostly women and children, who are Ottoman citizens, have been perished across the deserts of Syria, without protection, without supplies. 

Continuing,

Pros of Turkey's recognition of Armenian Genocide:

·         Accepting one's mistakes is good?

·         Old friend's reunion. (A very good and old friendship!!!)

·         ...

YEREVAN, Armenia — Thousands of Armenians laid flowers around an eternal flame here on Friday in memory of the 1.5 million people killed in Ottoman Turkey a century ago. The ceremony was one of many around the world marking the 100th anniversary of what historians call a genocide.

The legacy of those mass killings and forced deportations, which Turkey still insists were not genocide, remains a source of bitter enmity and continues to roil politics in Asia Minor and beyond.

On an ashen gray day here in the Armenian capital, President Serzh Sargsyan was joined by international delegations that included Presidents Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and François Hollande of France at the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex, the main monument to the Armenian genocide, on a hilltop overlooking the city.

Mr. Sargsyan, in his opening remarks, described the killing of Armenians as “unprecedented in terms of volume and ramifications” at that point in history.

“The western part of the Armenian people, who for millenniums had lived in their homeland, in the cradle of their civilization, were displaced and annihilated under a state-devised plan,” Mr. Sargsyan said, “with direct participation of the army, police, other state institutions, and gangs comprising criminals released from the prisons specifically for this purpose.”

“Around 1.5 million human beings were slaughtered merely for being Armenian,” he said.

The forced exiles that accompanied the killings in Ottoman Turkey transformed the Armenians into one of the world’s largest diaspora peoples — estimated at up to 10 million people, more than three times Armenia’s population.

Many of the mourners in Yerevan on Friday had traveled from Russia, Iran, the United States and other countries with large Armenian communities.

Charles A. Hajinian, 61, a dentist from Delafield, Wis., carried an aging black-and-white photograph of his great-grandmother. “I came to remember my great-grandmother, my great-uncles, both my great-grandparents died, my great-cousins,” Dr. Hajinian said, fighting back tears. “I came to say thank you to the Armenians for surviving, fighting and putting this monument up.”

Gevorg Tonoyan, 60, an elevator technician, who was waiting with his 2 ½-year-old granddaughter to enter the memorial complex, said: “Whatever happens, we will not forget. We will come, we will honor our victims, our martyrs.”

In some cases, mourners expressed seething anger at the Turks. Sona Ghazaryan, 63, a religion teacher, said, “Only at a time when our neighbor apologizes, washes their bloody hands and gives us back our treasures” could there be reconciliation.

Photo

Turks and Armenians marked the anniversary on Friday in Istanbul.CreditDeniz Toprak/European Pressphoto Agency

“How can you be neighbor with someone if they have a dagger and wants to stab you in your back?” she said.

An increasing number of world leaders have endorsed Armenia’s position that the mass killings in 1915 constitute a genocide; Turkey says it was a tragic outcome of a bloody war, but not a planned genocide.

“We sincerely sympathize with the Armenian people who suffered one of the most awful tragedies in the history of mankind,” said Mr. Putin, who decided to attend the ceremony in Yerevan and eschew a ceremony in Turkey, brought forward by one day, commemorating the Turkish victory in the Battle of Gallipoli.

The American delegation to Yerevan was led by Jacob J. Lew, the secretary of the Treasury, and the White House referred to the ceremony Friday as the “Centennial Commemoration of the Events of 1915” — euphemistic enough perhaps to satisfy President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, but a disappointment to Armenians who had hoped Mr. Obama would make good on his promise as a presidential candidate to recognize the killings as genocide.

In a new statement on Friday, Mr. Obama called the killings of Armenians “the first mass atrocity of the 20th century.”

He also suggested that the absence of the word genocide in his statement was an official position, but not a reflection of his personal beliefs. “I have consistently stated my own view of what occurred in 1915, and my view has not changed,” Mr. Obama said.

By now, with the facts well established, it is largely a semantic debate that Turkey seems to be losing. And even some people in Turkey have called for recognition and reconciliation given the increasingly settled world opinion.

Beyond the fight over the term genocide, the enmity between Turkey and Armenia still weighs heavily in both countries and is a major factor in regional politics.

The border between the two nations is sealed, in what amounts to an economic barrier for the entire region, and Armenia remains officially at war with its other Turkic Muslim neighbor, Azerbaijan, over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

At the memorial complex in Yerevan, many Armenians said they wanted Turkey to acknowledge the genocide, as a matter of historical justice. But none seemed to be holding their breath.

“If you have a scab, a sore, and you keep picking at it, it will never heal, and that’s the sad part of Turkey, they are hurting themselves by not acknowledging,” said Dr. Hajinian, the dentist from Wisconsin. “But for the rest of the world and for us, we know in our hearts what happened. We don’t need the acknowledgment of Turkey for our healing.”

Correction: April 30, 2015 
An article on Saturday about a ceremony in Yerevan, Armenia, marking the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide misspelled the surname of a dentist from Wisconsin who said he came to remember relatives killed then. He is Charles A. Hajinian, not Hijinian.

Armenian Genocide or Mets Eghern is carefully planned massacre of the Armenian population which resulted in the extermination of the Armenian population from their historical homeland Western Armenia.
It was implemented in two stages. The first stage was the slaughter in 1894-96 organized by the sultan of Ottoman Empire Abdul Hamid II. The second stage started in 1909 with the mass carnages of Adana and continued throughout 1915-23. The organisers were the leaders of the Young Turk Party and the Committee of Union and Progress (Ittihat) and later the representatives of the Turkish National Movement.

The first response was the joint announcement made by France, Great Britain and Russia in 1915 which qualified the encroachment on Armenians as “a crime against humanity and civilization’’. According to them the Turkish government was guilty for the annihilation of the Armenians.
Since the start of World War I around 60 000 Armenian males were recruited to Ottoman Army. They were disarmed and killed by their Turkish comrade-in-arms in 1915. On April 24, in Constantinople (Istanbul) began the mass imprisonment and execution of hundreds of Armenian intellectuals; the talents of the Armenian nation were exterminated.

The policy of the physical extermination of the Armenian population continued. The elderly, women and children were marched out hundreds of kilometers to the Syrian town of Deir ez-Zor and the surrounding desert, without food and water. During the deportation and in concentration camps situated in Syrian deserts (Deir ez-Zor, Ra's al-'Ayn, Raka, Maskanah) hundreds of thousands of people were killed by Ottoman troops, officers, Kurdish assassins; others perished of starvation and infectious diseases. Thousands of women were raped, children were abused. Besides, thousands of Armenians were forced to change into Muslims.
1 500 000 Armenians were exterminated as a result of massacres and deportations. Mets Eghern was the first Genocide of the 20th century planned at the Government level and carried out systematically with the aim of the total extermination of the Armenian nation from the earth. As the world turned a blind eye in the face of the slaughters, it served as a precedent for the other Genocides of the 20th century.

Today the Republic of Turkey refuses to accept the undeniable fact of the Armenian Genocide carried out by the Ottoman Empire. The problem of the recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide as a memory of the neglected tragedy passes from generation to generation. Twenty-one countries have officially recognized and condemned the Armenian Genocide. R

About the projectecognize 1915” project is dedicated to 100th anniversary of Armenian Genocide which is coming in 2015. Initiators of this project are patriots – descendants of people who escaped from ethnical mass murders in Turkey at the end of the 19th and at the beginning of 20th centuries. We carry all sorrow and pain of those years... pain that will not let us tolerate these crimes. Each and every one of us took responsibility for supporting worldwide recognition and condemnation of Armenian Genocide, as such crime cannot possibly have limitation period. We strongly believe that every person, no matter his/her nationality, should recognize and condemn all crimes and massacres organized by Turkey during first decades of the 20th century.

This project was developed to inform the whole world about horrendous tragedy happened in the beginning of previous century, which took lives of almost 1.5 million Armenians. As many of us often write personal and corporate emails to the people and organisations abroad, we created “Recognize 1915” signature which can be inserted into your emails. With this project we want to remind people that any unpunished crime can be made again.

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