Armenian historians have addressed an open letter to US President Joe Biden, hoping to see clearly the term genocide in his annual April 24 address.

The letter has been signed by the Union of Historians of Armenia, the History Institute of the National Academy of Sciences, the History Faculty of the Yerevan State University, the Institute for Armenian Scientific Research of the YSU, the Faculty of History and Social Science of the Armenian State Pedagogical University.

In the letter the historians state that they do not seek to scientifically prove once again the obvious fact of the Armenian Genocide. The concern is connected with the persistent denial by Turkey, which serves for that country as a carte blanche to make new genocidal acts.

“The last of it was carried out against the peaceful population of the self-determined Nagorno Karabakh through broad involvement of international terrorist organizations. A NATO member state, combining the modern technical means provided by that powerful security system and the capacities of terrorist structures, has again behaved itself in Nagorno Karabakh as a serial killer because it has not yet been held accountable for its past crimes committed against humanity and civilization”, the letter says.

The letter notes that Turkey poses a threat not only for Armenia, but also for all its neighbors and the entire civilized world.

“The two major crimes committed against humanity and civilization during the First and Second World Wars – the Armenian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust, have outlined the clear line, with which the 20^th century has set the red lines guaranteeing peaceful coexistence on the Planet Earth, which have become inseparable parts of whole human consciousness. Their protection and the prevention of new genocides firstly depend on the will and determination of the United States as one of the greatest countries which guarantees freedom and human rights in the whole world”, the letter states, adding that the decisive condition for preventing the new genocidal aspirations of Turkey, bringing that country back to the field of its international obligations is overcoming the phenomenon of Turkish impunity through the unconditional and final recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

“At this historic moment the souls of not only the innocent victims of the Armenian Genocide, but also millions of people killed in violence and sufferings are praying with a hope to see clearly the GENOCIDE term in your annual April 24 address”, the letter says.

by Michael Rubin,

There is a dynamic in government where officials believe it sophisticated or useful to distort history or elide current tragedy for the sake of short-term diplomatic necessity.

All indications are that the Biden administration will recognize the Armenian genocide more than a century after it occurred. On April 24, 2020, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden tweeted, “If elected, I pledge to support a resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide and will make universal human rights a top priority.” It appears his staff remains onboard with that commitment.  

On March 22, 2021, the Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer reported that “White House sources” had told him genocide recognition would go forward. While Bremmer noted not only Biden’s campaign promise but also that Vice President Kamala Harris had co-sponsored the 2019 genocide resolution, he is also correct to note President Barack Obama made and reneged on a similar promise.

Herein lies the problem: there is a dynamic in government where officials believe it sophisticated or useful to distort history or elide current tragedy for the sake of short-term diplomatic necessity. Samantha Power wrote a book about it and, yet, not only failed to stand up with moral clarity on Armenia but then she (and Ben Rhodes) ignored the ongoing genocide in Syria. U.S. climate envoy John Kerry, who like Harris served a state with a large Armenian community, also sponsored Armenian genocide resolutions while senator, only to forget them when he entered the executive branch.  

Secretary of State Antony Blinken promised greater attentiveness to human rights during his first weeks in office, but he has already demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice principle for politics. Consider, for example: 

In the State Department’s latest human rights report, Blinken revised downward casualty figures from Iran’s protest crackdown in order to facilitate the Biden administration’s Iran diplomacy. 

• Just as he did during the Obama administration, Blinken has also violated promises to stand up for American hostages held in the Islamic Republic’s prisons, again in the apparent belief that human rights advocacy could impede his team’s working relations with their Iranian counterparts. 
• Blinken has also abided by his Africa Bureau’s moral equivalence and played into the hands of revisionists who seek to downplay the anti-Tutsi nature of the genocide in Rwanda. 

• The State Department’s Africa Bureau is likely slow to recognize the severity of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s actions in Tigray. Simply put, the Nobel laureate appears to be setting Tigray down the same path that Hutu extremists put Rwanda twenty-seven years ago. 

Many Armenians may dislike the late historian Bernard Lewis because he questioned the Armenian genocide’s premeditation and blamed a million murders (which he did not dispute) on the fog of war. Subsequent information, however, not available at the time to Lewis confirms premeditation. Lewis was as honest as he was erudite; I have little doubt that were he alive today, he would allow new evidence to change his interpretation.  

There is another reason why Armenians should not entirely dismiss Lewis. In his 2012 memoirs, Lewis wrote, “We live in a time where great energies are being devoted to the falsification of history—to flatter, to deceive or to serve some sectional purpose. No good can come from such distortions, even when they are inspired by unselfish motives.” This is the Lewis statement upon which Armenians and those interested in historical truth should today seize as it emphasizes the importance to not allow short-term diplomatic interests to distort history’s reckoning. 

Many within the Biden administration, the State Department, and the Pentagon can find incentive to walk back Biden’s commitments or infuse them with moral equivalence. There remains a strong Turkey lobby with the State Department ready to advocate for Turkish interests and absolve Turkey of accountability for its actions. The Pentagon may not recognize that maintaining access to the Incirlik Air Base does not offset the cost of giving Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan a free pass. Both the State Department and Pentagon may believe antagonizing Erdoğan may cause him to lash out in the Eastern Mediterranean. Already, there are warning signs that Biden and Blinken have gone wobbly: For all their tough talk on Turkey, for example, they empowered its dictator, Erdoğan, by making him a host for the Afghanistan peace talks. Then, there is Nagorno-Karabakh, where Turkey and Azerbaijan precipitated a forty-four-day war last autumn and peace is tenuous

None of these concerns justifies perverting or whitewashing history. Not only is the Armenian genocide fact, but downplaying it can also have a real cost. Azerbaijan and Turkey timed their surprise September attack on Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh to coincide with the centennial anniversary of the Ottoman invasion of newly independent Armenia. Both Erdoğan and Azerbaijani dictator Ilham Aliyev used eliminationist rhetoric to suggest their ultimate goal is to be to wage religious warfare and eradicate Armenia itself. To show Turkey that bluster can trump accountability will ensure further aggression not only against Armenia but also against the Kurdsand Cyprus. 

While acknowledging the Armenian genocide is both right and wise, Biden and Blinken should go further. Genocide denial undermines long-term security and so Blinken might consider the erection of monuments to the Armenian genocide in both Ankara and Baku as the metric to determine if acknowledgment of genocide extends beyond rhetoric. Such a display would also help chip away at the historical blindness that decades of Turkish incitement have caused. There are precedents for such monuments. Unlike Turkey and Azerbaijan that project images of multi-faith tolerance to Western visitors and invite the foreign press to small commemorations, Armenia hosts a Holocaust monument in its capital as Armenians recognize that history too often repeats.  

Biden and Blinken must also commit to ending the Section 907 waiver that effectively rewards Azerbaijan for its defiance of diplomacy. Blinken must also call out both Turkey and Azerbaijan for embracing and deploying Al Qaeda-linked mercenaries from Syria. The Trump administration downplayed diplomacy in the South Caucasus by appointing a Minsk Group co-chair who lacked the diplomatic rank of his Russian and French counterparts. Rather than simply appoint an ambassador, Blinken might designate an assistant secretary to incorporate the portfolio. Just as Kosovo emerged as an independent state to halt Serb ethnic cleansing of an ethnic Albanian minority, so too might the United States propose a similar Kosovo model for the Artsakh Republic, the self-declared Armenian state in the territory. In the meantime, Blinken should station a diplomat permanently in Stepanakert, Artsakh’s capital. 

Genocide recognition is important but it is not enough. With dictators to both Armenia’s east and west, it is essential to recognize that the threat of a century ago continues to the present day. Empty rhetoric can carry a huge cost. 

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). You can follow him on Twitter: @mrubin1971.

Image: Reuters

By Knox Thames

Former State Department Special Advisor for Religious Minorities

History matters. It is time the United States calls the systematic murder of Armenians from 1915-23 a genocide. Doing so confirms the historical record and reaffirms the United States’ commitment to those suffering from mass atrocities. April 24, the upcoming day remembering victims, provides President Joe Biden the right moment to set the historical record straight.

The history is sound. Based in present-day Turkey, the Ottoman Empire undertook a mass campaign of murder against Armenians, as well as Assyrians and Greeks, starting on April 24, 1915, running for eight years. 

Historians estimate 1.5 million Armenians died. It was no secret either. The New York Times wrote 145 articles in 1915 alone about the massacres.

The US government knew as well. US Ambassador Henry Morgenthau documented the brutal violence he witnessed when traveling the Ottoman Empire’s countryside. Morgenthau’s memoirs described the plans of Turkish authorities as “giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact.”

International law buttressed these claims. The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines the term genocide as any “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” through killing, serious bodily harm and other means – 1.5 million Armenians killed meets this threshold.

There is no historical question of whether these atrocities happened. There is no legal question about what to call them. But there is a political question about what to say.

Not since President Ronald Reagan has the White House referred to the events of 1915 as the Armenian genocide, although both houses of Congress did vote overwhelmingly to pass the Armenian Genocide Resolution in 2019. As a senator, Biden vigorously supported recognition throughout his more than three decades in office. As a presidential candidate, he pledged to recognize the Armenian genocide, stating that “failing to remember … only paves the way for future mass atrocities.”

In the past, geo-strategic concerns trumped facts. While committed by an extinct empire, modern Turkey is adamantly opposed to the calling it a genocide. Turkey is a NATO ally, sitting at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Its borders touch the former Soviet Union, Iran, Iraq and Syria. It sits opposite Russia across the Black Sea and neighbors the European Union. We gave them a veto.

When I served at the State Department during both the Obama and Trump administrations, I participated in internal deliberations about whether to call ISIS atrocities against Yezidis, Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac Christians and other minorities as genocide. We repeatedly encountered tremendous bureaucratic resistance. Then-Secretaries John Kerry and Rex Tillerson overruled voices raising endless concerns to place the United States firmly on the record. Those same hesitant voices have stymied a similar decision on Myanmar’s military atrocities against the Rohingya Muslims.

Regarding the Armenian genocide, President Biden is presented with a unique confluence of events allowing him to set the historical record straight. He leads a new administration while Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan implements increasingly problematic policies. With this window of opportunity, now is the time to call a genocide a genocide. Waiting will only make things more complicated for the administration.

International politics aside, it is the right thing to do. A genocide happened. Using the “G” word describes the facts. Sure, some Turks won’t like it and Erdogan will huff and puff, but many will agree it is true. The United States should not muzzle itself for short-term, ephemeral gains with an unsteady ally. We should prioritize enduring truth over worthless concessions. As then-candidate Biden said, “silence is complicity.”

The Armenian genocide happened. Candidate Biden recognized this and I hope President Biden will say the same on April 24.

Claire Sadar,

Turkey has spent millions of dollars on sometimes bizarre campaigns to dissuade the American government from calling the murder and expulsion of the vast majority of the Armenians in Anatolia during World War One a genocide.

For decades, the United States government has tiptoed around the issue, afraid of the fallout it could precipitate in U.S.-Turkish relations.

Ultimately, all this money and effort appears to have been a waste. At the end of 2019, the United States Congress and Senate passed a resolution to officially “(1) commemorate the Armenian Genocide, the killing of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923; (2) reject efforts to associate the U.S. government with efforts to deny the existence of the Armenian Genocide or any genocide; and (3) encourage education and public understanding about the Armenian Genocide.”

Now, statements coming from White House officials and President Joe Biden’s own history of supporting genocide recognition makes it likely that on April 24, Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, he too will officially use the term “genocide” to describe the fate of the Ottoman Armenian community.

Biden’s decision to break the trend of equivocation by his predecessors makes sense given his long history supporting resolutions like the one passed by Congress a year and a half ago. As a senator, Biden supported similar resolutions as far back as 1984. He was a co-sponsor of the 1990 resolution that spurred contentious debate between those opposed, led by Senator Robert Byrd, and those in favour, led by Senator Bob Dole.

Despite, or perhaps because of, his continued support for these ultimately failing resolutions, Biden has not wavered in his conviction that the U.S. government should recognise the Armenian Genocide. In a post on Medium to mark last year’s Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, then candidate Biden “pledge[d] to support a resolution recognising the Armenian Genocide and will make universal human rights a top priority for my administration”.

Experts agree that Biden is likely to make an official declaration referring to the mass death and deportation of Ottoman Armenians in Anatolia as a genocide. The consensus is that not only does he genuinely believe that the events constitute that term, but the current, perhaps historically, low point in U.S.-Turkish relations makes this decision more politically feasible.

“Previously when the Armenian Genocide bill would be up for discussion on the Hill there would be a flurry of various groups, from foreign policy analysts who defended Turkey for real-politik reasons to pro-Israel groups who saw Turkey as an ally to defence contractors who didn’t want to lose crucial arms sales,” said Daphe McCurdy, Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“That doesn’t really exist anymore or to the extent it does, these pro-Turkey groups don’t have a sympathetic ear among any U.S. policymakers whether on the Hill or in the administration,” McCurdy said.

Nicholas Danforth, a non-resident fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, concurs:

“Turkey has no friends left in Washington, and it is increasingly hard to make a geopolitical case that Turkey is an important enough ally, that not angering Turkey is important enough, to block the resolution,” Danforth said.

A low point in bilateral relations may seem like the worst time to risk a statement on the genocide. Thus, it is perhaps surprising that the experts not only agree that if Biden does follow through with a genocide recognition statement, U.S.-Turkish relations will not be irrevocably damaged but some also feel that finally moving past the issue of recognition might actually improve relations in the long term.

“It’s something the Turks will get angry about, they will probably recall their newly arrived ambassador, maybe they will ask the U.S. ambassador to leave for a time, but at the end of the day, there are too many real, pressing issues that these two countries have to deal with that are very imminent, they are not about history, they are not symbolic, they are real issues,” said Alan Makovsky, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

“If anything, because it’s the United States, there is going to be a lot of reasons to get past it,” he said.

“When it comes to the members of the Turkish-American diaspora who take their political cues from Ankara, the Biden administration’s recognition of the Armenian genocide could end up being a liberating development,” said Aykan Erdemir, Senior Director of the Turkey Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former member of the Turkish parliament.

“Until now, the bulk of the Turkish-American mobilisation in the United States has revolved around pushing back against various efforts to recognise the Armenian genocide,” Erdemir said.

“Once the issue is behind, the Turkish-American diaspora will have an opportunity to channelise its energies to more productive endeavours that will accrue positive dividends for themselves as well as for their countries of residence and origin.”

Some experts stress that Turkey sees the United States in different terms than EU countries, and that there is more symbolic weight to it taking this action, but that this was still not enough reason to believe that a permanent diplomatic breakdown was imminent. That of course does not mean that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will not take full advantage of any official statement by Biden in the service of domestic politics.

“Erdoğan is searching for any distraction from his political and economic weaknesses and will undoubtedly use this issue to do the same,” McCurdy said. “But at the end of the day, these antics will only get him so far if they don’t put food on people’s tables.

“That’s not to say that much of the Turkish public won’t be outraged by the decision, just that Erdoğan has been using anti-Americanism as a tool to garner political support for years and

there are diminishing marginal returns to its effectiveness, especially as people’s economic plight increases.”

There will undoubtedly be segments of the Turkish population who are angry and offended by it if the president makes an official declaration using the term “genocide”, but Taner Akçam, a professor of history at Clark University, and one of the preeminent historians on the Armenian Genocide, cautioned that all news about how “average Turks” feel should be taken with a huge grain of salt.

“[The Turkish government] will put their position in the mouths of so-called ‘ordinary Turks’,” Akçam said. “Whatever we will see and we will hear about Turkish public reaction, will not be Turkish public reaction. If they allowed the free press in Turkey, public reaction would be totally different.”

For example, Akçam doubts that much of the ethnic Kurdish population in Turkey buy into Turkish government propaganda about what did or did not happen to the Armenians in Anatolia, given their own experience with violent cultural suppression, and subsequent government denial that it is happening.

Akçam also sees a wider cultural and political shift happening in Turkey, which is ultimately indicative of the weak international position the Turkish government now finds itself in.

“There is a basic change in Turkish society in understanding the Armenian Genocide. In the early days, before (prominent Armenian journalist) Hrant Dink’s assassination, in the 80s, 90s, we were the bad guy,” Akçam said. “We were dragged from courtroom to courtroom. We were attacked. There was a hate campaign against us. We were in a defensive position. Today, we won the psychological war in Turkey. Today, psychologically, the Turkish government is in a defensive position.”

This does not mean that the Turkish government is just going to give in to international pressure and overwhelming historical evidence and stop denying that the killing and deportations that wiped Armenians from Anatolia constitute a genocide.

Akçam likens genocide denial in Turkey to racism in the United States. “Denialism is a political structure,” one that can only be defeated by democratisation and significant changes to Turkish society, he said.

The fact that the U.S. government has now politicised the historical facts has set back progress toward any such shift.

“The tragedy of all of this is by not recognising the Armenian Genocide earlier, by waiting until U.S.-Turkish relations had deteriorated to this point, Washington has made it very easy for Erdoğan to turn around and say “look, they’re just saying this because they are angry at us

now”, and this won’t prompt any kind of moral reckoning, this won’t prompt any kind of real, serious conversation in Turkey,” Danforth said.

“The refusal to take this step earlier when it would have been inconvenient, has irrevocably politicised it. I still think it is the right thing to do, but we should avoid feeling too good about it,” he said.

President Biden has an opportunity this month to use honest and accurate terminology in describing the Ottoman Empire’s killing of more than 1 million Armenians a century ago. When the anniversary of the start of the massacre arrives, he can and should call it a genocide, a term that only one president — Ronald Reagan — has previously used in that context. And even then, Reagan made the reference as an aside in a proclamation about another atrocity, the Holocaust.

In fact, it’s dumbfounding that calling what happened to the Armenians “genocide” is even debatable. It’s like saying, “You know, if we don’t call the time when the river water raged down Main Street a flood, then the damage wasn’t so bad.”

And it was bad, a crime against humanity whose pain resonates all the more through history because global governments have been slow to recognize it and some factions have intransigently refused to acknowledge the truth.

Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day occurs annually on April 24, reflecting the day in 1915 when Ottoman authorities rounded up hundreds of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in what is now Istanbul. Many were hanged in the streets. Although Armenians had suffered violent oppression under the Ottoman Empire before, that roundup marked the start of a campaign of much broader and more consequential attacks and forced deportations. When it was over, the estimated population of Armenians living in Turkey dropped from 2.1 million to 389,000.

Deniers of the Armenian genocide — led by the Turkish government — claim that while predominantly Christian Armenians did indeed die in Turkey through violence and starvation before, during and after World War I, so too did Jews and Muslims. But that false equivalency dances around the question of why they were killed. Victims of indiscriminate war differ from people targeted over their ethnicity.

It’s factually correct that Armenians weren’t the only ones who perished in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, but that argument denies the truth. It’s like countering the grotesque reality of the Nazis’ systematic effort to eradicate Jews — the unforgivable crime against humanity that first earned the term “genocide” — by arguing that it wasn’t so bad because other people died, too. That’s offensively absurd.

So why is whether to call the massacre of Armenians a genocide even an issue? Because the Turkish government has steadfastly refused to accept that its forebears in the Ottoman Empire committed genocide, a position unmoored from the facts and the overwhelming consensus of serious historians.

The Turkish government may cling to this delusion, but the rest of the world does not, and should not, have to indulge it. And, in fact, many governments don’t. More than two dozen have taken formal stances declaring the Armenian genocide.

The issue has proved to be particularly thorny for the United States. Turkey has long been a military ally (it’s a fellow member of NATO), and the U.S. maintains a significant military presence at the Incirlik Air Base. But relations have frayed in recent years, propelled by Turkey’s move toward better relations with Russia (which has been selling Turkey military equipment) and its attack on U.S.-backed forces in northern Syria. That broke the dam in Congress, which voted in 2019 to recognize the Armenian genocide.

But Congress is not the White House, which determines U.S. foreign policy. President Obama had a golden opportunity to fulfill a campaign promise and drop the pretense in 2015, the centenary of the start of the Armenian genocide, but stopped short despite using the Armenian term for it, meds yeghern, and stating that “beginning in 1915, the Armenian people of the Ottoman Empire were deported, massacred and marched to their deaths. Their culture and heritage in their ancient homeland were erased. Amid horrific violence that saw suffering on all sides, one and a half million Armenians perished.” The Trump administration stuck with that position, too.

That brings us to Biden, who arguably entered the Oval Office with the deepest and broadest understanding of U.S. foreign policy of any newly inaugurated president since George H.W. Bush. But he also has historically positioned himself as a moderate pragmatist. To be sure, foreign policy can be a multidimensional chess match in which the idea isn’t necessarily to win, but to make sure your opponents lose. But here, what’s important is the truth and an honest recognition of history.

Biden needs to call the Armenian genocide by its name.

Source: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-04-05/biden-armenian-genocide-turkey