Web Letters: Whose Genocide Counts?

I cannot understand why politicians have to discuss history in parliaments. Have they forgotten that history departments of the universities research and discuss such topics and courts decide on such issues? Our Canadian parliamentarians gave in to Armenian pressure and voted to describe events of 1915 as genocide. After all, politicians make decisions to get votes or financing. Now US politicians are deciding on the history. Such strong accusations are decided by the courts, as was the case for Jewish Holocaust.

Following WWI, occupying British forces put Ottoman officials to trial in Malta and nobody was found guilty. Historians still dispute the events of 1915. The Turkish government has opened the Ottoman achieves. whereas Armenians have been confiscating books and journals throughout the world if any contained information on the terrorist activities of Armenians and suffering of other Ottoman citizens in the hand of Armenian bandits between 1880-1915.

Even the media, including the Ottawa Citizen, refer to the events of 1915 as genocide without knowing the real facts. All of this proves that any strong lobbying group can persuade the media and the politicians by providing selected documentation and lobbying tirelessly. Events that took place in Eastern Anatolia during WWI as a result of the Armenian uprising were indeed tragic and many lives were lost from both sides. Picturing these events as genocide and portraying the rebelling Armenians as innocent victims is not fair to the other citizens of the Empire--Turkish, Christian and Jewish--who lost their lives during the tragic events.

Dr. Kevser Korhan
(Canadian of Turkish origin)

Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Dear Mr. von Hoffman, I enjoyed your article titled "Whose Genocide Counts?" Thank you for exposing that sitting for what it was, a pandering, a charade.

I am a Canadian of Turkish origin. I watched the entire session, listened to all the speeches. I had no idea how much these representatives loved Turkey, I couldn't believe how many friends Turkey had. Almost all of them felt the need to mention that Turkey was their friend, some of them even said, "I went to Turkey, lovely place." It is good to know that they like us so much and value our friendship.

It is not my intention to make light of a past tragedy and to belittle the sufferings of the Armenians and Turks of a troubled time, but the committee was so out of touch that the session turned out to be pitifully comical and it deserves every sarcastic remark made in your very funny article. Thanks to the ridiculousness of the sitting, I did not feel guilty one bit when I laughed out loud reading your article. It was very enjoyable and to the point.

At least three of the representatives quoted Hitler, who is supposed to have said, on August 22, 1939, "I have given orders to my death units to exterminate without mercy or pity, men, women and children belonging to the Polish-speaking race. It is only in this manner that we can acquire the vital territory which we need. After all, who remembers today the extermination of the Armenians?" Hitler is presumed to have said this while delivering a secret talk to members of his General Staff, just a week prior to his attack on Poland. The official texts of this speech, published in the Nuremberg documents, contain no reference to Armenians.

However, that is beside the point. Even if Hitler had said any such thing, are the representatives of the House Foreign Affairs Committee learning their history lessons from Hitler, the single most loathsome figure in history?

Then there was the issue of dates and numbers. Some said "the events that took place between 1915 and 1922," and some extended the latter date all the way up to 1928 (a date eight years after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire).

Numbers of victims ranged between 1 million and 2 million, but what's a million between friends? (Statistically, the entire Armenian population in the area was around 500,000.)

Some quoted Ambassador Morgenthau, whose accounts are challenged by scholars on its sincerity and accuracy. Henry Morgenthau Sr. was commissioned to write a war-time propaganda by President Woodrow Wilson and the book Ambassador Morgenthau's Story was the result of this effort. Nobody quoted Heath W. Lowry, who wrote The Story Behind Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, which deconstructs Morgenthau's narration as largely fiction.

I was happy to read your comments, there is still sanity around. Thanks again for your humorous insights.

Lale Eskicioglu

Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

First of all, there is no consensus on the number of people who died between 1915 and 1918. The Armenian side pushes 1.5 million, which is silly because the total number of Armenians who had lived in the Ottoman Empire was about 1.5 million anyway. Official number of Armenians who got deported in 1915 was 500,000, 390,000 of which managed to reach their destination, Syria, Lebanon etc.

When you look at the Eastern Anatolia in the years of 1910 to 1920, you can easily realize that it was like a horror movie in there. First Armenian rebels attacked and massacred as many Muslims as they could when they thought it was the right time to side with the Russians and claim their independence, but the reaction that they got from the Ottoman army and Kurdish tribes was as harsh as their own. As many Turks and Kurds were killed in that era by Armenian forces sided with Russians and France. If you go to Eastern Turkey and talk to people they would tell you reversed genocide stories and this is why this issue is not as easy to conclude as the Holocaust.

Serhat Ozbay

Cranston, RI

I am neither of Turkish nor Armenian heritage. I am curious.

What is the motivation for the resolution in Congress right now?

The Turkish response seems over-the-top. Would it not be more prudent to lament the terrible events of so long ago? Why not acknowledge the painful loss of 1.5 million Armenians? The government and people of today do not have responsibility to misdeeds of past leaders. But the response and threats of "irreparable damage" gives me pause.

I am questioning here...

Rochelle Cisneros

Cocoa Beach, FL

To understand Turkish sensitivities on the issue, one needs to understand the history of Armenian revolts carried out by Armenian nationalist and separatist organizations such as Dashnaktsutyun (Armenian Revolutionary Federation) in the Ottoman Empire and mass killings of Muslims. These organizations are still active and heavily involved in the lobbying efforts to pass the Armenian genocide resolution. Their final goal is the same as in the 1800s: to grab land from the Turks. An interview with a spokesman of Dashnaktsutyun ("Dashnaks Insist On Territorial Claims To Turkey," by Ruzanna Khachatrian) presents their staged efforts, which will be final with a claim of territory from Turkey:

Armenia does not recognize Turkey's territorial integrity and may in the future lay claim to lands that were populated by Armenians before the 1915 genocide, a senior member of the governing Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) claimed on Friday.

"The current government of which we are a part and the president whom we have supported and will support will not abandon territorial claims," Giro Manoyan, a spokesman for the nationalist party's ruling Bureau, said. "Armenia's official position is that the issue is not on our foreign policy agenda. That means it can be on the agenda tomorrow."...

Manoyan revealed last summer that the party, which also has chapters in major Armenian communities abroad, plans a major shift in its long-running campaign for international recognition of the Armenian genocide. He said Dashnaktsutyun will strive to force Turkey to pay reparations.

Yavuz Cayir

Morristown, NJ

Here we go again! Anybody who speaks up in an impartial tone will be booed off the stage. All the letters are full of rage and even hatred against Mr. Hoffman but none of them seems to care to mention the committee's responsibility for 600,000 civilian causalities in Iraq. Why? Because Iraqi lives are not as valuable as Armenian or American lives. This is what really lies beneath fascism.

Comparing the Armenian Issue to the Holocaust is historically erroneous on so many levels. And this whole resolution stuff is a circus! There is no single soul who is really and honestly seeking the truth. If you need Armenian votes in California it is genocide, if you need Turkey on your side in Iraq it's just a tragedy but not genocide. And I love it when my Armenian friends come up to me and brag about the resolution! I say wow, 21-to-27 huh! Now I'm concerned. I’ve gotta get me one of these resolutions…

Serhat Ozbay

Providence, RI

This is just about the most callous, uninformed piece I've ever read in The Nation. I ask the editors whether they would have even considered running a similar article that poked fun at recognition of the Holocaust.

R. Diller

Brooklyn, NY

One of the definitions of genocide held by scholars maintains that the final crime of genocide is denial and erasure of the act from living and historical memory. Given the recent denial industry that's popped up all over America, one could argue that the Armenian Genocide is still continuing. Microsoft's Encarta has softly cushioned the event after Turkish pressure, the Washington Post yesterday cast doubt or at least encouraged speculation on the validity of the genocide charges in an editorial, our best publishers are offering foreign-funded "historical treatises" that maintain the genocide is a lie, our universities house historians bought and paid for by Turkey (a few of them all too willing to deny). Our common culture is dangerously close to whitewashing this genocide, as evidenced by the Washington Post's take this week. That's exactly why a bill like this one is needed.

Mr. von Hoffman, you may argue that this is not a good time. That argument has been made many times before and at any point this bill has come up in the past. Apparently, over the past ninety-five years there has never been a good time to offend our Turkish ally. Not surprising when you think about it. You ask for this genocide resolution to wait, to wait for a time when the Iraq situation has calmed, to wait for a time when Turkey will not be fighting the PKK, to wait for a time when our dealings with Turkey will not be so crucial. My question to you: Do you think that time will ever come? If so, when? And, if it ever comes, are you assured that the denialists won't have the upper hand at that time? Because they have made huge inroads into distorting our collective understanding of history already.

Denying is the last criminal act of the genocide. Enough representatives on the committee realized that, and they made the correct moral choice in this matter.

Dimitri Anastasopoulos

Buffalo, NY

My father, my grandmother and most of the adults who helped raise me were survivors of the Armenian Genocide. Thanks to the denial of the Kemalist Turks--the direct descendants of the Young Turk government--I've lived with the Armenian Genocide every day of my life.

The Armenian Genocide occurred between 1915 and 1923. The atrocities against Jews began in the late 1920s and continued through the Holocaust in the 1940s. How do you manage--in your own mind, at least--to characterize as ancient history the Armenian Genocide, which was finalized at almost exactly the same time as the persecutions of Jews in Europe began? How does one mock another people's genocide, knowing full well that survivors of that genocide as well as their children are reading such words?

Last year, when the Armenian Genocide Resolution wasn't even on the table, a poll in Turkey revealed that 89 percent of the Turks believe that America is their worst enemy. Their most popular novel in recent years--Metal Storm--climaxes with a Turkish agent setting off a nuclear bomb in America. The number-one best seller in Turkey is Mein Kampf. A few months ago, three Christian missionaries were mutilated and murdered for the crime of passing out Bibles. I won't go into the assassination of the Armenian editor in Istanbul. I can't imagine you would consider the killing of an Armenian in 2006 any more relevant than you do the killing of Armenians in 1915.

In 2003--after decades of giving them billions in military and economic aid--the Turks refused to allow a northern front to be opened by US troops, an act that Donald Rumsfeld and many others in the Administration have characterized as the primary reason for the quagmire into which America has sunk. What is perhaps most ironic is your self-righteous indignation at Armenian Americans' having the audacity to request a symbolic gesture from our own government and not one word of criticism about the millions in revenue generated by lobbyists pandering to agents of a foreign government. You claim to want the war in Iraq to end and yet you conveniently overlook the fact that the Turks closing the supply route may be the only thing that can force the Bush Administration to bring the troops home.

Perhaps the Democrats in Congress are not as crass as you portray them. The Armenian Genocide Resolution may catalyze your Turkish friends into inadvertently doing what our Congress is apprehensive of doing--ending the war in Iraq. Why would someone who claims to want the war to end argue so passionately against alienating the only country that's enabling the war's continuation? You failed to inform your readers that the Turks have been generating mountains of lira via Incirlik and the overland supply chain during the entirety of the Iraq war. They've been massacring the Kurds by the tens of thousands for decades and began their threats against Kurdistan in 2004. Their using the passage of the Armenian Genocide Resolution as a pretext for killing more Kurds is almost as specious as your allegations.

America's alliance with Turkey is the worst thing that ever happened to my country, and perhaps the only thing as hollow as your half-truths.

Setta Heroian

Sarasota, FL

Having encountered this article on Yahoo!news, I had to come to the Nation site for the first time to register my disgust. (I wonder if this might have been part of the plan.)

This isn't an issue of advocating the Armenian side of some ongoing dispute about reparations or confiscated territory, it's about recognizing a historical fact that Turkey refuses to admit either to the world or to itself. Are there policy implications of recognizing the truth? Yes. But should the petulance of Turkey be allowed to dictate history? No.

If fascist leaders were elected in Germany, would we stop funding the Holocaust museum right away, or only if they threatened to stop trading with us first? Should we join the Chinese government in recognizing that nothing interesting has happened in Tiananmen Square in the past two decades, just to make sure they don't cause trouble with North Korea?

Truth is truth, and it shouldn't be hidden because it might make people uncomfortable. This is a principle I would expect The Nation, of all publications, to hold dear.

Monte Frankel

Washington, DC

What a man of principle you are Mr. von Hoffman.

W. Elliott

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Mr. von Hoffman, I am very confused about your web posting. It seems you are against the war in Iraq and the killing of innocent Iraqi civilians, yet you're equally angry with the House Foreign Relations Committee for recognizing what has tried to be recognized several times in every decade since 1915: that in fact the Ottoman Empire in its waning days systematically and deliberately committed genocide against its own citizens. What do the two issues have to do with each other? Why are you so bitter and contemptuous? How can you be against the recognition of basic historical facts and attempt to artificially tie them with other parts of your agenda? Justice for one group should not take away justice from another. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Darren Kane

Los Angeles, CA

The glib tone of Mr. von Hoffman is deeply offensive and shows a gross lack of respect to those who have suffered from the Armenian genocide. Mr. Von Hoffman hits rock bottom with his comment about being “better sexually adjusted.” This shows either a stunning lack of sensitivity or an incredible degree of ignorance to what happened to Armenian women. Countless women young and old were raped and sexually abused at the hands of the Turks. There is nothing funny at all about that Mr. von Hoffman.

John Yacobian

Brooklyn, NY

I don't understand Nicholas von Hoffman's hostility toward the House Foreign Affairs Committee resolution. Didn't someone once say, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"? Does von Hoffman disagree with this statement, or does he believe it is subject to a statute of limitations? Does he next propose to pooh-pooh the furor over Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's characterization of the Holocaust as "under scholarly debate"? C'mon, Jews, it's in the past, get over it.

Armenians worldwide (not just in California) have been waiting decades for the well-documented genocide under the Ottoman Empire to attain the global recognition rightly given to other crimes against humanity, such as the Holocaust and apartheid. France and twenty other countries have done so. If the United States joined them, it would advance this legitimacy enormously. Yet von Hoffman questions the "value" of acknowledging the Armenian Genocide. Let's see, was there a "value" to characterizing the ethnic cleansing in Rwanda as genocide?

When planning the Holocaust, Hitler famously asked, "Who remembers the Armenians?" By remembering the Armenians, we stand against everything this question represents. Every crime against humanity that attains the weight of historical record provides precedent and ammunition against such crimes happening in the future. When we condemn historical wrongs, we also articulate intolerance for similar wrongs, present and future. Von Hoffman, in contrast, seems to believe that to decry an historical crime somehow means there is "less justice" for other atrocities such as the horrors currently enacted in Iraq, as if justice were a limited commodity, not a principle for the ages.

He also believes that since the genocide occurred "almost a century ago," it affects no one today. I would argue that Turkey's treatment of those who attempt to break the silence about the genocide (for example, the prosecution of writers for "insulting Turkishness," including Turkish novelists Orhun Pamuk and Elif Shafak, and Hrant Dink, the Armenian journalist who was murdered by a Turkish nationalist) demonstrates that the genocide remains very much relevant, particularly as Turkey attempts to join the European Union. Germany, another Union member, has acknowledged and repented for its crimes. Should we expect less from Turkey?

My grandmother is 93 years old and a survivor of the Armenian Genocide. Her father and brother were slaughtered by Turkish troops, and other members of her family died in the march across the desert. She has hoped for this moment her entire life while other survivors, family and friends, have passed away. It offends me to the core that von Hoffman would belittle her long wait for justice.

Anoosh Jorjorian

Los Angeles, CA

I will turn 60 years old next month and I can't remember a House Speaker allowing something this stupid. Madam Pelosi makes George Bush and Jimmy Carter look like overachievers in forign policy.

"Why is this not as good a time as any?" she asks with a vacant stare. Well, Madam Speaker, if you can't figure that one, please allow Paris Hilton to replace you.

Frankly, if all the House members who voted for this put their heads together, they still wouldn't be able to come up with a three-digit IQ.

Robert Stephens

Flagstaff, AZ

As an American of Armenian descent, I am pleased and proud of our Congress (or at least the Foreign Relations Committee) for passing HR106--the Armenian Genocide Resolution.

There should be no doubt that this resolution was in the best interest of the nation. George Bush and his Cabinet have proven themselves complete incompetents in executing the War in Iraq, and their handling of Turkey has been part of that.

When it was important, i.e., when we were preparing to invade Iraq, Turkey would not let us use the air base that everybody is concerned about now (actually, reports say they would have let us use it for $30 billion). And we call Turkey our ally? What kind of alliance is that? The appropriate response for the US government would have been to permanently withhold foreign aid from Turkey and pass the Armenian Genocide Resolution at that time. But neither the President nor the Congress at the time had the spine to deal with the Turkish extortionists.

The Turks can threaten all they want, but Iraq is relatively secure now and there are plenty of airbases there for our military to use. If the Turks are truly as upset as they claim, let them return the billions in foreign aid that we have been giving them. The simple fact is that the Turks need the US more than we need them. They should tread carefully.

Greg Dirasian

Astoria, NY

I am amused when I read this article. So the "simple" "unimportant" fact that the genocide of the Armenians occurred 100 years ago makes it OK not to acknowledge. I am curious to know what is the relevant timeline in cases like these. Is it one week, one year, ten years?

All the events that you mentioned in previous times that you so "funnily" wrote about are facts that are well acknowledged in history. People have direct access to these facts without propaganda. In the Armenian genocide case, Turkish propaganda has blurred the lines as to make some people like the author of this article satirically deny the importance of such a tragedy.

You have to accept the facts that history presents before you learn from them.

Comparing Iraq to the genocide is not a logical comparison either. These can go in parallel and are not mutually exclusive.

I am sorry that this article was even published.

Patrick Sislian

Los Angeles, CA

It seems pretty clear that Nicholas von Hoffman has never been to the Armenian Genocide Museum in Yerevan and otherwise knows little or nothing about the mass killing and ethnic displacement of Armenians in the early part of the twentieth century. Nor is he aware of the recent public statements calling for recognition of the genocide.

Particulary galling is the suggestion that these events are not relevant because they happened a hundred years ago. Understanding history informs us about the future.

Richard Fitzgerald

Napa, CA

"Thank God! We have been waiting almost 100 years for the House Foreign Affairs Committee to do it and at long last they did!"

Your snarky attempt at humor over the issue of a million deaths only shows your ignorance on the issue, as an Armenian Genocide resolution has passed in committee three times just this decade, most recently in 2005. For those who say "it's not a good time, why is this coming up now?"--well, it's not "just coming up now." It's come up again and again, and the same "it's not a good time" excuse has been used every time to put it off. Whether in 1989-90 (when extremely pro-Turkish Robert Byrd fillibustered the bill), 2000 (when President Clinton intervened because Turkey said the security of American lives there could not be assured if it passed) or in 2005 when (according to Sibol Edmonds the Turkish-bribed) Speaker of the House Hastert allowed it to die despite having promised to bring it to a vote, there have been numerous occasions, and this excuse foiled them every time. Is it our fault that Turkey has a radioactive aversion to dealing with its own past injustices?

And any true student of history would know that, unlike Romans from the Battle of Cannae, survivors of 1915 along with their children and grandchildren were all assembled in that room. People who suffered are still waiting for justice, this is very much a live issue. On top of that the effects of 1915 are still felt in the Middle East in numerous ways. To throw it in as equally irrelevant to an over-2,000-year-old battle or the campaign of Napoleon is nothing more than an incredibly insensitive and inaccurate poor attempt for humor.

Paul Sookiasian

Radnor, PA