Armenian genocide denial
Armenian genocide denial is the negationist claim that the Ottoman Empire and its ruling party, the Committee of Union and Progress, did not commit genocide against its Armenian citizens during World War I—a crime documented in a large body of evidence and affirmed by the vast majority of scholars. The perpetrators denied the genocide as they carried it out, claiming that Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were resettled for military reasons, not exterminated. In its aftermath, incriminating documents were systematically destroyed. Since the 1920s, denial has been the policy of every government of the Ottoman Empire's successor state, the Republic of Turkey.
Borrowing arguments used by the CUP to justify its actions, Armenian genocide denial rests on the notion that the deportation of Armenians was a legitimate state action in response to an alleged Armenian uprising that threatened the empire's existence during wartime. Deniers assert that the CUP intended to resettle Armenians, not kill them. They claim the death toll is exaggerated or attribute the deaths to other factors, such as a purported civil war, disease, bad weather, rogue local officials, or bands of Kurds and outlaws. The historian Ronald Grigor Suny summarizes the main argument as: "There was no genocide, and the Armenians were to blame for it."
A critical reason for denial is that the genocide enabled the establishment of a Turkish nation-state; recognizing it would contradict Turkey's founding myths. Since the 1920s, Turkey has worked to prevent recognition or even mention of the genocide in other countries. It has spent millions of dollars on lobbying, created research institutes, and used intimidation and threats. Denial, according to Donald Bloxham, is usually accompanied by "rhetoric of Armenian treachery, aggression, criminality, and territorial ambition". Denial affects Turkey's domestic policies and is taught in Turkish schools; some Turkish citizens who recognize the genocide have faced prosecution for "insulting Turkishness". Turkey's century-long effort to deny the genocide sets it apart from other historical cases of genocide.
Azerbaijan, a close ally of Turkey, also denies the genocide and campaigns against its recognition internationally. Most Turkish citizens and political parties support Turkey's denial policy. Scholars argue that Armenian genocide denial has set the tone for the government's attitude towards minorities, and has contributed to the ongoing violence against Kurds in Turkey. A 2014 poll of 1,500 people conducted by EDAM, a Turkish think tank, found that nine percent of Turkish citizens recognize the genocide.
Background
The presence of Armenians in Anatolia is documented since the sixth century BC, almost two millennia before Turkish presence in the area. The Ottoman Empire effectively treated Armenians and other non-Muslims as second-class citizens under Islamic rule, even after the nineteenth-century Tanzimat reforms intended to equalize their status. By the 1890s, Armenians faced forced conversions to Islam and increasing land seizures, which led a handful to join revolutionary parties such as the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. In the mid-1890s, state-sponsored Hamidian massacres killed at least 100,000 Armenians, and in 1909, the authorities failed to prevent the Adana massacre, which resulted in the death of some 17,000 Armenians. The Ottoman authorities denied any responsibility for these massacres, accusing Western powers of meddling and Armenians of provocation, while presenting Muslims as the main victims and failing to punish the perpetrators. These same tropes of denial would be employed later to deny the Armenian genocide.The Committee of Union and Progress came to power in two coups in 1908 and in 1913. In the meantime, the Ottoman Empire lost almost all of its European territory in the Balkan Wars; the CUP blamed Christian treachery for this defeat. Hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees fled to Anatolia as a result of the wars; many were resettled in the Armenian-populated eastern provinces and harbored resentment against Christians. In August 1914, CUP representatives appeared at an ARF conference demanding that in the event of war with the Russian Empire, the ARF incite Russian Armenians to intervene on the Ottoman side. The ARF declined, instead declaring that Armenians should fight for the countries in which they were citizens. In October 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers.
Armenian genocide
During the Ottoman invasion of Russian and Persian territory in late 1914, Ottoman paramilitaries massacred local Armenians. A few Ottoman Armenian soldiers defected to Russia—seized upon by both the CUP and later deniers as evidence of Armenian treachery—but the Armenian volunteers in the Russian army were mostly Russian Armenians. Massacres turned into genocide following the catastrophic Ottoman defeat by Russia in the Battle of Sarikamish, which was blamed on Armenian treachery. Armenian soldiers and officers were removed from their posts pursuant to a 25 February order issued by Minister of War Enver Pasha. In the minds of the Ottoman leaders, isolated incidents of Armenian resistance were taken as evidence of a general insurrection.In mid-April, after Ottoman leaders had decided to commit genocide, Armenians barricaded themselves in the eastern city of Van. The defense of Van served as a pretext for anti-Armenian actions at the time and remains a crucial element in works that seek to deny or justify the genocide. On 24 April, hundreds of Armenian intellectuals were arrested in Constantinople. Systematic deportation of Armenians began, given a cover of legitimacy by the 27 May deportation law. The Special Organization guarded the deportation convoys consisting mostly of women, children, and the elderly who were subject to systematic rape and massacres. Their destination was the Syrian Desert, where those who survived the death marches were left to die of starvation or disease in makeshift camps. Deportation was only carried out in the areas away from active fighting; near the front lines, Armenians were massacred outright. The leaders of the CUP ordered the deportations, with interior minister Talat Pasha, aware that he was sending the Armenians to their deaths, taking a leading role. In a cable dated 13 July 1915, Talat stated that "the aim of the Armenian deportations is the final solution of the Armenian Question."
Historians estimate that 1.5 to 2 million Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire in 1915, of whom 800,000 to 1.2 million were deported during the genocide. In 1916, a wave of massacres targeted the surviving Armenians in Syria; by the end of the year, only 200,000 were still alive. An estimated 100,000 to 200,000 women and children were integrated into Muslim families through such methods as forced marriage, adoption and conversion. The state confiscated and redistributed property belonging to murdered or deported Armenians. During the Russian occupation of eastern Anatolia, Russian and Armenian forces massacred as many as 60,000 Muslims. Making a false equivalence between these killings and the genocide is a central argument of denial.
The genocide is documented extensively in Ottoman archives, documents collected by foreign diplomats, eyewitness reports by Armenian survivors and Western missionaries, and the proceedings of the Ottoman Special Military Tribunals. Talat Pasha kept his own statistical record, which revealed a massive discrepancy between the number of Armenians deported in 1915 and those surviving in 1917. The vast majority of non-Turkish scholars accept the genocide as a historical fact, and an increasing number of Turkish historians are also acknowledging and studying the genocide.
Origins
Ottoman Empire
is the minimization of an event established as genocide, either by denying the facts or by denying the intent of the perpetrators. Denial was present from the outset as an integral part of the Armenian genocide, which was perpetrated under the guise of resettlement. Denial emerged because of the Ottoman desire to maintain American neutrality in the war and German financial and military support.In May 1915, Russia, Britain, and France sent a diplomatic communiqué to the Ottoman government condemning the Ottoman "crimes against humanity" and threatening to hold accountable any Ottoman officials who were responsible. The Ottoman government denied that massacres of Armenians had occurred, and said that Armenians colluded with the enemy, while asserting that national sovereignty allowed them to take measures against the Armenians. It also alleged that Armenians had massacred Muslims and accused the Allies of committing war crimes.
In early 1916, the Ottoman government published a two-volume work titled The Armenian Aspirations and Revolutionary Movements, denying it had tried to exterminate the Armenian people. At the time, little credence was given to such statements internationally, but some Muslims, previously ashamed by crimes against Armenians, changed their mind in response to propaganda about atrocities allegedly committed by Armenians. The themes of genocide denial that originated during the war were later recycled in Turkey's denial of the genocide.
Turkish nationalist movement
The Armenian genocide itself played a key role in the destruction of the Ottoman Empire and the foundation of the Turkish republic. The destruction of the Christian middle class, and redistribution of their properties, enabled the creation of a new Muslim/Turkish bourgeoisie. There was significant continuity between the Ottoman Empire and Republic of Turkey, and the Republican People's Party was the successor of the Committee of Union and Progress that carried out the genocide. The Turkish nationalist movement depended on support from those who had perpetrated the genocide or enriched themselves from it, creating an incentive for silence. Denial and minimization of wartime atrocities was crucial to the formation of a Turkish nationalist consensus.Following the genocide, many survivors sought an Armenian state in eastern Anatolia; warfare between Turkish nationalists and Armenians was fierce, atrocities being committed on both sides. Later political demands and Armenian killings of Muslims have often been used to retroactively justify the 1915 genocide. The Treaty of Sèvres granted Armenians a large territory in eastern Anatolia, but this provision was never implemented because of the Turkish invasion of Armenia in 1920. Turkish troops conducted massacres of Armenian survivors in Cilicia and killed around 200,000 Armenians following the invasion of the Caucasus and the First Republic of Armenia; thus, historian Rouben Paul Adalian has argued that "Mustafa Kemal completed what Talaat and Enver had started in 1915."
The Ottoman government in Constantinople held courts-martial of a handful of perpetrators in 1919 to appease Western powers. Even so, the evidence was sabotaged, and many perpetrators were encouraged to escape to the interior. The reality of state-sponsored mass killing was not denied, but many circles of society considered it necessary and justified. As a British Foreign Office report stated, "not one Turk in a thousand can conceive that there might be a Turk who deserves to be hanged for the killing of Christians." Kemal repeatedly accused Armenians of plotting the extermination of Muslims in Anatolia. He contrasted the "murderous Armenians" to Turks, portrayed as a completely innocent and oppressed nation. In 1919, Kemal defended the Ottoman government's policies towards Christians, saying "Whatever has befallen the non-Muslim elements living in our country, is the result of the policies of separatism they pursued in a savage manner, when they allowed themselves to be made tools of foreign intrigues and abused their privileges."