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Despite the vast amount of evidence that points to the historical reality of the Armenian Genocide, denial of this genocide by successive regimes in Turkey has continued from 1915 to the present. Unlike the Holocaust, which has been denied by various fringe groups and individuals, the Armenian Genocide has been officially denied by Turkish governments for almost ninety years. Out of political expediency, other governments, including that of the United States and Israel, have aided and abetted Turkey in its rewriting of history.
In the period immediately after World War I, the tactic was to find scapegoats to blame for what was said to be only a security measure gone awry. This was followed by an attempt to avoid the whole issue, with silence, diplomatic efforts, and political pressure used where possible.
In the 1960s, efforts were made to influence journalists, teachers, and public officials by telling “the other side of the story.” Foreign scholars were encouraged to revise the record of the Genocide, presenting an account largely blaming the Armenians or, in another version, wartime conditions. In the 1970s Turkey was successful in its efforts to prevent any mention of the Genocide in a report of the United Nations (in 1985 a sub-commission of the U.N. did acknowledge the Armenian Genocide), and in the 1980s and 1990s, in pressuring the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations to defeat Congressional resolutions that would have authorized a National Day of Remembrance of the Armenian Genocide in the United States. The Turkish government has also attempted to exclude any mention of the Genocide in textbooks and to prevent its inclusion in Holocaust and human rights curricula.
The Turkish government has attempted to disrupt academic conferences and public discussions of the genocide, notably a conference in Tel Aviv in 1982, with demands backed up with threats to the safety of Jews in Turkey, which we will discuss in detail later. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council reported similar threats over plans to include references to the Armenian Genocide within the interpretive framework of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
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. The volume and extent of these activities have been described by one scholar as “an industry of denial” and by another one as “an industry of denialism.”
The little I read sold the book to me (well, Jews are the best merchants, innit), and gonna read this book.