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April 28, 2008
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Excerpts from the paper, “The Armenian, Assyrian, Greek, Kurdish and 'Other' Genocides
The Politics of Genocide Recognition and Denialism”
Kurdishaspect.com - By Desmond Fernandes*
Presented at The Armenian/Assyrian Genocide Day Conference, The Grand Committee Room, The House of Commons, The UK Houses of Parliament, 24th April 2008. Organised by Armenian Solidarity with the Victims of All Genocides (ASVAG) and Nor Serount Cultural Association, and supported by The Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East, The European NGO Working Group Recognition - Against Genocide, for International Understanding, The Seyfo Centre, The Aegis Trust and The Genocide Prevention UK All-Party Parliamentary Group.
In recent years, … even as there has been greater international public recognition of the Armenian, Assyrian, Greek, Kurdish and ‘Other’ genocides (as a consequence of concerted initiatives by concerned individuals, Armenian, Assyrian, Greek and Kurdish communities and other people and organisations interested in exposing and confronting international genocidal crimes), certain governments, politicians, academics and lobbying groups have mobilized (and often collaborated with each other) to engage in denialism of these “events” due not to genuine uncertainty about the fate of these targeted “peoples/groups”, but to advance cynical personal and/or nationalist and/or geopolitical/economic/ideological agendas …
Thomas O'Dwyer, writing in Ha'aretz … has commented upon the manner in which, “not for the first time, we have witnessed the State of Israel's complicity in the lie ... This is political expediency at its most morally bankrupt. Tripping over itself in its stupid defense of the untenable Turkish position [which denies the Armenian genocide], the Israeli Foreign Ministry has again and again played an active role in suppressing even discussion of the issue ... What is shocking is that there should be any question whatsoever of Israel denying the murder of a nation ... Turkey's denials of the Armenian massacre will not endure - but the memory of Israel's refusal to speak out against the denial just might”. To Rabbi Kenneth I. Segal, spiritual leader of the Beth Israel Congregation in Fresno, California, “a ‘political stench’” has, indeed, “emanated from the role played by the Israeli Embassy in the United States in the matter” …
Larry Derfner [has] also noted the following in The Jerusalem Post: “What does the State of Israel and many of its American Jewish lobbyists have to say about it[?] ... If they were merely standing silent, that would be an improvement ... Israel and the US Jewish establishment may say they're neutral over what happened to the Armenians … but their actions say the opposite. They've not only taken sides, they're on the barricades ... Ninety years after the Armenian genocide, there is a decent Jewish response to the sickening behavior of the State of Israel, the American Jewish Committee and [many] other US Jewish organizations: Not in our name”.
The Israeli academic Yair Auron argues that “the Israeli government’s abetting of Turkey’s denial is not only a ‘moral disgrace’, it also ‘hurts the legacy and heritage of the Holocaust” … To Robert Fisk, we need to be aware that “the holocaust deniers of recent years - deniers of the Turkish genocide of ... Armenian Christians in 1915, that is - include Lord Blair” … Concerning the British government's stance over the matter, it is, in Fisk's view, based upon “a cynical premise by the Blair government, namely that it could get away with genocide denial to maintain good relations with Turkey”. R.J. Rummel remains critical of the manner in which, “for political reasons, the [US] State Department refuses to ... even acknowledge that the genocide took place” … What is even more shocking about the US official State Department position is that its own genocide analyst in its Legal Department privately would appear to be clearly convinced that what occurred was genocide … Despite this type of private acknowledgement, however, the US government officially and publicly asserts a denialist position …
The US government and many “establishment” figures, it should be noted, have a habit of refusing to acknowledge certain past and ongoing genocides. Those genocides, for example, that might be seen to embarrass the US government and perceived geostrategic and economic “pivotal” client states’ governments, such as Turkey. It is in this political context, as Edward Herman has observed, that “establishment politicians, media, and [establishment] intellectuals use the word genocide with great abandon, but with a hugely politicized selectivity” that we must be appreciative of:
Genocide was used often to describe the “killing fields” of Pol Pot, but not the killing fields of Vietnam where the United States ravaged the country, killed many more people than did Pol Pot, and left a destroyed country and chemical warfare heritage of hundreds of thousands of children with birth defects.
The word was never used in the US mainstream to describe Indonesian operations in East Timor, where the invasion of 1975 and murderous occupation killed off between a quarter and a third of the population …
The word genocide is rarely if ever applied to Turkish ethnic cleansing and massacres of its Kurds, and in fact Turkey was mobilized to participate in the 78-day NATO (de facto US) bombing war against Yugoslavia in 1999, supposedly to terminate “genocide” in Kosovo, although Turkey’s attacks on its local Kurds were far more deadly than any pre-bombing-war Yugoslav violence against the Kosovo Albanians.
The obvious explanation of the varying word usage is that Turkey was a US ally, and its ethnic cleansing and killings were facilitated by greatly increased US (Clinton administration) military aid, just as Indonesia’s violence in East Timor was greatly helped by greater US (Carter administration) aid to the killer state. Yugoslavia, on the other hand, was a US target …
The word genocide ... is never used in the mainstream to describe the “sanctions of mass destruction” that are credibly estimated to have killed over a million Iraqis. The establishment institutions have avoided all but passing mention of the numbers dead, and they suppress even more completely the evidence that the killings were a consequence of deliberate actions, including the US and British use of the sanctions system to block the import of medicines and equipment to repair water and sanitation systems that were destroyed with full recognition of the disease-threatening consequences …
It [also] remains a power-out-of-the-gun truth that … the United States can commit blatant aggression with only slightly delayed UN accommodation, and it and its clients don’t aggress, ethnically cleanse, or commit genocide.
Consequently, they are NOT adequately held to account for international genocidal crimes. In Turkey's case, internationally respected genocide scholars such as Tove Skutnabb-Kangas point out that Turkey remains in breach of two articles of the United Nations' Genocide Convention … For geo-political reasons, the US, UK, and German governments, particularly in the post-Second World War period, due to NATO linked agendas, ‘post-9/11’ and other geostrategic and economic concerns, have not only chosen to not recognize any [Kurdish] “genocide”, they have been complicit and instrumental in facilitating this very genocidal process. It is important to note that complicity in genocide is identified as a major international crime by the 1948 Genocide Convention … [Moreover], according to Cengiz Çandar, the Turkish journalist, Turkey continues to practice cultural genocide against the Armenians in Turkey. According to the internationally respected Turkish investigative journalist Ahmet Kahraman, currently in exile, the Turkish state continues to engage in cultural genocide of Armenians, Kurds and Greeks. And yet, despite this, from the US and UK governments who supposedly stand for “human rights”, “humanitarianism” and a commitment towards speaking out against 'genocide', there is no condemnation or serious examination or appraisal of these “genocide” charges that have been levelled, just as there is no serious appraisal or “recognition” of the past Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek genocides. Or, indeed, serious appraisal or “recognition” of the genocides in Vietnam, or Iraq (under sanctions, or after). The list goes on ...
Concerning the question:
Do the UK and US governments hinder the process of reconciliation by their one-sided pro-Turkish government stance?
I think they do. Reconciliation cannot meaningfully take place even as cultural genocide continues, and the Turkish state refuses to acknowledge its own ongoing and past genocidal policies and practices, that themselves derived “inspiration” from the even earlier – also denied (alongside with the US and UK governments) - genocidal phase under late Ottoman (CUP) rule. As Andrew Kevorkian has commented:
What is eminently clear is that there is a genocide of the Kurds going on (since about 1925) ... But, as long as Turkey can lie about the Kurds, with American support, the genocide will continue - like an inexorable spreading cancer.
And with a genocide continuing in its many manifestations against Kurds, Armenians and 'Others', there is little chance of reconciliation developing meaningfully.
As the Turkish Human Rights Association noted on Armenian Genocide Recognition Day (24th April) in 2006 (and this has to be reflected upon, given knowledge of the Turkish, US and UK governments' continuing denial of the “reality” of the Armenian and 'Other' genocides):
Denial is a constituant part of the genocide itself and results in the continuation of the genocide. Denial of genocide is a human rights violation in itself. It deprives individuals the right to mourn for their ancestors, for the ethnic cleansing of a nation, the annihilation of people of all ages, all professions, all social sections, women, men, children, babies, grandparents alike just because they were Armenians regardless of their political background or conviction. Perhaps the most important of all, it is the refusal of making a solemn, formal commitment and say: “NEVER AGAIN” ...
Turkey will not be able to take even one step forward without putting an end to the continuity of the Progress and Union manner of ruling.
Indeed, for the Turkish Human Rights Association: “Unless the Turkish state agree[s] to create an environment where public homage is paid to genocide victims, where the sufferings of their grandchildren is shared and the genocide is recognised”, there can be no progress.
If we ask ourselves the question:
Will the planned state visit by HM the Queen to Turkey in May be a seal of approval on the Turkish government's distortion of the truth of the genocide, and the continuing cultural genocide in Turkey?
It very much will, in my opinion, depend upon the nature of the visit, and the statements and endorsements that will accompany that visit (relating to what is said or unsaid concerning the Turkish state's ongoing and past genocidal record, and its and the UK government's continuing Armenian/Assyrian/Greek/Kurdish genocide denialist position). The Queen and those in her entourage and the UK government should also reflect upon the Turkish Human Rights Association's observations on Armenian Genocide Recognition day in 2006, which remain relevant today:
Turkey has made hardly any progress in the field of co-existence, democracy, human rights and putting an end to militarism since the time of the Union and Progress Committee. Annihilation and denial had been, and continues today, to be the only means to solve the problem ... Today’s ongoing military build up of some 250,000 troops in the [Kurdish] southeast of Turkey is the proof of a mindset wh[ich] is unable to develop any solution to the Kurdish question other than armed suppression.
*Desmond Fernandes is the author of The Kurdish and Armenian Genocides: From Censorship and Denial to Recognition? (Apec Press, Stockholm, 2007).
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