Does anyone have a good link to someone explaining why announcing a genocide was a genocide is such a big deal- I feel like I knew this at one point but my brain just dumped it. I understand the vague contours- the cold war and the war on terror, etc., but does officially declaring it lead to any actual changes in policy or standing?
Also, whatever happened with those Turkish guys who assaulted people in DC a couple years ago?
Legion
Calling a genocide a genocide is a problem because Erdogan is building a fascist regime and that means nothing in their history can be “bad”. Anything that can’t be retroactively defined as “fantastic” must be simply erased from history.
And as for the thugs who beat up Americans on American soil? Nothing happened to them. Nothing at all.
2liberal
npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/22/596227771/feds-drop-prosecution-of-7-turkish-bodyguards-invol…
persistentillusion
My grandmother’s BFF was Kate Turabian (if you don’t know who she is, google the name. She’ll show up with Strunk and White). She insisted during my childhood that the Turks had massacred the Armenians and that they were all going to rot in hell. I’ve felt strongly based on that testimony that Turkey and it’s rulers can GFTS.
Gin & Tonic
Genocide is always a difficult topic to speak of clearly. Ottoman Turks against Armenians in 1915-16, the USSR against Kazakhs or Ukrainians in 1932-33, the Indonesians in East Timor in the 1970’s, the Hutu against the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994, the list goes on, but the perpetrators, especially if it is the same government or a successor government that claims the mantle of the previous, strive to avoid mention of the facts. The simple fact of calling a spade a spade provides some comfort to the heirs of the victims. No, this will not change Erdogan’s policies in any way, but it is important nevertheless.
persistentillusion
She was deeply scarred by the genocide, and it caused her to leave Amernia and immigrate to America because she didn’t feel safe.
Shantanu Saha
The Armenian Genocide is a touchy subject for the Turks, and thus something US diplomacy stayed away from when they needed good relations with Turkey, especially during the Cold War when we needed them on our side blocking the Soviets at the Bosporus.
Yutsano
To Armenia this is a Big Biden Deal. The US has done a little tapdance teasing the Armenian community that for sure it will be announced only oops realpolitik kicks in and what ya gonna do? This is really a shot at Erdoğan. Biden is basically telling him to piss up a rope and calling him out on the authoritarian path he’s on.
Tehanu
@persistentillusion:
Kate Turabian, wow. Haven’t heard that name in years. My high school English teacher swore by her.
Roger Moore
@Legion:
I think there’s a bit more to it than that. This is something the Turks have never been willing to admit, or we would have brought it up before Erdogan took power. I think a huge part of it is that the Turks are unwilling to accept that Turkey is actually a multi-ethnic country, which is also why they’ve been so resistant to conceding anything to the Kurds.
brettvk
What struck me when I read the background on this is that naming your political punditry show “The Young Turks” was a really poor decision.
Sister Golden Bear
@Legion: More than just Erdogan. The Turks have vehemently denied there was a genocide ever since it happened. The complete denial has been woven into the general public’s psyche for decades.
Mary G
I’m sure Bill in Glendale can report that it’s a BFD amongst the large Armenian-American community there.
Trump let the criminals go because he loves seeing poor people beat up.
Martin
The US has pretty much always held that this was a genocide.
You have to put this in the same category as the One China policy. Formally, we recognize a unified China, but the cost to China of that formal recognition is that we’re going to treat Taiwan as an ally and nearly as a protectorate, sell them arms, and so on. China understood this. They had no real expectation of unification – they knew they couldn’t pull it off, so it got them something. Mostly it got them recognition and a seat on the world stage. That was something we wanted to have happen, and it gives us leverage – piss us off and we’ll just recognize Taiwan, and you can gauge American tolerance of Chinas behavior by how much we do with Taiwan.
Similar with Turkey. The US has never denied it was a genocide, and has informally called it that repeatedly. I think every president but Trump has. Obama did very clearly. But witholding the formal statement was just a bit of leverage.
My guess here is that Biden is getting a few things out of this.
So I don’t think this changes anything directly. It’s not like anyone from 1920 is about to go to the Hague. It does mean the US can be counted on to vote on things that would pressure Turkey to recognize and apologize for the genocide. That’s about it directly. I think it’s a bit more designed for China.
Feel free to disregard all of this should Adam show up.
Old Man Shadow
Turkey gets all butthurt whenever you point out the obvious and the U.S. thought we needed Turkey back in the Cold War and the war on Terror.
I guess now that the geopolitical situation has changed, Biden feels confident enough to say the obvious out loud and to hell with Erdogan and his fascist bullshit.
bbleh
Well, not pretending to any detailed topical knowledge, but having been around for some scores of years, I know it has surfaced repeatedly like a vicious and unhealed wound that has had ramifications for literally generations of US policy as well as smaller-scale matters like mountdavidsoncross.org/armenian-genocide
Cheryl Rofer
Wikipedia is always a good place to start. The historical facts are there.
The Armenian Genocide is wrapped up with the origins of the modern Turkish state. So admitting that such a thing happened is deeply embarrassing to the Turkish government, much as we are seeing with slavery entwined with American origins.
Turkey has been an American ally through NATO. Armenia was a Soviet Republic and retains close ties with Russia. Admitting something that would embarrass an ally and support a Russian-oriented country was difficult. However, Turkey has recently made the relationship more difficult, however, making the declaration easier.
The administration’s statement softened the blow by putting the genocide firmly in the past.
Roger Moore
@Yutsano:
I think this is at least as much about pressure from the Armenian-American community as it is about deliberately antagonizing Erdogan. Of course I tend to see it that way because I’m in an area where a lot of businesses close on April 24th, and both my previous and current Representatives (Adam Schiff and Judy Chu, respectively) have been pushing hard for this for years.
NotMax
Capsulized topical history tidbits.
The etymology of genocide.
Wasn’t yet available for Grover Cleveland to utter in 1896.
Martin
@Mary G: Oh, yeah, within the Armenian community, this is huge. But the relative importance of Armenia and Turkey on the world stage is probably the only real explanation for why it didn’t come sooner.
Foreign policy isn’t about doing what’s right, it’s about doing what gains/secures you soft or hard power. Generally the US want those to be in alignment, which is why we backed so many initiatives like the UN, but they often aren’t.
Cheryl Rofer
I think there are some legal things that happen within the US government when it officially designates an action a genocide, but it’s too late to look them up and figure them out. Those legal things may have to do with relations with the perpetrators, which would be one of the things that would make the designation difficult.
persistentillusion
@Tehanu: She was a secretary at the University of Chicago. She was charged with correcting the grammar in the doctoral submissions. They pissed her off enough that she wrote the book. She was a nice person.
namekarB
@Gin & Tonic: During the same period, The Ottoman Empire also went after other minorities in Turkey, killing 300k (low estimate) or 900k (high estimate) Greeks in Anatolia and 200k (low) or 750k (high) Assyrians.
Here is a Wikipedia page on genocides. Who, where, and how many. And I would be remiss if I did not point out American genocide in California following the gold rush when 80% of the native population was killed. We should acknowledge our own heritage before pointing fingers at other nations. The indigenous population in pre gold rush California was denser than anywhere in North or South America.
Cheryl Rofer
I am thinking today of a friend, now gone, who was born as his parents fled the genocide. He did a lot of good things for the United States, his adopted country, but most are secret. He received some high-up awards, not entirely secret but not publicized.
Roger Moore
@brettvk:
Well, Cenk Uygur is proud of his Turkish heritage and probably sees the Young Turks as people to be emulated. Part of the reason Turkey has had a hard time admitting the Armenian Genocide is because the Young Turks are still widely admired, and it’s hard to admit the founders of modern Turkey were wrong about anything.
bbleh
@Cheryl Rofer: Definitely carefully crafted, and the Turkish response seems fairly pro-forma, so it certainly appears to have been scripted. I’m sure the Turks would prefer it hadn’t happened, but it certainly is less bad than it could have been, and one presumes that the Biden people care a little less than TFG’s people did about how the Erdogan regime feels. On the whole, looks to me like yet another example of the fkin amazing professionalism that the Biden people are bringing to the federal government. The contrast with TFG is almost too great to describe.
Cheryl Rofer
@bbleh: Yes. Biden called Erdogan yesterday (or Thursday?) to talk about it. The pro forma Turkish response indicates the Biden team got it right. Again.
Will note that there are loud calls for the US to do something about India’s covid crisis, and Antony Blinken just now issued a tweet.
Martin
@namekarB: I don’t think there’s ever been a formal accusation against the US for genocide against indigenous peoples (hard to find many other countries without similar records to levy such a claim) but I do know there was a formal accusation against the US for the treatment of black americans which WEB Dubois had a hand in. Friend of friend of the blog I.F. Stone makes an appearance.
RandomMonster
“Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” — A. Hitler
I don’t know why it’s taken 100 years to get here.
jl
@Martin: Not sure what that means, that the US hasn’t been formally accused of genocide against its indigenous peoples.
You mean formally charged by another sovereign country? Plenty of groups have charged the US with genocide. We deserve it: genocide of the Californian nations, as mentioned above, Trail of Tears, total war against Plains tribes (extermination of Buffalo, destruction of areas for foraging, etc.)
JoyceH
@bbleh:
But but but…. If he pisses off the Turkish government, they might not provide the permits for Biden Tower!
MomSense
The virtuoso cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan just posted this video commemorating the Armenian Genocide.
Even if you don’t have Instagram you should be able to watch it.
instagram.com/tv/COCoSDBgrz2/?igshid=fx3sg1zb9hro Apricot Tree
Zelma
Funny aside. I’m sure most people of a certain age as children were told to eat their dinner because of the starving people somewhere else. Most of my contemporaries were told, I believe, to think of the starving Chinese. I, OTOH, was always told to “Think of the starving Armenians!” My father was of the recalcitrant eating age at the time of the Armenian Genocide, and somehow, that became the family mantra. I had no idea until I was an adult either who the Armenians were or why the were starving. It was well known in the US because the American ambassador in Constantinople was the one who publicized what was happening to the Armenians.
It’s a horrible story which the Turks have been denying ever since. I think the term genocide is appropriate because the dispossession and killing of millions was the direct policy of the government. It was a “war measure,” undertaken because the Armenians were suspected of being supportive of Russia, with whom the Ottomans were at war.
Several years ago, I read a fine book, The Levant, which was about the vibrant, multi-ethnic world around the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean which was one of the many casualties of World War I. A tragic story.
dnfree
@Martin: that’s an excellent analysis and summary.
tom
@MomSense:
That is haunting, gorgeous, and ineffably sad. Thanks for posting.
Cheryl Rofer
Following up on Blinken’s tweet, here’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.
Darkrose
@persistentillusion: As in, Chicago Manual of Style Turabian? She’s a legend.
Kelly
We can certainly do both. Many Americans acknowledge the national crimes in our history. Many never will.
namekarB
@Kelly:
Agree
Martin
@jl: Yeah, not arguing such a charge wouldn’t be warranted, just saying that no formal accusation has been made to a governing body that other nations gave any credibility to.
persistentillusion
@Zelma: In a childish tantrum, I tossed a plate of food over my shoulder and was told ” think of the starving Amerians.”
Mary G
Nancy SMASH gets a body back, though I’m not sure she needs it.
Yutsano
@Mary G: She needs every body she can get right now. It wasn’t a flip but it’s still a body for the counts.
Kent
Can anyone recommend a good approachable history of the Ottoman empire and modern Turkey? I’d like to learn more about that region and history.
My impression was that the Ottoman Empire was Turkish-dominated multi-ethnic empire in which dozens or perhaps hundreds of ethnic groups from Greeks to Armenians to Turks to Arabs more or less blended to some extent over centuries of unitary rule and when the Ottoman Empire collapsed it descended into ethnic nationalism except that populations no longer aligned geographically. And Turkey, which was the rump remaining core of the Ottoman Empire went on a ethnic nationalist project that meant driving out or exterminating all of its problematic minority populations especially the Christian ones, from Greeks to Armenians. So the Armenian genocide was really at the heart of the formation of modern Turkey.
I’m sure it was far more complex than that. Which is why I could use a good readable history of the region.
SiubhanDuinne
@Yutsano:
What’s the status of the Florida seat held until recently by the late Alcee Hastings? His death was scarcely noted, and I haven’t seen a word about a replacement appointment or special election.
Kent
@Mary G: Louisiana 2nd is New Orleans. It is a Dem +52 district. Biden won it over Trump 75% to 23%. The runoff was between two Black Democrats. Carter was the more centrist of the two.
Yutsano
@SiubhanDuinne: Looks like it has to be scheduled by DeSantis. I couldn’t find anything about that happening yet. Wouldn’t surprise me if he’s just sitting on it right now.
Poe Larity
Calling the Ottomans as bad as Hitler will be butthurt with an Erdogam regime. We just dialed it up to 11.
If we didn’t sneak the NATO thermonukular sharing weapons out of Incirlik n 2019, we better get them out tonight.
Noskilz
The idea that this sets the tone for where the US will be going on these sorts of issues and puts Erdogan (and perhaps China) on notice seems like a good one.
Roger Moore
@Zelma:
A Chinese coworker said they were told about starving children in America, I assume with some kind of Marxist spin on class oppression.
Yutsano
@Poe Larity: I’ll let Adam and Cheryl fill in the details, but basically: no. Turkey will never get the nuclear armaments from Inçirlik*.
*I wish I could con my keyboard into making proper Turkish vowels. Alas…
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mary G:
Oh, yeah. Folk of Armenian heritage make up about 25 to 30% of Glendale’s population. I think I see more Armenian flags here than US flags.
William D
Good old Vox comes through…
The Armenian genocide is the first selection in a book I edited about genocide years ago …
If I had a chance to do the book over again, I might include more things about my own country and its annihilation of indigenous communities.
The Nazis kind of skewered the scale for defining and ascertaining genocide. You could squint at other horrific campaigns and say well they don’t measure up to the Holocaust, therefore not really genocide.
NotMax
@Kent
Osman’s Dream, Caroline Finkel
Constantinople, Philip Mansel
A Peace to End All Peace, David Fromkin
.
Mary G
?BillinGlendaleCA
@SiubhanDuinne:
As Nancy Smash has said, members of the House are never appointed, but elected.
SiubhanDuinne
@Yutsano:
Heh. Well, I see that the Democratic primary for the special election has nine declared candidates and six potential. I don’t know any of the names, but the great majority of them have electoral/legislative or administrative experience.
On the other hand, there is but one Republican candidate:
So I don’t think Nancy needs to worry about an upset in the House balance :-)
(Thanks for the link. Didn’t see that when I was doing my own googling.)
Steeplejack (phone)
@Kent:
Jason Goodwin, Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire. Dunno about “modern Turkey.”
Zanamu
For what it’s worth: we had a Turkish exchange student living with us in 2006-07, & the genocide was a huge thing. She & her family hated – HATED – the Erdogan regime, but there was NO GENOCIDE. She never admitted that it took place. So, the one time the issue came up, she talked about Native Americans, and I said, yeah, the US definitely committed genocide against Native Americans, and also against African American slaves. That I was willing to make such a statement blew her mind, but did not change her mind. I think it is a strength, that many US citizens (although not all: my elderly folks absolutely have a different interpretation of US history) are willing to admit a national failure.
206inKY
Yeah, it was genocide, but holy shit, we’re reaching beyond living memory here. How about formal recognition that the CIA orchestrated the coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohommed Mossadeg in 1953 and installed the Shah? Or our hand in assassinating Patrice Lumumba? Or turning a blind eye to Ho Chi Mihn’s overtures for US support against France in the 1945 Vietnamese Declaration of Independence and sparking a 28-year decolonization war? Or giving a medal to the naval officer who shot down Iran Air flight 655? Or our own damn genocide of Native people? Or slavery?
This is about shitting on Turkey and the fascist tendencies of the current regime. And yeah, maybe a warning shot at China, Brazil, and Hungary. But this is pretty rich.
How about calling out Spain for the entire fucking Franco regime and the Pact of Forgetting in 1975? Watch the heartbreaking documentary The Silence of Others (2019) on how victims in Spain are still hurting and could use some backbone from the US. Or calling out Germany for chronic racism against Turkish immigrants who have now saved the world at BioNTech? Let’s clean out the damn closet if we’re going to start using history like this so that it’s not just another shot at the Turkish people as global chess pieces. I mean shit, the Uyghur genocide is against the Turkic people of Xinjiang. Weird way to call it out.
206inKY
@Zanamu: Wait, you had a Turkish exchange student and you asked her to account for the Armenian genocide? How did this come up? Just casual conversation?
SectionH
@Cheryl Rofer: Yeah, I’m thinking of a friend too. Well, of my mom’s – they were teaching at the same University – but he was a good friend to me too, willing to discuss lots of things with me. When I was younger, he didn’t tell, but the story came out, how his grandmother survived the trek from Armenia to Alexandria, but lost most of her children on the way. He was born in Alexandria I think (his mother being the survivor) but I think mostly grew up in Marseilles. (Big Armenian community there still.)
I have a hard time not being pretty emotional about the topic.
And as Roger and others have mentioned, the Turks are still trying genocide with the Kurds. It’s appalling.
dopey-o
The only things your human race excels at are war and genocide.
Strangely, many of you approve of that.
We are currently at work to find a resolution to this situation.
Cermet
Unlike Turkey, we can and do note that we wiped out the Native American population – in Turkey, to speak of the Armenia genocide at all will land you in jail! They have denied the fact of the genocide and still do even through they did it. That is why officially recognizing it as genocide is both proper and appropriate. Duh.
Anne Laurie
It’s like saying the American Civil War was about slavery instead of ‘states’ rights’. It’s a signal to the Turkish government, and also to every other authoritarian government currently attempting to destroy some despised minority of its own population, that they are the descendants of thugs and monsters.
By the same analogy, it’s a long-overdue acknowledgement to the children of its victims that their suffering matters. It would be worth doing even if the current Turkish government was a benevolent democracy… and not an increasingly repressive kleptocracy.
SectionH
@206inKY: Never mind your “whatabout” shit, you seriously have No Idea about what “recent history” is in that part of the world.
I’ve also met an actual survivor of the Spanish Civil War, ffs. He was quite happy to stay in Yorkshire, at least before Franco was really, clearly, sincerely dead.
This is now when we have something diplomatic to say about reality – and I so hope about the Kurds…
NotMax
@SectionH
Heck, one of my step-grandfathers avoided being ‘conscripted’ by the Cossacks into the Russian military by piercing one of his own eardrums. Not that long ago, historically speaking.
206inKY
@Cermet: Without a doubt, the genocide was fucked up beyond belief. I just think there’s an undercurrent of orientalism in our fixation on it. There are fascist shock troops rampaging against Palestinians right now, the world’s largest stateless population, and we’re literally making a bigger deal about Turkish crimes against humanity from 100+ years ago. Like, why this? Most Americans don’t even know about Franco’s crimes in Spain and the Pact of Forgetting of 1975. But that’s a family matter among western European allies. We’ve whitewashed how much the geopolitics of this was originally driven by outrage that Turkey drove out the Greek occupation in 1919-1922. We couldn’t handle Christians being driven out by Muslims. We claim to care about the genocide but our real beef is with Turkey not sufficiently bending its knee to American empire today.
206inKY
@SectionH: Are you aware of the Pact of Forgetting of 1975?
columbusqueen
Would also recommend Paradise Lost by Giles Milton, about the destruction of Smyrna in 1922. Good book, which focuses on the very multicultural nature of the city & how completely it was laid waste. Also shows how the Greek effort to grab chunks of Turkey made everything so much worse.
SectionH
@206inKY: Yes, he was still alive when left Yorkshire in 1973. So what?
They suffered through Franco and then realised they wanted to be part the actual modern Europe they were already wanting to be.
trollhattan
IIUC some portion of genocide denial is motivated by continual efforts to keep Ataturk’s reputation spotless; even if he isn’t considered directly responsible he was known for oppressing and “Turkifying” non-Turk minorities.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@206inKY:
No, the reason they are paying attention to this is politics. Armenians out here are wealthy and well connected politically and have wanted this declaration for decades. The events may have occurred a century ago, but it is fresh in the minds of folk of Armenian heritage.
206inKY
@Anne Laurie: That’s a good analogy. We’re still teaching that crazy “war of northern aggression” bullshit in high schools across the rural South. These kids have been brainwashed. None of them know about the Tulsa massacre of 1921. Lynching is shoved under the rug. The hard work of bringing this stuff to light matters.
Shedding light on the Armenian genocide matters, too. The Armenian genocide was real, it was horrific, it deserves to be taught widely, and Turkey should be ashamed of itself.
But it’s real damn rich to just ignore that there’s an undercurrent of Islamophobia that makes it so damn EASY for us to talk about. We say nothing of the 1919 invasion of Turkey by Greek Christians who were promised a slice of the Ottoman empire, and spent three long years as an occupying force before being driven out. Obviously this does not excuse the Armenian genocide and Turkey’s ongoing whitewashing. But if we wanted real progress, we could leaven our condemnation with acknowledgement of the damn Crusades.
Cermet
@206inKY: All true but the issue is we too have white washed Turkey’s genocide as well. It is time we stopped doing that. What crimes we have done does not mean we should ignore past crimes that are still being denied today by the very people who did it.
So should we be silent about what China is doing because we committed crimes against native americans?
206inKY
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Yes, and that community, like Armenia itself, is overwhelmingly Christian. The genocide was real and awful and painful and shameful. But it’s totally fucking insane to ignore the context of religion. We’re on the right side of history in condemning the genocide. But the oil that has lubricated this issue and made it an easy call is American contempt toward the Islamic world. If this is a two-step dance toward condemning what’s happening to the Uyghurs today, I’ll change my tune.
SectionH
And I’m gonna say this again, and I hope I’m even a bit right – it’s also a notice to Erdogan on more than one issue. I want to hope there’s some [a great deal] of it about the Kurds. We owe them so much after That fucking FG.
206inKY
@Cermet: No, I strongly think we need to be taking action to stop what is happening to the Uyghurs.
206inKY
@SectionH: I agree as well that we need to take serious steps to protect the Kurds after Trump’s profound betrayal of our allies. For some reason, we never seem to get around to protesting certain cases of ongoing ethnic cleansing (whether the Kurds or Uyghurs or Palestinians or Rohingya). Surely it’s not that they’re all Muslims…
?BillinGlendaleCA
@206inKY: The reason the US is recognizing the genocide has nothing to do with religion, it’s political pressure by a well connected population.
206inKY
@SectionH: Unbelievable that you can say “So what?” about the Pact of Forgetting in Spain. Watch The Silence of Others (2019) and get back to me on that one. Critics seeking truth and reconciliation faced criminal penalties like in Turkey. The 1975 law still hasn’t been repealed, and we still haven’t said shit to Spain about it.
206inKY
I want to be crystal-clear that I am not denying or excusing the genocide of Armenian Christians in any way. It was awful, real, disgusting, and shameful. Turkey’s historical amnesia disgusts me as well. Erdogan disgusts me. I just think it’s possible for these things to ALL be true, and still question the wisdom of this decision.
I think we should forcefully call out what’s happening right now to the Kurds, Uyghurs, Rohingya, and Palestinians. Make some tough calls like apologizing for the actions of Kermit Roosevelt and the CIA in Iran in 1953. Build trust that we’re not just shitting on Muslims.
SectionH
@NotMax: OUCH!
SectionH
@206inKY: Sorry, shorthand, and the edit window was gone.
Ok, yes I was aware, And it was a BFD. Yes it was.
It didn’t help the old man I knew. He’d made his life in a not very friendly place for most non-locals, but when they accept you, they do. He was fine. He wasn’t going back to Spain to celebrate.
I may not have the most accurate memories of that era, but the “Francisco Franc is still Alive” was a thing on Italian TV stations around that time. Because the Italians were fairly hating on actual fascists back then. That happened.
Gvg
@206inKY: There is always a lot going on in the world and even more that happened in the past. We can’t do everything at once, even though we must do many things. We just can’t do all of those things right now, now should we because the responsibilities of government go well beyond apologizing about every past mistake or criticize every monster in history. What you are demanding is impossible. Any politician who concentrated on just every genocide in history by ourselves and everyone else, would lose in a landslide as the ultimate downer plus not doing all the rest of his job.
in addition, most of those things you cite are taught in history books. In spite of disdain for rural southern schools supposedly teaching the war of northern aggression and other whitewashing, I was taught very clearly in my southern schools that the civil war was about slavery and the CIA Iran overthrow. It’s not hidden. The sheer volume of history does result in people just not knowing it all though.
PaulWartenberg
I’ve personally met a number of Armenians here in Florida, and they have been so adamant about getting the genocide information out there. It is a very big deal with their community here in the U.S. and had been promised often by both political parties that the matter would be publicly expressed in ways the Turkish government couldn’t ignore.
In Turkey, they punish any public admission of the Armenian Genocide to the point the talk of it is avoided at all hazards. Getting the major world powers – especially the United States – to denounce Turkey whose conservative ruling class and military want to ignore the sins of their past over the genocide is a big effing deal.
This is akin to France publicly denouncing the U.S. for the Tulsa Massacre, or the United Kingdom holding the U.S. to account for our forced relocation of Native tribes to reservations during the Trail of Tears.
Barry
@206inKY: “How about”
The correct phrase is ‘what about’, as in en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism.
Ken
@Barry: Still, it’s nice to see so many new people joining the blog, if only for this one thread.
WaterGirl
@Ken:
Perfection!
ian
@Gvg:
The United State’s civil war was about power. All civil wars are about power. Slavery and state’s rights are convenient justifications we tell ourselves after the conflict so that we will the deaths and destruction were meaningful. Almost no one in the north in 1861 went to war to end slavery, when the goalposts moved in 1863 there were draft riots in the north. The South cared even less for states rights, as seen by the fugitive slave act of 1853 and the Scott decision of 57. The question, as always in violent, bloody, civil wars, is who wields the power.
artem1s
I’d like to know more about how Turkey’s stalled accession to full membership into the EU plays into diplomacy with Turkey. I seem to remember Turkey’s inclusion in NATO has often been at odds with US military action in the Middle East. It’s kind of hard to take military action in the Middle East and N. Africa without flying into (or out of) their airspace. Ukraine’s attempts to leave the old Soviet block trading consortium and attempts join the EU had a huge impact on US/Russian/Germany relationships – not to mention the annexation of Crimea. Seems to me negotiations with Turkey and the need to keep it from becoming a totalitarian state with strong ties to the Soviets (i.e. similar to Iran) has a lot to do with how much and what kind of pressure the US will put on Turkey. TFG definitely did more damage than is really easily understood here. So which not-awful options are still available for partners in Eastern Europe and the ME given there is a madman ascending the throne in Saudi Arabia? And with Netanyahu in power, Israel is becoming a more unstable partner as well? If Biden and Blinken can thread this needle and bring Turkey back from going rogue state, then more power to them. The EU has taken some big hits in the last 4-5 years. The world economy can’t afford for the EU to collapse – much as Putin would like it to.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@ian:
…but it was about slavery. The South wanted to keep slavery to keep its power. The North wanted to limit the Slave Power and the South feared slavery would eventually be outlawed outright, so they seceded
Pappenheimer
@ian: The best summation I ever found was that the United States fought the Civil War over secession, but that the southern states seceded over slavery.
dlw32
Same reason some people go mental when you say the US southern states succeeded because they wanted to keep using black people as disposable farming equipment despite 150 years of proof?
Ruckus
@Gin & Tonic:
The fact that he’s freaking out shows that it actually is important.
History is real and it can be very, very real to the subjects of state violence, if any of them survive. Countries are good, bad and indifferent entities. The bad will never change if no one ever calls them out or ends their reign of terror. But that attempting to end can and often does bring endless war and even more deaths. Calling them out, openly, can have a chilling effect, even if everyone knows what they did, but will never admit it. It isn’t the first or last step but often it is the only reasonable step.
Holding wars for decades, risking having a war now, really doesn’t accomplish much because the bad guys have enough (or far too much) modern weapons as well. The cost to be the worlds police keeps getting higher, just as the reward of being a world dick keeps getting higher. At some point (which I think is past) doing things differently has to happen. Acknowledging this is a vocal step, rather than a physical one. Not whitewashing history is an important part of the necessary. For all sides.
206inKY
@Gvg: Where in the south were you taught this? I am well aware of what happens in rural southern high schools from my job and there is zero chance you were taught about the 1953 US-backed Iranian coup unless you went to one of the elite prep schools with a social justice mission like Sacred Heart in Louisville.
206inKY
@Ken: I’m not new here, as plenty of others can attest. I reported on my door-knocking efforts for Andy Beshear. Haven’t posted as much during the pandemic since it hit my family hard, but just google my username.
206inKY
@WaterGirl: Seriously? You’ve personally exchanged emails with me. I get that you don’t agree on this issue, but come on now, why are you piling on? I assume you won’t dox me, but you know I’m not new here.
WaterGirl
@206inKY: I thought the wording of the phrase itself was perfection! His reply was to Ken, who is a regular, and I did not know who he was specifically referring to.
So don’t take it personally. I’m sure it goes without saying that I would never dox anyone, for any reason.