Turkey and the Denial of the Armenian Genocide

Translated by Vartan Matiossian 

 

The genocide of the Armenian people was perpetrated a century ago by the Young Turk government in the Ottoman Empire, from 1915 to 1923. Known also as the "Armenian holocaust," this episode, one of the abominable ones that world history remembers, consisted in the forced deportation and extermination of an undetermined number of Armenian civilians, approximately calculated between a million and a half and two million people.

Despite the documentation that widely proves the fact, Turkey continues to deny it and makes vain efforts to try to distort history, as if the genocide had not existed and if the Turks had not been responsible, hiding and defying truth.

For this reason, it is not unexpected that it continues the adoption of measures to deepen the abovementioned denialism. One of them is the modification of a national celebration, the anniversary of the battle of Gallipoli against the allies during World War I, to make it coincide, not by chance, with April 24, the date when Armenians historically commemorate the dramatic sacrifice to which their people was subjected. Let us remember again that a million and a half victims lost their lives in an atrocious and cruel way in that genocide: either directly executed or exterminated by hunger or forced to march until death, in episodes absolutely inhuman that cannot and must not be forgotten.

The change of the Turkish holiday is really lamentable and adds to the distorted historical descriptions included in some soap operas of Turkish origin that are even being shown among us.

These efforts to deface and even trivialize the subject generate a strong rejection. The Armenian genocide cannot be concealed and, even less, erased from history. It is time that the authorities of Turkey recognize it in due form.

"La Nación", February 2, 2015 (editorial)