Calling a Spade a Spade: Biden and the Armenian Genocide

Truth is often hard to come by, especially when it comes to a nation admitting its faults. It is also hard for people to call a spade a spade when it comes to the actions of other nations, especially when that nation is an important ally.

Yet that is exactly what US President Biden did when on 24 April 2021 he referred to the massacres of Armenians starting in 1915 as genocide. He was simply calling a spade a spade. Or, to use the words of Philip Jenkins, “If the word genocide has any meaning whatever, it certainly applies” to the treatment of Armenians and other Christian minorities under Ottoman rule during those years.[1]
 
The word “genocide” was invented in the 1940s by Raphael Lemkin in order to describe the Turkish handling of Armenians and the Nazi treatment of the Jews. The term is based on the Greek genos (people or nation) and Latin suffix –cide (murder).[2] The United Nations adopted the term on 9 December 1948 in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, often referred to as the Genocide Convention. The Convention defines genocide as “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”[3] It is more than deaths as a consequence of war, or localized pogroms; rather, it is a systematic and concerted attempt to wipe out a people. The term has its detractors, and is contested, but at its core is the recognition that genocide seeks to eliminate a particular people, and for that reason the word serves an important purpose.
 
The Hamidian Massacres (1894–1896) that led to 100,000–300,000 deaths at the hands of the Ottoman Turks were only a prelude to the coming calamity. During the First World War, the Turkish government aggressively pursued a policy of extermination against the Armenians within its borders and estimates of the disaster usually range between 1,000,000 and 1,500,000 deaths (there were further mass killings to the south among Syriac and Iraqi Orthodox Christians adding another 500,000 deaths to the total).[4]
 
But can what happened to the Armenians be deemed “genocide”? Despite intense political pressure from the Turkish government, a growing number of nations – Canada included (2004) – have declared that the violence perpetrated against Armenians was genocide.[5] Until Biden called a spade a spade, the US government refused to join in the chorus of those recognizing what seemed obvious.
 
There has been a great deal of primary source material gathered on the genocide, with a well-developed historiography.[6] Nevertheless, the interpretation of these sources is contested, with some denying that genocide even occurred.[7] There is a professional and moral responsibility for historians to use academic freedom properly, but that is not always the case with deniers of the Armenian genocide – especially among Turkish historians.[8] There are “striking similarities” in the methodologies and objectives of Armenian Genocide and Jewish Holocaust deniers, and denying the events is cause for alarm, for in the denial of the past the “process of annihilation is thus advanced and completed.”[9]
 
For years the world has called a spade a spade when it comes to Turkey’s crimes committed a century ago. And now the leader of the most powerful nation on earth has finally joined the chorus. The question now is whether or not Turkey will admit its culpability. Based on the initial reaction of the Turkish government, we may be waiting a long time for that part of the healing process.


[1] Philip Jenkins, The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia – and How It Died (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 162.
[2] Eric D. Weitz, A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation (Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003), 8.
[3] Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, http://www.un.org/millennium/law/iv-1.htm (accessed 2011).
[4] Turkish authorities admit 800,000 deaths occurred (not counting tens of thousands of conscripts executed by the military), but not through genocide.
[5] For the Canadian statement, see http://www.armenian-genocide.org/Affirmation.291/current_category.7/affirmation_detail.html. For Turkish reaction, see http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2004/04/22/armenia040422.html.
[6] For instance, see Ara Sarafian, “The Archival Trail: Authentication of The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-16,” In Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), 51-65. See also James L. Barton, ed., “Turkish Atrocities,” Statements of American Missionaries on the Destruction of Christian Communities in Ottoman Turkey, 1915-1917 (Ann Arbor: Gomidas Institute, 1998); Donald E. Miller and Lorna Touryan Miller, eds., Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1993; Leslie A. Davis, The Slaughterhouse Province: An American Diplomat’s Report on the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1917 (New Rochelle: Aristide D. Caratzas, 1989). For historiographical issues, see Donald E. Miller and Lorna Touryan Miller, “An Oral History Perspective on responses to the Armenian Genocide,” In The Armenian Genocide in Perspective, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian (New Brunswick, USA/London, UK: Transaction Publishers, 1986), 187-203; Donald E. Miller and Lorna Touryan Miller, “Armenian Survivors: A Typological Analysis of Victim Response,” Oral History Review 10 (1982): 47-72; Richard G. Hovannisian, “Bitter-Sweet Memories: The Last Generation of Ottoman Armenians,” In Looking Backward, Moving Forward: Confronting the Armenian Genocide, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian (New Brunswick, USA/London, UK: Transaction Publishers, 2003), 113-124; Lorne Shirinian, “Survivor Memoirs of the Armenian Genocide as Cultural History,” In Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), 165-173; Rubina Peroomian, “Problematic Aspects of Reading Genocide Literature: A Search for a Guideline or a Canon,” In Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), 175-186.
[7] For instance, see Mim Kemal Oke, The Armenian Question, 1914-1923 (K. Rustem and Brother, 1988); Guenter Lewy, The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2005).
[8] For instance, see Yves Ternon, “Freedom and Responsibility of the Historian: The ‘Lewis Affair’,” In Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), 237-248; Roger W. Smith, Eric Markusen, and Robert Jay Lifton, “Professional Ethics and the Denial of the Armenian Genocide,” In Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), 271-295; Marc Nichanian, “The Truth of the Facts,” In Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), 249-270; Richard G. Hovannisian, “The Armenian Genocide and Patterns of Denial,” In The Armenian Genocide in Perspective, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian (New Brunswick, USA/London, UK: Transaction Publishers, 1986), 111-133; Vigen Guroian, “Collective Responsibility and Official Excuse Making: The Case of the Turkish Genocide of the Armenians,” In The Armenian Genocide in Perspective, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian (New Brunswick, USA/London, UK: Transaction Publishers, 1986), 135-152; Henry C. Theriault, “Denial and Free Speech: The Case of the Armenian Genocide,” In Looking Backward, Moving Forward: Confronting the Armenian Genocide, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian (New Brunswick, USA/London, UK: Transaction Publishers, 2003), 231-261.
[9] Richard G. Hovannisian, “Denial of the Armenian Genocide on Comparison with Holocaust Denial,” In Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), 201-202.