Armenian Genocide Debate

Barack Obama has announced his vice presidential nominee as Delaware Senator Joe Biden, head of the Foreign Relations Committee of the 110th Congress. Joe Biden is well known in Turkey for having taken an anti-Turkish stance on all occasions and creating problems for American-Turkish relations.

Peter Musurlian, an Armenian-American filmmaker barged into Steve Cohen's house, where he was holding a news conference. Peter Musurlian started interrupting Steve Cohen's news conference and refused to leave the house when requested by the campaign staff. Steve Cohen then got up, went to Peter Musurlian, told him to leave immediately, to which Musurlian replied that he needed to get his stuff. Steve Cohen, already enraged by the constant harassment by Peter Musurlian told him to leave repeatedly and when he wouldn't budge, Steve Cohen slightly pushed him out of his home.

This week an independent non-political commission declared after researching the 1994 Rwandan Genocide that France had direct involvement in actively exterminating 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda. The commission accused 33 French political and military figures including the former prime minister of France and the former president. The phrase "What goes around, comes around" comes to mind when the French who recently accused the Turks of the Armenian Genocide, is now being blamed for a proven genocide.

Taner Akçam is a historian from Ardahan, Turkey born in 1953. Taner Akcam studied economics and graduated from the Middle Eastern Technical University in 1975. In 1975, he was arrested and sent to Ankara Central Prison. He has written many controversial books in support of the Armenian Genocide thesis and has even claimed that the Armenian Genocide debate is already over, which was widely criticized by Western historians and scholars.

The conditions of exiled and relocated Armenians is a frequent question in the Armenian Genocide debate. Armenian Genocide proponents throw a variety of arguments and claims sourced from questionable survivor stories as to the horrible conditions in which the relocated Armenians suffered during the Tehcir (Relocation) Law in 1915 by the Ottoman Empire. One statement that gets repeated is that the Armenians were relocated in such a way as to deliberately cause their deaths as part of an Armenian Genocide. Through archival documents, reports by foreign consuls, and logical analysis we can determine whether these claims have any merit.

Supporters of the Armenian Genocide thesis often refer to Ambassador Morgenthau's story – a book published in the name of the American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire shortly before, during and after World War One – to prove that they are justified in their accusation of genocide. Since Henry Morgenthau Sr. was an ambassador of an initially neutral country, many Westerners assumed around 1918 and continue to assume today that his 'diary' was objective in its reflections of what happened to the Armenian population of Ottoman Turkey in 1915.

In the Zeytun and Sasun Armenian revolts, the Ottomans had learned that they needed to control internal disorder and that they cannot simply defend the borders. The Armenian Revolutionary Federations' plan of ferocious rebellions that provoked retaliatory attacks which would then be used to convince Europe that they should help Armenians achieve independence was about to be tested. Armenian authors argue that the rebellion was part of a self-defense against Ottoman troops which resulted in the Armenian Genocide, but how was it interpreted by British consuls?

A common misconception blames Turkish nationalism as the cause of Armenian massacres in Turkey; however, Turkish nationalism did not exist before the 1920s and sometimes Ottoman nationalism is confused with Turkish nationalism. Starting in the 1920s, Turkish nationalism was founded upon the determination of the Turks to survive World War I. The Sevrés Treaty and Sykes-Picot agreements were European Imperialists and Anti-Turkish Nationalist’s plans to divide the crumbling Ottoman Empire.

European Hypocrisy is a double standard on the founding democratic principals that European nations were founded upon. It is the suppression of certain view points because of the lack of knowledge of the view points. How does one value the free speech of one over the free speech of another? Will the European Human Rights Court fix the suppression of freedom in Switzerland and France?

Anti-Turkism, also known as Turkophobia or Turcophobia, is hatred or discrimination towards Turkish people, their culture, their government, or their history (such as the Ottoman Empire or Seljuq Empire). They are mostly a collection of stereotypes and ethnic or religious hatred rooted by conflicts of the Turkish government or of the Ottoman Empire. Anti-Turkism originates usually from wars, propaganda, and differences in culture or religion.