Why does the Turkish government deny that a genocide took place?

Answer 1

"Because it is Armenian propoganda and did not really happen!" says the initial poster of this question. There real answer is because of people like this person. Over the last century the Turkish government has done everything in its power to promote forgetting the genocide and to rational the great crime. There were no nuremberg trials which is why it was less known of and not as globally recognized as the Jewish Holocaust. Its was hidden under the cloak of war and is slowly getting the recognition it deserves (Twenty-one countries including Sweden, Argentina and Canada and forty-three states of the United States of America have recognized the Armenian Genocide, with and overwhelming majority of historians in support).

Answer 2

Genocide is probably the worst accusation that leveled at someone and the Young Turks did not want the sting of that accusation. It has nothing to do with facts or evidence, since those squarely support the Armenian claim that a genocide occurred.

Answer 3

Rationale for Denying the Genocide

1) Young Turk Nationalism: The Armenian, Pontic Greek, and Assyrian Genocides (1.5 million people, 500,000 people, and 280,000 people, respectively) are glowing indictments of the ethnocentrist racism and xenophobia of the Young Turk ideology. While there were some Young Turks like Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who kept away from strictly racist and xenophobic rhetoric and instead focused on modernizing Turkey and the Turkish citizenry, most of the leaders of the Young Turk group were actively affiliated with or took no stand against these genocides. It was these Young Turks who became part and parcel of the Kemalist administration in the Interwar period of the Republic of Turkey. These are the "Founding Fathers" of Turkey, so to speak. It would be very painful for the Turkish people to admit that most of the founders of their country were blood-soaked genocide-perpetrators. This is really the issue; it is an emotional desire not to rightly defame the founders of the modern Turkish State and its focus on the "Turkish" ethnic identity. This is a very emotional reason for denying the Armenian, Pontic Greek, and Assyrian Genocides: their love of country and the desire not to indict their founders.

2) Reparation Payments: The Turkish people are also making a modern calculation. They expect that Armenians, Pontic Greeks, and Assyrians who survived the genocide and their descendants will demand money or land in compensation for their suffering in much the same way that the Jews and other victims of the Nazi Holocaust have demanded that the German government compensate them. Even though most Armenian organizations have said that they are not interested in money, just simple recognition of historical wrongdoing, the Turkish government remains suspicious.

3) Analogy to the Turkish-Kurdish Issue: If the genocides are admitted, the cause of them, the exultation of the Turkish national identity and repression and murder of those who cannot participate in the Turkish national identity, would recast the current Turkish violence and aggression against its Kurdish minority. The arguments used to justify the genocide of the Armenians, Pontic Greeks, and Assyrians are completely analogous to the current arguments against Kurdish autonomy, the murder of Kurdish politicians, and the Turkification of Kurds and Kurdish-majority cities. It would force Turkey to re-examine the past century of Anti-Kurdish activities and come to terms with the Human Rights abuses that the Turkish Kurds face on a daily basis.

4) Cypriot Dispute: The Turkish Occupation of Northern Cyprus is a continuation of the strong distrust of Christian Ottoman subjects that was symbolized by the genocide of the Armenians, Pontic Greeks, and Assyrians. The Occupation of Cyprus is based on the same grounds, fears of what the Christian Ex-Ottomans, the Greek Cypriots, will do to Muslims. If the fears of Christian Ex-Ottomans in the first context (Armenians, Assyrians, and the descendants of the Pontic Greeks who fled) are shown to be fatuous, then there is a strong indication that the fears of the Christian Ex-Ottomans in the second context is equally without merit.

Turkish Legal Argument

Turkish Perspective

Successive Turkish governments have also jailed those who press for recognition of the Armenian, Pontic Greek, and Assyrian genocides as well as making declaring the Armenian Genocide to be a genocide to be economically disadvantageous to any nation which openly states it. This has prevented many nations from coming out against it. Regardless, most Turks try to make a historical claim that the genocide did not take place and the Turkish government will often make sizable grants to universities and professors who can put forward a legitimate argument in defense of the genocide denial. The Turkish position, and the position of those who believe similarly has two components: (1) that the Armenians and others were subversive to the Ottoman Empire and (2) that the legal definition of genocide is not met by the events that took place in the Ottoman Empire.

(1) Armenians Were Subversive

This argument is that the Armenians and the Russians had a historic relationship and that the Armenians were likely to mobilize on the Russians' behalf in World War I. This would open the Ottoman Empire to a fourth front (in addition to Gallipolil, Egypt, and Arabia) and deplete Ottoman resources. As a result, it would be necessary to remove them. The Pontic Greeks were seen to locked with independent Greece in order to create a pincer attack in future Balkans Wars. The Assyrians were subject to suspicion on the idea that they would follow the Armenians. As a result, it was necessary to target these groups to remove any possible collaborators. The Turks simply became overzealous in this act.

Turks point to how the Jews, Kurds, and Alevis, who were other minorities in roughly the same regions as where the Armenians, Pontic Greeks, and Assyrians lived, were not subject to the same types of attacks because there was no evidence that these Non-Turkish groups would be subversive.

(2) Not a Genocide

Turks hold (correctly) that a genocide has two components.

The first necessary component of a genocide is the singling out of one or more races for worse treatment than the remainder of the population. This worse treatment must be harsh enough to be considered repressive or oppressive and not merely having fewer rights. Most Turks acknowledge that the Armenians, Pontic Greeks, and Assyrians faced incredible hardship during their forced relocations and evictions that would satisfy this requirement.

The second necessary component of a genocide is the intent and execution of a plan to eliminate the singled out race from the planet or, barring that, from any territory claimed by the genocidal power. This is where Turks often say that the Armenian case falls short. While Turkish soldiers were unconscionably brutish, belligerent, and murderous, there was never a top-down order or insinuation that the Armenians should be exterminated. The fact that many died was due to the appalling conditions under which the forced relocations and exodus were performed.

This view does not acquit Turkey of its actions, but puts it in the same ballpark as the Trail of Tears in the 1820s in the United States: an atrocity that is not quite a genocide.
Commentary on the Turkish Perspective
Most people around the world do consider the Armenian genocide to be a genocide and the Turkish view is a minority view in academic circles.

(1) Armenians Were Subversive

This argument is littered with holes. The first is that the Armenian-Russian relationship was always cultural and never military. The Ottoman Empire went to war with Russia eight times in the prior two centuries and the Armenians never fought alongside the Russians. When the Serbs, Greeks, Bulgarians, and other Balkan minorities rose up against the Ottomans, the Armenians were consistently called "the Loyal Minority" because they remained loyal to the Ottoman leadership and never demanded an independent state. There was no evidence of Armenian-Russian collaboration. It is also well-known that Ismail Enver Pasha, one of the leaders of the Genocide, blamed his failure in the Battle of Sarikamish on his Armenian soldiers, even though an Armenian named Hovannes had saved his life during a battle by carrying Enver through battle lines on his back. It was ironically being saved by an Armenian that allowed Enver Pasha to spin lies and commit atrocities against the people who saved his life.

The second major hole is that there was absolutely no reason to think that Assyrians would help Armenians in declaring independence, were the Armenians to want such a thing. Armenian independence would reduce Assyrian land-claims.

The third major hole is that Greeks in Greece had never relied on Anatolian or Pontic Greeks in the various Balkans Wars, so there was no reason to suspect that Greeks would do so this time.

The fourth major hold is to discuss the non-targeted minorities. The Jews were not large enough to stage a rebellion, the Kurds were actively fighting in militias in the mountains where they were harder to target, and the Alevis were considered Turks - keeping them within the acceptable definition of "Turkishness" and not subject to the genocide. The Christian Ex-Ottomans, the Armenians, Pontic Greeks, and Assyrians were (1) large enough to rebel, (2) not actually fighting, and (3) clearly not Turks. This is why they were targeted.

However, the largest hole is the persistent organization of the genocide. The first group attacked and murdered were the Armenian intellectuals in Istanbul, which were the very people who would be most attached to the Ottoman State and willing to argue against independence in their communities. It makes sense to kill intellectuals if you are trying to destroy an ethnic group, not if you are trying to pacify internal disquiet. Next, entire villages were expunged of the majority-Armenian, majority-Greek, and majority-Assyrian inhabitants and the names of the cities completely altered to create "theoretical" Turkish names in a process called Turkification. Again it would not make sense to target a civilian population if the threat is a military one, but it makes perfect sense to target a civilian population if genocide is the goal. The Armenians were marched to Deir ez-Zur in the Syrian desert without food and water (the Pontic Greeks and the Assyrians were marched to other places). There were numerous massacres and concentration camps along the route to Deir ez-Zur. That genocide was the goal is basically assured. This is not to mention the courageous work of Gregoris Balakian who detailed how the system was organized.

(2) Not a Genocide

While the Turks are correct that there are two parts to a genocide claim, most historians hold that there is sufficient documentation to establish that the Ottoman Empire intended to exterminate the Armenian people and thus fulfill the second necessary component of a genocide. The massacres that followed were in accordance with those orders. The actions and orders of Ismail Enver Pasha, Mehmed Talaat Pasha, and Ahmed Djemal Pasha are well-documented. The evidence is incredibly strong that they engineered the systematic murder of roughly 2.5 million people.

Answer 4

Rationale for Denying the Genocide

1) Young Turk Nationalism: The Armenian, Pontic Greek, and Assyrian Genocides (1.8 million people, 500,000 people, and 280,000 people, respectively) are glowing indictments of the ethnocentrist racism and xenophobia of the Young Turk ideology. While there were some Young Turks like Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who kept away from strictly racist and xenophobic rhetoric and instead focused on modernizing Turkey and the Turkish citizenry, most of the leaders of the Young Turk group were actively affiliated with or took no stand against these genocides. It was these Young Turks who became part and parcel of the Kemalist administration in the Interwar period of the Republic of Turkey. These are the "Founding Fathers" of Turkey, so to speak. It would be very painful for the Turkish people to admit that most of the founders of their country were blood-soaked genocide-perpetrators. This is really the issue; it is an emotional desire not to rightly defame the founders of the modern Turkish State and its focus on the "Turkish" ethnic identity. This is a very emotional reason for denying the Armenian, Pontic Greek, and Assyrian Genocides, their love of country and the desire not to indict their founders.

2) Reparation Payments: The Turkish people are also making a modern calculation. They expect that Armenians, Pontic Greeks, and Assyrians who survived the genocide and their descendants will demand money or land in compensation for their suffering in much the same way that the Jews and other victims of the Nazi Holocaust have demanded that the German government compensate them. Even though, most Armenian organizations have said that they are not interested in money, just simple recognition of historical wrongdoing, the Turkish government is suspicious.

3) Analogy to the Turkish-Kurdish Issue: If the genocides are admitted, the cause of them, the exultation of the Turkish national identity and repression and murder of those who cannot participate in the Turkish national identity, would recast the current Turkish violence and aggression against its Kurdish minority. The arguments used to justify the genocide of the Armenians, Pontic Greeks, and Assyrians are completely analogous to the current arguments against Kurdish autonomy, the murder of Kurdish politicians, and the Turkification of Kurds and Kurdish-majority cities. It would force Turkey to re-examine the past century of Anti-Kurdish activities and come to terms with the Human Rights abuses that the Turkish Kurds face on a daily basis.

4) Cypriot Dispute: The Turkish Occupation of Northern Cyprus is a continuation of the strong distrust of Christian Ottoman subjects that was symbolized by the genocide of the Armenians, Pontic Greeks, and Assyrians. The Occupation of Cyprus is based on the same grounds, fears of what the Christian Ex-Ottomans, the Greek Cypriots, will do to Muslims. If the fears of Christian Ex-Ottomans in the first context are shown to be fatuous, then there is a strong indication that the fears of the Christian Ex-Ottomans in the second context is equally without merit.

Turkish Legal Argument

Turkish Perspective

Successive Turkish governments have also jailed those who press for recognition of the Armenian, Pontic Greek, and Assyrian genocides as well as making declaring the Armenian Genocide to be a genocide to be economically disadvantageous to any nation which openly states it. This has prevented many nations from coming out against it. Regardless, most Turks try to make a historical claim that the genocide did not take place and the Turkish government will often make sizable grants to universities and professors who can put forward a legitimate argument in defense of the genocide denial. The Turkish position, and the position of those who believe similarly has two components: (1) that the Armenians and others were subversive to the Ottoman Empire and (2) that the legal definition of genocide is not met by the events that took place in the Ottoman Empire.

(1) Armenians Were Subversive

This argument is that the Armenians and the Russians had a historic relationship and that the Armenians were likely to mobilize on the Russians' behalf in World War I. This would open the Ottoman Empire to a fourth front (in addition to Gallipolil, Egypt, and Arabia) and deplete Ottoman resources. As a result, it would be necessary to remove them. The Pontic Greeks were seen to locked with independent Greece in order to create a pincer attack in future Balkans Wars. The Assyrians were subject to suspicion on the idea that they would follow the Armenians. As a result, it was necessary to target these groups to remove any possible collaborators. The Turks simply became overzealous in this act.

Turks point to how the Jews, Kurds, and Alevis, who were other minorities in roughly the same regions as where the Armenians, Pontic Greeks, and Assyrians lived, were not subject to the same types of attacks because there was no evidence that these Non-Turkish groups would be subversive.

(2) Not a Genocide

Turks hold (correctly) that a genocide has two components.

The first necessary component of a genocide is the singling out of one or more races for worse treatment than the remainder of the population. This worse treatment must be harsh enough to be considered repressive or oppressive and not merely having fewer rights. Most Turks acknowledge that the Armenians, Pontic Greeks, and Assyrians faced incredible hardship during their forced relocations and evictions that would satisfy this requirement.

The second necessary component of a genocide is the intent and execution of a plan to eliminate the singled out race from the planet or, barring that, from any territory claimed by the genocidal power. This is where Turks often say that the Armenian case falls short. While Turkish soldiers were unconscionably brutish, belligerent, and murderous, there was never a top-down order or insinuation that the Armenians should be exterminated. The fact that many died was due to the appalling conditions under which the forced relocations and exodus were performed.

This view does not acquit Turkey of its actions, but puts it in the same ballpark as the Trail of Tears in the 1820s in the United States: an atrocity that is not quite a genocide.
Commentary on the Turkish Perspective
Most people around the world do consider the Armenian genocide to be a genocide and the Turkish view is a minority view in academic circles.

(1) Armenians Were Subversive

This argument is littered with holes. The first is that the Armenian-Russian relationship was always cultural and never military. The Ottoman Empire went to war with Russia eight times in the prior two centuries and the Armenians never fought alongside the Russians. When the Serbs, Greeks, Bulgarians, and other Balkan minorities rose up against the Ottomans, the Armenians were consistently called "the Loyal Minority" because they remained loyal to the Ottoman leadership and never demanded an independent state. There was no evidence of Armenian-Russian collaboration. It is also well-known that Ismail Enver Pasha, one of the leaders of the Genocide, blamed his failure in the Battle of Sarikamish on his Armenian soldiers, even though an Armenian named Hovannes had saved his life during a battle by carrying Enver through battle lines on his back. It was ironically being saved by an Armenian that allowed Enver Pasha to spin lies and commit atrocities against the people who saved his life.

The second major hole is that there was absolutely no reason to think that Assyrians would help Armenians in declaring independence, were the Armenians to want such a thing. Armenian independence would reduce Assyrian land-claims.

The third major hole is that Greeks in Greece had never relied on Anatolian or Pontic Greeks in the various Balkans Wars, so there was no reason to suspect that Greeks would do so this time.

The fourth major hold is to discuss the non-targeted minorities. The Jews were not large enough to stage a rebellion, the Kurds were actively fighting in militias in the mountains where they were harder to target, and the Alevis were considered Turks - keeping them within the acceptable definition of "Turkishness" and not subject to the genocide. The Christian Ex-Ottomans, the Armenians, Pontic Greeks, and Assyrians were (1) large enough to rebel, (2) not actually fighting, and (3) clearly not Turks. This is why they were targeted,

However, the largest hole is the persistent organization of the genocide. The first group attacked and murdered were the Armenian intellectuals in Istanbul, which were the very people who would be most attached to the Ottoman State and willing to argue against independence in their communities. It makes sense to kill intellectuals if you are trying to destroy an ethnic group, not if you are trying to pacify internal disquiet. Next, entire villages were expunged of the majority-Armenian, majority-Greek, and majority-Assyrian inhabitants and the names of the cities completely altered to create "theoretical" Turkish names in a process called Turkification. Again it would not make sense to target a civilian population if the threat is a military one, but it makes perfect sense to target a civilian population if genocide is the goal. The Armenians were marched to Deir ez-Zur in the Syrian desert without food and water (the Pontic Greeks and the Assyrians were marched to other places). There were numerous massacres and concentration camps along the route to Deir ez-Zur. That genocide was the goal is basically assured. This is not to mention the courageous work of Gregoris Balakian who detailed how the system was organized.

(2) Not a Genocide

While the Turks are correct that there are two parts to a genocide claim, most historians hold that there is sufficient documentation to establish that the Ottoman Empire intended to exterminate the Armenian people and thus fulfill the second necessary component of a genocide. The massacres that followed were in accordance with those orders. The actions and orders of Ismail Enver Pasha, Mehmed Talaat Pasha, and Ahmed Djemal Pasha are well-documented. The evidence is incredibly strong that they engineered the systematic murder of roughly 2.5 million people.