I didn’t realize that David Ignatius had Armenian ancestry (on his father’s side). That’s one of the things that comes out in his most recent Washington Post column. Today there are about 11 million Armenians worldwide, mostly in Turkey, Armenia, Iran, Russia, and the United States. If you’re not familiar with the term “Armenian genocide” it refers to the mass slaughter of Turkey’s Armenian population by the Turks a century ago. Turkey’s position is that the numbers have been greatly exaggerated and they were merely putting down an insurrection. Officially, the U. S. hasn’t contradicted the official Turkish account.
In the column Mr. Ignatius considers President Biden’s official recognition of the Armenian genocide favorably:
Armenians around the world surely will rejoice in Biden’s planned announcement. They will celebrate the affirmation of justice and truth after so many decades of Turkish denial of the horrific events of 1915. But I hope they will also think, as Gregorian would have, about how to build bridges now to help Turkey escape from the horrors of its history.
Saturday ought to be a day when Turks, too, are liberated from the past. Denial of the genocide has wounded Armenians, but it has also damaged Turkey. Historians have long affirmed the truth of what happened, including Turkish scholar Taner Akcam in his detailed study of Ottoman sources, titled “A Shameful Act.â€
Denial of these facts has been a dead weight around Turkey’s neck, as if dragging the past into the future. Turkey’s continuing anger has been manifest, too, in its support for Azerbaijan’s war against Armenia over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.
I think that Mr. Biden’s decision to recognize the Armenian genocide is the right one but I also think the President Trump’s decision to move our embassy in Israel to Jerusalem was a good one. I think we should deal with the world as it is rather than as other countries (or peoples) wish it were in their creation myths. We shouldn’t lose track of the facts but that recognition may make dealing with the Turks more difficult.
As I have said before the Turks are not our friends. Kemalist Turkey was a useful ally during the Cold War but Islamist Turkey is an ally in name only. I’m not concerned about their allying with Russia or Iran; their own interests are not well-aligned with those of Russia or Iran and, indeed, in the case of Iran are in some ways antithetical to them. We need to understand Turkey as it is rather than as we wish it were and that includes the Armenian genocide and Turkey’s denial of it.
I don’t remember who said it but it remains true. History is a vendetta.
