January 23, 2001

5:49 AM

Armenian holocaustYou accuse Turkey of what they did to the Armenians--all a part of history--and you lose out. Thus, the Unite;d States has yet to cite Turkey, our needed ally, of what is known to have taken place, despite the many protests from the Armenian community in America.
posted by Postroad (5 comments total)

1.5 million people killed. In other news, ww1 and 2 never happened.
posted by tiaka at 6:06 AM on January 23, 2001

Anyone has every been to the Sardarabad Memorial? I remember visiting it as a kid, wondering what the big place was. Scroll down for a picture.
posted by tiaka at 6:15 AM on January 23, 2001

That's a great link, tiaka: thanks. It's easy to forget that Armenia's history makes even European civilisations look like upstarts.

The UK finally chose to acknowledge the Armenian massacres in its Holocaust remembrance ceremonies this weekend, after mounting pressure. I'd imagine that the words "Ilusu" and "Dam" were involved: the mechanism of a modern day ethnic cleansing. (You'd think that the Turks would be happy to pass off the 1915 massacre as one of the last throes of Ottoman rule. But I'd imagine that it raises too many similarities to the modern treatment of the Kurds in eastern Anatolia.)

As for whether Britain should be having a Holocaust day at all... well, Nick Cohen said it better than I could, last year: "I hate the thought of history as therapy; of death camps becoming a - y'know - life-affirming experience. Absolutely despise it."

Oh, but while we're talking genocide: Rwanda.
posted by holgate at 6:25 AM on January 23, 2001

P.L.U.C.K.
posted by sonofsamiam at 7:03 AM on January 23, 2001

OK, I am gonna self-blog: I run a Greek-Turkish weblog and we've covered this topic a lot, if you are interested in deeper background.
posted by costas at 7:49 AM on January 23, 2001