The first mass massacres in the beginning of 20th century were perpetrated in Turkey, reads the article by Gwynne Dyer published in Trinidad & Tobago Express. He recalls that “Armenians all over the world insist that their ancestors who died in those events were the victims of a deliberate genocide, and that there can be no reconciliation with the Turks until they admit their guilt.”

NEWS.am issues several quotes from the article.

“On October 10, the Turkish and Armenian foreign ministers signed an accord in Zurich that reopens the border between the two countries, closed since 1993, and creates a joint historical commission to determine what actually happened in 1915. The most anguished protests came from the Armenian Diaspora: eight million people living mainly in the United States, France, Russia, Iran and Lebanon.
There are only three million people living in Armenia itself, and remittances from the Diaspora are twice as large as the country's entire budget, so the views of overseas Armenians matter. Unfortunately, their views are quite different from those of the people who actually live in Armenia. For Armenians abroad, making the Turks admit that they planned and carried out a Genocide is supremely important. Indeed, it has become a core part of their identity.

For most of those who are still in Armenia, getting the Turkish border re-opened is a higher priority. Their poverty and isolation are so great that a quarter of the population has emigrated since the border was closed 16 years ago, and trade with their relatively rich neighbour to the west would help to staunch the flow. But can any practical consideration justify abandoning the traditional Armenian demand that Turkey admit to a policy of genocide? Yes it can, because it is probably the wrong demand to be making.


Long ago, when I was a budding historian, I got sidetracked for a while by the controversy over the massacres of 1915. I read the archival reports on British and Russian negotiations with Armenian revolutionaries after the Ottoman Empire entered the First World War on the other side in early 1915. I even read the documents in the Turkish General Staff archives ordering the deportation of the Armenian population from eastern Anatolia later that year. What happened is quite clear.

The British and the Russians planned to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war quickly by simultaneous invasions of eastern Anatolia, Russia from the north and Britain by landings on Turkey's south coast. So they welcomed the approaches of Armenian nationalist groups and asked them to launch uprisings behind the Turkish lines to synchronise with the invasions. The usual half-promises about independence were made, and the Armenian groups fell for it. he British later switched their attack to the Dardanelles in an attempt to grab Istanbul, but they never warned their Armenian allies that the south-coast invasion was off. The Russians did invade, but the Turks managed to stop them. The Armenian revolutionaries launched their uprisings as promised, and the Turks took a terrible vengeance on the whole community.

If genocide just means killing a lot of people, then this certainly was one. If genocide means a policy that aims to exterminate a particular ethnic or religious group, then it wasn't.”