A Systematic Crime Against Humanity

The Armenian Genocide is a topic I can not seem to move away from. I have written about this previously in my blog about The Bastard of Istanbul, and again about the term genocide in relation to what is going on in Palestine,but after watching the documentary "The Armenian Genocide" in class I was provided with a visual aid to the horror of 1915 in which I am still shocked to be learning about now for the first time. What caught my attention the most was the clear effort of the Turks to deny these events even today. With the example of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany there is no denial that those events happened and I see very little difference in what happened to the Armenians as a result of this ruthless Turkish Nationalism. Understanding that the Turkey is under a different government from the one run by the Young Turks in 1915, I can understand their desire to hide such an atrocity, however when there is a group of people who are still in mourning of the deaths of their families and ancestors, the Turks are only pouring Salt in their wounds by not recognizing it.
According to the video, Theodore Roosevelt called this event "the greatest crime of the war"which I would agree with. I think what makes this so shocking is that it was permitted and systematically organized by the government and said to be condoned by the mosques which promoted participation from the local people. This created the notion that the systematic mass murder of a specific ethnic group or religion was a tool of government which easily promotes violence throughout a nation. This understandably could be something the Turks no longer wish to identify themselves with but as shown by this video they will go to any means necessary now to suppress the past even resort to violence. A couple living in Turkey, as shown in the video were attacked and their house was bombed as a reaction to their publication of book of the Armenian genocide. This shows me that Turkey is desperately trying to suppress a memory that is well known to many people, in most cases probably even the ones who are trying to hard to deny it.
In class we debated over if this event can really be called genocide. Without a doubt genocide is the first word I would use to describe it. However, since the Turks continuously deny that it was a genocide and instead refer to it as a "civil war" this issue can be argued. Was it a civil war? I guess if you look at the facts: The Turks were trying to establish a United Empire and therefore attacked Russian and lost. With Russia's faith being Christian and the Armenians faith being Christian many Armenians fought on the side of Russia which resulted in the first stage of the "genocide", the massacre of the Armenian soldiers who fought for the enemy. As a result of this the Turks began to look at the Armenians as a threat and from there pursued the execution of Armenian intellectuals who would have been the ones to organize any type of revolt. From this point it could been seen as the beginning to a civil war or the efforts of the Turks to suppress an ethnic group who was threatening to their leadership. The thing that I believed pushed this into an act of genocide was the mass killing of all Armenians, women and children included, the raping of women and young girls and the torture of innocent people simply because they fit the description of a group who the Turks were threatened by.
To an extent the Turks argument is understandable but I definitely would agree that they pushed the line into genocide. Since this term genocide did not exist 1915 the Turks may not have had a word so commonly known as one of the worse things a nation can be associated with but they still committed the crimes fitting the definition of the term. Had they had this term then, perhaps they would have modified their principles a little bit in effort to avoid their actions being labeled with this word, but regardless history is unavoidable despite their many effort to avoid it. I cant help but think about the current conflict with the Isreali's and Palestinians. Will this eventualy turn into an act of genocide? Can it be viewd as one already? A century from now will the Isreali government try to deny their actions? These are all questions I asked myself while watching this documentary.