Ninety years ago, the Armenian genocide began in Turkey.

Just saying those words today still causes political uproar. For nearly a century, Turkish governments and most Turks themselves have avoided taking responsibility for genocide. Recent events in Europe, far from the site of the mass killings, indicate that the success of Turkish denial is nearing an end. This trajectory of denial demonstrates the importance of international politics in the public understanding of genocide.

In 1915 and 1916, Turkish authorities began the first ethnic cleansing of modern times. The racist stereotypes through which Turks regarded Armenians were the same as those propagated by the Nazis about Jews: physically ugly, morally inferior and politically dangerous.

Driven out of Turkey

In the middle of World War I, they tried to drive the entire Armenian Christian minority out of Turkey. Between 1 million and 1.5 million Armenian men, women and children were killed or died on death marches through the desert. Many international observers reported on the genocide as it took place. Then, as with every genocide, the perpetrators denied what they had done: They minimized the number of deaths, blamed their victims for creating civil unrest and referred to wartime conditions to explain the enormous mortality.

The Armenians had few friends in Europe, which had an interest in contradicting the official Turkish version. This denial was so successful that Adolf Hitler asked just before invading Poland in 1939, “Who remembers now the destruction of the Armenians?”

Decades later, Turkish refusal to acknowledge their history has prevented recognition of what happened to the Armenian minority. This denial has been successful because it found powerful support among a variety of world leaders acting on national interests. American politicians, anxious to retain bases in Turkey during the Cold War, did not wish to offend the Turkish government, a member of NATO. Nearly every year, resolutions introduced in Congress to acknowledge the Armenian genocide were defeated by State Department lobbying.

Even after the end of the Cold War, the Clinton administration persuaded the House of Representatives not to adopt such a resolution.

European governments generally followed suit. Israeli leaders pursued a very different, but equally self-interested logic. In 2000, Israel’s foreign minister, Shimon Peres, acted to protect Jewish claims to unique status as victims of genocide: “We reject attempts to create a similarity between the Holocaust and the Armenian allegations. Nothing similar to the Holocaust occurred. It is a tragedy what the Armenians went through, but not a genocide.”

Oppressive tactics

Turkish denial has been successful for so long partly because of the ferocity with which Turkish political leaders and civil groups in and outside of Turkey have attacked anyone who dares to speak of Armenian genocide. When a leading Turkish novelist said earlier this year that 1 million Armenians were murdered, lawsuits were filed against him for damaging the state.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently declared April 24 a “Day of Remembrance of the Armenian Genocide.” In response, an umbrella organization of some 300 associations, unions and businesses, led by the Ankara Chamber of Commerce, launched a petition to get his films banned in Turkey. A German politician of Turkish ancestry received anonymous telephone threats after offering support for official German recognition of the genocide. Turkish newspapers in the United States and Europe, supported by Web sites such as that of the Turkish Embassy in Washington, constantly propagate sophisticated denial arguments.

But the tide is turning. Recent discussions about possible Turkish entry into the European Union have focused the attention of many Europeans on Turkish political culture, especially in the area of human rights. For example, the Turkish judicial system had to give up the death penalty in order to qualify for membership in the E.U. Turkish treatment of its genocidal past has thus received increased attention. Within Germany, political conservatives had long refrained from addressing the Armenian issue. But because conservatives also tend to oppose Turkish candidacy for the E.U., the Armenian genocide became a convenient issue with which to demonstrate Turkey’s lack of fitness.

The sudden interest of German conservatives in open discussion of the Armenian genocide has tipped the balance here.

Two weeks ago, I attended a “Memorial Ceremony for the Victims of the Genocide Against the Armenians,” hosted by Walter Momper, president of the Berlin city parliament. Vartkes Alyanak, local leader of the Armenian community, noted the history of official German acquiescence in Turkish denial and welcomed the new willingness of some political leaders to say the forbidden word “genocide.”

Momper then said that word repeatedly in his call for the Turkish government and society to have the “courage toward truth.”

European insistence

Poland recently became the ninth member of the European Union to officially recognize the Armenian genocide. The German Bundestag will soon consider a resolution, which states that the Ottoman Turkish government gave the order to deport most of the Armenians in Turkey, leading to the death of more than 1 million, although the word “genocide” is not used in the resolution.

It is likely that the institutions of the European Union will insist that the Turkish government allow free discussion of this shameful history and acknowledge the responsibility of Turkish leaders at that time.

Genocide is the extreme form of political terror by a state against a civilian minority. Politics, not morality or historical truth, determines how these acts are discussed long afterwards. In this case, now that eyewitnesses are gone, history may eventually triumph over politics.

Steve Hochstadt lives in Lewiston and teaches history at Bates College. He is temporarily teaching in Germany and can be reached at [email protected].