Obama bolsters Turkey's Genocide denialist policy: historian

PanARMENIAN.Net - Denying acts of Genocide is morally irresponsible and dangerous, especially when it becomes entrenched in a country's fabric. This is the case with Turkey. For over a century it has buried the truth about the Armenian Genocide, while attempting to persuade the world that a charnel house was never built nor occupied on its land, Frank J. Perez, a world history teacher at San Benito High School, said in his recent article on Mercury News.

“The Armenian experience within the Ottoman Empire, as Turkey was formerly called, was one of marginalization, persecution and violence,” the historian said.

On April 24, 1915, more hundreds of Armenian intellectuals were rounded up and ultimately executed.

“On April 24, 2016 marked the anniversary, and for the 101 years since, Turkey has tried to stop the bleeding that pours from historically accepted versions of the truth,” Perez says.

“Nearly 60 percent of the Armenian population -- 1.5 million -- perished at the hands of the Ottoman Empire. While the United Nations' Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the accepted definition of genocide, didn't exist in 1915, the historical record is clear that the Turkish government was complicit in genocidal acts.” Unlike Germany, Perez says, Turkey has never acknowledged its blood-stained past: denial is championed, while voicing culpability is criminalized.

“Sadly, President Obama bolstered Turkey's impunity once again, omitting the word genocide from a recent statement commemorating “the events of 1915.” Voters could change that by urging their representatives to pass House Resolution 154, a proposal calling upon the president to make Turkey finally own up,” Perez says.

Perez of Hollister is a world history teacher at San Benito High School who teaches about the Armenian Genocide and has developed an entire unit on genocide.