It may be difficult for the Turks to admit to Armenian genocide before they
manage to obliterate all things Kurdish.

"F. Leon Wilson" wrote:

> CHOMSKY:
>
> Comments on the article below?
>
> F. Leon
>
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>
> A glance at the February 8 issue of the "London Review of
> Books": The Armenian tragedy and the meaning of genocide
>
> The article is available online at <http://www.lrb.co.uk/>
>
> Mark Mazower, a professor of history at Birkbeck College of the University
> of London, reviews the history of the massacre of Armenians by Turks
> during World War I and the debate over the use of the term "genocide" to
> describe the mass killing. While "genocide" was not a term that was used
> before World War II, Mr.  Mazower finds many parallels between the
> treatment of the Jews by the Germans and of the Armenians by the Turks.
>
> "In both cases, a murderous policy was shaped in wartime by high officials
> of state with far more single-minded objectives than those of the
> populations at large. They prevailed thanks to their control of the
> machinery of violence, both formal and informal," he writes. Mr. Mazower
> notes differences between the two events, but says there is "enough
> similarity" for the treatment of the Armenians to qualify as genocide.
> Scholars have created the field of genocide studies, Mr. Mazower writes,
> and he expresses surprise "at how far an academic dispute" over what
> qualifies as genocide "has pushed itself into the public domain." He lists
> the variety of reasons Armenians today insist on calling the massacres
> genocide and the reasons Turkish leaders resist such a move. Mr. Mazower
> doubts that Turkey is ready to face the truth about the Armenians, but he
> hopes that one day it will. To do so, he writes, would "be a sign of
> vitality and resilience in Turkish society, an indication that Ataturk's
> work has been done, and that the country could now move on."