Genocide: - DIIS

Turkey, the US and the Armenian Genocide
degree probably because of the many foreigners in the capital). 41 Uras concludes:
“The Turks had given the Armenians no real cause for rebellion. It
might, therefore, not be unjustifi able to put the blame for what happened
in the end on the Armenians themselves.” 42
The offi cial attitude at the beginning of the fi fties, as it is expressed by
Uras, remained that the Armenians declared war on Turkey and started
extensive massacres of Turks in many provinces. 43 As a response to this
the government was forced, albeit reluctantly, and after having given several
warnings, to turn to “relocations”. But the deaths were mostly due
to illness, starvation, encounters between two armed enemy groups, bad
transport conditions – not to Turkish assaults. Besides many more Turks
than Armenians died. 44
The arguments are of course mutually contradictory: that people who had
never been able to found a state, would then be in a position to declare
war; that in 1915 nothing worth mentioning happened to the Armenians,
but it was their own fault. Nevertheless, these arguments have survived
up until today. Uras’ book was the offi cial Turkish comment to the Armenian
question until 1977.
Armenian Terror 1973-85
Armenian immigrant societies in the West were deeply engaged in fi nding
a new modus vivendi. The living preferred to look forward and not back;
what happened in 1915 was almost a taboo.
41 Ibid., p. 872.
42 Ibid., p. 884.
43 Thus Kilic, the Turkish press attaché at the embassy in Washington wrote in a publication
from 1959: “Turkish response to Armenian excesses was comparable (...) to what might have been
the American response, had the German-Americans of Minnesota and Wisconsin revolted on behalf
of Hitler during the second World War”. Hovannisian (1997), p. 121.
44 There was some Armenian violence against Turks, e.g. in connection with the Russian invasion
of the Van-area early in 1915. Turkish sources give numbers of up to 150,000 killed,
but this is supposedly considerably exaggerated. Ervin Staub (1989), The Roots of Evil. The
Origins of Genocide and Group Violence. New York, p. 179.
207