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1 Introduction“And look what it says here. The first who were called wogs [svartskallar] were Armenian beggars.They were thrown out from Sweden since it was forbidden to beg.” 1 The beggars in questionwere Armenian survivors from the massacres in Ottoman Turkey.The genocide of 1915 is sometimes also referred to as the “forgotten genocide”. It claimed thelives of approximately 1.5 million Armenians, leaving an Armenia without Armenians, but alsoclaimed the lives of several hundred thousand Assyrians, Chaldeans and Pontic Greeks. 2 In thepresent-day debate about Turkish membership in the EU and Turkey’s responsibility toacknowledge its past, some, especially politicians, who wish to evade the question of arecognition, refer to a lack of knowledge about the issue and the need of more research in thearea. The research is essential, they argue, to substantiate what really happened during the yearsof the First World War when almost the entire Europe was either entangled in the armed conflictor tried its best to pursue a non-alignment policy. These are, however, ill-founded arguments.The Armenian genocide thus has become much more than just a historical issue. The phrase “amatter for historians, not parliaments,” is used frequently by those who wish to avoid the subject,but parliaments and governments do most certainly address the issue. The foremost user of thephrase, The Turkish Government, has introduced the infamous Paragraph 301 of the TurkishPenal code, according to which, among other things, the mentioning of the Armenian genocide isregarded as “insulting the Turkishness and the Turkish State”, thus punishable by law. 3 On theother hand, the French and Swiss Parliaments have included the Armenian genocide in the samepenal code which forbids denial of the Holocaust. 4Today, the Republic of Turkey dismisses almost every historic document presented by theEntente Powers of the First World War as war propaganda, serving the sole purpose ofblackening Turkish reputation. Turkish documents on the subject, on the other hand, are accusedto be Turkish Government’s falsification and a cover up. 5 Having said that, it should bementioned that research on German and Austrian documents, allies of Turkey during the Great1 Bakhtiari, 2007, p. 9. In the Swedish text “wogs” translates to “svartskalle”, verbatim “black head”, referringto the dark color of the foreigners, which contrasts to the light brown hair-color of the native Swedes. Alsosee Hammar, 1964, p. 69-71.2 The number of the Armenian victims is a disputed issue, and while the 1.5 million is the generally acceptedfigure, the researchers rather talk about a span between 1.2 and 1.5. This will be discussed further down in thetext. The impact on the non-Armenian Christian population in the Ottoman Empire could be compared withthe Jewish genocide and the impact on the Romany and other victim groups during the Second World War.3 For the English text of the law see Haraszti, 2005, p. 10.4 For the texts see Armenian National Institute, Affirmations, 2008.5 One argument used by present-day Turkey to avoid recognition of the 1915 genocide is referring to thealleged difference between “Ottoman” and “Turkey”, asserting that Turkey did not exist before 1923, nor isthe present state responsible for any actions committed by the Ottoman Government. However, whenstudying the period in question it becomes evident that this transformation from Ottoman to Turkey wasalready ongoing. Several foreign states, in their diplomatic letters, reports and documents, do use “Turkey” or“Ottoman Turkey” for designating the state. Thus, this paper will use Turkey when referring to the OttomanEmpire. For further discussion see Dadrian, 1999, p. 5-6.4