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scene. They primarily targeted the Turkish diplomaticcorps. During a ten-year spree lasting from 1975 to1985, Turkish ambassadors, consuls, attaches, andguards were shot and killed by these gunmen, whosedemands were always the same: international recognitionof the Armenian genocide and Turkish restitutionof Armenian lands." After decades of being ignored,the methods of the mil itants at first seemed to be payingoff as they captured headlines and succeeded in gettingtheir story told. " The campaign of violence, however,could not sustain itself. The costs to Armenian societybegan to mount as the repeated acts repelled more andmore Armenians and raised their own set of questions.Countries on whose ground most of the operations werecarried out responded with their own security measuresto prevent the radicals from gaining access to publicity.Finally, Turkey also formulated its own responsepolicies in order to bring the problem under controland stop the killings.The long-term effects of the decade of politicalviolence are yet to be analyzed. One short-term resultwas the intensification of the denial campaign by theTurkish government. Turkey repudiated not just theviolence, but also the historic reason and fundamentalinjustice which propelled the terrorism in the mindsof its practitioners." The Armenian genocide becamecontestable ground. Most of the revisionist and denialliterature to appear on the Armenian genocide wasproduced against this backdrop.The terrorism subsided, but the denial campaignremained in high gear. The production of denialliterature took on a life of its own. With the resourcesof the Turkish government committed to obstructing,obscuring, confusing, distorting, and in any and everymanner denigrating the Armenian genocide and itsmemory, the denial campaign became an industry. With,increasing frequency the literature challenging everyaspect and recorded fact of the genocide now reachedlibraries around the world. Revisionists, deniers, andspokesperson of the Turkish government, masqueradingas scholars, historians, and specialists of one sort oranother, made a living pounding away at the body ofevidence documenting the Armenian genocide.The stated purpose of the newest phase of thedenial program was to control the damage to Turkey'simage. The depiction of Turkey as heir to a genocidalstate was not a small problem for the Turkish government.That, however, was the lesser of its concernssince Turkey was far too deeply integrated into theworld economy and the Western alliance systems tofeel seriously challenged. Armenian terrorism providedTurkey the opportunity, once and for all, to confusethe record on the Armenian genocide by claiming itas nothing more than an unfounded charge made byirrational individuals. The violent insistence that therewould be consequences to Turkey for failing to acknowledgethe Armenian genocide only netted apowerful and elaborate program to deny everything tothe Armenians once again, not just irredentist claimsto lands inhabited by their ancestors some seventy ormore years earlier, and not just the genocide either.The Turkish pol icy of denial established that everythingwas deniable; whether there ever was an Armenia,whether the Armenians were actually a people, whetherthey had a history." It mapped out an extensiveprogram of mockery. Hence in the last two decadesthe Armenian genocide has been compromised twiceover, once by violence staged by Armenian extremists,and again by a growing body of denial literature. Forthe rest of Armenians there was a penalty to be paidfor their inability to establish the record of the genocide.Defining the ArmenianExperienceOpposed to, and apart from, these trends wereother developments shaping the understanding of theArmenian genocide. First among these was the continuingprogress made by the international community,through the United Nations and other bodies, to agreeto covenants respecting the rights of all human beings,codifying conventions on warfare and war crimes, anddefining provisions for punishing the commission ofgenocide. Basic documents giving expression to theconcept of human rights were formulated. Theseachievements were registered with the widespreaddestruction of World War II in mind. The hope ofpreventing global conflict, nuclear exchange, or thegross abuse of human rights made a dent in the coldpragmatism of states which once left the victims of theArmenian genocide in the dust."The second and critical development of the post-World War II period which brought the subject ofgenocide into focus was awareness of the Holocaust.The imperative to explain how educated men seeminglyexercising their rational faculties sent an unimaginablenumber of people to gas chambers posed a challengeto the moral and intellectual premises of Westerncivilization. How nations fell prey to racial ideologiesof their own choosing, and how they fueled anti-Semitism to the point of reducing Jews to victims ofextermination, were questions demanding an answer.Drawing on the lessons of the Holocaust, the examinationof past or present violations of the fundamentalhuman right to life now takes a basic body of knowledgeon political behavior, social psychology, massculture, and the ideology of rationalized evil as commonprinciples and tools. The Nuremberg trials set thestage for studying these and many other related issuesas serious subjects of inquiry and they have had an'fThe Armenian Genocide: Revisionism and Denial 91