Why recognize the armenian genocide

By Madeline Roache. Related Stories. Already a print subscriber? Go here to link your subscription. Need help? Visit our Help Center. Go here to connect your wallet.

Yet it will undoubtedly be hard to prove legal claims dating back more than a century. In other historical cases, restitution of this kind has usually been a voluntary and symbolic act—an act the Turkish government will resist, but which some Kurdish municipalities have already performed. The word genocide is also used as an angry weapon of identity politics.

Many national elites instrumentalize the suffering their people have endured for political ends. In the last three decades, the term genocide has sometimes been used to stoke divisions in cases that do not rise to the severity of genocide, as the term is traditionally defined.

This tactic is especially acute in the former Soviet Union. For instance, the term genocide has been employed in the Armenian-Azerbaijani rhetorical conflict—even though Azerbaijanis had nothing to do with the killings of and even though nothing that either side has endured since can properly be given that term. The third use of the term is the one that Biden evidently intends in his April 24 statement : a synonym for mass killing and cultural erasure and the wholesale denial of human rights, which must be recognized to achieve reconciliation and closure.

Such reconciliation looks very far off. If anyone can a point a way forward, perhaps it is academic scholars. This new round of scholarship has conclusively discredited denialist Turkish theses.

It also now contextualizes and explains what happened—but does not justify it—within the framework of the end of the Ottoman Empire and World War I. Historians can further fill out the full dreadful story of the years between and The Armenian Genocide was the most terrible crime in the sense that the Armenians, and also the Assyrians, were not only killed but also had their culture destroyed.

Other stories can be told properly too, including those of the Sunni Turks, Kurds, and Azerbaijanis who suffered at the hands of great power armies in those years and sometimes at the hands of vengeful Armenians too. Mass atrocities are significantly destabilizing events, regardless of whether they happen within or outside of armed conflict. As a result, states with high atrocity risk are not reliable diplomatic partners. Prioritizing prevention and the protection of communities vulnerable to atrocities will result in diplomatic relationships that not only better align with U.

Furthermore, prioritizing prevention does not require deprioritizing other U. The fuller use of these tools — from conflict assessment frameworks to the expertise of the Atrocity Early Warning Task Force — can improve coordination and strengthen diplomatic and development responses to high-risk atrocity situations. Type: Podcast. But the revival this week of war in the Caucasus region should galvanize policymakers in Washington, Europe and Moscow to lean in hard and resurrect vigorous peacemaking for the first time in recent memory.

Type: Analysis and Commentary. Peace Processes. Publicly available satellite imaging used to document atrocities in Darfur and wartime destruction in the Syrian city of Aleppo will be tested by scientists in a USIP-funded project to gauge its usefulness in tracking the signs of impending cross-border conflict.

Turkey's Armenian dilemma. Europe diary: Historical guilt. Armenian diaspora bound by killings. Fears of Turkey's 'invisible' Armenians. Turkey bans 'genocide' conference. Armenian quest for lost orphans. Image source, Library of Congress. Arguments have raged for decades about the Armenian deaths in What happened? What is genocide? Were the killings systematic? This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Armenia's mass killings - explained in 60 seconds.

What was the political context? Was anyone held to account? Image source, AFP. Who recognises it as genocide and who does not? What is the political impact of the row? Are Armenia-Turkey relations still frosty? Related Topics.