Mass Murder is in Our DNA

It’s good and right that we commemorate the mass killing in the Ottoman Empire during World War I of between 500,000 and 1.5 million Armenians.
Many nations now call the slaughter of 1915-1916 a ‘genocide.’ This week the 100thanniversary of the notorious event was observed. Pope Francis and the European parliament called on Turkey to recognize the killings as genocide.
Turkey, successor to the Ottoman Empire, admits many Armenians were killed in WWI, but rejects the label of ‘genocide,’ saying their deaths occurred in the confusion of war, not by design. The United States, a very close ally of Turkey, avoids the ‘g’ word. Interestingly, Israel does too, perhaps not wanting to detract from the genocide Jews suffered in WWII.
Armenians insist the Ottoman authorities were determined to eradicate the ancient Armenian people. Turks claim that Armenian guerilla bands known as ‘dashnaks’ acted as a fifth column for their bitter foe, Russia, which was attacking the crumbling Ottoman Empire. Large numbers of Armenian civilians were herded from their homes in eastern Turkey, across the mountains, and into the wastes of northern Syria.
The greatest loss of life occurred on these ‘death marches,’ a fact that Turkey accepts. What is rarely stated by either side is that Kurdish tribesmen inflicted a significant number of deaths, pillage, and rape on the helpless Armenian deportees.
Modern Turkey is determined to avoid being branded with the shame of genocide because it tends to demote the bearer to a second-rate nation forever begging forgiveness, like eternally cringing Germany.

This post was published at Lew Rockwell on April 25, 2015.