HyeOctane

A recently uncovered US State Department document reveals that, as late as 1934, the Turkish government was continuing its policy of genocide against its Armenian population.  In a letter sent from the US Embassy in Ankara, Ambassador Robert P. Skinner summarizes how the government coerced the remaining Armenians living in Anatolia to abandon their properties and forcibly exiled them from their homes.

As Skinner himself states, “It is likely, though, that their removal is simply one step in the government’s avowed policy of making Anatolia purely Turkish.” In other words, the US is once again on record documenting and openly describing the Turkish government’s systematic campaign to wipe out its indigenous Armenian population.

Furthermore, the date of this correspondence demonstrates that the crime committed against the Armenians is not something that can simply be relegated to the days of the Ottoman Empire.

As Harout Sassounian points out in his latest column, this document reinforces the fact that, “a key reason why today’s Turkish officials are not prepared to face their history honestly and blame their Ottoman ancestors is that the Republic of Turkey is actually the continuation of the Ottoman state.”

Sassounian goes on to write, “many of the early leaders of the Turkish Republic had been high-ranking Ottoman officials personally involved in the implementation of the Armenian Genocide.  Such an unbroken transition in leadership assured the continuity of the Ottomans’ anti-Armenian policies.” 

The reality is that the Armenian Genocide was a policy which extended beyond the confines of World War I.  It continued in equal veracity into the Kemalist era and, in effect, continues to this day with successive Turkish administrations pursuing their policy of aggressively denying and criminalizing discussion of the first genocide of the 20th century.