How Many Genocides?
On March 4, 2010, a US congressional panel narrowly voted that the massacres of Armenian civilians between 1915-17 by Turks were indeed "genocide"; within minutes the Turkish government issued a statement critical of "this resolution which accuses the Turkish nation of a crime it has not committed" and withdrew their Ambassador in Washington, back to Ankara for consultations. It does seem unusual that, almost a century later, the US Government is still in the throes of deciding the nature of the events which are estimated to have taken the lives of between one to one-and-a-half million Armenians, during the period of the First World War. These civilians were allegedly systematically murdered in forced marches, concentration camps, mass burning, drowning and mass executions. It is also peculiar that the current Turkish Government should care so much – as these horrific events were carried out under the Ottoman Empire; therefore the Turkish Republic, which was...