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was questioning that acknowledgement by providing a platform for those who disagree with the claim that a genocide took place.
The documentary, on its own, also seemed persuasive to an independent viewer, and also illuminating about the emerging struggle over whether Turkey will face its own history more openly, including allowing the right to challenge the official denials. The film included denials and explanations by Turkish diplomats and the head of the Turkish Historical Society. And it supplied context for the greater unfolding carnage, including references to sporadic uprisings by Armenians against the Turks in some villages, the killing of perhaps 100 Turkish officials in scattered attacks, and a contingent of five to six thousand Armenians who were fighting for the Russians against the Ottomans and causing the Young Turk leaders at the time to see all the Armenians of the Empire as a threat to the state. But aside from those moments, which are relatively brief, the documentary presented essentially a relentless case that what took place in the aftermath was a genocide. And that was the point and the historical conclusion of the program.
University, and Taner Akcam, a Turkish sociologist and historian who is a visiting professor at the University of Minnesota. On the other side was Justin McCarthy, a professor of history at the University of Louisville, who is probably the American historian most identified with challenging the notion that while this was a disaster and there were massacres, it was not a planned genocide. And there was a Turkish associate professor, Omer Turan, from Ankara, Turkey. Turan, with halting English in the company of three fast-talking and articulate other panelists, made little, if any impact. I thought he tried to make one interesting observation about material in the archives that, he said, indicated that many of the reports about the Armenian death toll in Swiss, American, French and British newspapers at the time were from the same single source. But the moderator said he wasn't sure he followed that. *
contrarians would have appeared on a panel, I don't know. But it would have evened the level of discourse for viewers, at least. Both the Armenian Americans and the Turks have big and aggressive lobbying machines in Washington and around the country. The Armenians, and several congressmen in New York, California and elsewhere, lobbied extensively to have the local TV station not air the follow-up panel. They claimed it was a platform for the Turkish equivalent of holocaust deniers. The Turks argued forcefully against what they saw as bias in the documentary, and for the panel discussion to be aired.
Germans, from the allies and their liberating armies, from trials and from many survivors. Germany has documented its own history well and made reparations. The subject of the PBS documentary deals with events 90 years ago, for which there is evidence but not the kind that accompanies the events of World War II. Furthermore, the action is strongly denied and refuted by the country involved, Turkey, and there are historians, as has been shown, who question not whether terrible things happened but whether there is enough evidence to use that powerful descriptor, Genocide. Turkey is a Muslim country that is also part of NATO, that is battling to be admitted to the European Union, that is viewed as an important strategic and economic ally by the United States, Britain and Israel. Those countries have shied away from using the genocide word in official proclamations when it comes to the tragic events of the 1915 period. The last American president to use it in an official remembrance proclamation was Ronald Reagan in 1981. So the showing of this documentary, and the panel, at this time was an important event; a reminder about a very important event that is probably on the most remote edge of awareness, if that, for millions of Americans who don't happen to be of Armenian or Turkish origin. ______________________________________________________________________________ _______________ * This sentence was in the original draft for this column but was inadvertently dropped from the initially-posted version.