ZAMAN: No Evidence of Ottoman Intent to Destroy Armenian Community - by Selcuk Gultasli

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No Evidence of Ottoman Intent to Destroy Armenian Community - by Selcuk Gultasli

Gunter Lewy, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Massachusetts/Amherst, argues in his latest book ‘The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide’ that what happened in 1915-16 was a huge tragedy but was not genocide as the Ottomans had no intention of exterminating the Armenian race. The Armenian lobby in the US tried hard to prevent the publication of the book, but Prof. Lewy does not want to go into details about the Diaspora’s efforts to block his book. Though Prof. Lewy gives the details of the massacres and accuses some Turkish authorities of distort history by denying significant massacres, Prof. Lewy has been attacked by Armenian hardliners as a “denier.”

Armenian misdeeds during World War I were often ignored because Armenian propaganda was well orchestrated and the Western world did not expect Christians to behave this way. The horrendous events of World War II have since taught us that no nationality, no matter what its religion or cultural achievements, is immune to outrageous criminal conduct in war.

Armenians waited until 1965 before they alleged genocide. It is said that the impact of the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 was deeply demoralizing. Also, the early 1960s brought a lot of scholarship on the Jewish Holocaust of World War II, and the Armenians may have sensed an opportunity to cash in on this aroused humanitarian conscience.