This Friday, April 24, will mark 100 years since the beginning of the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Ottoman government in what is present-day Turkey. The Washington Post apparently saw it a fitting occasion to accept a full-page A-section advertisement by an organization which essentially denies the holocaust of millions of Armenians by the Turks.
The Turkish American National Steering Committee took out the advertisement on the back of the Thursday, April 23 A-section, publishing an open letter headlined, "A message of peace to President Obama and members of Congress from Turkish Americans and friends of Turkey."
"This Friday, April 24th 2015, we commemorate the 100th anniversary of a poignant civilian tragedy in which millions of citizens of the Ottoman Empire, including Armenians, Turks, Kurds, and Arabs succumbed to the ravages of war," the Steering Committee noted, spinning government-organized deportations and executions as some sort of passive thing that, well, just happened.
"There is no academic consensus" about what happened, the Steering Committee insisted, "Indeed, a substantial number of international scholars declined to label the 1915 events as genocide, instead finding a multitude of causes of suffering with widely varying outcomes for Armenian populations depending on location and rebellious activity."
What's more, the group groused, "The politicization of this historical controversy not only tarnishes the memory of the dead, but also thwarts the ultimate objective: reconciliation between Armenians and Turks."
Translation: Just shut up already about this historic atrocity. Turkey's government will never apologize for it, much less acknowledge it, and your whining is only standing in the way of "reconciliation."
The goal of the letter was encouraging Armenian Americans to join in on a walk from Lafayette Park outside the White House to the Turkish Embassy in Washington, D.C. "We will walk to pay our respects to the lives lost from all ethnicities and creeds and to kindle a spark for what we believe should be our shared future."
Of course, the Washington Post does not necessarily endorse the opinions of any organization running an ads in its pages, but it does have every right to refuse to run ones that may be particularly egregious. One which denies a holocaust should most certainly be in that category, should it not?
