Peace and Conflict Studies - Spring 2014

Peace and Conflict Studies Volume 21, Number 1 76 Governments that do take action to historically preserve the genocide face Turkish retaliation. This issue drew international media attention in 2011 when the government of France debated a bill to criminalize denial of any officially recognized genocide – including, in France, the Armenian genocide. In response to this, the Turkish government recalled its ambassador and banned French military vehicles from Turkish docks and airspace while threatening further retaliation (“Watch your words,” 2011). France had seen this before, in 2000, when they passed a bill officially recognizing the genocide; at that time, Turkey took six months to resume diplomatic relations with France (Balakian, 2003, p. 390). Although the 2011 bill became law in France, France’s Constitutional Council later overturned it (“French court overturns,” 2012). Strategies of denial also manipulate academics. The Institute for Turkish Studies in the United States – funded by the Turkish government – awards grants to academics and then requests their involvement in political action preventing genocide recognition (Balakian, 2003, pp. 381-385; Hovannisian, 1997, p. 42). The Turkish government also uses coercion to fuel the denial. For example, the first major conference considering all genocides was planned in Tel Aviv in 1982. Some speakers intended to make reference to the Armenian genocide. For that reason, the Turkish government put so much pressure on the universities and institutes involved, as well as the Israeli government, that it was felt that “Jewish lives … were at risk” (Hovannisian, G., 2010, p. 122; Hovannisian, R., 1997, p. 7). Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel stepped out as keynote speaker, and the conference had to be relocated. These are examples of what Richard Hovannisian (1997) calls “the strategies of denialists, rationalisers, relativisers, and trivialisers” (p. 52). In his comparison of the denial of the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust, he details the identical methods of each and the equal danger they present to academic integrity as well as human rights. Denialists conceal certain facts, and distort and exaggerate others to make their claims convincing. To deny any genocide proven by historical fact is to allow for the denial of them all; this behaviour creates a precedent for future genocide denialists to exploit. Hovannisian also argues that allowing anyone to deny the Armenian genocide, or allowing it to be forgotten by history, is collusion in ongoing Turkish crimes (1997). These examples of Turkish government efforts to maintain and promote the denial speak to a collaborative repression of historical truth. This represses not only the historical facts of violence against the Armenians, but also individual stories of Turkish and Kurdish heroism, of individuals and families who risked their lives to help Armenians survive and escape (for