Looking Backward, Moving Forward: Confronting the Armenian Genocide

The decades separating our new century from the Armenian Genocide, the prototype of modern-day nation-killings, have fundamentally changed the political composition of the region. Virtually no Armenians remain on their historic territories in what is today eastern Turkey. The Armenian people have been scattered about the world. And a small independent republic has come to replace the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, which was all that was left of the homeland as the result of Turkish invasion and Bolshevik collusion in 1920. One element has remained constant. Notwithstanding the eloquent, compelling evidence housed in the United States National Archives and repositories around the world, successive Turkish governments have denied that the predecessor Young Turk regime committed genocide, and, like the Nazis who followed their example, sought aggressively to deflect blame by accusing the victims themselves.

This volume argues that the time has come for Turkey to reassess the propriety of its approach, and to begin the process that will allow it move into a post-genocide era. The work includes â Genocide: An Agenda for Action,â Gijs M. de Vries; â Determinants of the Armenian Genocide,â Donald Bloxham; â Looking Backward and Forward,â Joyce Apsel; â The United States Response to the Armenian Genocide,â Simon Payaslian; â The League of Nations and the Reclamation of Armenian Genocide Survivors,â Vahram L. Shemmassian; â Raphael Lemkin and the Armenian Genocide,â Steven L. Jacobs; â Reconstructing Turkish Historiography of the Armenian Massacres and Deaths of 1915,â Fatma Müge Göçek; â Bitter-Sweet Memories; â The Armenian Genocide and International Law,â Joe Verhoeven; â New Directions in Literary Response to the Armenian Genocide,â Rubina Peroomian; â Denial and Free Speech,â Henry C. Theriau