Lay off the Armenians. They live in a tiny, very poor country wedged between Turkey and Iran. They don't have a seaport. They can't import or export anything without the goodwill of the neighboring countries. They can't even get an airplane in or out without permission to use somebody else's air space.

So they don't make a fuss abotu Turkish genodice denial because they need Turkish good will in order to have any kind of a future at all. Armenians in the US, France and elsewhere make a fuss about the genocide. Armenia keeps its mouth shut and hopes that neither Turkey or Iran will cut off trade ties or - worse - invade.

Plus, there was historically a huge Armenian community in Persia. I imagine some of them are still there. Which is a good reason not to tick Iran off unnecessarily. Muslims have murdered enought Armenians without inciting them to do more.

And, remember, Israel doesn't say a word about Turkish denial of the Armenian genocide. Official Israeli policy because, you know, Turkey is a big country and Israel needs the goodwill.

So cut the Armenians some slack. they've had a rough century. Actually, a rough millenium. It's a tough neighborhood and Armenia didn't survive surrounded by Muslims by picking unnecessary fights.

The genocide claim is very much like the WMD's of the Iraq war, a tool to incite a cause which was Armenians dream of a greater Armenia. Armenians in Ottoman Turkey for years have tried prior to WW1 to obtain land through armed civil strife against it's fellow country folk much like those Shiites of Iraq who sided with Iran during the Iran Iraq war. Only the Jews of Nazi Germany were truly innocent victims for they had no intentions of grabbing land nor did they arm themselves with weapons for such a cause. Note that no Jews, Greeks or Kurds claimed ill treatment such as the Armenians did while living in Ottoman Turkey. What is ironic is the fact that Armenians, Jews and Greeks all lived very wealthy and influencial lives during the ottoman empire. The president of Turkey was a Kurd in 1991.

Steve,

You are wildly misinformed and morally obtuse.

First - when the Turkish Ottomans lost their empire, they determined not only to hold onto Anatolia, but to eliminate the indigenous Anatolian nations. they drove the Greeks into the sea in an ethnic cleansing of extreme brutality. fortunately, the Greeks had a nation to which they could flee. and, yes, the Greek Army crossed the Aegean in an attempt to defend the Greek land awarded to Greece in the post WWI treaties. We are talking about provinces like Smyrna where the city and the peasants in the countryside were Greek, and had been Greek and living continuously in that place for 2,500 years before they were driven out by Ataturk. Hundreds of thousands were murdered. Millions lost their homes and property. They were innocent. and they were no less innocent for the fact that the Greek Army had tried to defend them.

The Armenians had no nation of their own to flee to. They were living in Armenia (known as eastern Turkey since the Turks murdered the Armenians. Did many of them dream of an independent Armenia on land that had been Armenia since long before the Prophet rose in Mecca and long before the Turks invaded Armenia? Of course they did. Some of them worked for an independent Armenia politically, some few took up arms, and others believed Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson when those leaders promised an independent Armenia.

Why should the Armenians not have wanted this? Every other nation does. An independent Armenia and allowing the Greek parts of Anatolia to remain Greek would not have precluded Turks from having a nation state in the Turkish-majority parts of Anatolia. But the Turks weren't satisfied with the Turkish-majority parts of Anatolia. they wanted the Greek and Armenian land, too.

The Turkish nation was founded on three great crimes.

Turkey is guilty taking the land it occupies by means of an unprovoked war of conquest.

Second, Turkey is guilty of driving the Greeks of Anatolia from their ancestral lands, land that was Greek from antiquity on.

Third, Turkey is guilty of driving upwards of a million Armenians from their ancestral homeland, and of the deliberate genocide of upwards of a million more. All innocent of any crime except being Armenian.

Small wonder the Turks don't want to talk about it. They are guilty as sin.

To the author of this blog:
1) Israel enjoys support of the U.S.,Turkey,and Europe and of the whole world on the issue of the holocaust.
2) It has access to sea, so it could care less of having closed borders with it's neighbours.
3) It hasn't officially recognized the Armenian Genocide, nor has it voiced it's official position
4) It never condemns foreign remarks that deny the Armenian Genocide

Armenia has the support of some European countries in the Genocide issue.
1) It's blocaded by turkey and azerbaijan.
2) Georgia being a transit country is very unreliable.
3) Iran is it's only stable neighbour.
4) Armenia as voiced it's official position on the holocaust issue, condemning iran is not going to change anything in the way the world sees the Holocaust issue.
5) If Armenia condemns Iran, it's like asking a kid to talk with a tone to a full grown man. It will incite nothing but trouble with iran and leave armenia reliant by hostile and unreliable neighbours for it's access to the outside world.

Last time I checked, Armenia has officially recognized the Jewish Holocust but Israel, to this day, shamefully refuses to recognize the Armenian Genocide.

I would like the author of this article to explain this phenominon first, before picking on Armenia.

OK, a couple of things here. First, I'm not against Armenia, and I'm aware of the realpolitik everyone has to deal with. That's the point of the post -- even a country that one may think would have red-lines that would make them step out of purely political calculations won't. This happens to be an especially ironic situation that bears pointing out. You may hope that at some point the threat of a nuclear war next door would change the equation, but that's something they'll have to figure out for themselves.

Whether or not Israel acknowledges the historic Armenian Genocide is a separate issue entirely, and doesn't bear on the morality of Armenia's eye closing on current events. Israel also has their own delicate political situation to consider, which doesn't make it right, either of course, but "they won't, so I won't" is kid stuff.

Every country does things out of necessity that they shouldn't be proud of. We did it throughout the Cold War and still do it. It's certainly important to put it in perspective (as several commenters have eloquently done for Armenia's case, above, and I agree with them), and necessity and balanced considerations are important to keep those bad deeds, taken in a vacuum, in their proper perspective, but it doesn't make them right, either.

Pointing those bad things out isn't a bad thing, so long as the perspective is preserved -- which I think has been accomplished.

My family lived since antiquity in what is now called turkey. They lived in Appolonia on the lake,near brusa (now bursa)Anatolia, turkey.
In a matter of 2 months in 1918 (after WW I) my grandfather was murdered by Turks because of is ethnicity. Later, my uncle was decapitated by the Turks and my mother and grandmother forced to watch and bury him. After,in 1922 the Turkish authorities forced my mother and grandmother to march to the Greek border of western Thrace without food and water. two of my cousins were left on the road to die.
And you deny this took place?
The Jews do not have a monopoly on holocausts, unfortunately. How dare Israel deny the muder of millions of Greeks, Armenians, and Assyrians, when scream for the world to hear: "Never again." such hypocrisy!
Ataturk and his followers were responsible for genocide. he did not lose a war, therefore is revered as the father of "his" country. Think about this, if Hitler had won, he too, would be considered the "father" of modern Germany.
Shame on you and other revisionist historians.
ann