Manufactured Controversy: Academic Denial of the Armenian Genocide in American Scholarship

The Armenian Genocide, which took place during World War I, resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians. Despite the overwhelming evidence of the Genocide, Turkey has denied it for decades and continues to do so. This denial has been institutionalized in Turkey as the official narrative and legitimized by an international court.

The Ottoman leadership constructed the denialist narrative, which portrayed the Genocide as a necessary relocation due to Armenian disloyalty and rebellion. However, with growing documentation and scholarship on the Armenian Genocide, traditional denial strategies have become increasingly untenable. As a result, denialists have developed a more effective model that seeks to establish itself as the legitimate “other side of the story.” This denialist “scholarship” is meant to convey the impression of a robust scholarly debate and lay claim to academic credibility while seeking to forestall any conclusions being drawn and any consequences arising from such findings.

One of the earliest proponents of denialism was Lewis V. Thomas, a key figure in the crucial post-World War II era who trained the first generation of American specialists on the Ottoman Empire. Thomas acknowledged the eradication of the Armenians but offered excuses, qualifications, and rationalizations. He was part of a group of academics in Turkish and Ottoman studies who ignored, minimized, and denied the Armenian Genocide, which is considered a formative event in the shaping of modern Turkey.

The denialist tactics used by Turkey are similar to those used by the American tobacco industry to deny the harmful effects of smoking. By the early 1980s, Turkey was facing increasing pressure to acknowledge the Genocide and turned to public relations firms like Hill & Knowlton to help shape public opinion and counter efforts by Armenian-Americans to gain recognition of the Genocide in the United States. These efforts included lobbying Congress, influencing academia, and presenting a more appealing image of Turkey to the public. The role of Mustafa Şükrü Elekdağ, Turkey’s ambassador to the United States, was crucial in inaugurating a new policy of public relations and propaganda to counter the genocide recognition campaign.

Turkey aimed to cultivate academics who could produce credible-looking genocide-denying scholarship. The Institute of Turkish Studies (ITS) was created to boost Turkey’s scholarly bona fides and disburse funds to scholars associated with American colleges and universities. However, breaking Turkey’s official line carried serious consequences, as in the case of Donald Quataert, who was forced out as chairman after acknowledging the Armenian Genocide [1]Erbal, A. (2015). The Armenian Genocide, AKA the Elephant in the Room. International Journal of Middle East Studies. Cambridge University Press The ITS-supported scholarship has not paid much … Continue reading. As a result board members Marcy Patton, Kemal Sılay, Reşat Kasaba, and Birol Yeşilada resigned, and Fatma Müge Göçek said she would resign. [2]Though Yeşilada's main reason was his health, he also showed concern about what happened to Quataert. For more details, see Susan Kinzie, “Board Members Resign to Protest Chair's Ousting,” 5 … Continue reading

The Turkish Coalition of America (TCA), funded by Turkish-American businessman Yalcin Ayasli, has made denying the Genocide a significant focus, promoting the idea of a “legitimate historical controversy” and funding publications that attempt to undermine the historicity of the Armenian Genocide. The TCA’s website prominently displays a list of 34 scholars who support their position, most of whom explicitly or implicitly deny the applicability of the word Genocide.

TCA went to create a list of “legitimate scholarly resources” to support their position on the Armenian Genocide. They attempted to use this list in a lawsuit against the University of Minnesota and its Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (CHGS), which had listed the TCA as an “unreliable” source. The TCA argued that they were being defamed and that they were a credible resource because of the scholars who supported their viewpoint. The lawsuit was dismissed in 2011 and the dismissal was upheld in 2012.

In 1985, the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA) published an advertisement in both the New York Times and the Washington Post. This advertisement contained the names of 69 scholars (he majority of whom had no involvement in genocide studies,) who challenged the use of the term “Genocide” to describe the “Armenian suffering” that occurred during World War I. Turkey utilized this statement from the scholars for several years to argue that there was a legitimate scholarly debate about the events and to prevent further recognition of the Genocide. However, currently, many of the signatories are hesitant to publicly affirm their continuing support for the denial statement. Except for Justin McCarthy, none of them are prepared to sign a similar statement today.

By the year 2000, Utah became a hotbed for Armenian Genocide denial in the years leading up to the establishment of the Turkish Studies Project. In 2005, the University of Utah published a book that would become a key text in modern denial: Guenter Lewy’s The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide [3]The Armenian massacres in Ottoman Turkey (2005). University of Utah Press.. The publication was arranged by Hakan Yavuz, a Turkish professor who had been instrumental in establishing the Turkish Studies Project.

Lewy’s work built on rhetorical strategies used by Gwynne Dyer and Michael Gunter in the 1970s and 1980s. He presented himself as an impartial observer of the “disputed genocide” implying that Turks and Armenians could not write their history. Despite portraying himself as agnostic and open to evidence, Lewy argued that “no authentic documentary evidence exists to prove the culpability of the central government of Turkey for the massacre of 1915-6.”

Lewy’s rhetoric shared similarities with Justin McCarthy’s, who argued that Armenians were disloyal and had brought their fate upon themselves. While Lewy stopped short of this assertion, he argued that “as [the Turks] saw it, the Armenian people the world over had thrown in their lot with the Allied cause and were arrayed against them in a fateful struggle.” This, he argued, led the Turks to view Armenians as a “fifth column” and take “decisive measures” against them.

While Lewy acknowledged that the Armenian Genocide was not justifiable, he suggested that Armenians could not claim to have suffered for no reason. His book did not break new ground in the “disputed historiography” of the Armenian Genocide. Still, its publication by an American university press gave it credibility and ensured it would be widely available in academic libraries.

In 1996, the Turkish ambassador to Washington, Baki İlkin, along with an editor from Microsoft Encarta, approached Ronlad Suny and the genocide scholar Helen Fein with a request to revise their articles written for MS Encarta[4]2 Scholars Say Microsoft Encyclopedia Sought to Delete References to ‘Genocide’. The request was to remove the word “genocide” in reference to the events of 1915. However, they both declined the request.

The denial of the Armenian Genocide has powerful Turkish government supporters and influential activists, particularly in the United States. The denial of genocides is becoming increasingly common, including the denial of specific genocides like the Holocaust. Scholars must confront genocide denial, because compromising academic integrity is a serious concern when it comes to academic denial of the Armenian Genocide.

As we have shown above, the narratives that the Armenian genocide was a result of Armeno-Turkish civil war or provocation were propagated through western academia with the help of scholars. These scholars include Justin McCarthy from the University of Louisville, Heath W. Lowry from Princeton University (who has been notably silent on this issue for many years), and the late Stanford J. Shaw, who had retired from UCLA. Guenter Lewy, an emeritus political scientist from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is a recent addition to this group of supporters.

However, since 2000, numerous non-Armenian academic historians, political scientists, and sociologists, such as Norman Naimark from Stanford University, Donald Bloxham from the University of Edinburgh, David Gaunt from Södertörn University, Hans-Lukas Kieser from the University of Basel, Michael Mann from UCLA, and Benjamin Valentino from Dartmouth College., have recognized the Armenian genocide as a case of ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Moreover, several scholars in Turkey or of Turkish ancestry, including Taner Akgam, Fikret Adanir, Halil Berktay, Fuat Dundar, and Fatma Muge Göcek., have rejected the notion of civil war and provided evidence of the intentional planning and execution of the massacres.

Denialist scholars may use selective evidence, manipulate sources, or ignore relevant facts to support their arguments, while also claiming a legitimate “other side of the story.” However, it is important for scholars to recognize that academic rigor and integrity require a commitment to the objective truth and a critical evaluation of evidence, rather than a false sense of balance or bothsidesism. Failing to uphold these standards can compromise the integrity of academic research and contribute to the spread of misinformation.