Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 26. november 2005 / Timeline November 26, 2005
Version 3.525. November 2005, 27. November 2005
11/26/2005
Genocide Denial in the state of Denmark
-The Danish Department for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the
denial and relativization of the Armenian genocide.
Open letter by Torben Jørgensen and Matthias
Bjørnlund, historians, specialists in the Holocaust and the
Armenian genocide, respectively.
We have taken the highly unusual step of publicly criticizing a
Danish academic institution to which we both have, or have had,
been connected, the Department for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
in Copenhagen, and of forwarding this criticism to colleagues,
etc., both domestically and internationally. The reason for taking
this step is that the director of the Danish Department, Uffe
Østergaard, is at the moment involved in the planning of
making what appears to be a "neutral" institution or "place of
dialogue," where the "question" of, what Mr. Østergaard
sometimes refers to, not as genocide, but as "the tragic events of
1915," can be discussed by Armenian and Turkish scholars. This
initiative is being supported by the Turkish ambassador in
Copenhagen, Mrs. Fügen Ok.
This might sound perfectly innocent "neutral" is good, and so
is "dialogue" but there are major problems by taking such an
approach towards Turkish-Armenian reconciliation as well:
1. Any assumption that there is a "neutral ground" between an
"Armenian" and a "Turkish" side of the "question" of the Armenian
genocide is plain wrong. When it comes to the historical reality of
the Armenian genocide, there is no "Armenian" or "Turkish" side of
the "question," no more than there is a "Jewish" or a "German" side
of the historical reality of the Holocaust: There is a scientific
side, and an unscientific side acknowledgment or denial. In
the case of the denial of the Armenian genocide, it is even founded
on a massive effort of falsification, distortion, cleansing of
archives, and direct threats initiated or supported by the Turkish
state, making any "dialogue" with Turkish deniers highly
problematic. No scholar or scholarly institution can remain
"neutral" between the positions of acknowledgment and denial, and
it is not (or should not be) the aim of a scholar or scholarly
institution to facilitate "dialogue" between scholars that
recognize a known genocide, and scholars that, contrary to facts
and professional ethics, deny it. We are obviously not against
dialogue between serious scholars, no matter their national
background, but that is not the issue. The issue is one of
acknowledgment of known and well-established facts, against the
denial of these.
2. Even if one still believes that such attempts at "dialogue" are
appropriate or necessary, we believe that the director of the
Department, Uffe Østergaard, is not the person to facilitate
it, since there can be raised serious doubts as to his intentions.
All through the nineties, Mr. Østergaard was, for all
intents and purposes, a denier of the Armenian genocide, a position
which he may or may not have changed over the years. To illustrate
this, we have translated the main part of a paragraph from an
article on the history of the Ottoman Empire he published in
1996:
"The truly large massacres took place in connection with the Young
turk revolution in 1908-09. The modernizing officers tried to save
their state by 'Ottomanizing' the population in the leftover parts
of the Empire. Macedonia was bloodily oppressed, and the Armenians
were subjected to several pogroms, culminating in the genocide in
1915, the event which confirmed in earnest Europe's prejudices
regarding the Ottoman Empire (cf Franz Werfel's moving novel, The
40 Days on Musa Dagh from 1933). Only in its weakness the Ottoman
Empire unfolded the bloodthirst and the misrule we have gotten used
to connect with 'the Turk.' And even then the oppression can be
exaggerated. This is the case regarding the persecution of the
Armenian minority. The expulsion of the Armenians in 1915 is often
expounded as a genocide along the lines of the later extermination
of the Jews. But this is being disputed by many modern historians
such as Stanford and Ezel Kural Shaw. In the preface to the 2.
edition of their account of the history of the Ottoman Empire, they
answer the critics of the first edition of the work in the
following way:
'No one denies, or seeks to deny, that the Armenian people suffered
terribly during the last years of the Ottoman Empire. We do make
this clear, but in the context of Ottoman history. What may be
overlooked is that the experience of the Armenians, however
terrible it undoubtedly was, was not unique to them. It was part of
a general tragedy that engulfed all the people of the Empire Turks,
Greeks, Armenians, Arabs, Jews, and all others, all of whom have
traumatic memories of the period. This was the terrible result of
the final breakup of a multinational society as the result of a
whole series of brutal and destructive foreign invasions,
terroristic attacks, national revolts, massacres and counter
massacres, and famine and disease, in which all the Empire's
people, Muslim and mon-Muslim [sic] alike, had their victims and
criminals.' (Shaw and Shaw 1978, x)."
This quote ends the article's treatment of the "question" of the
Armenian genocide. What Mr. Østergaard is attempting to do
here is "clever" and "sophisticated" denial, but denial
nonetheless: he starts by calling the Armenian genocide a genocide
("folkemord"), and then he systematically backs away from the using
of that term: He goes from describing the "events" as "genocide" in
some sense of the word, to describing it as "persecution," and
ending by describing it as "expulsion," all in one and the same
paragraph. Also, by literally and uncritically giving known and
notorious deniers of the Armenian genocide, Shaw & Shaw, the
last word regarding the "Armenian question," Mr. Østergaard
clearly accepts these author's historical interpretation of the
"events." And by doing so, Mr. Østergaard makes his own
initial use of a Danish term "folkemord," a term equivilant to the
term "genocide," meaningless. According to this use of the term,
the Armenian genocide was an unintentional and unsystematic
genocide, a genocide where all Ottoman groups were equally
victimized, and all were equally atrocious.
This might seem less of a problem if Mr. Østergaard, for 6
years the director of a Department for Holocaust and Genocide
Studies, had publicly and unequivocally acknowledged, and distanced
himself from, his denialist views. Since this is not the case, and
since Mr. Østergaard in fact still regularly insists that
he, regarding the "Armenian question," takes up a "neutral"
position between an "Armenian" and a "Turkish" point of view, we
find ample grounds to seriously question his current position on
the Armenian genocide. We have tried to raise such matters of
denial and acknowledgment, both internally at the Department, in
Danish newspaper articles, and in academic publications, all to no
avail. This open letter is therefore our last attempt at
facilitating an open discussion of these vital matters, hopefully
before any final decisions are made.
Sincerely,
Torben Jørgensen and Matthias Bjørnlund
Comments are welcome, and can be mailed to:
matthiasb@webspeed.dk
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