Genocide claims 'only glue' for Armenian diaspora: Academic

ANKARA

Nearly 50 academics gathered in Ankara on Friday for a two-day international conference on the “Armenian Question”.

The conference, organized by the New Turkey Center for Strategic Research, was called to explore Armenian claims that the tragedy of 1915, in which numbers of Armenians and Turks in eastern Anatolia lost their lives, was "genocide" carried out against Armenians by the Ottoman Empire.

The International Conference on the Armenian Question: Myths and Realities heard U.S. historian Justin McCarthy, an expert on the late Ottoman Empire based at Louisville University, claim the “only reason” Armenians sought their own state was “imperialism”.

He also claimed Armenians attacked Muslim Turks to provoke a backlash as a pretext for European intervention in Anatolia.

McCarthy was criticized in 2006 by the International Association of Genocide Scholars for “severely selective scholarship that grossly distorts history.”

Michael Gunter, professor of political science at Tennessee Technical University and an expert on the Kurds, told the conference the “Armenian genocide claim is the only glue binding the Armenian diaspora, which is linguistically and geographically separated."

Tal Buenos, an Israeli political scientist at Utah University, said the Armenian "genocide" claims were sparked by U.S. attempts to “cover” war crimes committed in Vietnam in the 1960s.

The events of 1915 took place after part of the Armenian population living in the Ottoman Empire sided with the invading Russians and revolted. The subsequent relocations led to numerous casualties.

Turkey does not dispute that there were casualties on both sides but rejects the claim that these amounted to "genocide". It has called for a joint commission of historians to uncover what happened.