Donald Trump became the only leader of a Western democracy to congratulate Recip Erdogan when, earlier this month, he won a disputed referendum that would give the Turkish leader authoritarian rule over his country for the foreseeable future. In doing so, the U.S. president displayed either complete ignorance of the significance of the referendum or a continuing bias in favor of autocrats (or maybe a little of both). The Turkish election may mark the end of Turkey’s claim to be a truly democratic Muslim country, and it came just weeks before the annual commemoration of the Armenian Genocide, which Erdogan continues to deny ever occurred.
The Armenian Genocide is vividly portrayed in the recently released film entitled “The Promise.” Directed by Terry George (“Hotel Rwanda”) and starring Oscar Isaac, Charlotte Le Bon, and Christian Bale, the film clearly depicts the horrors of the Ottoman-directed extermination of the Armenian population in Turkey, which began with the Turkish alliance with Germany in the First World War and continued until the eventual termination of the Ottoman rule in 1923. Historical records document the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians in what became recognized as the first genocide of the twentieth century. (In fact, the word genocide was coined by the United Nations’ Raphael Lemkin in 1944 after Lemkin had studied the historical record of the Turks’ concerted action against the Armenians and the Germans subsequent use of the same tactics in the Holocaust.)
Trump may or may not be aware of the Armenian Genocide. He presumably is aware of the Holocaust. Regarding the Ottoman’s efforts to exterminate the Armenians, Trump this week issued what has become a standard presidential acknowledgment of the deaths without calling the purge a true genocide. His statement could have been copied from those issued by his recent predecessors, including Barack Obama, who had promised during his first candidacy to acknowledge and condemn the genocide if he became president. He never did. Instead, like Trump, he expressed sorrow and joined with Armenians in the United States and around the world in “mourning the loss of innocent lives.”
The ultra-polite diplomatic wording that all U.S. presidents use on April 24 (the official date on which the genocide was said to have begun in 1915), and on any other occasion when they are asked, is a salve for the feelings of the current Turkish government. And Mr. Erdogan, in addition to being uplifted by Trump’s congratulatory phone call, must have been even more pleased with the statement Trump released about the geno-, err, “mass atrocities” that claimed the lives of so many Turkish citizens (as all Armenians living in Turkey were at the time).
In the past, when U.S. presidents have backed away from acknowledging the historically accurate use of the word genocide when referring to the “mass atrocities,” they have done so to maintain Turkey’s support in alliances against, in its time, the Soviet Union, and, since the demise of the U.S.S.R., the terrorist actions of stateless entities like al Qaeda and ISIS. Of course, with Turkish influence in Syria minimal at best and with Russia’s influence ascendant, it is unclear just what a friendship with Turkey gives the U.S. in its fight against Islamic terrorism.
Trump may not even know the calculus at play in acceding to Turkey’s demands regarding the genocide. He never sounds fully conversant on any topic that he speaks about, and he hasn’t spoken at all about Turkey, the Armenian Genocide, or the role Turkey can play in combating ISIS since he took office (other than through his spokespersons, of course, and who knows where they are getting their messages). We have seen him react to the videos of Syrian children when they were subjected to chemical weapons last month. He reacted with a missile attack that had little effect on Syria’s air force but may have tempered Bashar al-Assad’s appetite for brutal attacks on his own people.
If vivid portrayals of cruel barbarism motivate the president, maybe Trump should see “The Promise.” While there are not many of them, the scenes in the film that depict the killing of Armenians are powerful and, so far as history has recorded, entirely accurate. My own ancestors (I am fully of Armenian descent) were subjected to mass murder. Most Armenian descendants can tell stories of great-grandparents who were murdered by the Turks. They met their fate either in beheadings or hangings or by being shot en masse, their bodies hurled into large pits. And many died in forced marches, which are also depicted in the film, into the Turkish desert. There were also concentration camps where falsely accused Armenian men awaited their death sentences. Many well-bodied Armenian men were forced to work in support of Turkey’s military efforts in WWI, but, also as depicted in the film, they were killed when they had outlived their usefulness.
All of these actions were well documented at the time. The U.S. ambassador to Turkey, Henry Morgenthau, Sr., reported the details to his administration. The killings were also documented by the press. The New York Times, among other prominent newspapers, carried reports from the field about the atrocities. In the film, Christian Bale plays a reporter for Associated Press who documents the killings. While he is a fictional character, he represents the real reporters who verified the murders.
Trump has shown that he can learn. He has learned, for example, that healthcare reform is complicated and that China is not a currency manipulator. And he is presumably learning that defeating ISIS is not going to be easy and that passing legislation is not going to be easy and that being pals with Vladimir Putin is not going to be easy.
And so, maybe if he were to see “The Promise,” he would learn that Turkey, then and now, is not such a great friend of the United States. And maybe, unlike his predecessors, Trump would then feel compelled to do what they did not have the resolve to do. Maybe he would then recognize the Armenian Genocide as a historical fact. Doing so wouldn’t make him a great president, but it would certainly make him a hero among the diaspora of Armenians who, like me, feel betrayed by their country at around this time every year.