More than a century ago, Ottoman Turks deliberately rounded up and murdered more than a million Armenians.
While some historians have argued that the deaths were due to the fog of war, evidence is overwhelming that the design and goal of the slaughter were deliberate. Other Turks parry discussion of the murder of more than a million Armenians by pointing out that Turks also suffered grievously in the Balkans. This is neither here nor there, though, as it is not relevant to the question about the deliberate extermination of eastern Anatolia’s Armenian population. Almost no one, the most ardent Turkish nationalists excepted, denies the deaths even if they deny the genocide.
Given how relatively recent the murders were — most Armenians have grandparents, if not parents, who suffered the tragedy — it takes certain pathological sociopathy to mock the genocide. However, this is what Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu did during an official visit to Uruguay. While departing the Turkish Embassy, Cavusoglu flashed the sign of the Grey Wolves at protesters of Armenian descent. The provocation embarrassed Uruguay, whose president demanded an explanation.
This is what Turkish diplomacy has become. The episode ranks just behind the Sheridan Circle assaults in the annals of Turkey’s disdain for its norms. To understand how provocative the foreign minister’s actions were, it is necessary to understand the Grey Wolves he has embraced:
Turkey’s Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) established the Grey Wolves in the 1960s as its Brown Shirts. They roughed up, beat, and sometimes murdered ethnic and religious minorities in Turkey, with a special focus on targeting Armenians, Greeks, and Kurds. During the 1988-1994 Nagorno-Karabakh War, Grey Wolf volunteers were guilty of some of that conflict’s worst atrocities.
In recent decades, both the MHP and the Grey Wolves have found common cause with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. During trips to Turkey, I would explore MHP-dominated districts far from the normal tourist enclaves, and I would see Grey Wolf posters depicting a Jewish-star-wearing octopus strangling Turkey, imagery borrowed directly from Nazi Germany.
Last year, Congress called upon the State Department to review whether the Grey Wolves deserved designation as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has yet to reply.
Cavusoglu’s actions are bad enough if they were a one-off episode and the exception of Turkish regime action rather than the rule. But, as the foreign minister was taunting the children of genocide, Sezgin Tanrikulu, a member of parliament from the opposing Republican People’s Party (CHP), tweeted, “On April 24, 1915, hundreds of Armenian intellectuals were detained in Istanbul, exiled to Cankiri, Ayas, and Ankara, and forcibly disappeared. Without confronting this date, which is the milestone of evil, true justice cannot be achieved.” The Turkish government reacted to his acknowledgment of history by launching an investigation against him on charges of “insulting the Turkish nation.” He now faces years in prison for stating historical reality.
The irony, of course, is that those who besmirch the Turkish nation are not parliamentarians and intellectuals like Tanrikulu but rather buffoons like Cavusoglu who represent Turkey on the world stage. Turkey’s dehumanization of Armenians and its denial of historical truth is the precedent for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s revisionism in Ukraine.
While President Joe Biden has now formally recognized the Armenian Genocide, Cavusoglu’s action should spark three policy adjustments: First, the White House should acknowledge that the threat of genocide continues today against the millennia-old Armenian communities in Nagorno-Karabakh. It was no coincidence that Turkey and Azerbaijan launched their war on the 100th anniversary of the Ottoman invasion of independent Armenia.
Second, Washington is complicit in arming its would-be perpetrators. It is time for Blinken to follow the law and enact Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act.
Finally, as Turkey doubles down on denial and punishes dissent, there may be no recourse but for the United States and Europe to break another diplomatic taboo and begin to discuss the necessity for Turkish reparations to Armenia, not only to pay for the past but also the present.
Michael Rubin (@mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
