Chris Hitchens reminds everyone that Turkey is an ally we might not want to have. Despite its status as an democracy of Muslims, rather than an Islamic democracy, to my eye it resembles the post-World War II autocracies of Greece & Spain more than a liberal nation-state. But the key against their inclusion in the collective of civilized nations is their denial of the Armenian genocide. I don’t not think that the Turks are obligated to apologize en masse for an act committed by a very different government and polity (the Young Turks I believe)-and I find the argument that the Armenians were rebellious and seditious plausible-but denying that a mass slaughter occurred of the ancient community of Armenians in eastern Anatolia systematically organized by the Turkish government of the day seems empirically indefensable [1]. Denial is the first stage on the way to liberalism-but they have a long way to go.
Hitchens also has some good stuff on their denial of the existance of Kurds-until recently termed “Mountain Turks.”
[1] The Armenian “millet” was probably not particularly loyal to the Muslim Turkish state at this point in history, and wanted its independence just like the Greeks and south Slavic peoples. On the other hand, the mass slaughter that occurred seems disproportionate a response. Nevertheless, the past is the past, but a denial of the past means that we can never forgive & forget.
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