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NEWS & LETTERS, June-July 2006Film documents 1916 Armenian genocideThe Armenian community and the world at large is observing the anniversary of an event which served as a milestone on humanity’s road to barbarism in the 20th century. The 90th anniversary of the attempt of the government of Ottoman Turkey to eliminate its minority Armenian population in the midst of World War I is being marked by new efforts to familiarize the world with the story of the genocide--which may have taken as many as one million lives--and the depth of its historical significance. One important contribution to this effort was an hour-long documentary produced by filmmaker Andrew Goldberg and broadcast by PBS in April. Goldberg’s film "The Armenian Genocide" describes the increasingly tenuous position of the Christian Armenian minority within the Muslim Ottoman empire as it dramatically decreased in size due to successful rebellions of the Balkan nations. The Armenians, who had long militated for their rights within the empire, were perceived as a serious and growing threat by the Turkish nationalists in control of the government. When the Turkish government decided to participate in World War I in alliance with Germany, the extreme nationalists feared that the Armenians in Turkey would sympathize with Turkey’s foe Russia. As a result, a systematic campaign to destroy the Armenians was launched in 1915 and lasted for several years. It was carried out both by outright massacres and by uprooting Armenians from their homes and forcibly marching them south to Syria, then a part of the Ottoman empire, to perish in the desert. The film movingly depicts the scope of the genocide through photographs, contemporary documents, and interviews with scholars from several countries, including Turkey. The inclusion of the Turkish scholars serves to powerfully undercut the ongoing efforts of the Turkish government and some academics to deny that what took place was a genocide. The impact of the film was diminished slightly, however, by the decision of PBS to produce and air immediately following the documentary a discussion hosted by National Public Radio's Scott Simon. The program featured two academics--one American and one Turkish--who deny that a genocide against the Armenians happened. Although not all PBS stations chose to air the follow-up program and the genocide deniers were ably debated by Armenian-American poet Peter Balakian and a Turkish scholar, their position was given a large audience that it did not deserve. --Kevin Michaels |
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