The Armenian Genocide is abundantly documented by Ottoman court-martial records, by hundreds of thousands of documents in the archives of the United States and nations around the world, by eyewitness reports of missionaries and diplomats, by the testimony of survivors, and by eight decades of historical scholarship. After 83 years the Turkish government continues to deny the genocide of the Armenians by blaming the victims and undermining historical fact with false rhetoric. Books about the genocide are banned in Turkey. When Raphael Lemkin coined the word genocide in 1944 he cited the 1915 annihilation of the Armenians as a seminal example of genocide. Denial of genocide strives to reshape history in order to demonize the victims and rehabilitate the perpetrators.
Denial of genocide is the final stage of genocide.
Denial murders the dignity of the survivors and seeks to destroy remembrance of the crime. In a century plagued by genocide, we affirm the moral necessity of remembering. We denounce as morally and intellectually corrupt the Turkish government's denial of the Armenian genocide. We condemn Turkey's manipulation of the American government and American institutions for the purpose of denying the Armenian genocide. Washington University Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Professor of Afro-American Studies, Harvard University.