America and Armenia

Authors

Mark L. Movsesian, St. John's University School of LawFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

First Things

Publication Date

5-10-2021

Abstract

(Excerpt)

On April 24, in the annual White House statement commemorating the deaths of up to 1.5 million Armenian Christians in Ottoman Turkey during World War I, President Joe Biden used the word that other presidents have long avoided: “genocide.” Among historians, the word is not controversial. The Ottoman government’s ethnic cleansing campaign against Armenians from 1915–23 has long been seen as the prototypical genocide—an attempt “to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.” Raphael Lemkin, the lawyer who drafted that definition of genocide for an international treaty on the subject, had the Armenian Genocide specifically in mind.

Comments

Available at: https://firstthings.com/america-and-armenia/