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Denial of the Armenian Genocide


Armenian Genocide denial is the act of denying the planned systematic genocide of 1.5 million Armenians during World War I, conducted by the Ottoman government. As a form of denialism, it can be compared to similar negationist historical revisionisms like Holocaust denial and Nanking Massacre denial.

The Armenian Genocide is almost unanimously acknowledged as a historical fact by historians and genocide scholars alike. It is also widely considered to have been the first modern genocide, with the word genocide itself having been invented by Raphael Lemkin to describe the sheer scale and success of the plan organized to systematically eliminate the Armenians. Revisionists typically argue the academic consensus of it being a genocide as anti-Turkish propaganda or as a conspiracy spread by the Armenians, instead claiming that it either did not occur or that it was somehow justified at the time.

Denial of the Armenian Genocide, is officially outlawed in France, Switzerland, Greece, Cyprus and Slovakia.

Currently, only the governments of Turkey and Azerbaijan deny that there was an Armenian genocide. Many other countries, most controversially the United States (pressured by both the Turkish lobby and Anti-Defamation League) and Israel, have deliberately avoided officially recognizing it as a genocide to avoid harming relations with Turkey. The Turkish government has spent millions on Washington lobbying over the past decade, much of it focused on the Armenian genocide issue, and has in the past threatened politicians from other countries with strong retaliation to prevent them from using the word genocide. The Turkish regime has also been accused of attempting to intimidate and silence foreign investigative journalists and genocide scholars.


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