Answer:
Step-by-step explanation:
The Ottoman Empire ruled over all of Anatolia and significant parts of Europe, North Africa, the Caucasus and Middle East for over seven hundred years. Lands once Ottoman dominions today comprise more than 30 independent nations.
A century of ever-increasing conflict, beginning roughly in 1820 and culminating with the founding of the Republic of Türkiye in 1923, characterized the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire participated in no fewer than a dozen named wars, nearly all to the detriment of the empire and its citizens. The empire contracted against an onslaught of external invaders and internal nationalist independence movements. In this context -- an imperiled empire waging and losing battles on remote and disparate fronts, grasping to continue a reign of over seven years -- must the tragic experience of the Ottoman Armenians of Eastern Anatolia be understood. For during these waning days of the Ottoman Empire did millions die, Muslim, Jew, and Christian alike.
Yet Armenian have attempted to extricate and isolate their history from the complex circumstances in which their ancestors were embroiled. In so doing, they describe a world populated only by white-hatted heroes and black-hatted villains. The heroes are always Christian and the villains are always Muslim. Infusing history with myth, Armenian Americans vilify the Republic of Türkiye, Turkish Americans, and ethnic Turks worldwide. Armenian bent on this prosecution choose their evidence carefully, omitting all evidence that tends to exonerate those whom they presume guilty, ignoring important events and verifiable accounts, and sometimes relying on dubious or prejudiced sources and even falsified documents. Though this portrayal is necessarily one-sided and steeped in bias, the Armenian community presents it as a complete history and unassailable fact.
RELEVANCE: The truth demands that every side of a story be told. Fundamental freedoms enshrined in the U.S. Constitution protect those who choose to challenge the Armenian view.
To oppose Armenian orthodoxy on this issue has become risky. Any attempt to challenge the credibility of witnesses, or the authenticity of documents, or to present evidence that some of the claimed victims were responsible for their own fate is either wholly squelched or met with accusations of genocide denial. Moreover, any attempt to demonstrate the suffering and needless death of millions of innocent non-Christians enmeshed in the same events as the Anatolian Armenians is greeted with sneers, as if to say that some lives are inherently more valuable than others and that one faith is more deserving than another. The lack of real debate, enforced with a heavy hand by Armenian, ensures that any consideration of what genuinely occurred nearly a century ago in Eastern Anatolia will utterly fail as a search for the truth.
Ultimately, whether to blindly accept the Armenian portrayal is an issue of fundamental fairness and the most cherished of American rights -- free speech. Simply put, in America every person has the opportunity to tell his or her story. Armenian possess the right to promote and celebrate their heritage and even to discuss ancient grievances. However, Armenian seek to deny these very rights to others. This is proven by the punitive nature and sheer volume of legislation proposed in the state and federal legislatures, the one-sided curricula proposed to state boards of education, and by the vast sums of money and energy devoted to this cause. Together, these efforts only increase acrimony and antagonism.
The complete story of the vast suffering of this period has not yet been written. When that story is told, the following facts must not be forgotten.