Book Review
The Thirty Year Genocide
by Benny Morris and Dror Ze’evi
Harvard University Press. 2019
Turkish President Recep Teyyip Erdogan has followed the example of the leader of National Action Party ( the neo-fascist Grey Wolves) leader Devlet Bahceli and recalled the events at Smyrna which resulted in the mass slaughter of that city’s Greek and Armenian Christian inhabitants. Erdogan mentioned that Turkey would again drive the Greeks into the sea. For a country whose policies are heavily based on genocide denial, Turkey goes out of its way to actually remind the world not only of the genocide that its founders committed, but that it is willing to commit genocide again.
Turkey has lost the war that it spent many decades fighting by trying to impose its genocide denial on foreign countries and societies. That was has been lost as can be seen by the continued and unrelenting publication of books on the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek genocides. Turkey had always been fighting a losing battle as its only real supporters in western governments and academic institutions were corrupt politicians and pseudo academics willing to come under Ankara’s influence for a price of some sort. Bernard Lewis is a perfect example.
In 2019, Israeli academics Benny Morris and Dror Ze’evi published “The Thirty Year Genocide” a five hundred page tome documenting the systematic planning and carrying out of the physical extermination of the Ottoman Empire’s Christian populations. This book followed on the publication of “The Great Fire” by Lou Ureneck just a couple of years earlier which was about the slaughter of the Greeks and Armenians and the burning of Smyrna. There has never been any question as to the historical truth of what transpired in Anatolia between 1914 and 1923. When Turkish leaders open their big mouths making threats they are verifying the fact that their country has been built over the corpses of Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek Christians.
The authors of “The Thirty Year Genocide” spent seven years researching and writing this book. Their outstanding efforts show as this is simply a historical masterpiece. The authors recount in the introduction that Turkish governments over the decades have purged their historical archives of incriminating evidence. Turkish efforts to hide the truth have ended in miserable failure.
The authors in great detail recount the origins of genocide which they claim began against the Armenians in 1894. Over time, the policies of mass extermination were extended to the Greeks and Assyrians. Three governments in the Ottoman Empire were responsible- the government of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, the Young Turks, and Mustafa Kemal Pasha. Each government continued pursuing genocide as an instrument of state policy.
There are times when this book is tough to read. The pages at times endlessly describe the slaughter of Greeks and Armenians in village after village after village. They describe them in great detail and with statistics. This is a product of great historical research as well as political significance.
Israel for many years used its influence in Washington to stop the recognition of the Armenian genocide by the United States Congress. One has to wonder whether this book could have been published by two prominent Israeli historians had relations between Israel and Turkey not been damaged by the present leadership in Ankara. This is a wonderful and powerful contribution to the history of the Christians in the late Ottoman and early Republican eras in Turkish history.
This book has great political significance because unlike Germany which was occupied by the allies in 1945 and forced to undergo a policy of denazification, Turkey has never been forced or compelled to account for the horrors it inflicted on the Christian populations. As a result Greece, Cyprus, and Armenia today face threats of genocide by the Erdogan regime. Armenia in particular has been threatened by the lunatic regime in Azerbaijan which has threatened to attack Armenia’s nuclear power plant.
In recent days, the Greek government appointed an Ambassador to Azerbaijan. The Ambassador was in fact insulted by his hosts who made it clear that they stand firmly with Turkey on the matter of Ankara’s aggressive designs against Greece. It is abundantly clear that Turkey and Azerbaijan are being led by lunatics who are capable of and willing to resume genocidal operations against the descendants of the communities they exterminated one century ago.
Favorable reviews of this book were published in various American and British newspapers. Most important may have been the article about this book that appeared in the Wall Street Journal. The Journal was once one of the most staunchly pro Turkish newspapers in America. Its editorial writers served as apologists for the denial of the Armenian genocide and for the Turkish invasions of Cyprus.
They published a review of this book entitled “When Turkey killed its Christians” and recounted the genocide of the Armenians and Greeks. This is one example where the rise of Erdogan has led to a change in attitude toward Turkey. This past summer, National Review, another formerly pro Turkish publication made mention of the Armenian and Greek genocides.
Serious historians have worked hard for decades to expose the truth of genocide that was committed by the Turkish government. Their work has not been in vain. New generations of historians and scholars have come to assist the effort in liberating history from politics.