“They are just trying to make us angry. It is their last chance to cause trouble against us.” This sneering article puts “genocide” in quotes and presents it all as something “historians believe,” but it isn’t really a disputed question for any honest person. See, for example, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus by Vahakn N. Dadrian. From the Times Online, with thanks to Full Namespace:
TURKEY has reacted angrily to a demand by France that it accept responsibility for a “genocide” against Armenians nearly 80 years ago, which is thought to have influenced the Nazi Holocaust.
Michel Barnier, the French Foreign Minister insisted that Turkey must officially recognise the 1915 genocide before it joins the European Union.Historians believe that Turkish authorities orchestrated the killing of 1.5 million Armenian Christians, who were indigenous inhabitants of Turkey, in a brutal attempt to make an ethnically pure nation. However, the Turkish Government has always said that only a small number were killed in spontaneous acts of violence….
[Barnier] later referred to it as a genocide, the first time the French Government has used that word, having previously preferred tragedy. Many parliaments in Europe have called on Turkey to recognise the slaughter, which is marked by monuments in many European cities.
However, a Turkish government spokesman said: “There was no such genocide, so there is no question of recognising a genocide that did not happen.”
One Turkish official said: “They are just trying to make us angry. It is their last chance to cause trouble against us.”