Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Morgenthau's interview.
As I was reading this chapter, I was caught by Morgenthau's interview with Pasha Talaat. The interview was so blatant. There were two aspects of this interview that particularly shocked me. Firstly, the Pasha's blatant confession of his plan to "finish with them [Christians]." It made the Turks denial of the genocide even more surprising to me. I understand Turkey's current reasoning behind the denial of a "genocide," being a country that is trying to present itself as a safe westernized country, not as one with a history of mass-murder. Yet, it is astonishing that they continue to deny the title "genocide" when there is such clear recorded evidence stating that the government openly planned the murder of the Armenians, even calculating the commercial loss it would be to the country. Secondly, the fact that this interview was conducted by an American Ambassador showing America's full knowledge of the events occurring in Turkey. I would think the death of 3/4 of a population of people would instigate some type of response from the American Government or Army [especially considering the fact that America is a christian nation and the group that were being massacred were also christian] Morgenthau's lack of reaction unsettled me. He had no obvious response to the fact that the Pasha was, "not influenced by humane considerations," and, simply continues his interview with a new approach. The clear declaration of the Pasha's intentions, America's full knowledge of the events, and Morgentahu's mere "I lost my temper," were all aspects that made me notice and think about this interview.
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It was also extremely alarming for me that there were so many Americans in Turkey at the time, and yet it seems that nothing was done to try to stop the genocide (aside from just trying to verbally convince the Turks that massacre wasn't the right thing to do). I can't imagine being in the country at that time, especially in a position that was close to the government(as an ambassador is) and just stand by without doing something a lot more drastic to stop the circumstances. Either that, or I would think that the Americans would be so scared for their own lives (because as you pointed out, many Americans are Christian too), that they would just leave. It makes me wonder if there WERE any bigger attempts made by the US citizens living in Turkey that Balakian just doesn't talk about. Or, it could be that as the US Ambassador, Morgenthau was under orders not to do anything to infuriate the Turks. But that would just make me so angry that the US would put polite diplomacy over the lives of thousands of people! It would be interesting to learn more about Morgenthau's experience to see what was really going on behind the scenes.
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