Tuesday, 27 April 2021, 3:41 pm
Attributing names to the brutal acts humans are capable
of inflicting upon each other is never without problems.
There are gradations of terror, hierarchies of atrocity and
cruelty. In these, the pedants reign. Disputes splutter and
rage over whether a “massacre” can best be described as
a crime against humanity or a counter-measure waged with
heavy sorrow against a threatening enemy. Scratch the
surface of such arguments, and the truth is bleakly common:
apologists for murder will be found.
With the Armenian
Genocide, terms acutely matter. The treatment of the
Armenians by the Turks as the Ottoman Empire was running out