The Armenian Weekly. NEW YORK, NY—“Recognition is about prevention. Recognition is about breaking the cycle of violence that has haunted Turkey for generations, but ultimately, recognition is about justice for the victims,” said Prof. Khatchig Mouradian in an in-depth interview on RT’s “Worlds Apart” on the quest for recognition and justice for the Armenian Genocide.
Mouradian, a professor of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies at Columbia University and a former editor of the Armenian Weekly, noted that simplistic explanations of the passage of congressional resolutions remove from the equation decades and decades of Armenian American activism. “If for the victims, justice is important, acknowledgment is important, more power to them!”
In the 30-minute interview with RT anchor Oksana Boyko, Mouradian discussed how these resolutions accomplish more than “raising President Erdogan’s blood pressure.” He notes that the outcome, beyond the discussion on motives, is that the U.S. now alongside more than 30 countries on the right side of history.
Talking about Ankara’s demand for a historians’ commission Mouradian said, “Scholarship is not some kind of street fight, where we bring historians and make them clash.”
Read also
The interview also tackled responses to generic denialist arguments made by the Turkish government and its mouthpieces, Israel’s position on the Armenian Genocide is untenable (and what elements shape it), how Kurds and Syria factor into the discussion, and Mouradian’s own experiences growing up among genocide survivors.
Earlier, Mouradian had explored some of these issues in an op-ed in The Washington Post and a shorter interview on France 24.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKtAEa6xAT4&feature=youtu.be