"Never forgetting is easier... if you don't remember."

The Turkish PM weighs in from the op-ed page of the WSJ:

"While we search for ways to address this painful issue and develop our relations with Armenia, we cannot live in the past. Our sincere offer for dialogue and reconciliation is on the table," Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan wrote in an opinion piece published in Friday's Wall Street Journal, European edition.

"It is incumbent on Armenia to take the next step," he added.

Well, thanks but no thanks. Who would want to participate in a discussion when the very points you make will land you in jail?

From kos diarist upstate NY:

Turkey has made an offer to Armenia. Let’s get a team of historians together to look through the archives and decide this once and for all. A seemingly fair offer, one the Armenians are not too keen to take up because of their distrust of Turkish historians and academics. Of course, they should trust some Turkish historians, such as Taner Akcam of the University of Minnesota, one of the few to have undertaken research in the Turkish state archives. Or Prof. Gocek from the University of Michigan.

Unsurprisingly, Akcam came to the conclusion that a genocide sponsored and systematized by the state was undoubtedly committed, and that its premeditated nature was evident. Akcam’s book, A Shameful Act, testifies to his research in the archives. This makes the Turkish offer of a joint commission curious, since the few historians who have seen the state’s documents seem to draw the same conclusion.

Perhaps Turkey is relying on a form of intimidation through its national laws which criminalize such statements that claim the Armenian genocide occurred.

Akcam himself was charged under Article 301 with insulting Turkishness, as have the Nobel prize novelist from Turkey, Orhan Pamuk, and the Armenian-Turkish editor Hrant Dink who was gunned down by a right-wing fanatic. His son was convicted just this past week for publishing his father’s last news article citing the genocide.

Is there a disincentive for a Turkish historian to go into the archives and risk being jailed? The answer is obvious.

For the rest of the academic world, with access to documents from Armenia, firsthand eyewitness accounts from western diplomats and travelers such as US Ambassador Robert Morgenthau, not to mention Akcam's firsthand research in the archives, this is a dead issue. In historical circles, there is no dispute.

From time to time, a few historians deny the use of the term genocide, but invariably these are academics who holds chairs sponsored by the Turkish government.