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Dr. Mehmet Oz would be the first candidate in American historical past to run for the U.S. Senate as a citizen each of america and Turkey. For us, there’s nothing unsuitable with twin citizenship in precept, though Oz has, underneath immense stress through the Republican major, stated that he would surrender his Turkish citizenship if elected.
The larger downside within the Pennsylvania Senate race is that Oz, regardless of requests to make clear his place, refuses to say if the Armenian genocide occurred.
The query is greater than cheap. It’s important in understanding the values he would convey to Congress.
Final week, the Oz marketing campaign canceled a fundraiser in his dwelling state of New Jersey amid calls for for readability on his place. The agitators in New Jersey’s Jewish and Armenian communities have been clear: Something lower than a full acknowledgement of the atrocities visited by the Ottoman or Turkish Empire upon their Armenian victims is an affront towards historical past and conscience.
Whereas many nonetheless deny that the deaths of multiple million Armenians within the dying days of the Ottoman Empire constitutes genocide, america doesn’t. Final yr, the Biden administration formally acknowledged the Armenian genocide, as have 29 different nations. The U.S. Senate unanimously voted in 2019 to acknowledge {that a} genocide was undertaken towards the Armenian, Greek and Assyrian individuals. Oz’s candidacy rightly raises the query: Would he have stood with the senators he needs to hitch?
It’s not a query of semantics. For the one million-strong Armenian neighborhood of america, the genocide is a lived actuality. Nearly all of Armenians dwelling within the U.S. are direct descendants of its survivors.
However Oz refuses to particularly say whether or not what occurred in Armenia was genocide, with a marketing campaign aide solely telling NBC Information, “Dr. Mehmet Oz opposes genocide and the homicide of harmless individuals in all types.”
Genocide denial has very actual penalties. The failure of the worldwide neighborhood to stop and adequately reply to the Ottoman Empire’s systematic homicide of 1.5 million Armenians — a horror that continued via the beginning of the nascent Turkish Republic — arguably impressed others to do the identical.
Some historians argue the Armenian genocide was, in some ways, a blueprint for the Holocaust, which noticed the homicide of six million Jews, together with 1.5 million kids. On the eve of the Nazi invasion of Poland, Adolf Hitler reportedly stated: “Who, in any case, speaks right this moment of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
In truth, it was the Armenian genocide that led Jewish jurist Rafael Lemkin to coin the phrase “genocide.” The phrase described the industrialized eradication of a individuals; no present time period of legislation might fairly seize the unparalleled atrocity. Lemkin would later face the horrors of genocide himself. The Nazis murdered his complete household for the crime of being Jewish.
To disclaim genocide is to do extra than simply refuse to acknowledge historic details. It’s to actively abet the erasure of historical past and reminiscence, to whitewash the horrors of the previous and undermine our resolve to confront the horrors of the current. Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and advocate for Armenian genocide recognition, as soon as described the denial of genocide as a “double killing.”
The implications of this denialism have been profound. Turkey right this moment continues to have interaction within the destruction and desecration of its Armenian, Greek and Assyrian cultural heritage websites and is on the watch record of the U.S. Fee on Worldwide Spiritual Freedom. Turkey’s minorities — notably its dwindling, embattled Christian communities — proceed to face routine harassment, discrimination and threats emanating from the best political workplaces.
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, publicly known as the compelled relocation of Armenians throughout World Warfare I “cheap” and referred to the survivors of Armenian victims as “remnants of the sword.” And to at the present time, Turkey continues to promote weapons to Azerbaijan, which has just lately renewed preventing with Armenia.
Genocide stays as nice a menace to humanity right this moment because it did a century in the past. From the persecution of the Uyghurs in China, the Rohingya in Myanmar and the Tigray in Ethiopia, genocide the world over continues to problem worldwide norms and legal guidelines, to not point out human lives and rights and the values we maintain pricey as People.
The chance for Oz is obvious. Up to now, his marketing campaign has issued solely nebulous affirmations towards genocide in precept, with out particularly acknowledging or affirming his place on the Armenian genocide. However it’s not too late for him to be on the file.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, known as “essentially the most well-known Rabbi in America” by The Washington Submit, is the creator of “Holocaust Vacation: One Household’s Descent into Genocide Reminiscence Hell.” He’s on Instagram and Twitter @RabbiShmuley. Aram Suren Hamparian is govt director of the Armenian Nationwide Committee of America.
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