Article by Henry C. Theriault, Ph.D. Worcester State University, USA, published in the House Magazine on April 22, 2025, the leading publication for MPs and peers.

“The Failure of Rehabilitation, the Failure of Repair:  Why Addressing the Armenian Genocide Is Crucial for the Survival of the Armenian People Today”

Henry C. Theriault, Ph.D.

Worcester State University, USA

There is a pervasive yet false presumption that, once the direct killing of a genocide ends, the victims are somehow safe from further harm and will, over time, recover, at least to the point of continuing viability.  Both beliefs are false.  As shown by comparison of the Holocaust and Rwanda Genocide to the many cases of past genocide – especially of indigenous peoples – that resulted in subsequent disintegration of victim communities, sometimes decades and centuries later, without meaningful efforts to reconstruct and support a victim group, the trajectory of past genocide is toward the ultimate demise of that group.  What is more, without rehabilitation of the perpetrator group that specifically extirpates the genocidal attitudes, normalized practices, and even institutional structures in governments, militaries, educational systems, and more.  The process of genocide is not a cathartic exhaling of genocidality, but rather yet more deeply embeds it into perpetrator governments, societies, and cultures.  This is evident, for instance, in the multi-century struggle of three prominent progeny states of the UK itself, Australia, Canada, and my own United States, to transition away from direct killing and other measures designed to destroy indigenous groups in which country; even today, the transformation away from genocide is not yet complete and indigenous survival continues to be in question.

As opposed to these three democracies, in which bad actions are always contested from within, though not always successfully, in countries run by strongmen, where “democracy” is a dim image on the far horizon mocking the millions of decent people ready to do the right thing, genocidality not merely escapes treatment, not merely festers beneath the surface, but is fed and watered and grows over the years.  It is through this framework that Azerbaijan’s attempt at ethnically cleansing Armenians from their ancestral homeland of Nagorno-Karabakh starting with Stalin in 1920 and escalating with massacres and all-out aggression in 1988 can be understood.  It is through this framework that Turkey’s celebratory military and propagandistic direct participation in mass violence against Armenians from 2020 to the present makes sense.  For years, Turkey had been claiming only benevolence toward Armenians, that it had never been and never would be the unjust aggressor against them; yet, when COVID, geopolitical shifts based on dictatorial alliances, and other factors provided the opportunity, it did not hesitate for a moment to send its troop and to pay for Islamic jihadis from other countries to commit atrocities including murder against Armenian civilians for the first time since 1920.

Someone relatively unfamiliar with the facts on the ground might question whether genocide is actually occurring today against Armenians, even if the International Association of Genocide Scholars passed a resolution with this finding in September 2024 (https://genocidescholars.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/IAGS-Resolution-on-Nagorno-Karabakh.pdf).  The genocidality of Turkey and Azerbaijan is not mere speculation, but on the contrary confirmed by repeated statements and actions by the leaders of both countries.  For the Turkish strongman Erdogan, the assault of 2020 to the present is the completion of what his predecessors began in 1915, the elimination of Armenians.  And, for Azerbaijan’s dictator Aliyev, the goal is not even just elimination of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh, but elimination of Armenians from the Republic of Armenia itself, from which Armenians will be “chased like dogs” in the realization of his own diminutive version of delusional pan-Turanism, the reclamation of the entirely fabricated “Western Azerbaijan” = the Republic of Armenia.  (In this regard, it is good to recall that proto-Azeris, then “Tatars,” carried out their own massacres of Armenians before and during the 1915 genocide.)  While rhetoric of this sort is not always to be taken seriously, the fact that Azerbaijan has invaded and now occupies southern Armenia and has indicated it intends to take more Armenian territory – as much as it can get – demonstrates that the rhetoric is material intent.  It would be one thing for Turkey and Azerbaijan to be merely unrepentant about their past mass violence, but they have done what many emboldened perpetrators do, restart the violence when an opportunity presents itself.

The consequences for Armenians are already dire.  Beyond the expulsion of the Armenian people of Nagorno-Karabakh from its multi-millennial homeland, the Azerbaijani-Turkish conquest has wiped out a generation of Armenian males.  We know the implications of this from the Srebrenica Massacre of 1995, a massacre that continues to impact Bosnian demographics.

What can the UK do?  What should the UK do?  It might be hard to admit for countries to admit how often they get it wrong, especially when it comes to human rights issues.  But in 1915, specifically in its May 24 joint declaration with France and Russia, the UK got it really right – as it did in 1939, ahead of the US and others.  The statement that the perpetrators of what later would be understood as genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks would be held accountable, and accountable for “crimes against humanity,” was not merely an important intervention in this particular case, but was a seminal moment in the establish of basic human rights norms for all of humanity going forward.  Why hide this profoundly laudable part of British history through a refusal to recognize in today’s context what the righteous predecessors of today’s leadership had no doubt about as it occurred.  Is fleeting military advantage and access to fossil fuels that are on their way out anyway really worth not just sacrificing a people that has already gone through genocide twice (not just 1915-23 but also 1894-96), but sacrificing the ethical soul of the UK?  Indeed, in an age of criticism of colonialism and more, why does the UK want to negate one of its shining moments of human rights promotion?  Why do contemporary politicians thumb their noses at the right-thinking leaders of the Great War period?  That the UK did not make good on the promise of the May 24, 1915, declaration in the years after the war does not mean it cannot make good on that promise today, and restore its own internal consistency.  The direct perpetrators of 1915 are long dead and prosecution of Erdogan and Aliyev for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes outside the scope of the current discussion.  The UK can make good on its promise merely by recognizing that it already fully recognized the Armenian Genocide as it occurred – and produced some of the most important evidence of it in the Bryce-Toynbee Report.

Contemporary recognition would be no minor or purely symbolic act.  Recognition today by the UK, the last major holdout in the world now that even the US has fully recognized the 1915 genocide, would be a decisive response to a century-long denial campaign by successive Turkish governments and their public relations and academic mercenaries that confirms the historical record and, more than simply bearing witness to past Armenian suffering, asserts in clear ethical terms that, in the UK, truth matters.  What is more, it would place contemporary Turkish and Azerbaijani treatment of Armenians in a new framework.  It would put Turkey in the category of perpetrator state and Azerbaijan as accomplice – also outlawed by the UN Genocide Convention.  It would not entail land reparations or even compensation – though these are quite legitimate in the circumstances – nor any other positive actions by Turkey and Azerbaijan.  (These could be addressed once Turkey and Azerbaijan have democratic governments that go through transitional justice processes.)  What it would do, on the contrary, would be to impose a brake on their ability to inflict mass violence against Armenians today, to expel Armenians from their lands, to take more of the Republic of Armenia until nothing is left, to complete their cultural destruction of Armenian places, and more.  Though it is often neglected in discussion of recognition and repair, the most important consequence of recognition and most essential element of repair is non-repetition, that is, prevention of the perpetrator group(s) from committing more violence against the victims.  The failure in 1919 to hold accountable those who led the genocide – especially the UK’s release of perpetrators awaiting trial back into Turkey – authorized renewed massacres of Armenians through 1923 and the conquest of the inchoate Armenian Republic in 1920.  The failure of recognition since has emboldened Turkey and Azerbaijan to renew their genocidal assault against Armenians, until every last one has been murdered in or driven from their homeland of more than 2,000 years.

Many of us are too jaded witnessing genocide after genocide and endless denial over our lifetimes to be mystified as to why the British government would refuse to stand by the best of themselves.  The UK is far from exceptional in placing fleeting, merely perceived military advantages and British Petroleum’s balance sheet ahead of basic human decency and human lives.  The UK can make itself exceptional – exceptionally principled, a true global leader – if in the current context of renewed mass violence against Armenians it recognizes the 1915 genocide and refuses to countenance repetition today.