“We believe that acknowledgments of the Armenian Genocide are an important step toward ending the final stage of every genocide, denial, which continues to inflict suffering on the group that has been victimized – an inhuman assault on memory perpetrated by the Turkish government for more than 90 years.”
“The 94-year denial of the Armenian Genocide has emboldened perpetrators ever since.”
IAGS letter to President Barack Obama, 3.7.09
“Studies by genocide scholars prove that the single best predictor of future genocide is denial of a past genocide coupled with impunity for its perpetrators. Genocide Deniers are three times more likely to commit genocide again than other governments.”
Testimony to Congress by Dr. Gregory Stanton, President, IAGS, 4.23.08
“Denials of known events of genocide must be treated as acts of bitter and malevolent psychological aggression, certainly against the victims, but really against all of human society, for such denials literally celebrate genocidal violence and in the process suggestively call for renewed massacres – of the same people or of others.”
Dr. Israel Charny, Executive Director, Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, Jerusalem, 7.17.01
“The black hole of forgetting is the negative force that results in future genocides. When Adolf Hitler was asked if his planned invasion of Poland was a violation of international law, he scoffed,‘Who ever heard of the extermination of the Armenians?’”
The 8 Stages of Genocide by Dr. Gregory Stanton, President, Genocide Watch, 1996
“We represent the major body of scholars who study genocide in North America and Europe. We are concerned that in calling for an impartial study of the Armenian Genocide, you may not be fully aware of the extent of the scholarly and intellectual record on the Armenian Genocide and how this event conforms to the definition of the United Nations Genocide Convention ... We note that there may be differing interpretations of genocide—how and why the Armenian Genocide happened—but to deny its factual and moral reality as genocide is not to engage in scholarship but in propaganda and efforts to absolve the perpetrator, blame the victims, and erase the ethical meaning of this history ... We would also note that scholars who advise your government and who are affiliated in other ways with your state-controlled institutions are not impartial. Such so-called “scholars” work to serve the agenda of historical and moral obfuscation when they advise you and the Turkish Parliament on how to deny the Armenian Genocide.
IAGS letter to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, 6.13.05
“It is disingenuous of the government of Turkey to use the red herring of a ‘historians’ commission,’ half of whose members would be appointed by the Turkish government, to ‘study’ the facts of what occurred in 1915 ... A ‘commission of historians’ would only serve the interests of Turkish genocide deniers.”
IAGS letter to U.S. Representatives Tom Lantos and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, 10.5.07
“Turkey’s call for an ‘historical commission’ to study the events of 1915 is an attempt to put genocide deniers on an equal level with genuine scholars.”
IAGS letter to President Barack Obama, 3.7.09
“There is no more ‘other side’ to the truth about the Armenian genocide than there is about the Holocaust.”
Testimony to Congress by Dr. Gregory Stanton, President, IAGS, 4.23.08
“The government of Turkey has since continued to call for a ‘historian's commission’ of scholars to ‘study the facts of what happened in 1915-1923.’ The proposed committee is marketed as a high-minded quest for truth and reconciliation, a long overdue arbitration of disputed history, and a chance to finally give equal weight to both sides of the story. But as the saying goes, a lie isn't the other side of any story. It's just a lie.”
State of Denial, Summer 2008, Southern Poverty Law Center.