Lima and Ara Sarafian, the editors of the journal Armenian Forum, spoke at the California State University, Fresno, on 10 September. Their talk was the second in a lecture series organized by the Armenian Studies Program at the university.

"A Certain Envy"

Dickran Kouymjian, the Haig and Isabel Berberian Professor of Armenian Studies, introduced the speakers. Kouymjian professed "a certain envy" for the enterprising young scholars: he spoke of a "lifelong desire" to publish a journal like Armenian Forum, which offers in-depth, thoughtful discussions of contemporary affairs.

Kouymjian spoke highly of Lima’s accomplishments as editor of a journal of modern Armenian history for seven years, through 1995. He observed that Sarafian compiled a multivolume collection of official U.S. documents on the Armenian Genocide; Sarafian has also edited reports written by American missionaries who were eyewitnesses to the Genocide. Kouymjian said that "the Armenian Genocide owes a lot to Ara Sarafian in terms of documentation."

Sarafian spoke about how and why Armenian Forum came to be. Lima focused on a series of essays in the Summer 1998 issue of the journal. The essays are about the motivations of the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide. They consist of an article by Ronald Suny (University of Chicago), responses by Engin Akarli (Brown University), Selim Deringil (Bogazici University, Istanbul), and the Genocide scholar Vahakn Dadrian, along with a reply by Suny.

"Time to reclaim the agenda"

"Professor Richard Hovannisian has often complained that responding to Turkish government-sponsored denial saps all of our energies; it denies us the opportunity to come to grips with the actual events of the Genocide," Lima said. "Professor Hovannisian is right. But now, even though denial continues full-force, as a matter of scholarship the veracity of the Genocide is unassailable. It is time to reclaim the agenda and move forward."

Lima conceded that "it is not fair to say that there has been only documentation and no analysis. A handful of scholars--Vahakn Dadrian’s name comes to mind, among others--have offered analytical perspectives."

He noted, however, that "for the most part, these scholars have not responded to each other. They have not engaged each other’s views. Until now. We are happy to say that the debate in Armenian Forum brings analytical questions--rather than the nonquestion of whether there was a genocide--to the foreground."

"The very existence of a debate is a breakthrough"

Lima emphasized that debate and engagement bring the important points into focus; weak theses are drummed out; new avenues for further research emerge; progress is made. The very existence of a debate among prominent specialists is a breakthrough, he argued. The debate is enriched by the fact that the four participants come from diverse academic disciplines--history, political science, and sociology.

"We welcome particularly the contributions of our esteemed Turkish colleagues," Lima added. "Their participation is a big step forward in Turkish historiography, Armenian historiography, and, above all, in the development of an honest and meaningful historiography of the late Ottoman period."

Lima proceeded to discuss some of the actual issues that had emerged in the debate. "Suny and Dadrian agree, for example, that the Young Turks made a major strategic decision to exterminate the Armenian people. They disagree, however, on just when and just why the genocidal decisions were made. They present evidence to support their views. And so their exchange of views is enlightening."

"A travesty of history"

After discussing a number of other issues that emerge in the debate, Lima returned to the matter of the significance of the debate. "Whereas the present debate takes us beyond the issue of denial, some of the views expressed by the participants do double-duty," Lima said. "They serve to debunk certain stock assertions of denialists. Deringil, for example, derides the classic Turkish nationalist thesis that the destruction of Armenian civilians in 1915 was part of a civil war. He refers to the thesis as ‘nonsense,’ and ‘a travesty of history.’

"Akarli, in turn, takes issue with the reasoning of those who deny the Genocide. He states that even if Turkish nationalist claims about Armenian sedition were true, they would not account for the destruction of Armenians away from the war zones: The deportation of ‘virtually all Armenians en masse, and their actual consequences, do invite the term "genocide,"’ Akarli writes."

During the discussion after the presentations, Kouymjian reinforced the sense that the study of the Armenian Genocide has reached a turning point. He pointed out that a number of Turkish intellectuals participated in a conference on the Genocide that was held in Paris in April. The conference was organized by the counterpart in France of the Armenian National Committee.

"He took up a challenge"

Sarafian noted that one of the participants in the Paris conference was Fikret Adanir, a prominent Turkish professor based in Germany. Adanir stated that he himself used to deny the veracity of the Armenian Genocide twenty years ago; however, he took up a challenge to review the evidence and changed his views. Now he is even the author of a German-language textbook on Turkish history, which includes a discussion of the Armenian Genocide.

On the significance of the participation of Turkish scholars, Sarafian quoted Engin Akarli’s contribution to Armenian Forum: dialogue helps the efforts of a young generation of Turkish intellectuals to rescue the history of their land from the clutches of nationalist paradigms and to face honestly what they see there.