Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnum, and me, William Durimport.

On April 24, 1915, Ottoman authorities arrested Armenian intellectuals and community leaders

in Constantinople. Thus began the Armenian genocide, one of the worst mass atrocities of the

20th century. Today we remember the one and a half million Armenians who were deported, mass

occurred, or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination, and mourned the tragic

loss of so many lives. Now that was a statement by Joe Biden, which was made on the 24th of April

2022. So less than a year ago, and it formally recognized the Armenian genocide as a genocide,

which previously no US president had done. And that is the subject of today's topic. Our special

guest, you have met him before, but he is again the best person to speak about this. He has written

extensively and researched extensively the subject, and it is Eugene Rogan. And Eugene, we should

recognize right at the start of all of this, that we are going to be treading some very tricky terrain

here. Why is this such a contentious, even subject to be talking about in this podcast?

Thank you, Anita. I mean, I think you find when you approach the history of the Armenian

genocide that there are conflicting narratives, Armenians who have been in search of justice and

recognition for the suffering of the Armenians at the Ottoman Empire, and still feel that they

run up against a wall of denialism from the Turkish government. And the Turkish government,

patriotic Turks, who for generations, have sustained a narrative that what happened to the Armenians

was not delivered genocide, but was the consequences of war. And that the Armenians were not the only

ones to suffer in a terrible war that claimed millions of Turkish lives as well. These are rival

narratives that are very difficult to reconcile, but I think the historian today really faces a

challenge of balancing these narratives to try and get to the grips with why mass murder happens.

Not to justify it, but to understand it because it's definitely not going away. It's a

...