April 24, 2015 marks the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Beginning in 1915 in the midst of the strains of World War I, Ottoman officials oversaw the deportation and massacre of anywhere between several hundred thousand and 1.5 million Armenian people. The result was the physical annihilation of the Armenian communities that had lived in the Anatolian peninsula for more than 2500 years. But labeling it as a “genocide” has proven controversial and unacceptable for the Turkish Republic. Join your History Talk hosts Leticia Wiggins and Patrick Potyondy as they interview Ronald Grigor Suny, Ayse Baltacioglu-Brammer, and John Quigley to discuss what is now known about the  history of these events, the meaning of the legal and historical label “genocide,” and why coming to terms with mass atrocities is so difficult today.

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Posted April 2015