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W. Empire pod UK.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me Anita Arnan and me William Durable.

On April 24th, 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 1.5 million Armenians who were deported,

massacred or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination and mourn 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

Rogin and Eugene we're gonna 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 of the Ottoman Empire and

still feel that they run up against a wall of denialism from the Turkish

government and the Turkish government and patriotic Turks who for generations

have sustained a narrative that what happened to the Armenians was not deliberate 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

...