Is it true that Cenk Uygur’s ancestors tried to wipe out Ana Kasparian’s ancestors and that their media outlet, the Young Turks is named after those of Cenk’s ancestors who tried to wipe out Ana’s?
It is not as well known that, as we’ll see, the Young Turks was a group of men who waged the “Armenian massacre of 1915” also called the “Armenian Genocide” according to Britannica.
In other words, Cenk and Ana both work for a media outlet that, it seems, is named after a group of Cenk’s ancestors who mass murdered Ana’s ancestors!!
During the Armenian genocide that began 100 years ago, the Turks not only killed over 1.5 million Armenians but they razed their churches and monasteries as well.
According to Britannica, the Armenian Genocide, also known as the Armenian massacre of 1915, was a
campaign of deportation and mass killing conducted against the Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire by the Young Turk government during World War I (1914–18). Armenians charge that the campaign was a deliberate attempt to destroy the Armenian people and, thus, an act of genocide. The Turkish government has resisted calls to recognize it as such, contending that, although atrocities took place, there was no official policy of extermination implemented against the Armenian people as a group.
Since we are an encyclopedia that focuses on things insofar as they are relevant to our own culture war, we will not explore the Armenian Genocide itself in depth. Therefore we recommend you see the sources listed at the end of this piece. Know, however, that Britannica states,
Life for Armenian villagers and townspeople in the Ottoman Empire was difficult and unpredictable, and they often received harsh treatment from the dominant Kurdish nomads. Because local courts and judges often favoured Muslims, Armenians had little recourse when they were the victims of violence or when their land, livestock, or property was taken from them.
Further on, they write that in January of 1915, Armenian soldiers were
Systematically murdered by Ottoman troops, the first victims of what would become genocide. About the same time, irregular forces began to carry out mass killings in Armenian villages near the Russian border.
Armenian resistance, when it occurred, provided the authorities with a pretext for employing harsher measures. In April 1915 Armenians in Van barricaded themselves in the city’s Armenian neighborhood and fought back against Ottoman troops, On April 24, 1915, citing Van and several other episodes of Armenian resistance, Talat Paşa ordered the arrest of approximately 250 Armenian intellectuals and politicians in Istanbul, including several deputies to the Ottoman Parliament. Most of the men who were arrested were killed in the months that followed.
Soon after the defeat at Sarıkamış, the Ottoman government began to deport Armenians from Eastern Anatolia on the grounds that their presence near the front lines posed a threat to national security. In May the Ottoman Parliament passed legislation formally authorizing the deportation. Throughout summer and autumn of 1915, Armenian civilians were removed from their homes and marched through the valleys and mountains of Eastern Anatolia toward desert concentration camps. The deportation, which was overseen by civil and military officials, was accompanied by a systematic campaign of mass murder carried out by irregular forces as well as by local Kurds and Circassians. Survivors who reached the deserts of Syria languished in concentration camps, many starved to death, and massacres continued into 1916. Conservative estimates have calculated that some 600,000 to more than 1,000,000 Armenians were slaughtered or died on the marches. The events of 1915–16 were witnessed by a number of foreign journalists, missionaries, diplomats, and military officers who sent reports home about death marches and killing fields.
The Armenian Genocide laid the ground for the more homogeneous nation-state that eventually became the Republic of Turkey. By the end of the war, more than 90 percent of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were gone, and many traces of their former presence had been erased. The deserted homes and property of the Armenians in Eastern Anatolia were given to Muslim refugees, and surviving women and children were often forced to give up their Armenian identities and convert to Islam. Tens of thousands of orphans, however, found some refuge in the protection of foreign missionaries.
The Armenian Genocide had both short- and long-term causes. Although the expulsion and murder of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in 1915–16 was an immediate response to the crisis of World War I and not the result of a long-held plan to eliminate the Armenian people, its deeper causes go back to Muslims’ resentment of Armenians’ economic and political successes—a reversal of traditional Ottoman social hierarchies that had Muslims superior to non-Muslims—and to a growing sense on the part of Young Turk leaders and ordinary Muslims that Armenians were an alien and dangerous element within their society.
Turkey has steadily refused to recognize that the events of 1915–16 constitute a genocide, even though most historians have concluded that the deportations and massacres do fit the definition of genocide—the intentional killing of an ethnic or religious group. While the Turkish government and allied scholars have admitted that deportations took place, they maintain that the Armenians were a rebellious element that had to be pacified during a national security crisis.
Image source: Armenian Genocide - Turkish-Armenian history by Encyclopedia Britannica (last updated August 29, 2022), captioned, “Armenian Genocide Bodies in a field, a common scene across the Armenian provinces in 1915 From Ambassador Morgenthau's Story by Henry Morgenthau (Doubleday, Page & Company, New York, 1918)”
Image source: Armenian Genocide - Turkish-Armenian history by Encyclopedia Britannica (last updated August 29, 2022), captioned, “Armenian Genocide: massacre at Erzincan Human remains from the massacre at Erzincan, a site now in eastern Turkey From Ambassador Morgenthau's Story by Henry Morgenthau (Doubleday, Page & Company, New York, 1918)”
It seems that long before Cenk’s TYT media outlet, he went out of his way to deny the that they Armenians were subjected to mass murder. See “Column: Historical Fact or Falsehood?” by Cenk Uygur for the Daily Pennsylvanian (November 20, 1991). Thus, it appears that Cenk knew about the Young Turks and had no issue with his media outlet being called the Young Turks. Seems suspicious, at best.
I wonder if Ana Kasparian knows that four years before she joined The Young Turks, Cenk had an article denying the Genocide her ancestors survived on the show’s website? From her public statements on the subject, she appears to be completely unaware.
Cenk has tried to defend his choice to give his show, The Young Turks, the same name as the perpetrators of the Genocide he denied, by saying that he got the definition from the American Heritage Dictionary[8]. The problem for Cenk is that the definition he put on the website didn’t exist when he came up with the name of the show (he purchased youngturk.com[9] and TheYoungTurks.com[10] in 1998) and the definition didn’t feature on the show’s website until years after he’d already put Genocide denial on his the site[11]. This raises the question, was Cenk “progressive” at the time? All evidence points to the fact that he wasn’t, at least in the way he portrays to the media now, (he even voted for John McCain in 2000 and would have in the General Election if he’d won the nomination[12]).
This is a huge problem for The Young Turks brand. Even before we found out that Cenk had Genocidal Denial on his show’s website there have been increasing calls for Cenk to change the name of his show[13]. The mounting pressure became so great that Ana tweeted[14] out a statement by Cenk[15] in 2016. It wasn’t what Cenk said in that statement, but what he didn’t say revealed the most.
In this article, it will become apparent why Cenk’s 2016 statement, simply isn’t good enough and why it’s not enough for Cenk to “rescind” two of his four statements explicitly denying the Armenian Genocide. It’s also untenable for a talk show host who regularly talks about current and historical world politics to say he refuses to talk about this one issue.
If The Young Turks don’t have the editorial procedures in place to deal with their own history how can they expect anyone to take them seriously as a “news” organization? If they aren’t willing to be open and honest about this, why should anyone listen to them on any other issues? And why are they calling on sports teams to change their names for “racism”[16][17][18][19][20] when their own CEO show has a much worse history of showing insensitivity to the Armenian community and a darker past of racism and genocide denial?
the four times we know that Cenk publicly denied the Armenian Genocide. It’s also worth noting that since Cenk claims to have written for The Turkish Times within this same time period, there is a good chance that there may be more.
It seems that very shortly after endorsing Cenk for Congress, Bernie Sanders rescinded for past controversy. However, it seems that this had nothing to do with Cenk’s genocide denial. See these;
